Starting Again... with sourdough

Fall is here and I am so excited to try my hand at sourdough again. Again? you may ask. Alas, it is a sad story. 

I cleaned out my starter for Passover. No big deal, right? I gave some to a friend who doesn't celebrate so I figured I could get a little back. And I was right! My friend happily supplied me with a little container. And then things started to go weird. No matter what I did, the starter was unhappy, partly orange and super sour. Frustration abounded, patience did not. It is possible that neglect started to occur. 

Long story short, it had been contaminated at the friend's house by iron bacteria. I could not resuscitate it and the orange turned to a strangely beautiful color of blue green mold. Was it my doctoring skills or was it just beyond help? I had too many other things to do than worry about it. I bought a new cow, who then had a baby. There was duck drama, calf escaping drama, more duck drama. There were swim lessons. Then Buttercup had a baby. (There was no weeding because I just didn't do any. My pepper plants are still thanking me by producing peppers in their weed protected corner of the garden despite these chilly nights! The tomatoes, however did not enjoy the neglect.)

Needless to say, I wouldn't have the time or desire to nurse the starter even if it had showed any signs of possible recovery. So, out it went. The lovely pottery got washed, dried, left the sit, washed again and left to dry on the counter. 

Why the delay? Well, grapes aren't in season until August/September and I wanted to make the starter again from my own grapes. Alas, this was also not in the cards. Our small grape harvest was so delicious, it was irresistible to the children. The grapes were ripe and the kids were eating them daily until there were no grapes. Now, our cultivated grapes come in a bit earlier than wild grapes (or so I have been told) so I began asking around. No luck. I didn't let it bother me yet, supposedly, I had at least a few weeks before there were not any kind of grape in our zone. And I pray about it. And once again, God provided. 

I stopped at a small local granola and coffee chop. During the summer, they have this teeny-tiny produce section with things grown on the farm organically, with a bunch of cool animals. The rpoduce shop was COMPLETELY empty except for two huge bunches of grapes sitting on a woven platter. It was like a scene right our of Under the Tuscan Sun. I checked with the woman who had just picked them - no, they had never been sprayed, no they hadn't been washed since she picked them. I promptly bought all 3 pounds of them and brought them home... and got busy with preparing for and then observing the Sabbath the next day and then being busy the following day... and a week later, there the grapes sat, in a plain brown bag waiting. There were still fresh and plump, covered in wild yeast. Ten days from picking them before they went into a new batch of yeast water. But what a batch of yeast water it became!

Did I use the same recipe as before? Yep. (I got it from this cookbook.) 

Did I use my own honey? Oh yeah. (I still haven't harvested honey this year but this year's bees are another amazing story for another time.) 

Did I finally get a new starter up and running? Yep.

Was I smart enough to freeze half the grapes so I can make a new batch of stater next spring? Yep. 

Am I going to try making bread this year? YES! Okay, that is the plan. The first thing I made were scones. Then I made some hamburger rolls. The English muffin dough is in the mixer, waiting for the morrow. Now I am thinking about bread but still feel a little intimidating. I am psyching myself up to it. Either way, it is growing so now I need to start baking something. I may not be a rock star sourdough baker yet but I am a rock star yeast water maker and starter starter. Gotta start somewhere baby! 

IT'S ALIVE!!! Muahahaha!

Experimenting with Sourdough

 Ah, good intentions. I had so many good intentions to write more this year but alas, it is already September (almost October if I don't finish this soon!). 

September's project has been learning to cook with sourdough. I have always wanted to but have had many counter pets given to me by well-meaning friends. For some reason they had confidence in me and my ability to like their pet, enjoy their pet and keep it alive. Thankfully I am much better with real pets.

Last year, for my birthday, my awesome husband got me a grain mill! I had been wanting one for years. Alas it is still in the box! This summer I tried to grow some corn to grind but some animal stripped them from my garden before I even knew they were ready! Let me tell you, it has been a ridiculous experience and not especially fruitful.

