Lazy Days (Lemon, Rosemary Chicken)

These hot, summer days make me lazy. But in spite of all that sloth, I'm still famished! (I've got a good excuse though since I'm pregnant with our second child, due in late October.) This recipe is about as simple and delicious as it gets and very satisfying to boot. There is just something about chicken cooked in the solar oven. I favor using the flavorful dark meat of chicken thighs with the skin on and the bone in. The bone and skin lend extra nutrition and savoriness to the dish. And since the chicken stays so moist in the solar oven, you don't have to add extra broth. Many people have rosemary in the garden and a lemon tree nearby, which makes it a cinch to put this together at the last minute, especially with these long summer days which are so forgiving when it comes to solar cooking - starting dinner at 2pm just isn't a problem. Serve with rice and salad or take along on a picnic in the cool evening air without ever heating up the kitchen! You may even have enough energy left to slice some fresh summer peaches over vanilla ice cream for dessert!

Ingredients:
 2 lbs Organic chicken thighs with skin and bone
Dash Olive Oil
Lemon juice from 1/2 a lemon
1 sprig fresh rosemary
Sprinkle of sea salt
1 leek, sliced (optional)
2 cloves garlic, crushed (optional)

Instructions:
Place chicken with skin facing down in a single layer in a 3 qt pot (having the skin face down means that if you remove the skin before eating you don't lose the seasoning with it.). On each thigh, drizzle a little olive oil, squeeze lemon juice liberally, and sprinkle with fresh rosemary and salt (I like to use mom's homemade herb rock salt). If you are using sliced leeks and crushed garlic, sprinkle these over the chicken thighs as well. Put lid on pot and place in preheated sun oven for 3-6 hours (it will only get more tender with time).

Humble (Polenta) Pie

Cookin' Humble Polenta Pie

Sometimes the simplest foods are the best, not to mention the quickest, easiest, and most nutritious to prepare. And they are comforting, bringing us back to our humble beginnings as cooks and consumers. This recipe brings me back to my humble beginnings as a solar oven cook. The basic idea was taught to me by my friend Irina who along with her husband and baby boy, was living with us at the time. It is the first "recipe" I ever tried in the solar oven and it is one that I come back to again and again.  I'm actually a little embarrassed to include it on a blog about cooking since it is basically a kind of mushy goulash, but I figure others might appreciate a quick, easy, tasty, clean-out-the-fridge kind of recipe that kids love. It is perfect for those spring days when the sun is shining bright, but winter still hangs in the air, chilling your bones, making you hanker for something warm and nourishing.

Ingredients:
Polenta - to make this recipe really easy, use 1 1/2 pre-made tubes of polenta(or about 3 cups freshly cooked polenta)
Protein - I like to use a 1/2 lb of ground turkey, but pine nuts, white beans, or veggie sausage could also be used, or place a fried egg on top of the finished product
Chopped Veggies - 3 cups of whatever you have like carrots, celery, fennel bulb, sweet red pepper, mushrooms, summer squash, etc
2-3 cloves crushed garlic
1/2 onion, chopped or 1 sliced leek
Seasoning - fresh parsley, time, rosemary or dried oregano, basil, thyme, or tarragon, sliced dried tomatoes is a nice touch
2-3 Tb olive oil
Salt & pepper to taste

Directions:
If using pre-made polenta, squeeze polenta into a 3qt black enamel pot and mash with a potato masher. Add ground turkey if using and mash into polenta. If using fresh polenta, pour cooked polenta into a 3 pt black enamel pot and proceed as follows. Toss in vegies, crushed garlic, chopped onion and seasoning, douse with olive oil and add salt and pepper to taste. Stir all ingredients together. Cover the pot and place in solar oven for at least three mid-day hours or until you remember to take it out. Enjoy!

He's Got the Beat (Baked Beets for Babes)

Kelsey dancing to Christmas music at the Farmers Market

Everyday is a dance party with my 1-year-old son around. He starts the day by pointing to the stereo, urging us to turn the radio up and rock out. We comply, he moves his little hips, then we start to move and pretty soon we're all smiling, oxygen filling our lungs, blood pumping through our limbs - it's a good way to start the day.

