any a u cats enjoy some ash syrup?
a tad more tangyr'n birch.
tis tappin season, n, shoot, i done cut all that maple crap fer my floor.
Not down here, redpowered. We don't drill trees, we squeeze cane, and that's all over with till next fall.
cane, hmmm, how do you like yer coffie?
right outa the pot!
We raise cane all summer and raze cane all winter!
u mean the perk-o-later!
:D yeah that!
Is Ash syrup for real? Besides, after tasting REAL Maple syrup I'll never go back to anything less. That is, unless the cheap stuff is all I can get at the time for my pancakes.
Are you serious about Ash syrup? I've never heard of it.
???
I've never heard of ash syrup, but I imagine you can get syrup from any type of tree. Sycamore is one, but you need about twice as much sap to get the same amount of syprup as sugar maple. But, ash never seemed like that much of a sap producer.
How much sap do you need to get a gallon of ash syrup?
I know where there are a bunch of pines you could tap. I want to be there when you get your first taste of the syrup it makes. ;D
camphor........now that would be a trip. :D
Wish I knew how to tap a tree! It sounds like fun, is it easy to do? Besides a bucket what else would I need? Can someone give me a run down on how it's all done?
Thanks!
Steve
Try this link:
http://biology.clc.uc.edu/fankhauser/Buds_and_Bark/tapping_sugar_maple_index.html
Great link Ron with some great links on the page. I would like to try this someday and see what happens!
Steve
I once made "maple" syrup from potatoes. If I remember correctly I cut up about 6 medium sized potatoes and covered them with water. Cooked them just like kidneys (boil the pith out of them). Kept adding a little water until they disintegrated and then strained out the mush. Continued cooking down the juice until it was thick then added a little brown sugar (I think). It was really good and tasted very similar to maple syrup.
Mark
I planted some Sugar Maple here about 5 years ago. They are at about 4" in diam. right now. Sure have pretty leaves in the Fall. How much longer do I have to wait to get enough to cover a short stack? ??? I'll have a couple of eggs over wlell with thick sliced bacon too, please. 8)
Mark,
I really hesitate to make this reply-------I don't think I've ever met a potato that I didn,t like----but,
I hope you don't take offense at this because I enjoy your posts extremely and would hate to discourage you----but
I ain't using no recipes from someone that cooks innards. :o
Noble
Red,
You mentioned birch sap. What kind of birch tree do you tap for sap/syrup?
We have lots of black birch. The sap smells like sasspirilla.
Never tapped them though.
We tapped a yellow birch for the heck of it when we were sugaring. It made a pleasant drink, a bit wintergreen tasting but not as sweet as a maples sap. I have heard that it takes closer to 75 to one reduction to get syrup as opposed to the 45 to one boildown with hard maple. Don't know about that ash syrup though, it might be a son of a beech to swallow!
Frank
Welcome crofter, I see yer goona fit in real well. Now if we can teach the rest of these guys how to tell their ash from their pophole...
I"ve heard you can make an alcoholic birch beer from sweet or black birch. Saw it in a Ewell Gibbons book.
I don't know about watching potatoes boil like that. I'd get a little board boiling the pith out of them.
Crofter and Ron,
Thanks for the input on tapping birch. I figure at some point we'll try this as we have so many birch trees. Besides the big ones we have lots of small ones that seem to grow like a 15-20 foot weed. I suppose I should thin em out.
I had asked question on this topic about tapping birch trees.
Well I was reading the March 19th Weekly Market Bulletin put out by the NH Farm Bureau last night & there was an article about tapping birch.
It looks like this is becoming a cottage industry in Alaska.
Anyway they said it takes about 100 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup. It sounded like the flavor is very interesting also less sweet.
They said any birch tree can be tapped although most tap black birch.
Same rules apply as maple you want a 10" dia. tree and every 5" dia after that can allow another tap.
Mike
As a kid I tapped and boiled down sap from Box Elder,not too bad, sweet and different than Maple.
i just threw out "ash syrup" that day cause it was warm, and the ash logs sittin next to the barn were runnin and smellin sweet, so i gave her a lick. very tasty. all winter long i throw young branches off the logs into the goat pen, and they browse it right down. 14" birch trees can be tapped with success. the flavor is very robust, unlike maple in any respect.
id like to try the booze rather than the syrup. :D
Noble,
What's wrong with cookin' innards?! I've eaten many objectionable parts of the cow, pig, and deer....tasty 8)
Ohsoloco,
You have convinced me-------I don't want any of your recipes either :D
Noble
C'mon, Noble...I have some good ones ;)
My grandmother still swears that the doopa is the best part of a chicken (I think I just gave a hint to our nationality). Of course, one of her sisters used to love to eat the chicken heads. Then again, with 14 siblings in a house, I could see why they would munch on some of these tasty morsels...guess it just rubbed off on me ;D
ohsoloco,
Ya have any recipes for haggus(sp)? :-X
Jason
ohsoloco what is doopa? I never heard of it.
