Stalking the Wild Yeast

    Lately I've been taken with a desire to learn how to bake bread. I've always been a big bread fan. I loved all of the different breads I tried in Italy and I really love the "artisan" type breads you can buy now like the pane pugliese they sell at Costco.  However, I'm quite certain that the bread would taste much better if I were able to make it myself.  Also, I don't like the idea of my quality of life being linked to closely to the continued existance of Costco

    I decided to take my budding obsession to the public library where I checked out a book entitled "52 Loaves".  The author was extremely obsessive (not merely mildly obsessive like me) and went on a one year quest to learn how to bake a particular type of bread that he really liked. He baked a loaf of what he called "peasant bread" every week for an entire year.  His journey of discovery included, among other things, trips to Morocco and France, a homebuilt outdoor clay oven, a week of baking school at the Ritz Hotel in Paris, a week of baking bread in a French monastary, and the capture of his own home grown sourdough starter known as a levain.  While I'm not planning on taking a class at a fancy hotel in Paris, I do think the idea of capturing my own yeast culture sounds pretty cool. Everything is better homegrown.

    So where does one go to hunt for wild yeast?  Fortunately, I didn't have to go any further than my backyard as wild yeast grow in abundance on many types of fruit.  The instructions in the book suggested using a couple of apples.  One of the apples is cut up into one inch cubes while the second apple is peeled. This is place in a jar with about a cup of water. If tap water is used it has to be poured into a jar and left open for 24 hours before use so that the chlorine can offgas.  The mixture is stirred daily and after three days it should be a bit foamy.  At that point the water is strained off and some flour and more water are added and Voila, you are a yeast farmer.  Needless to say my little science projects are sitting on our kitchen counter as I write. I'm at day two at the moment.  In order to hedge my bets I'm also trying a similar experiment using some of my grapes.  Linda has developed a great deal of patience over the years with my numerous hobbies.  This has stood me in very good stead in this latest endeaver.  I think she feels this is pretty harmless compared to the possible construction of an outdoor clay oven in the backyard.

Ward Talent Show

   On Saturday night I played my fiddle at our ward talent show with James playing guitar. We played "King of the Fairies" while Brie Gidewall and Angelia Harper danced.  I would have asked Sophia and Annika to dance but they are inconveniently living way too far to the east. James and I were only able to practice together with the dancers a short time before we performed. Amazingly, it turned out very well. It was a big help that everyone's attention was riveted on the dancers which diverted their attention from the fiddler.  I think people enjoyed it almost as much as the synchronized swimming skit which was absolutely hilarious. (You can check out the skit on You Tube by searching SnychronizedSwimming-SnohomishWard.)
Sorry, but I didn't get any pictures of me playing or the girls dancing.

    I have been doing my best to try to use up my supply of barter pumpkins.  I made pumpkin pies a few days ago and another batch of pumpkin soup this afternoon.  My first effort at squash soup was seasoned with dried thyme, garlic and onions.  This time around I used onion, curry, tumeric, and nutmeg.  Linda said she liked this version better than the first one.  I had looked through about a dozen squash soup recipes on the internet and found quit a bit of variety in the spices used. I reached the conclusion that squash soup is a very flexible dish.

    On the subject of pumpkin pies, I have found a very good use for excess pumpkin pie filling. I always seem to have extra filling left over.  The last two times I made pumpkin pies I used the extra filling to make a pumpkin bread pudding. I just added some raisens, bread and some extra milk and or cream.  Both times it turned out very well. I think I liked it even better than the pies.  

Homemade Hot Sauce

    About a week ago my good friend Terry Johnson shared the bounty of his garden and gave me a gift of a bag of various hot peppers and a bucket of tomatillos. He knows I'm an obsessive canner and knew I would find something to make of them.  The tomatillos and a handful of jalapenos are still waiting to be made into salsa verde but I cranked out a batch of hot sauce last night.  I'm not really a big hot sauce fan, but we do have several of those in the family so it seemed a good use of the hot peppers.  Sadly, I don't recall the names of two of the peppers, the long skinny curly red ones and the roundish red ones.  I'll have to ask Terry the next time I see him. Most of the peppers were either jalapeno or serrano peppers so I'm sure the hot sauce turned out pretty spicy regardless of the variety of the red pepper ingredients. You can tell I'm not a big hot sauce fan as I didn't personally sample my product.  Linda was complaining that her eyes were watering just from the peppers being cooked.  I actually wore rubber gloves to cut up the serrano and jalapeno peppers.