Getting Kelsey to dance is easy - he's been known to bounce to Raggae in stores, dance the Hula on a river boat, and even move his hips to the rhythm of the washing machine. Getting him to eat a variety of vegetables is not always so easy. He loves all kinds of orange pureed vegies - carrots, winter squash, sweet potatoes - introducing vegies from the other color spectrums has taken a lot more trial and error. Broccoli, spinach and chard win out in the green category, especially when cooked with eggs from our chickens. Tomatoes - yellow and red - add variety in the summer months. And from the indigo end of the rainbow - beets are a winner! This is a lucky boon since beets are filled with good vitamins and minerals, especially iron and they're a cinch to cook in the Sun Oven.

Here is a recipe for Baked Beets from "Cooking with Sunshine" by Anderson & Palkovic:

Using one or two bunches beets:

Two kinds of beets ready to go into the Sun Oven

Trim the greens from the beets and wash the beets. Place the beets in a dark roasting pan with 1/4 inch water. Cover and bake for about 2 hours in the Sun Oven until tender when tested with a fork. Peel the beets by rubbing the skin off (it should fall off easily). These can be kept whole in the fridge for several days. Cut into bite sized pieces when ready to serve.

If you would like to use the beet greens, which have a nice flavor and plenty of nutrients, strip the greens from their stems and wash very thoroughly. Cut into 2-inch strips. You can either place them in the roasting pan on top of the beets for 30 minutes to steam them, or you can saute-braise them on the stove, first sauteing them in a little bit of olive oil until they start to wilt and then adding a tablespoon or so of water and covering them to steam until tender.

Serve plain or with a simple dressing of olive oil and seasoned salt (I like Herbamare).

Don't fret if your baby's poop is an alarming shade of red the next day - it's just the beets' strong coloring.

Bakin' in the Sun at Christmas (Persimmon Cookies)

The Holidays are a great time to slow down and bake in the sun - and you don't have to vacation in the tropics to do it! Even if you live where there is snow, when the sun is out, the conditions are right for baking in your solar oven. It's the perfect way to slow down during what is all too often a hectic and stressful season.

Baking in the Sun Oven is a new culinary treat for me. For the longest time I didn't try it, I was just sure it wouldn't work, but boy was I wrong! I'll admit, I do miss the smell of cinnamon and sugar wafting in the warm air of the kitchen on a chilly day, but it's also great to have a reason to go out into the fresh air and take a deep breath of yummy baking smells outside. And the baked goods come out at the perfect temperature for tasting.

The secret to baking in the Sun Oven is what my software techie friend calls, "Stacking Functions" - basically a fancy word for what women have been mastering for centuries - the art of multi-tasking. So here are three ways to stack functions in your Sun Oven:

First, have cookie sheets and baking pans on hand that can be stacked on top of one another, criss-cross fashion in order to maximize space in the Sun Oven.

Second, set up the solar oven to pre-heat and after a few minutes, place the butter in a glass pyrex dish to soften (10-15 minutes is enough). Meanwhile, you can mix together the dry and other wet ingredients.

Lastly, because things take longer to bake than in a conventional oven, it is not possible to crank out 6 dozen cookies in a day like a good little elf. I have found one or two batches (2-4 dozen) a day to be a reasonable number. This is not a limitation necessarily, but rather, an opportunity to slow down and enjoy the process of creating holiday treats. The process can be made a whole lot easier by pre-mixing ingredients. I did this by measuring out dry ingredients into two containers at a time - a bowl to be baked today and a tupperware container to be baked tomorrow. Then I measured out the wet ingredients into two containers, but did not include the butter for the second day batch. On day two all I had to do was soften the butter in the solar oven, pull out the container with the rest of the wet ingredients from the fridge, mix these both into the dry ingredients and viola - I was ready to bake!

Come late November, persimmons start appearing en masse at farmer's markets stands, in plastic bags carted home from friends' homes, and on our own trees. There are two kinds - the fuyu persimmon which is hard and can be eaten like an apple and the hachiya, which when soft and mushy can be spread on toast like jam or used to make any number of seasonal treats. It's good to have a lot of recipes to accommodate these fruits, which for me represent a burst of abundance at the end of the harvest season. It's wonderful to preserve their flavor as we head into winter and the holiday season. 

This recipe for Persimmon Cookies is one of my favorite ways to use up persimmons that appear to be melting into the counter. It comes from my mom's 40 years-and-counting collection of recipes, which she has gathered from a friend here and a magazine there.

