Winter garden, holidays, and recipes!

We are working hard to prepare the garden for the winter and the upcoming Spring growing season!  Several of the beds have been turned over and feather meal was added to help balance the soil in preparation for Spring planting.  Vetch seeds have been spread as a cover crop for the winter.

The weather has been beautiful and the garden is so peaceful.  If you get a chance during the next few weeks while the weather is still mild, be sure to stop by and take in the beauty of the gardens and all nature has to offer this time of year!

The leaves are in full Fall colors and you know what that means...the Holidays are right around the corner!  Do you have any favorite holiday recipes?  We would like to give our readers and members of the Emerson Farm community the opportunity to share your favorite holiday traditions and recipes!  If you would like to share a recipe, send it in an email to emersonfarm@yahoo.com (see link to the right)  Be sure to tell us any background stories about your recipe...is it a family recipe?  one from a dear friend?  one you made yourself?  You can also send a picture of your favorite foods too!  (Be sure to send pictures as an email attachment in jpeg format).

When we get your recipes we will post them to share with all of our readers!  To get us started, here is a great recipe for peanut butter cookies!

This recipe comes from the King Arthur Book of Whole Grain Baking...

Peanut Chews
Yield: 28 cookies
Baking temp: 350
Baking time: 11-12 minutes

Ingredients
1 cup smooth all-natural peanut butter
1/2 packed brown sugar
1/2 granulated sugar
1 large egg
1/4 water
2 tablespoons honey
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 lightly salted, dry roasted peanuts, finely ground in the food processor

Directions
Preheat oven to 350F.  Lightly grease or line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.

Cream the peanut butter, sugars, egg, water, honey, vanilla, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl, beating until smooth.  Add the flour and ground peanuts, beating until the mixture is well combined.  The dough will be very stiff.

Drop the dough by tablespoonfuls onto the prepared baking sheets.  Press the top of each cookie with a fork to make a crisscross design, flattening cookies to about 1/2 inch thick.  Dip the fork in water if it starts to stick.

Bake the cookies until lightly browned 11-12 minutes.  Remove from oven and transfer them to a cooling rack!  Enjoy!

picture from King Arthur Flour