    I found my hot sauce recipe on the internet on a website entitled "Not Your Ordinary Homestead" The recipe goes as follows:

50 jalapeno peppers, sliced (obviously I used a mix of jalapenos, serranos, and two unknown varieties)
6 cloves of garlic, minced
1 cup of onion, minced
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 1/2 teaspoons salt (omitted for the benefit of those in the family for whom salt is poison)
4 cups water
2 cups distilled white vinegar

    Sautee the onion, garlic and peppers in the oil for about five minutes, then add the water and cook for about twenty minutes until everything is soft. Let the peppers cool, then whiz it up in the blender, adding the vinegar gradually.  I have to admit that I just put the vinegar in all at once and blended it a bit longer.  The recipe was supposed to make about six cups and I ended up with a little more than eight. I canned 4 pint jars of hot sauce and put the remainder in the fridge to be added to my next batch of salsa verde. It came out a light orange-yellow color because of the mix of the green and red peppers.

   Speaking of orange-yellow, I baked a couple of pumpkin pies using one of the sugar pie pumpkins I got in trade a week or so back.  I used the recipe from the bottom of my ceramic pumpkin pie pan.  I will include the recipe later as part of it is still covered up by pumpkin pie.  They turned out so well that I have determined to bake and freeze the remaining sugar pie pumpkins over the next month lest any of them go to waste.

   The apple pie on the right was destined to settle a debt with one of my boy scouts. I used a mixture of Melrose and Ashmead's Kernal apples.  I love the flavor and texture of the Melrose apples but they are a little too scab prone.  Some years they turn out okay and others they are a scabby mess.  This is the first year I have harvested  any of Ashmead's Kernal apples. They were a nice combination of sweet, tart, and crisp and they were completely scab free. I just delivered the pie last night so I don't have any feedback on how well the apples worked in the pie.   

A Different Kind of Princess.

       In September this year Linda and I went to Disneyland and had a wonderful time hanging out with children and grandchildren. I was very grateful to Beth and James for inviting us to come along and their patience in putting up with my snoring as we shared a hotel room. My wonderful little granddaughters (both Kangs and Tunnells) were pretty obsessed with all of the disney princesses and spent a lot of time collecting autographs and posing for pictures with their favorite princesses. While I enjoyed watching all of the little girls have their special moments, I didn't feel the need to pose with a princess myself.  I guess a Disney princess is not really my kind of princess.  The past two days I attended the Washington State Beekeeepers annual meeting in Federal Way, Washington. Among other wonderful "bee geek" delights I finally met my kind of princess...a honey princess.  I posed for the picture below to show my grand daughters that there are some princesses out there that can impress me.  Allison Adams hails from Plano, Texas and has been keeping bees since she was 13.  She currently works as an elementary and high school art teacher.  Even better, she also plays the penny whistle.  She showed pictures of her wearing a "bee beard" with a big princess smile.

   I had a great time listening to some very smart people summarize their recent honeybee research.  I listened to Gloria Hoffman from the USDA bee lab in Tucson, Dave Tarpy from the University of North Carolina, as well as the usual suspects from WSU and OSU.  The best part was that I got to talk to several of them after their formal presentations. It was a wonderful day to be a bee geek.

Tour De Squash Update

     I finally got around to trying out some squash recipes. The first two I tried seem to be serious winners based on Linda's enthusiastic response.  Although I have some concern that her perceptions of them were colored by the "full liquid diet" she has had for the past several weeks.  A lot of things would seem pretty yummy after two weeks of yogurt, chicken broth, and popcicles. The first recipe was pumpkin-orange waffles.  I didn't do this recipe justice because I didn't have orange juice handy and substituted white grape juice. I also didn't have any hazel nuts left from last year to do the fancy hazelnut-maple syrup butter and used plain storebought maple flavored syrup. Linda and I both found the plainer version to be pretty tasty. I'm pretty sure the fussiest child would like squash when its put into a waffle. I found this recipe in a pumpkin cookbook entitled "A harvest of Pumpkins and Squash" by Lou Siebert Pappas. The recipe is as follows:

