Making Traditional Bavarian Sauerbraten

As some of you may know my mom's family is from Germany; Bavaria more specifically. My mom was born in Munich in fact. I've grown up eating some really great, filling, traditional German foods, and now that I'm older I like to try my hand at our recipes. I had a bunch of family over recently for Sunday dinner. Cooking German food for my mom's side can be tricky, they know what it's supposed to taste like, and everyone has an opinion, of course, on how sour or salty or sweet it should be. I've compiled the best recipes and advice from everyone and here's what we get for sauerbraten. It's mostly a secret family recipe, you lucky people you.

Ingredients for marinade:

• 4lb pot roast (with fat trimmed off)
• 1 1/2 C Red wine vinegar
• 2 1/2 C red wine
• 12 peppercorns
• 1T mustard seed
• 4 bay leaves
• 4 whole cloves
• 1 1/2t salt
• 1/4t pepper

Ingredients for cooking:

• marinated roast
• 3T butter
• 12 carrots, sliced thin
• 6 onions, sliced

First combine all marinade ingredients (except meat) in a large saucepot, bring just to a boil. Let cool slightly.

Put meat in large bowl and then pour mixture over meat. Let cool, cover tightly, and put in fridge. Marinate for 5 days, turning meat daily.

On day 5 remove from marinade (save it, you'll need it later), drain and pat dry. Melt butter in a dutch oven, then brown meat on all sides.

I made 2 because I had a number of guests. Here's the browned meat and the other one just getting started.

Once browned, add 1C marinade, and the carrots and onions. Bring to a boil, cover tightly, and simmer for 2 hours. If you need to, add more of the marinade as it cooks.

Then strain the liquid in the dutch oven and use it to make gravy.

I'd love to tell you how, but I can't, it's secret, and umm... actually I'm not even sure how to do it right, that's Omi's department.

Along with sauerbraten we had semmelknodel, blaukraut, and creamed spinach. For dessert we had American favorites: pumpkin and apple pies. I think in the end everyone was pretty happy and full.

ummm ok I'm hungry now!

Making Horse Chestnut Soap

So I like to experiment with things. This year I've been trying out different wild foods. Some have been pretty successful, and others were an absolute bust.

Here's another experiment...

My neighbors have this huge Horse Chestnut tree, and this year it's dropped a TON of nuts. It seems like such a waste. Now these nuts aren't edible, they contain the saponin aescin and also tannin, both of them would give you a pretty nasty case of the "green apple trots", or worse, for toddlers could be fatal.

I've read that Horse Chestnuts can be used to make a soap, that's not lye-based, to use on linens. Supposedly it whitens and brightens them. Really?!

So here goes...... gather some inedible horse chestnuts.....

They're kind of pretty, some folks use them in decorating, in wreaths and such. I'm not a big decorator, so I'll make soap.....

I needed to crack this thing to get at the nut meat, so I tried a potato masher...

No luck

...maybe my meat smasher flattener mallet thingy..

Nope still fine...

Out comes the hammer, the trick was holding it still without hitting my fingers, which I eventually accomplished.

Peel the nuts

Slice meat into boiling water

Let sit in boiling water for 10 minutes or so.

Ok now I have boiling soap water, that I have to say looked and felt like it was not going to work, and smelled like potatoes. I was pretty sure I'd wasted my time at this point. Well except for the hitting the nuts with a hammer, that was fun.

Now for the experiment. I took one of my linen towels and dropped wine on them (ps this was a bad idea, I love this towel, I should have used a towel I didn't like).

Then I soaked one side in the horse chestnut soap, the other side I washed with woolite.

Here's the result, can you see that the horse chestnut soap side is better?

I was amazed actually, really surprised!

Then I washed the whole thing in horse chestnut soap to get the stain out of the woolite side too. Once it was dry the linen towel was pretty as ever, but stiff, like I'd starched it (which I guess I technically did, right?).

So the verdict is:

On new stains it works better than woolite, smells like potatoes, and starches your linen. Is a little bit of a pain to make, and not sure how I'd store it. Also I've no idea if it'd work on old stains.... an experiment for next time I suppose. Overall, if I had some stained linens that I loved and wanted to resurrect without using harsh chemicals, I'd make it again.

Newly knitted and work in progress

I loooove knitting socks, I just do, and I like wearing them too! So for all you knitted sock lovers, here's a fix!

Aaron's socks

I loved these sugary pink ones, but they weren't easy!

A client ordered these, but I night just make a pair for me, they're so pretty.

And these are the socks I'm working on now. Wool knee highs for someone's birthday. As soon as i finish these, I'm making a pair for me, I loooove these!

If you'd like your own socks, or socks to give as a gift, check out our website:

Crocus Hill Farm

making crabapple sauce

OR......... how to waste a few hours..................

Everytime we walk the dogs we walk by this really neat crabapple tree, and for the past 2 years I've been thinking about trying to make crabapple sauce.

So this year, we finally tried it.


We picked the crabapples, washed them, cut out the bad spots and put them in our dutch oven with a little bit of water so they didn't scorch. Cooked them, covered, until soft.

Don't they look pretty? They smelled good too.

Once they were soft enough I used my ricer to mush 'em up good.

PS...hot apple mush burns....

Then back in the dutch oven they went, and I cooked it down to a good consistency, and added my sugar. It tasted pretty sour and bitter, so I added more sugar, and more, and more, and more..... pretty much I added more sugar than apples....... nothing helped, it tasted awful, so it all went in the garbage! YUCK

The only good thing was, this was a test batch so I didn't pick a ton.

So.... I discovered those crabapples up the road, are not so good for applesauce....