Then my son decided he wanted to do a Chemistry class this year. We choose Chemistry in the Kitchen by Guest Hollow and I of course looked ahead and realized he would be learning to make a sourdough starter. As a person who cannot keep one alive, I will admit this terrified me a bit. Those who know me, know exactly where this is going... without a starter, I decided to take out about 20 books from the library on sourdough. Yes it really was at least 20 but I believe at the time I had less than 100 books checked out so it's all good.

Anyway, I quickly returned quite a few and kept four. One of the 20 had a recipe for making a starter from grapes. Guess what? My grapes actually grew this year! Thank you YHWH! The next day, I asked the kids to pick some for me as I recalled the recipe called for a quarter cup. They forgot and I got sidetracked. Two days later, I had my quarter cup of homegrown grapes... but I couldn't find which book had the recipe. 

The grapes sat on the counter for 24 hours.

Finally, I found a different recipe in a different cookbook but it called for more grapes than a quarter cup. Actually, it called for grapes or raisins. Ahh! I thought, I have raisins. I bought a 20 lbs. box of organic raisins that I have barely touched in months.

Hooray! So I whipped up the yeast water late at night. (You know, after the kids are in bed and you should also be in bed but you aren't ready and then bam it is midnight and you still are sitting on the couch because you are too tired to do anything... no, that's just me? Okay then.)

Much to my amazement, it worked!!!

I was so encouraged, I actually kept going! I used the yeast water to start the sourdough starter.

It worked! I now had my own counter pet made from the yeast in my field! I am still totally blown away that I did this.

Now what to do with it? My first recipe was crackers with the discard, which I will share another time as they weren't impressive but edible. Next was waffles. Those were absolutely delicious and to be share another time but as you can see from the photo, I started the yeast water almost a month ago and my sourdough starter is still alive. In fact, I promised the kids waffles in the morning.

Chocolate & Toasted Coconut Maple Muffins

I know February is short but goodness it flew by. We had a nice stretch of warm weather and the sap was flowing. The days were beautiful. I planted some small garlic bulbs from the scapes that I didn't get around to planting last fall. It even got so warm that we were able to get back into the three remaining bee colonies and make sure they were alive and give them some food in case they need it. Needless to say, the days all ran together. The one consistent thing? Muffins.

Chocolate Maple Pudding and Goals

Oh February, how you  tease me with your warm weather. The days are getting lighter and warmer but that cold dampness is still in the air. Sap season has started so spring is on it's way and just like every winter, I have big dreams for being outdoors and the garden.

For the holiday of love, we decided to indulge in some dark, delicious chocolate pudding. Yum!

Sausage, Beans and Goals

Sorry I missed you last week. I got knocked down by a terrible head cold. When I finally started to feel human around Thursday, it was just in time to cook and clean for L2's birthday. So now that I am feeling better, I am playing a bit of catch up. Thankfully the weather has been lovely so the kids haven't been under foot while I do laundry and dishes. The quiet house has given me some unexpected and welcome time to enjoy The Dave Ramsey show with minimal interruptions.

If you have never listened to his show, or read any of his books (I am currently reading The Total Money Makeover), his show is definitely inspirational. It has been inspiring me to continue working our budget without coming up with creative ways to cheat or talk myself out of it. For now though, I have been sticking to all our goals.

Spending the Day in the Kitchen?

Despite one of my more recent posts, I have been hesitant to post. First off, there has been a big change in how we spend our days: we have officially started homeschooling. It is a deeply personal choice, and while it might not be for everyone, it is definitely what is best for our family right now. Needless to say, we have been spending more of our time learning/teaching reading and cursive writing as well as enjoying tons of living books; today it was Seeker of Knowledge, last week it was Over in the Wetlands, this week we will continue to explore monarchs with Hurry and the Monarch and Monarch and Milkweed as we watch for them as the days grow colder and shorter. I digress. This is not a homeschooling blog and I am planning on keeping it separate (leave me a comment below if you can think of a good title for our homeschool!). This space has been for me. A place to write about cooking and gardening and other fun aspects of our organic lifestyle.