Dry Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups flour

1 3/4 cups oats

1/2 t baking soda

1/4 t nutmeg

1 cup sugar

1 t salt

3/4 t cinnamon

Wet Ingredients:

3/4 cup shortening (I used unsalted butter)

1 egg - beaten

1 cup persimmon pulp

1/2 cup nuts (I used walnuts)

Sift together the dry ingredients. Mix the wet ingredients and add to the dry ingredients, stir together. Spoon drops of batter onto cookie sheets and bake for an hour or more, depending.

Makes 2 dozen cookies.

Result:

These cookies are moist and delicious - the butter and sugar mixed with oats and persimmon make these cookies the perfect combination of naughty and nice. They got nicely brown but didn't burn or dry out even when I forgot about them in the Sun Oven.

Around my house, these cookies go fast. In order to keep them around until guests arrive, I freeze them. To keep them flat and in good shape, place the first layer on a piece of cardboard and layer them with sheets of wax paper in between the layers, then wrap the whole package in saran wrap.  Take them out several hours before serving.

Happy Holiday baking!

Thanksgiving Do-overs (Pumpkin Streusel Pie)

My husband fondly refers to my family as "The Hallmark Family," so dubbed because of our faithful exchange of cards to mark meaningful holidays and milestones such as birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, Valentine's day - we just received our Thanksgiving card in the mail yesterday. But while this seeming obsession with letting one another know that we are thinking of each other may be excessive at times, it also manifests in more practical ways. One of the best of these is my mother's gift for gift giving. Knowing how little space we have in our home for more stuff, she keeps a keen ear out for any hints I might drop about things we need or want - a bread knife for our five year anniversary, a peppermill for my birthday, and the item I apparently requested which is coming at Christmas, but which will be a complete surprise when I open it.

As a wedding gift, my mom and step-dad gave us a Sun Oven. It has turned out to be a gold star winner when it comes to fitting into our space-limited, "stuff"-intolerant lives since it spends most of it's time outside and in use, ducking under our deck only when the rain comes. And unlike so many things, we have used it more and more over the years, rather than less and less. The Sun Oven was not only a superbly practical gift, it was also a very appropriate wedding gift, for I have found that solar cooking and marriage have teamed up to teach me many of the same lessons.

On most days, the lessons are about how to slow down, take a deep breath and let go of my attachment to having things turn out a certain way. Food, like a marriage, has its own alchemy and is influenced by many changing conditions that are beyond my control. This is particularly true when cooking with the sun - rain, clouds, short winter days all have influence on the ultimate outcome. Such was the case with my solar cooked Thanksgiving dish.

By the graces of my mother-in-law, my only responsibility for Thanksgiving other than showing up, was to bring pumpkin pie. I seriously considered plopping one of those pre-made goodies into my grocery cart, but opted for the more creative and daring approach - making my very first pumpkin pie, crossing my fingers it would be a presentable and palatable offering at the Table of Thanks. Not only that, but I would make two, with real pumpkin (not the canned stuff) and cook them in the solar oven! Visions of sun-baked, steaming pumpkin pies danced in my head. I would draw the line at making the pie crusts - our local pie place happens to sell gluten-free crusts ready-to-go out of the freezer - that would be my concession to convenience.

The thing about slow cookin' with the sun though, is it takes time - it gives time in the sense that it mostly cooks itself - but you've got to give it time in return - the time it needs to bake at the rate nature deems possible on any given day. Making pumpkin pie from scratch in the solar oven would take one long day with concentrated effort ("concentrated" being a relative term when you've got a one-year-old) or two shorter days with more breathing room.

It was an ambitious plan, but entirely possible with the right conditions. The rain which came two days before Thanksgiving was not the right condition. Neither was the pediatric appointment that required two hours of driving time the day before Thanksgiving and the funky nap schedule that it resulted in. Time to let go of having things just the way I wanted them. I took a deep breath and surrendered to that act that married couples know all-to-well - I compromised. I could have canned pumpkin and sun-baked pies or fresh sun-baked pumpkin and crusts and conventional oven-baked pies, but I could not have both. I opted for the latter and hoped for more favorable conditions next year.

Even though this is not a truly solar baked pie, I share the recipe here because it's a good one and because I have faith that it is entirely possible to bake it in the Sun Oven. It is taken from Nava Atlas' Vegetarian Celebrations (another of those practical gifts from my mother).

