Port Potager

Choose just one favorite pie for Thanksgiving? Impossible!  We all love pumpkin and apple, so every year we make two pies — even on the years when it's just the four of us. Because really, you can't have too much pie. You just eat the leftovers for breakfast for the rest of the week. And dessert. And maybe lunch. Anyway, the pumpkin pie is made from fresh pumpkins, and you can find full recipe and pumpkin processing details here . The apple pie was adapted from a Martha Stewart recipe . I looked at a few to get a sense of ratios, and decided to season this apple pie (4 Granny Smith and 4 Gala apples) with the zest and juice of one clementine, ground cloves, allspice, and coriander, plus brown sugar and a pinch of cinnamon. I purposely went with a less traditionally flavored apple pie, to differentiate it from the pumpkin. I liked it, but I think I should have given a bigger warning that this was different from your regular cinnamon-clove-nutmeg classic apple ...

All of the sudden, we have cucumbers. And not just one or two. Today I picked 5 1/2 pounds of the most perfect pickling cukes we've ever managed to grow.  And it just so happens that five pounds is the perfect amount for our gallon crock. Time to brine some pickles! Brined pickles are fermented, and we made our first batch last summer . Up until then we had always done a fresh pack with vinegar and canned them. Those are good, too — I do love vinegar! — but the flavors of a fermented pickle are much more complex. Fermented foods are also good for you , which make our pickle and sauerkraut crocks suddenly more trendy than Dutchy .  We liked last summer's brined batch well enough, but the seasoning wasn't our favorite. The recipe we used called for pickling spice, and the generic one we found was pretty heavy on the cinnamon. So this year I am determined to get the best spicy, kosher flavor with our brined pickles. I'm hoping for a classic here. Althou...