When I was about 22 I was seeing a girl from another part of the world and they ate chicken feet and that was pretty good eating.
When I go to the cabin on the island there's a lady there that makes this really good pate from the brain and liver of deer and that's pretty good!
I think the only thing that I won't eat is prarrie oysters!
Steve
Are prarie oysters the same as mountain oysters?
Yuuummmmmmmmmm
You don't know what you are missing.
BTW........I extracted around 30 pair of them yesterday.
:D :D :D
Bizie, your girlfriend didn't have to be from another country to enjoy chicken feet. My grandma used to make soup out of'em, when we butchered several at once. They ain't so bad, if ya don't wash all the flavor off of'em. ;D
Believe it or not, they actually sell chicken feet at the Super Walmart in Quincy, Fl. :o
Jason, I don't have any recipies (let alone good ones ;) ) for haggus; however, Gram makes a mean stuffed pig stomach :)
Bizzie, doopa is Polish for butt.
There are very few things I won't eat, but I may have to think twice before I eat any mountain oysters :-/ Then again, I'd probably only eat them if I DIDN'T think about it :D
ohsoloco doopa is butt? Well I guess there's nothing like a good piece of butt!
DanG I thought that leaving the flavour on was the best part about it! Nothing like eating what they stepped on.
Haytrader are we talking about the same thing? I'm told that prarie oysters are bull balls that are cooked over an open fire. Are mountain oysters the same thing?
Steve
They're one in the same, bizzie...I've always heard of them as Rocky Mountain Oysters.
I was always told the mountain oysters were from sheep. Makes me think that the original prairie oysters would be from buffalo.
The record holder for eating mountain oysters is held by a guy named Nad Chuester. They say the crowds encouragement during the competition is what spurred him to victory.,
Go NAd! Go Nad! Go NAd!
It must have been quite inspiring. :)
Maybe Prairie oysters come from Prairie dogs?? Use 'em as "appetizers". ::) ::)
My recollection of rocky mountain oysters was they were from sheep. When I was growing up they would have what they called stag dinners that always had rocky mountain oysters as an entree (if you can call them that). Later as pigs got to be the main farm animal around here then it was pig knuckles. Either way after a few beers you didn't care what their parentage was. ;D
OK I gotta ask! Who here has ever eating these things for dinner? I will try anything thing but when it comes to nuts I think that I will stick to eating nuts that come from the trees! :D
Steve
rocky mtn oysters taste pretty danG good, but they got this mushy texture to em that i cant get over, so i dont eat many of em. ill try anything once. guess thats all it takes ;D
Steve,
I think nuts are nuts, whether they are of the prarie variety, mountain variety, or Rocky mountain variety. Then there are calf nuts, sheep nuts, and turkey nuts. I have fixed many hundred pounds of calf nuts over the years. Don'T matter what ya call em, they are double DanG good, if fixed right. Sometimes at a restaurant they make the peices to big resulting in the "mushy" texture. Of course they come in varying sizes so the cook determines the sixe of the end product. I like to cut them small (walnut size) and dip them in egg wash (egg and milk) and then coat them with flour and cracker crumbs. Cook in a deep far fryer till golden brown.
Thy are really good and even sound better than chicken feet.
:D
I guess my most exotic taste would be Chicken gizzards. Love em. You can buy just Gizzards up here. Fry em like ya would the regular chicken. Dad always used to hover over the frying pan on Sundays till Mom gave him the gizzard, which was always the first chicken part to fully cook. I was in my teens before I was able to finaggle my first one away from him. :)
Gizzards and livers are big around here, too. You can get'em in all the grocery stores, as well as some restaurants. Some of the convenience stores that have a little deli, sell them too. My favorite place for'em is Lindy's Fried Chicken. They have gizzards that are steamed after being fried. They are "different" but good. They also have the regular fried ones, and fried livers.
I'll have to admit that the oysters are pretty good grub, but they really aren't 'innards'. Well maybe the ones from a turkey as they are located inside. We always called them 'turkey fries' and they are the best of all.
Noble
Mmmmm....gizzards ;D For Thanksgiving the turkey gizzards always go in the gravy....the neck always gets cooked and chopped up in there as well.
Breaded, deep-fried nuts...now that you put it that way, I'd eat em. Heck, you batter dip and deep fry just about anything and it would taste good :)
Hey, wasn't this thread about syrup? :D :D :D
Any other fans of scrapple out there?