Pumpkin Streusel Pie (makes 1 9-inch pie)

1 2/3 cups pureed pumpkin
1 egg, beaten
1/2 to 2/3 cup light brown sugar, to taste
3/4 cup applesauce
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon each: ground ginger, allspice
9-inch pastry crust

Topping:
1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour (I used spelt instead)
1/2 cup wheat germ (I used 1/4 cup rice flour instead)
1/4 light brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon each: cinnamon and nutmeg
2 tablespoons reduced-fat margarine, melted (I used butter)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees (or as close as you can get in the solar oven)
Place the pumpkin, egg, sugar, applesauce, and spices in the container of a food processor or blender. Process until very smoothly pureed. Pour into the pie crust.
In a small bowl, stir the streusel ingredients together and quickly stir in the margarine until all the dry ingredients are lightly coated. Sprinkle evenly over the pumpkin filling. Bake for 45 minutes, or until the curst is golden and the filling is set. Let cool. Serve at room temperature.

Slow Cookin' Sol Notes:
In the morning, I cut a small hole in each of the two sugar pumpkins I had bought and put them straight into the solar oven, before leaving to take my son to the doctor. When I returned several hours later, the larger of the two pumpkins was done while the smaller of the two, was mysteriously hard (after a second attempt at cooking this one halved, I decided it was funky and gave it to the chickens for their Thanksgiving feast).

During the middle of the day, I pre-baked the crusts one at a time. To pre-bake a crust, line it with foil and fill the foil with dried beans. Normally, I wouldn't use foil in the solar oven since it reflects the sunlight and cools the oven down, but the dried beans decreased the surface are of the foil and after fifteen minutes it came out nicely firm, but not dry. (My mom suggested that in the solar oven it probably isn't necessary to use the foil since it isn't likely to brown). Once the pie crusts were pre-baked and the filling made, I gave a heaving sigh at the waning sunlight hours and slid the pies into a conventional oven for an hour.

The pies came out great. Often, things turn out so much better than in my original vision and even when they don't, there's always the opportunity for a do-over. Through trial and error, my husband and I have re-discovered the wisdom of grade-schoolers: when we're headed down the road of reactivity, one of us will pause, take a breath and ask, "Can we have a do-over?" It does wonders to diffuse the situation. Thankfully, the Sun Oven, like loving husbands, is quite forgiving and is always willing to grant me a do-over. We have a date for Thanksgiving next year.

Bravery Beans (Adzuki Bean Salad)

In an effort to feed my family more whole foods rather than processed foods, I've been cooking a pot of dried beans each week rather than buying them in cans. Canned beans are high in salt and the cans can be a source of heavy metals and BPA. Beans are a great alternative to meat as a protein source and diverse enough to fit into a number of meal plans, plus buying them dry is better for the environment since you can avoid packaging by buying in bulk and it takes less fuel to transport dry beans than those loaded with cooking water. Buying them from a local farmers market is a great option and you can find a diverse array of rare varieties like dragon tongue, angel wings, coco beans, and pearly whites. They take a little bit of planning if you want to soak them overnight, but its easy to keep a variety of dried beans on hand in the pantry.

Today I'm cooking adzuki (aka aduki/azuki) beans in the solar oven. It's a natural way to do it since beans are notorious fart-foods and slow cooked foods are easier to digest (canned beans are pressure cooked which can be hard on digestion). I also soak the beans overnight and add a strip of kombu to the cooking water to aid digestion. Enhancing the digestibility of foods makes them more nutritious since our bodies can absorb more nutrients from them. Adzuki require less cooking time than most beans and are considered in Chinese medicine to be good for the health of the bladder and kidneys. According to Winifred Yu (April, 1999), in ancient Chinese folk wisdom, the kidneys govern the emotion of fear and therefore adzuki beans are considered a source of courage that help people meet challenges bravely. So don't be afraid to eat beans, the "magical fruit"!

Here's how to prepare them:
Soak the beans overnight (this way you can start cooking them in the morning so they're ready for lunch or dinner). Rinse them in cool water and place them in a black pot with enough water to cover by two inches (I like to use purified water for soaking and cooking the beans). Add a strip of kombu seaweed if you're using it. Since the sun is nearing its lowest point in the sky as we approach the winter solstice, I gave the beans a head start by bringing them to a boil in a pot on the stove and then transferred them to my black 3-quart solar oven pan, but you can also just stick them straight in if it's early enough in the day. (While the beans were boiling, I warmed up leftover rabbit and ribs with sun-cooked spaghetti squash for lunch in the solar oven.) Once the beans are in the solar oven, let them cook for 1-4 hours - you can check them after an hour, but remember, every time you open the oven door, you add-on 10-15 minutes of cooking time. Add salt to taste after the beans are cooked, doing it before this point can toughen the beans.