Pumpkin-Orange Waffles with Hazelnut-Maple Syrup Butter

Waffle Ingredients:
  2 cups all purpose flour
  1/3 cup firmly packed brown sugar
  2 tsp baking powder
  1/2 tsp baking soda
  1/2 tsp ground ginger
  1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
  1/4 tsp salt
  3 large eggs, separated
  3/4 cup pureed pumpkin or winter squash, canned or homemade
  1 1/2 cups whole milk
  1 cup freshly squeezed orange juice
  1/3 cup unsalted butter, melted

Hazelnut-Maple Syrup Butter Ingredients:
  1/3  cup hazelnuts
  6 tablespoons butter, at room temperature
  6 tablespoons pure maple syrup

      The hazelnut-maple syrup butter is made with nuts that have been roasted and had their skins rubbed off, and chopped fine.  Then it is simply a matter of beating the butter and syrup together until it is light and fluffy and adding the chopped hazelnuts.

   The waffle batter is made by wisking together the dry ingredients, then blending the wet ingredients with the exception of the egg whites.  Then beat the egg whites until soft glossy peaks form. Then the wet and dry ingredients are blended together,  then the egg whites folded into the batter.  They turned out very well inspite of my wholesale substitutions and had a nice pumpkin pie kind of flavor.  I used a winter squash called gold nugget that has fine textured flesh but I doubt if it would matter much which kind of winter squash or pumpkin was used.

    The squash soup recipe came from the same book. It was called a "Butternut Squash-Pear Bisque". First of all, I'm not sure what makes a soup a bisque and I didn't have any butternut squash. Also I didn't have any pears, let alone Anjou pears.  Basically, I diced up an onion, sauteed it in butter, added a garlic clove and seasoned it with dried thyme. I then added about 2 pounds of baked Sugar Pie pumpkin and in place of an Anjou pear I substituted a diced  and peeled Melrose apple.  I added a quart of chicken broth, salt and pepper and brought it to a boil.  Since my squash was already cooked, I didn't have to worry about cooking the soup very long.  As soon as everything seemed to be cooked, I added a pint of whipping cream, ran it through the blender, poured it into quart jars, and stored it in the fridge. I later served some to Linda with a small garnish of shredded cheddar cheese.  It is amazing how a little bit of whipping cream can make an ordinary vegetable soup seem almost decadent.  I think I'm going to try and make this about once a week for the next month. This recipe produced about three quarts of soup. Thanks to a bee store swap, I currently have an ample supply of the sugar pie pumpkins. I'd be very happy to see them all put to good use.  
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More Green Tomato Recipes

  I made Currant and Green Tomato Chutney last night only I used blueberries instead of currants. I guess it should be called Blueberry and Green Tomato Chutney. I seasoned it a little differently too as I didn't have mustard seed available. I used a combination of powdered mustard and tumeric. I also used lemon juice rather than thinly sliced lemon. The good news is it turned out very well in spite of all my substitutions. It would appear that chutney recipes are very forgiving. The color turned out well too.  I'm including the recipe but I merely used it as a starting point before I made wholesale changes to take advantage of the ingredients I had on hand. This recipe comes from "Stocking Up" which is pretty close to the bible for home canning and food storage. My daughter Lia is the inspiration for my interest in chutney recipes.

         Currant and Green Tomato Chutney

1 1/2 cups currants
2 1/4 cups green tomatoes, chopped
2 1/4 cups tart apples, peeled and chopped
1 lemon, seeds removed, quartered, sliced thin
1 cup onions, minced
1 garlic clove, minced
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup vinegar
1/2 cup water
1 tablespoon mustard seed
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cayenne
1 teaspoon ground ginger

   Combine all ingredients. Simmer for 20 minutes or until fruit is soft. Pakc into sterilized jars, leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Adjust seals and process for 5 minutes in a boiling water bath. It was supposed to yield two pints but I doubled the recipe and ended up with about five pints.  One curious thing about this recipe is that it didn't specify whether to use red currants of black currants.  Either would probably work, but the results would be very different.
   

