Future Fermentation

He says:

Things have been pretty tame regarding the fermentations in our house the past couple months.  However, I plan to really ramp it up soon.   

She says: Eek!

He says:

There’s a book called Wild Fermentation that I read about a year and a half ago.  It contained a bunch of recipes and methods that I was very excited to try, but I never got around to attempting them.  I’ve made a decision to make a concentrated effort to work my way through the recipes.

In other fermentation news, I made a root(s) beer a while ago.  I kept hearing that store bought root beer tastes nothing like the real thing.  I found that to be true – although at least for the recipe I was using, this might not be a good thing.  Abby and I bought some sassafras and sarsaparilla root at an supplement store.  The recipe called for those two roots and some brown sugar.  I can tell you that the finished product tasted pretty much how you would expect tree roots to taste.  My first bottle was a letdown, but I tempered my expectations and with subsequent tastes of the rest of the brew I have started to appreciate the nuances of the bark-like flavor.  I’m not put off enough to never try it again, in fact I found another recipe that would add some more ingredients, making the roots more of an accent rather than the main attraction.

She says: During a field trip I got to go on with my first graders, we smelled a freshly cut twig off a sassafras tree, and it smells like Fruit Loops! 

Fall (with a fury)!

She says:
   Today on the way to work, I could literally see the cold front of Fall weather rolling in. Kind of intimidating, kind of awesome!

P.S. I am ready for warm apple cider, so bring on Fall!

Banned from Books

He says:

Abby and I use the library quite often.  It’s about a 5 minute walk (or a 1 minute drive) from our house.  I would like to think that since we’re both avid readers we are some of the most frequent patrons that visit this small town library.  Plus, we return books on time and in good condition so we don’t have outrageous fees or missing books.  We treat the institution with the respect it deserves.

So it came as a surprise to find out that in turn for all of that respect, the library banned (BARRED) me.

I tried to place a hold on a book through the library’s website, but every time I tried it said that I was barred.  Not “delinquent” like it usually says for overdue books (not that I would know...), but “BARRED”.  I was never really given a reason for the restriction--even after I went in to get the ban lifted, but the librarian was able to set my account straight, so it all worked out in the end. 

Maybe they do this every once in a while to see who the really hardcore patrons are, the ones who will fight for their right to use the library and take action to get their bans lifted (yes, that would be me).  Or maybe it was just a mistake.

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.