I think it was but it all fits. :P 8) That's what makes a lot of this stuff taste so good ......when you accidentally let a corner of it get in the syrup that ran off of your biscuit. :D :D
So what's the best type of syrup to put on mountain oysters?
I don't like syrup on my scrapple...either sliced cold from the fridge, or fried up nice and crusty with lots of fresh cracked pepper :)
Different strokes for different folks but I'm an old Southern boy and there is only one kind of syrup to me, Cane. I like those tree kinds ok but they are foreign to my tastes.
I don't like syrup on my sausage either but you have to understand that the operative word is "accidentally". When a little bit just edges into syrup and you didn't mean it.....then......m mmmm boy! That's good.
Okay, since you insist.
:D
Syrup for moutain oysters is actually a dip. I make my own and everybody really likes it and wants to know the recipe. I tell them it is secret.
;)
Reason is, cause I never make it exactly the same. Depends on what I have to make it out of. But..........it is somthing like this.
Ketchup base and small amounts of the other
Heinz 57
Worchestershire sauce
Mustard
Horseradish
Garlic powder
A little salt
We generally cook mountain oysters when there is an occasion or a gathering and it takes several batches in the cooker before any end up in the pan to go on the table.
:D :D :D
QuoteWorchestershire sauce
Your confusing me. I think you meant whats-that-there-sauce
Jeff,
Yeah, that's what I meant.
Actually, I didn't miss it to far. Went to the fridge and have my very own bottle of WORCESTERSHIRE sittin here to do my spell check with.
:P
Hey Haytrader that's funny because I've walked to the fridge a few times to get the spelling on things that are in there!
Sure wish they would spell ketchup the way it sounds....catch up!
Steve
I looked up ketchup in the dictionary, once. Found it listed as "Catsup." Mr Webster says it is a sauce made from tomatoes or apricots. :o APRICOTS? Anybody ever had any apricot catsup? Don't seem like it would go too well with a burger and fries. Maybe it would go better with nuts. ::)
Here's something really gross! We can get ketchup that's green, it tastes the same but it's made for kids and it just isn't right I tell ya.
Steve
My kids had some of that around,awhile back.I couldn't bring myself to try it,even though it is supposed to be the same flavour.
Why mess with a good thing ???
We bought some of the green ketchup for our kids once, couldn't get myself to try it until one day we were out of the good stuff. Now it tastes the same but the green color made it taste different. I ate about three bites out of my hamburger and couldn't finish it, it's not the same. I threw it out after that.
The thought of green ketchup on pigs knuckles yuck!
I think they even make purple ketchup....PURPLE! I'll stick with the red stuff.
That reminds me of my former boss/pharmacist telling me they used to sell a certain brand of aspirin that came in several different colors. They were exactly the same, but some customers insisted that one color worked better than another.
Oholoco,
Good scrapple is hard to find. Whem I lived in Union Co. Pa. We would butcher every new years, We would make a batch of scrapple per pig. Down here in Md. we had a couple of pigs done at different butchers but it just wasn't right. I used to like my mother-in-laws home made ketchup, it was thick and a little chunky. But my wife is tired of it and won't make it.I'm getting hungery now.
Some of the scrapple in the local grocery stores are pretty good. My dad and I made a batch a while ago with some pork and livers. Pretty good considering it was missing some of the "meat." Had a couple people give us a pan, and most of it wasn't worth eating :-/
There's scrapple and then there's pudding. Pudding has more corn meal in it and I believe it gets passed off as scrapple.
I like it fried and crispy. There is one restaurant that deep fries it, but that's too greasy.
Some people in this area used to use molasses instead of syrup. Good shoe-fly pies are made from molasses. You don't see people use molasses much, they been sold on that sugary "maple" syrup for too long.
Hiya
Where in Union County? I have spent quite a bit of time hunting at my friends camp in Werkert. Real pretty country :D but the hunting isn't to good any more. ??? ???
John
(https://forestryforum.com/images/04_01_03/Weikert.jpg)
Well, I love fried scrapple. It's mighty fine for breakfast. I sure would like for someone to put a recipe on how to make good scrapple into the Knowlege Base. I'd like to make a batch. 8)
Ron, molasses is highly underrated. I made many-a shoe-fly-pie and cake in my time. Just not too sure about putting it on my scrapple :-/ Like Tom said, maybe just a little on the edges ;) I never cook liver pudding, always eat it cold :) Scrapple I can eat either way.
John, I drive pretty close to your friend's camp on my way to the lumberyard...chuggin' along with a trailer full of green lumber, although I'd rather haul the dry stuff ;D What a great drive that is down 45.