Once the beans are cooked you can do a variety of things with them such as serve them with sauteed kale and brown rice, or add them to miso vegie soup. I was feeling like eating seaweed with my adzukis, so I found this recipe for adzuki bean salad on the Wholefoods website:

Serves 6

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups dried adzuki beans
1/4 cup arame sea vegetable
1/4 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
3 tablespoons canola oil
1 1/2 tablespoons finely chopped ginger
1/2 teaspoon finely chopped garlic
1 1/4 cups basil, finely chopped
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
Pinch red pepper flakes
1 tablespoon tamari
1/4 cup lime juice
1 cup thinly sliced green onions
1 cup grated carrots

Method

Once beans are cooked, set aside to let cool completely. Meanwhile, soak arame in cold water for 15 minutes; drain and rinse well.

Put oils, ginger, garlic, basil, vinegar, pepper flakes, tamari and lime juice into a large bowl and whisk to make a dressing. Add cooled beans, arame, green onions and carrots and toss gently to combine.

The result: This salad was tasty with a strong ginger flavor, which I love. I omitted the basil since it's out of season, added thinly sliced fennel bulb and served it with quinoa and bok choy sauteed in sesame oil. My one year old loved the plain adzuki beans along side some of the bok choy and mashed yams.

Feeding the Ancestors (Nana's Rabbit & Ribs)

Every November our friends Dan, Irina and their son Finn host a Ghost Dinner. It is like Dia de los Muertos – a time to honor our loved ones who have crossed over to the great mystery that is death. They create an altar on which we all place pictures, candles and offerings of those things our loved ones enjoyed when they were alive such as tobacco, alcohol, sweets, and objects of beauty. Once everyone has arrived we gather in a half circle facing the altar and talk story about our deceased loved ones, coming closer to them and one another as we share. Following the story circle, we gather around the table and feast on foods that remind us of our deceased loved ones - foods of their culture or foods they made and enjoyed. Some people wear clothing or jewelry that belonged to the person they are honoring, others serenade the living and dead alike with sweet songs.

Last year we honored my dear friend's grandfather Andres Silva, whom we all fondly called “Papi.” We remembered his tequila drinking, cigarette smoking, flirtatious ways with smiles and cringed at our memories of him driving the roads of Mexico back to his little ranchero, despite the fact that he was half blind and had been drinking. He was also more than a little deaf and being the obstinate type, refused to wear a hearing aid, which meant there was no such thing as a "private conversation" with Papi, so we shared stories of him loudly and with laughter in our voices. 

In his honor, I made flan - that custard-like dessert with a carmelly topping we all enjoy in Mexican restaurants - only to realize during the story circle with a rush of blood to my face that Papi hated sweets! He was one of the few people I have ever met who turned his nose up at dessert - can you imagine?!?! It seemed meaningful then that his picture should have toppled face down onto the pan dulce (sweet bread) I had placed in front of him on the altar (along with some Cazadores and tobacco of course). I took comfort in thinking that perhaps during those last days, when a lifetime of toughness melted into a warm embrace of the loved ones who surrounded him, Papi came to know and appreciate the sweetness in life so that now, he could drink deeply of the earthly sweets we offered him.

This year, I felt moved to honor my great-grandmother, Vicente Maria. My mother's paternal grandmother lived into her eighties and was a proud link to the Chumash ancestry that runs through my families bloodstream. She died when I was only a few years old and so my memories of her are mainly those that I have inherited from my grandfather, mother, aunts and uncles. Most of the stories about "Nana" as we called her, revolve around food and what a wonderful cook she was. Known for her tamales, empanadas, fry bread, and a dish known as "Nana's Rabbit and Ribs" she continues to nourish those of us who knew her, who wished we could have known her more, and who never had the chance to know her.

