Yum! Bacteria!

So, guess what!  I made the jalapenos and they're very yummy, approved by my pickled jalapeno loving husband.  Also, my friend Joy gave me some kefir to use so I'll start making that for soaking grains a la Nourishing Traditions.  It incubates at room temperature, so no more accidentally killing my yogurt in the oven while I prep for dinner!

Also, I'm going to try to do the sew along at Gertie's Sewing Blog for the Lady Jane Grey coat, which is on it's way to me as we speak... I have a cotton jaquard in grey and yellow that should be smashing with my grey skirt... but as to lining, a silk charmeuse in ??? turquoise? green? grey?  I'd prefer a surprising lining, of course, but haven't decided yet what color... maybe in orange???  Erg...

I also bought fabric for curtains in the living room, finally!  It's very pretty, but I seem to be unable to find time to sew!!!  Now that school planning is done I may have a few days next week to get them put together.  I bought curtain rods already and I can't wait to see it all done and in my living room!

Speaking of fabric, I have a new favorite online fabric store: Hawthorne Threads
They have beautiful, modern fabrics which you can search by color!  So cool... and there are discounts for volume orders, as well.  Go check them out!

My new experiment: Lactofermentation

Ok, so anyone who eats yogurt enjoys the benefits of lactofermentation, it's basically growing good bacteria, the kind that your tummy likes, in a milk medium.  I've found out that it can be used for preserving foods, too, and still with all the benefits to your tummy!  Not to mention, there's no cooking involved, so the food remains nutritionally dense during preservation, unlike canning or to a lesser extent, freezing.  So, because so many of us like to eat pickles on a regular basis, I've begun with those.  Here is a recipe from Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions, which I highly recommend (and it costs a lot less now than it did when I first bought it).

Pickled Cucumbers

Makes 1 Quart

4-5 pickling cucumbers or 15-20 gherkins
1 T mustard seeds
2 T Fresh dill, snipped
1 T sea salt
4 T whey (or substitute another T of sea salt)
1 cup filtered water
Also, I added 1 clove of garlic

Wash well and place in a quart sized, wide mouth mason jar.  Combine remaining ingredients and pour over cucumbers, adding more water if necessary to cover the cucumbers.  The top of the liquid should be at least 1 in below the top of the jar.  Cover tightly and keep at room temperature for about 3 days before transferring to cold storage (read refrigerator).

Dude, that's like so many times easier than normal pickles I can't even describe it... I mean, liming, sanitizing, heating vinegar and spices, salt, processing, and all in a hot kitchen is the normal modus operandus.  So, here are mine!

 

I used the extra salt because we've been using yogurt for soaking grains for eating and I'm running short of whey...  also, mine seem to be slightly foamy, which I fear may be detergent residue from washing them out?!  I'm trying sliced jalapenos next!

Anyway, with all this yogurt consumption, I'm thinking I need the big yogurt maker, so I can make like  a quart at a time, without having to wrap my jar in a towel and put it in a warm oven and hope for the best!  One like this:

 

Or, I could make kefir, which incubates at room temperature and can be used for soaking grains, too.

Or, I could make both, some yogurt for yogurt cheese, whey, and sauces, and the kefir for when I need the bacteria to predigest and counteract enzyme inhibitors in grains.... hmmmmmm....  so many little microbes to farm, so little time!

A Child's Apron

Did you all know that Little Women love frilly aprons? Mine definitely do. My girls love to throw on a pretty apron with as many ruffles as possible and "play house" while cleaning the real kitchen or making their real beds. I guess it's like a uniform, but fun to wear! This little gem was a gift to a dear friend of Mini Me's. She's a sweet little blue eyed, pink cheeked cherub who likes to help in the kitchen, too, so I thought this was appropriate!

Isn't this just the sweetest little helper outfit you ever saw! Well, now my girls want them, too, and I've just closed shop in the sewing room in preparation for the move, but maybe for next Christmas? A little detail shot:

Here's a lovely post from Your Sacred Calling on little helpers.