No Stir Simple Granola

Happy August! I have always heard about granola. "It's amazing! What do you mean you don't eat it?" The things is, I never really cared for the really hard bits of not very sweet oats and nuts. I used to like Honey Bunches of Oats (way back when I bought processed food) and those had little tiny bunches of granola type clusters but they weren't the same. But I guess they were. When I got pregnant with L2, I tried a sample of locally made granola and was absolutely blown away. It was definitely not the granola I remember from high school. It was crunchy but not hard. Sweet but not sickly sweet and tasted like sweetened nuts. What had I been missing? To make a long story short, I realized I would have to learn to make it. I found lots of recipes but most seemed relatively time consuming. Then one of my best friends came to my rescue with a recipe that didn't require any stirring. It takes maybe 5-10 minutes to throw together and then you don't need to do anything until it is ready to eat, an hour and 40 minutes later. Seriously, unless you buy it already made, there is no easier way to make it that I have found.

Loco Moco: A Hawaiian Pork Recipe

Some days I am at a total loss for what to do for dinner. I realize that most people seem to be pretty good at this with their weekly meal plans and shopping lists. I have tried it before and it never seems to work out for me. Seriously, never. I will make a weekly plan and pull out meat and then all it takes is one late night or busy day and the whole schedule goes crazy. Now I just don't bother. I pull a couple of packages of meat out of the fridge and then decide the day before, or the afternoon of, what I am going to cook.

You know what I don't know what to do with? Ground pork. I have some great recipes but you can only have pork burgers and pork and pasta so often. And with two pigs a year, we get quite a bit of ground pork. Needless to say, I needed something new. Thankfully, Just One Cookbook had just what I needed: Loco Moco. I had never heard of Loco Moco but it sounded interesting and different so I figured, why not?

Chicken in Milk

We drink a lot of milk. I mean a lot. We love it and between the five of us, we consume about a gallon a day. We drink it raw and organic, just the way the cow intended. Okay, not really. We drink it chilled but otherwise it is just as the cow made it. As Joan Dye Gussow once said "As for butter over verses margarine, I trust cows more than chemists." In general, this is a guiding principle.

The week after Christmas we were fortunate enough to find a new farm that follows organic practices selling raw milk: Jersey Meadows Farm in Ghent, NY. (Check out this cute picture of their cows.) Now I don't have to drive far to get our milk.

Anyway, after having amazing success braising our pork chops and pork steaks (one of the owners of Jersey Meadows gave me the pork chop recipe!), I decided that braising is something I need to do more often. My recipe research turned up an odd recipe for chicken in milk. After checking out the ingredients I decided to live dangerously and give it a whirl.

Sweet Black Bean Dessert

I know you have all ready about using black beans in brownies and hidden inside other dishes. Let me assure you, this is not one of those posts. In fact, I too have been skeptical and have not yet tried the black bean brownies. Call me a crazy purest but let's not mess with my brownies, ok?

That said, one of our goals is to eat more beans this year. Not only to the kids love them, they are great for us and relatively easy to grow. Plus due to all the fiber, they keep you (and kids) full a long time. This past year we experimented with growing four different kinds and I purchased a 25 lbs bag of organic black beans from our distributor at the very start of last year i.e about a year ago. We didn't grow a lot but we grow enough for us to sample the different kinds. This year, beans will take up a lot more real estate in the gardens.

Perfect Pork Chops

I feel like I am finally back to the land of the living. I don't know about everyone else, but this past winter has been crazy. First a head cold, then the stomach bug (that lasted a week!) and then -20° F... and now today it was 56°F... so weird. I hope that everywhere else is faring much better. Before all the craziness started, I had lunch with a dear friend. She cooked one of the most delicious meals. I seriously considered licking the plate once the kids had run off to play and she took her toddler to the bathroom. Not the dainty lick, either, the furious "must get every last drop" kind of lick. When I again expressed my appreciation, she laughed and told me how easy it was, and that this was the leftovers.

Needless to say, I had to learn to make it.

