Ginger Beer

He Says:
   
   After some trial and error, I think that I’ve perfected the ginger beer method.  For my first batches I was using yeast to ferment the beverage, but it was giving me some strange results.  Sometimes it would be delicious, other times it would be insipid.  I think those hungry little yeasts were devouring every single thing they could--which included all the flavor compounds.  Plus, whenever I had made it previously, I bottled it in old Canada Dry bottles which never really held the carbonation that well.  So what I was left with was a bland, flat drink most of the time.

   After reading a book called Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and Diet Dictocrats (a pretty hefty title, huh?) I became turned onto the idea of using whey to ferment beverages.  Since we make tons of yogurt in our house, we had a source of whey.  This new change allowed most of the flavor compounds to stay in the ginger beer, so now all of the batches turn out tasting great.  Plus the whey adds a pleasing sour note to the drink.

   To fix the carbonation (or lack thereof) problems I started using standard beer bottles and capping them with bottle caps.  This turned out to be a mistake--and a rather messy one.  Since I had no previous experience using whey, I wanted to bottle it with enough time left while it was actively fermenting so it would produce a good amount of fizz.  Once I capped the first set I let them sit out for 24 hours.  I inspected them regularly and could see the bubbles rising and just knew that this plan was going to work.  What a fool I was.

   When it came time to taste the first bottle, I opened it and within a second the contents sprayed out of the top all over the kitchen.  I stood there dumbfounded and sticky.  There wasn’t a drop left in the bottle.  Looking back, it was unfortunate and messy, but at least the bottles didn’t explode.  For the rest of the over-carbonated bottles I enlisted Abby’s help.  She held a jar over the bottles while I opened them in the sink so that the spray was captured. 

   Learning from my mistake, we purchased plastic soda bottles at the store so that I could feel when the bottle expanded and became firm, which shows when the proper carbonation is achieved – no more messy guesswork.  Plus Abby got to have Dr. Pepper on our calzone nights.  Everyone was happy!

Now that I have the technique down it’s just tweaking to find the recipe perfectly suited to my tastes, and maybe Abby’s if she ever realizes how delicious this stuff is.

A Bit of Ketchup

She says:
  
   Oh my!  It has been quite a while since we have updated the blog.  Here are a few of the things we've been up to:

• I finished and started another semester of grad school (this is the last one before student teaching!)
• I was commissioned for a sewing project--more of the burp clothes I had made for Lizzie
• Jason started making ginger beer
• My children's library has been growing.  We had to add another bookshelf to hold it all.
• We started drinking raw milk
• And we made ice cream and butter out of the cream that comes with our raw milk
• Our garden finally produced some produce--yellow (but delicious) cucumbers
• We went to Minnesota
• We went to IKEA (and dreamed about the day that they build one near Kansas City...coming soon)
• We started making homemade pretzel burgers, like the ones at Wendy's (ours are much better)
• Jason changed his first diaper (for Lizzie, on the Fourth of July)
• We helped my best friend pack up to move to Ohio
• We went to Nashville, and eventually turned down the opportunity to move to Nashville
• I quit my job (one of them, due to conflicts with my school schedule)
• Jason made homemade ketchup

   So there's a bit of catch up on our ketchup and everything else.

Today I Received a Package

These are some of my favorite children's books that I picked out to give to Lizzie.  They all came today in one box--pretty much the best thing I could imagine opening!

A Naturally Julienned Salad

He says:

Last week Kansas City had a major storm system pass through.  It rained and hailed so hard that we were both woken up early in the morning  by the noise, and I got up to close all of our windows because of the torrential rain.  I thought that would be the end of it.

I came home from work the next day and looked at my garden, or what was left of it.  The plants looked like someone had been through with a weed-eater.  Every plant that was in the ground had damage.  None of my freshly transplanted seedlings made it.  Only 3 of the 6 of my glorious cabbages were salvageable.  In short, it was a nightmare.  I had been fighting back the caterpillars by hand for the past couple of days going over each leaf by hand  only to have the whole garden destroyed over the course of a few hours.

The situation could be worse.  We’re not dependent on the plants for food, and I have some other seedlings started that I transplanted yesterday.  Plus we have really good farmers’ markets close by so we won’t be without fresh produce.  However, none of this makes me any less upset over the loss of our green babies.

Our Green Babies? (An Update)

She says: 
  They grow up so fast!  Last week we had our first tiny baby seedlings. 

Remember this?

    This week, there are loads of sprouts.  They've been transplanted into a medium size planter tray, but aren't big enough to go in the garden yet.   Jason is protecting them from the slugs and caterpillars as long as he can.

They grow up so fast!

Edible Glue

He says:

   I love cultured foods.  If you've been reading this blog you know that fermentation is one of my interests.  I only have a few permanent cultures in the house (sourdough, kefir, kombucha), but I do a lot of one time fermentations (like sauerkraut, kimchi, ginger beer).  I have to stop myself from buying more cultures because I don't want culture maintenance to become a huge time sink.

   So ignoring any misgivings about time management, I ordered another culture.  This one is called viili and it's a Finnish yogurt strain.  Much like my kefir and differing from store bought yogurt, you don't have to incubate the milk, it just sits on the counter for 24-36 hours.  How easy is that?
  
  It is described as being more "ropey" than most traditional yogurts.  Sometimes it will pull back into itself if you try to scoop some out with a spoon.  I find this characteristic exciting, while Abby is grossed out by it.  I thought I would have an aversion because it was described as having a mucous-y texture, but it isn't at all offensive.  My only complaint is that it isn't as sour as I thought it would be.  It's very mild much like a thick milk.  Abby says it tastes like liquid glue would taste.  I suppose that could be true, but hopefully it carries more health benefits...

   I'm going to see if it develops into something altogether different than my kefir strain.  I hope it does since I don't really see a need to keep two extremely similar cultures alive and fed at the same time (time sink warning!).

Caffeine Vacation

She says:
  
   I am currently on day five of my vacation from caffeine.  <----- That's the nice way of saying I'm ending my addiction. 

   A while back I realized that even though I love coffee, I wasn't handling caffeine very well.  Without my morning cup of coffee, I ended up wandering through my day with headaches and the light-sensitivity of an oncoming migraine.  In less than a year I've gone through an entire 100 pill bottle of migraine medicine (which has caffeine in it!).  If I caught up on my coffee intake later in the day or had an extra serving to help me along with evening classes, I end up feeling jittery (minimum) or about to have a panic attack (maximum).

   This past week without caffeine has not been particularly pleasant either.  Headaches galore!  Weird sleeping patterns! Unable to regulate my body temperature! But in the end, it is all for the best.  I still plan to drink coffee on occasion (because I love it!), but not to the point that it makes or breaks my everyday life.