Farmer's Markets

Our first real initiation to a farmer's market couldn't have happened at a better one. San Luis Obispo's farmer's markets are kind of legendary, really they're rather more like carnivals with really fresh food. Street musicians, fresh flowers, magicians, street corner preaching, and prepared foods joined the fresh food in vying for our attention. Our local markets are less complicated, but they've got plenty to satisfy our hunger for local food and farm products.

We bought lots of yummy veggies and some berries and some ground lamb and lamb sausage... ground lamb mixed with ground beef for hamburgers is really good... I only wish we'd gotten some fresh goat cheese to stuff those burgers with a la Eat Make Read. Ooooh, also this cocktail... mmmmmm.

I even bought yarn! and some fiber covered soap from the Dream Keeper Farm in Orlean VA. They had 220 yards of hand dyed worsted wool yarn from their sheep (not handspun). Fun! For $10 a skein! Score! I bought a loverly bluey, lavendery, aquaey variegated skein for my friend's 6th baby. OK, I'm knitting a gift for said baby with said yarn. Actually, I'll probably finish knitting it tonight after I write this. More on that later! Those half gallon jars are for our milk from our cow shares... we start getting at least two gallons a week next week. And look at that cool bag I got from the Dream Keeper booth, just for free with my stuff!

Blueberries

We are locavores, when at all possible. We like to eat stuff that is grown around here, which is really easy in our area because we're very rural, but near a city, so there are tons of small farms and farmer's markets, etc. very near. Monday morning we went to Hartland Orchard and picked blueberries. We have the luxury, being at home to go in the morning on a weekday, which is the best time because it's cool, there are fewer people, and the bushes are less picked over, which is common on a Saturday anytime after the first hour a u pick it farm is open. Anyway, the people there are just as friendly as can be, and helpful, and eager to answer questions, which is wonderful. Soooo, here are our five pints of blueberries:

What to do with all those berries? Jeremy had picked up a bargain cookbook featuring food from Maine and I used a recipe for a blueberry crumble pie... yum.

The Prairie Princess made the crust for me and put it in the fridge this afternoon.

I rolled it out and fluted the edges and popped it in the fridge.

Mmmmmmmm, blueberries, flour, baking powder, and a pinch of black pepper!?!



Next the Crumble! Flour, dark brown sugar, and lots of butter...



And very small people to help.



Baking the pie crust, using dried green peas as pie weights



More crumble-ing, and little baby helpfulness:

The finished crumble all, um, crumbly

I popped this all into the pie crust, put it in the oven, and made a little tart with the leftover filling and crust... to give to the neighbors. What do you do with the leftover crust and filling.

All served with a litle iced cream, warm and tangy sweet, with that nutty, molassas flavor in the crumble, wonderful! I'd have added some oats and maybe some nuts to the crumble, but it was really good.

It's absolutely amazing, a bit of summer on your tongue.

Of course, I forgot to plan supper, so we didn't eat till 9:30 pm, cause we're a little short on cash right now and hub says no eating out... and the kids went to bed late and were grumpy all morning, but the pie was worth it.

Some fun Stuff

I just heard about the book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, which I so want for Christmas. It sounds amazing. I mean, I want to make all our bread, and have been toying with the idea of making my own sourdough starter, which I still plan to do, but the idea that you just mix a few ingredients, let it rise for two hours without kneading, stick it in the fridge and just get bread dough when you want it and form a loaf and bake it. I'm sorry, but that's just amazingly easy for homemade bread. I mean you never knead this stuff, you soak the flour which is good for digestion, and I imagine that I could eventually use this same idea with my sourdough starter.

Also, I spotted this today. Little knitted moccasins in super warm alpaca. All my kids want them for slippers, so now I have to figure out how to make them in multiple sizes, but look how cute they are! They're super easy, too. I could probably use them to teach my big girls to do shaping and knitting in the round, since they're motivated to have them for themselves. Fun! Like I need more projects, though. I have way too many, seriously, waaaay too many projects going.