Maple-Glazed Carrots

I have a weakness for cookbooks. Inside, there are so many recipes and techniques. Here's the thing, by owning them I am able to aspire that some day, hopefully, I will be an amazing cook (who can host dinner parties with ease and have a perfect, Martha Stewart house). I realize this isn't true but to this day I remain hopeful. For the last year though, I have been purging my cookbooks. I have been reading them and guess what? Most of the ones I have owned don't contain recipes that are so amazing that they are worth the space on my shelf. I know, go ahead and pause as you think, no duh silly! It's okay I realize other people already know this. I take no offense. Cookbooks offer hope and don't we all need a little hope every now and then?

Sorry, I digress. Even as I have purged cookbooks, I have still had quite a few on my shelf that I haven't gotten around to reading. Recipes from America's Small Farms is one such book. So this evening when I was trying to come up with yet another way to prepare beets (our winter CSA is great but I picked up too many beets and carrots), I checked the index.

Happy 2016!

Happy New Year! I hope that everyone had a fantastic holiday season. We have been spending lots of time with family and being outdoors, enjoying the beautiful weather, although this week it is getting cold. Now that the new year is here, I am hoping that things will slow down a little. E2 is crawling and decidedly not slowing down but I figure I can let him do all the zooming and I can just sit back and watch. What do you think the chances are of that happening? Yeah, probably zero but it's a new year so hope is everywhere.

Honey Glazed Beets

As part of our winter CSA, we got a bunch of beets. The kids love beets and I had planned to pickle and can them using the recipe from Preserving by the Pint but... well, life got busy and I only got them half made. How do you half pickle beets you may be wondering and trust me this wasn't some kind of weird science experiment. Instead it was a delicious accident caused by being too busy one night and refusing to let anything go to waste.

Delicious Apple Butternut Squash Soup

I love butternut squash soup. I love the one at restaurants that is made with apple. Can you find that recipe though? Um, no. All I can find is curried soup recipes or ones with ginger. Well yesterday evening was a soup night. It just was. So I set out to find a butternut apple recipe.

Kitchen Things I Love

In honor of Cyber Monday I decided to do a quick post on things I love that can be bought. For the last year I have been reading about minimalism. Not because we want to live like monks but because we really do have too much stuff. Last February I stumbled across this article from becoming minimalist about what you don't need in the kitchen. I was very surprised that at how many of the items I would hate to do without.

Caramelized Onions and Turnip Greens

Harvest season is almost over. A huge part of me is letting out a sigh of relief. Winter is a welcome break from all the growing and preserving that takes place during the summer and fall. It is a time of rest and a time to recharge. That said, we still have a few things growing in our garden such as some radishes and some turnips. Eventually I would like to have a winter garden. (I have been reading Caleb Warnock's Backyard Winter Gardening and daydreaming.) Last week, as we were cleaning up the garden and preparing most of it for winter, I decided to harvest and eat up some of the turnips I had planted in August.

Taco Stuffed Zucchini

As a member of Zulily, I receive a free subscription to Family Fun magazine. While this isn't a magazine I would choose to subscribe to, it often has good recipes and travel information (that some day I will use). The only drawbacks to this recipe are 1. zucchinis are a summer vegetable (and I am extremely late in posting this and 2. it requires a little time to assemble. That said, it is easily something the kids can help you with.

Sautéed Radishes and Red Pepper Pasta

The picture is terrible but the flavor was delicious.

Fall is here. Have I told you that? The chilly days seep into my bones and I want soup. Seriously, dinners need to be warm for me. Something that fills me up and keeps me warm during the evening. Hence the recent Cabbage and Potato Soup recipe.

Another way to do warm up? Add some spice. Now a few of you laugh when you hear me say that because I can only handle a little spice. I am a white girl of Danish and French heritage who lives in New England. I have nothing going for me in terms of learning to love and handle spicy foods so for me a little spicy goes a long way. I have no problem however, making foods a little extra spicy and eating it alongside bread or chips.

Hearty Cabbage and Potato Soup

Some nights I have no idea what I am going to make for dinner until about 30 minutes beforehand when I am staring into the refrigerator or into the pantry wondering what I ca throw together. During the fall we have a plethora of cabbage so I am always looking for ways to use it. My useful friend Google managed to find me a surprisingly simple, filling and quick dinner over at 101recipes.