You've got me going now! I've been making syrup this spring- and hankering for scrapple- and I have made homemede ketchup that as I'm sitting here with my stomach growling I could taste, I swear. Got's to go make somethin to put the syrup on- wish I had scrapple.. lw
AAaahh..back again after french toast. The syrup is a mite thin but serviceable. Where we had another 4-6' up here over the weekend and it was 8* this am, I guess the trees will be running again midweek when it warms up again.
I wasn't gonna do it- way too busy (I'm now Maine State Nurse Liaison for the American Red Cross as well as being chief of Hollis Rescue- hadn't known about the one when I got the other- and then couldn't turn it down..so I should be off to Washington in May and hope that's not terrorist week..)- but I just wanted some sap to DRINK- so I put in a tap- and then I put in another tap- and now it's only 7 taps and still a stovetop operation- but she do mount up. One tap runs about 3 gallons on good days. All the rest are doing just a 'bit'- to up to a gallon at the best. And the hens are laying, and cows are in milk- so the French toast is nearly all my own product. Never did grow and grind wheat yet, though. We have a couple little grinders, but the harvesting is beyond my knowledge base.. And right now, where I'd plant wheat is where I graze cows.
I wish the snow would go away- I want to plant peas and see how the herbs made out over the winter. I know mice chewed the box-elder stems up about 15"- but they didn't touch the balsam poplars. I haven't checked the apples or the nut tree babies yet. I don't think they will like lavendar (heh heh..)- or wormwood, but I'll do a comprehensive catalog when I can finally see something besides white..lw
Speaking of snow, we're in the midst of getting about half a foot, and I think they're calling for more later in the week. Got the horseradish out of the ground a few days ago, and boy is that ever good on my ham sammiches ;D There's a big bag of onion sets in the kitchen waiting to go in the ground...at this rate it may be a while.
I forget how destructive rabbits can be to trees..the small apple trees have those plastic protectors on them. A few months ago I trimmed off some of the larger apple branches that needed to go so I could smoke bologna with them. All of the little branches I trimmed off and let on the ground are now stripped of most of their bark.
Yah, I'da liked to think it had been snowshoe hare doing the damage- it'd be nice to have them that close to the house- but I don't think they burrow. They den 'in' the snow, but AFAIK. there is evidence of them at the surface as well- those gigunda tracks..if they could burrow they'd like it a lot to avoid my idiot dawgs. God knows the snow was deep enough- we could had a jackalope burrowing and not have any surface evidence :D :D :D lw
(https://forestryforum.com/images/04_01_03/Smiling%20Pig01.jpg)
Can anyone tell me if this Scrapple recipe I found is any good?
SCRAPPLE
2 lbs pork shoulder (or pork butt)
1 whole fresh pork hock
2 cups yellow cornmeal
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon sage
1 tablespoon salt
1 teaspoon white pepper
2 teaspoons black pepper
Cut up pork shoulder into 2 inch chunks. Place the pork chunks, pork hock, sage and cayenne pepper in a stock pot and cover with water. Simmer for about 2 or 3 hours or until meat falls apart. Drain and reserve stock.
Pull meat from bone and chop all the meat with a knife or food processor, being careful not to grind it too fine. Set aside.
Measure 5 cups of stock and return to pot. Bring it to a simmer; add meat, cornmeal, salt and peppers, and stir constantly until thick and smooth, about 15 to 30 minutes.
Pour mixture into 2 loaf pans and refrigerate until completely chilled. unmold scrapple. Slice and fry until colden brown and crisp on both sides.
Makes about 12 servings.
That doesn't sound like a bad recipie, Charlie...a little more kitchen friendly than the stuff ya buy in the store, but I'm used to seeing buckwheat flour in the mix as well. Just found a block of scrapple in the fridge, and the only meat that is in it is pork livers, skins, jowls, and hearts....like I said, your recipie sounds much more kitchen friendly :D I would definitely add some pork livers to the recipie, it just wouldn't taste right without 'em 8)
So THIS is where they get the ideas for Fear Factor. Anybody ever try out??
Hey Jeff, I thought I joined the Forestry Forum not the Fear Factor Food Forum.
If you can keep it down, more power to you, but I would rather do it for 50k then just for fun... or food!
Furby,
Some of these ol southern boys will eat anything and say its good. Number one thing they look for in a food source? Its gotta be slow enough to catch it.
Jeff B
Last time I looked pigs were not slow, not that slow anyways.
They are even faster when they know they will be dinner. I do think trees are a little bit easier to catch though. :D :D :D
Some of us yanks will eat anything as well....and it IS all good ;D
Furby, the difference between a Yankee zoo and a Southern zoo is that the Yanks list the name of the animal that's in the cage. The Southerners list the name of the animal and also a recipe on how to cook and eat it. ;D
:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D