Finally, for fun, one of my fun chicken pictures..... guess what???????


Chicken Butt

Busy, Busy Me

My projects at the moment:


I've been knitting socks in the Embossed Leaves pattern from Favorite Socks, in this beautiful mauvy berry smoothie Panda Silk. I don't know how durable they will be, but as they are meant to be rather dressy, perhaps that doesn't matter so much. It's really pretty shimmery, sproingy yarn... merino, bamboo, and silk, but slippery, I'd suggest bamboo or wood or something instead of slippery needles. I'm knitting a sweater for one of my girls in a mulberry hue, with a round Fair Isle Yoke, a la Elizabeth Zimmerman's Percentage System using various DK weight superwash wools. I'm also knitting wool vest/undershirts for my girls to keep them warm in our chilly, old house inspired by a pattern called a Child's Shetland Vest in Weldon's Practical Needlework Volume One. Stripes for the smaller girls out of a merino fingering weight wool, some alpaca, and some sock leftovers. For my oldest daughter I've chosen a pale grey fingering wool, with sky blue accents (Knit Picks Palette). These seem to be knitting up really fast on size 5 needles.


As for sewing, I'm making costumes for the Nutcracker my girls will be in. I initially volunteered to sew some and somehow became in charge of five or six dresses. Yeowch. Fortunately, the goal is durability, and not beautiful details, so I can put them together rather quickly. I'm using this pattern from Sense and Sensibility Patterns by Jennie Chancey. I love these because they are printed on nice thick paper and include all the sizes one could wish for and she even provides supplements for busty gals and online tutorials for altering the patterns. I would like to get more basic patterns in this sort of format, too, in the future. I love the Nutcracker. I just never get tired of the music or the magic or the yummy treats it is inspired by.....


In the kitchen, I used the book Fix, Freeze, Feast to make a very large batch of red sauce this morning, and used 12 cups of it to make the Classic Chili recipe, I cooked one quarter of the recipe for lunch today and froze the other three portions in gallon freezer bags for future meals. My husband really liked it, though I decided to add some cumin to the recipe for next time. I really have liked this book so far (unlike recipes from other Freezer Cooking books I've used) and find it a real time saver at the end of very tiring and productive days to have the main dish all put together, marinated, and ready to cook. Plus, it's inspiring me to make up my own recipes in larger amounts for freezing for later. Like my cornbread recipe, put into single recipe bags, like Melissa's Corn Bread Mix, or something... I wonder if I could locate sealable paper bags instead of plastic??? I'm so over plastic.

Our First Egg!

Soooooo, guess what! We got our first egg. My 11 yo son was feeding and watering the chickens and letting them out for their day of foraging when he noticed one chicken didn't come out. He usually counts them as they come out of the coop, and since one didn't appear, he looked into the coop and saw one of our hens in the nesting boxes! He brought our four year old out after breakfast and they found one little brown egg in the nesting box! I know you all are just as excited as we are.


We've been working on some apple butter here. I love apple butter. I know not everyone appreciates the taste and the color is objectionable to some people, but to me, there's no beating good apple butter on some freshly baked bread. We don't have apple trees, but we went to a pumpkin patch on Sunday and bought a peck and a half of apples to make apple butter and an apple pie. No pictures of Apple Butter yet, but I have a picture of my pickles to share! They were my first attempt at pickles and they turned out pretty well. I mostly use pickles in recipes like potato salad and tuna salad, though occasionally I'll put one on a burger or something. The pickling spices made the pickles more complex than I'm accustomed to for eating out of hand, but they are really good in recipes.



Yum! On all accounts.