When the invitation for the Ghost Dinner came this year I knew I wanted to make Nana's Rabbit and Ribs, although it took me until only a few days before the dinner to fully commit to showing up with the dish in hand. It was daunting to think of making a dish that virtually everyone who has known me for my entire life still raves about, their bellies growling and mouths filled with saliva just with the memory of it. Not to mention the fact that I have never even eaten rabbit, let alone cooked it. So mustering my courage I emailed my mother for the recipe and marched myself to the farmers market to buy some organic, grass-fed beef ribs. Feeling more confident with the ribs in my freezer, I called our local butcher only to find out that I had to order a whole rabbit - not some nice little stew chunks like I had imagined, but a whole rabbit! I had visions of myself, skinning knife in hand, nervously trying to remove the soft hide of a fuzzy bunny. But alas, those merciful butchers agreed to thaw the rabbit and cut it into quarters for me - I could handle that. 

Here is the recipe as my mother sent it to me:

Brown the country style ribs and rabbit well.
Bake them a long time (2-3 hours, or until really tender) in a
350 oven, in the solar oven, or on the wood stove with this sauce:
         canned tomatoes, whole or chopped
         garlic, minced
         onions, chopped
         diced canned or fresh chili peppers (mild)
         dried red pepper if you want more heat
         plenty of oregano
         salt and pepper

This dish was just made for the solar oven - meat cooked slowly in a rich sauce until the meat is falling off of the bones, the flavor of the bones having fully leached into the broth.  It was not the way my great-grandmother cooked it, but I thought she would approve.

Before beginning the cooking process, I opened the album of childhood photos my mother gave me last year just before my son was born. I pulled out a black-and-white photo of Nana holding my mother when she was six months old and another of Nana holding me when I was about 14 months old, the age my son is now. I placed these together in a frame on an altar and lit a candle, praying in gratitude to all of the grandmothers who have come before me and asking my Nana to be with me as I prepared her famous rabbit and ribs, to fill the food with her grandmotherly love.

Meanwhile I had placed the ribs in a black pot and set it into the sun oven to defrost fully. With my prayers finished, I took the thawed meat out of the oven and prepared to brown it, the only trouble was I had never browned meat before. Generally squeemish around raw flesh and blood, I usually just get it from the butcher paper into the pot as quick as I can, preferably without touching it. Today was different though. There was something about preparing the food in honor of the ancestors that made the blood and flesh of those animals feel sacred and natural.

Sacred or not, the meat was still raw and needed to be browned. This was apparently a very important step as my mother had written that "it was the fact that they were so tender and brown that made them so good" - okay, no pressure there! So, I did what any sensible cook in this situation would do, I donned my apron and called my mother. The said reason for the call was to ask what kind of oil I should use to brown the meat, to which the nonchalant reply was "any kind." I settled on a high-heat safflower oil, realizing that really it was good just to know that my mom was on the other end of the line when I needed her.

I filled the bottom of two cast iron pans with safflower oil and set them over a medium-high flame. After a minute, I placed the three pounds of ribs in the two pans and browned each side for a few minutes, then the two pound, quartered rabbit - I was really glad I was wearing an apron when the oil and fat started sputtering all over the place. I plopped the rabbit organs into the frying pan too, pausing to honor the life of that rabbit as I peered at its small, round heart. Meanwhile, I cut up a large onion, almost an entire head of garlic, and three jalapenos. When the meat was done cooking, I took it out of the pans and cooked the onion, garlic and jalapenos in the same oil. Near the end I added a bunch of fresh oregano from our garden, two cans of diced tomatoes and some sea salt and fresh-ground pepper. I layered the meat and sauce in two layers in our large cast iron and set the lid on top. Then I took the leveler out of the sun oven in order to have more room and placed a trivet on the floor of the oven (this is important so that air can circulate around the whole pot). I placed the pan with the food into the oven at high noon with the oven at a temperature of 300 degrees, later when I checked on it, the temperature had dropped to 250 degrees, but that's slow cookin' for ya - it's all okay when you give it time.

 The Result:
Nana's Rabbit and Ribs definitely lived up to their reputation - they were delicious! Tender with a wonderful South-Western flavor. And rabbit, well it tastes like chicken - only better!  It had a rich flavor, not at all gamey and tough like I had expected. I took the meat off the bones since we were serving a large group buffet-style and boiled the bones to make a fortifying broth for my sick husband, but you could also serve it family style on the bone. I look forward to spending time with my great-grandmother in the kitchen, making this for loved ones many, many more times.