  This morning Terry Johnson and his wife stopped by the bee store. For those who have visited the store, Terry is the man in the poster wearing a swarm of bees on his head. In addition to our shared obsession with honeybees, Terry is also an avid gardener and canner.  I told him of my efforts to use up my supply of green tomatoes and how I had made both green tomato salsa and green tomato chutney.  He then offered to share with me some of his surplus supply of hot and sweet peppers and his bumper crop of tomatillos.  I was pleased to learn that tomatillos grow very well in our climate and are not susceptible to the inevitable late blight that plagues regular tomatoes.  Tomatillos do so well here that Terry only planted them on purpose the first year that he grew them. Since that time he has had tomatillos volunteering in his garden every spring. It has simply been a matter of pulling up the ones he didn't want or transplanting them to an appropriate spot in his garden.

     In addition to peppers and tomatillos we also discussed seed saving and I was offered all the scarlet  runner bean seeds I would like.  Terry also informed me that he grew Yin Yang dry beans this year and they did very well despite our lack of normal summer warmth.  I would think that any dry bean which performed well in weather such as we had this past summer is definitely well adapted for the Maritime Northwest. I had already noticed this variety in the Territorial Seeds catalog which listed a maturity time of 75 days.  The beans get their name from the fact that they look like a three dimensional depiction of the familiar Chinese symbol. As one of my children was once fond of saying, "Cool beans!"   

SaurKraut Completed

   I finished canning the rest of my saurkraut. I ended up with about 5 gallons after I had canned most of it. It reduces down a bit in the process of canning it. The jars in the photo represent about half of this year's saurkraut production. I also purchased two of the old fashioned quart jars with the rubber seals and the clamps so I could put two quarts in the fridge uncanned.  I prefer the flavor of the fresh kraut but it is a great convenience to have most of it canned. Fortunately, my sweetie likes the smell of saurkraut and doesn't seem to mind our house smelling like a hot dog stand for a few days.

    I still need to do something with the rest of the green tomatoes I got from Rachel.  Some of the tomatoes are falling prey to the infamous "Late Blight" so common in the wet Pacific Northwest so time is running out. I hate to see stuff like that go to waste. I'm considering trying a green tomato chutney recipe I found in "Stocking Up"  The recipe also calls for apples and currants. Apples I have, but I pruned all the blossoms and fruit off my currant bushes in an effort to eliminate my Currant Sawfly problem.  I think I can substitute blueberries for the currants and still give the green tomato chutney a try. I'm also hoping to get a batch of green tomato relish done as well.  Linda gave me a nice enamelware cup with the message "I garden, therefore I am."  I could just as easily say "I can, therefore I am."  I seem to have a certain amount of home canning that I just have to do every year.

    I had a scout campout this past weekend. We went to Cascade Park as the weather forecast was 100 per cent chance of rain. If you are going to have a miserable campout, it is better to have a short drive home. The weatherman got it exactly right. It turned out to be one of the rainiest campouts I've ever experienced. Our lone remaining eleven year old scout, Matthew Peterson, literally slept on a water bed as several inches of water accumulated between his tarp and the floor of his tent.  Miraculously his tent floor didn't leak and his sleeping bag was still dry in the morning.  I took the easy way out and set up a cot in my old beater cargo van.  It was so nice that I did not have to hang up a wet tent in the garage after the campout.

    Immediately prior to leaving on the campout I was able to drop off my two hides (one elk and one deer) in Marysville, Washington.  I wasted at least several hours last Monday fleshing the deer hide because I had been led to believe that they now needed to be fleshed before they could be accepted for tanning.  As it turns out that information was faulty. The hides only need to be fleshed if you want them tanned with the hair on. If they are going to be made into leather the tannery has a machine that fleshes the hides.  I had mixed feelings in that I was thrilled I didn't need to flesh the elk hide, but felt foolish that I had needlessly expended so much energy on the deer hide.  The only thing I got from the experience was a lot more respect for all of the indian women who fleshed animal hides with stone age tools.  I have not included any pictures of my hide fleshing experience so as to not gross out innocent grandchildren who might look at my blog.