Dining In

Hello there, dear readers! I know, it's been awhile, but I know you'll all forgive me, knowing I've been moving and that all is in an uproar... The sewing stuff is still all in boxes, my summer clothes still have not been located, and I'm off on a mini vacation to visit my sister and some old friends in Missouri and Chicago with the baby. I thought I'd just pipe in with a few suggestions for this time of year. I know I've mentioned square foot gardening before, and I still think that is a wonderful way to start to do a little to make life more healthy for you and your neighbors. Perhaps you're not really ready for that... perhaps you can't afford it, or you think it's too late in the season, or you don't think you can find all the ingredients. So I have another suggestion! Make your own dinner. Make it from scratch. Make it from local, fresh, seasonal food if you possibly can, but if you can't or don't want to go to the trouble, just make something for yourself for dinner. I know, you're busy, you're really, really busy and it's just easier to pick up some fast food and eat it on the way home, or get some tuna helper and cook it all in a skillet. But really, it's not very good for you or your taste buds or the environment or small family farmers or your beloved neighbors near and far. I have a few suggestions, just in case you want to try.
Mary Jane Butters came up with the wonderful idea of a Bakeover, which you can try, I've never tried her mixes, but one can always make their own.
A Crockpot is a great investment... if you use it! Think of it as an investment, as you'll save lots of money in the future by putting it to good use.
Try a pot of soup... I love this carrot top soup for spring, it's hearty enough for supper with some bread, but not too heavy for warm weather, and cooking stove top is waaaaay cooler in the kitchen than cooking in the oven.
Even better, try the rubber chicken idea. Roast a chicken... if you work, do it on a day off, like Saturday. (If you have a big family, try more than one chicken!) Eat it with some mashed potatoes, or try some roasted potatoes with fresh parsley or carrot top greens sprinkled over the top. How about a spinach salad with hard boiled eggs and bacon dressing? Have you ever made gravy from scratch? Mmmmm, I'm getting hungry.
After dinner, when the dishes are clean, grab that chicken and pick it clean with your fingers... yeah, it's messy and greasy, but it can be fun if you're listening to a book on tape, or chatting with someone you enjoy spending time with. Try to get them to help you! Put all the leftover pieces of chicken in a glass bowl and put some foil over it and save it for dinner tomorrow night! Then put that bony carcass away in the fridge, too, or, if you have time, throw it into a big soup pot, cover it with water and simmer it for a looooong time. While it's simmering, play cards or another game with your loved one(s)... it's fun! Or, make some dessert, we always do that on Saturday night. Make some chicken broth (here's some more detailed directions). Use it for your carrot top soup a couple of days from now!
On Sunday afternoon, depending on how much chicken is left either make chicken salad (I like this one from Martha Stewart) or black bean quesadillas. These are easily made with a can of black beans, some tortillas, plum tomatoes, and some cheese, don't forget the cumin and garlic and maybe some green onions, if you like. Or add salsa, or sour cream, or make it soft tacos or burritos with rice, or whatever strikes your fancy. If you drink alcohol, grab a couple of cervezas and a lime and make it a little event! If not, make yourself some sun tea or limeade with maraschino cherries and make it an event, anyway! There's your Sunday night dinner.
On Monday, eat your soup for dinner with a really good loaf of bread that YOU like, though, if I were you I'd remember the saying, “the whiter the bread, the sooner you're dead!” Try to make some! If you live alone, go shopping for a second hand thermos and take that soup to work every day to eat for lunch!
Now you know why they call it rubber chicken, it stretches to at least 3 meals!
If you're really into saving money, keep track of what you spend on those meals and compare it to what you would have spent on eating out. Then use the extra money to go shopping at the antique or thrift store for an old tablecloth that you think would make a good apron cause we're gonna do that for the next project! Don't forget to warm up that sewing machine, or get yourself some sewing needles and a thimble that your middle finger of your sewing hand and some thread to match, or contrast nicely with, your project. And don't forget to get some really sharp scissors, or get yours sharpened... it makes the work so much more pleasurable!

Kitchen Redo

Well, the floor still needs some scrubbing with a brush and a degreaser, I scrubbed about a third of the floor and just mopped the rest, as I was totally exhausted... but here it is!

I think those blue knobs are too cute. The floor, it turns out, is pale blue, so it looks perfect with the blue knobs.