Random 5 Friday

It is hard to believe that it is already Friday again!  Though I started a number of drafts this week, ideas churning away in my head, I only managed to post one.  That is a bit off my blogging goal, but my full days are making fodder for posts to come.

1.  As you can see from the above picture, B has busted out the elderberries that we carefully prepared last fall.  The 2014 wine making has begun.  He began 4 gallons of  Elderberry Melomel and 3 gallons of Gooseberry/Rhubarb wine this week.

2.  I have re-committed to bread making this week thanks to this wonderful book.  There is something so calming filling the house with the smells of fresh baked bread.  Speaking of bread, I also began a new sourdough starter.  I did one a year ago, and though it turned out fine, I couldn't keep up with it. This new recipe, from the same book, is slightly different in its process and I must say, it is a very happy little starter only three days in!  Let's see if I can keep this baby around...maybe even pass it down!

3.  I am so excited to be going out with some dear friends this evening to see the Moth Story Slam, I just can't wait!

4.   B always snow blows our parking area against a big old maple tree.  Then the kids use it as a mini sledding hill all season.  This year with plenty of snow and the deep cold, the hill has turned to mostly ice.  Perfect for making an igloo!  I would say that it is more than half done.  Charles and a friend dug a tunnel through the side of it, so they will use those holes plugged by some colorful sledding disks to make skylights.  It is a work in progress, based on its sheer girth, and another couple of months of winter to come I would say, much of this igloo will grace our yard well into April, and we will see remnants into May!

5.  I had my first committee meeting for Charles fifth grade awards/graduation celebration yesterday.  This morning I am sifting through the last six years of photos.  Wow, they grow fast!

linking up with Nancy, won't you join in?

Ferments

We have been up to our eyeballs in ferments this weekend.  All of the crocks of veggies that we have been lacto-fermenting for the last couple of weeks we emptied and jarred.  This group we did as refrigerator picklings so that we could maintain the integrity of all of the good bacteria.  As we have already started re-filling the crocks, our next batch we will water-bath can and as a result will loose some of the benefits of lacto-fermenting, but we will gain the fresh taste of pickles for the months to come. 

We bottled the 2012 elderberry wine.  This batch we did as a straight run.  We did not add any other fruit flavors to it (like last years elderberry/rhubarb).  It will benefit from time in the bottle, but the flavor right out of the carboy is great.  We are considering doing our 2013 batch as a first press and then a second press rose.  All new experiments, so much fun!

We pulled all of the garlic yesterday and out of the entire row, we only found one head that we couldn't keep.  We are heavy in the garlic.  It was surprising how immense the root systems were.  The giant clods of dirt that the roots held onto took more than a little effort to free.  Thankfully, with B's broadfork. we were able to pull up sections, harvest, and aerate all at once!

 
To tie this in to the ferments theme here,  aside from farm bags, we are going to look into selling some at a local farm fresh store, packing in oil, and making some black garlic to sell and share. I am interested to try this out, the flavor is supposed to be fantastic!

I asked B this morning, how are we going to outdo yesterday?  We shall see...

Weekly Roundup

 It is hard to know what day of the week it is this week.  The holiday compounded with being back to work and school for partial weeks has me all upside down.  Or maybe it is the fact that better than half of my staff either has been or is currently sick with some variation of the funk that is out there right now.  Of course, like the big extended family we are, I needed to only be back in the building 72 hours before I got it. Ugh!

So with a foggy head and a cup of hot lemon honey tea, that I prepped last fall for just such an occasion,  I am going to jot down a little weekly roundup.

Made Me Think:  I heard this interview earlier this week on WPR.  It is with the son of the President of the Sikh Temple in Oak Creek.  He was being interviewed from India where they were burying his father.  During this interview the philosophy of Chardi Kala was presented.  It is the outlook on life reflecting 'high spirits'.  This really spoke to me, such a positive life view.  It is especially humbling to hear how the Sikh strive to emulate this feeling in any circumstance.  A mindset that the whole world would benefit from.

Recipe of the Week:   I made Italian Chicken Soup this week.  Though a little labor intensive it was amazing and just what the doctor ordered as far as comfort food.  I will say that instead of cooking a whole chicken, I used a rotisserie one, and it was wonderful!

A New Project:  Starting off the New Year has led me back to Flickr and a group of photography friends who have spent much of the last four years enjoying one another.   This year's group focus goes nicely with my one word, as it is a weekly postcard 52:2013 (let me know if you'd like to join in!)

Weekend Haps:  Aside from substantial couch time for me, we will spend the weekend both bottling last years wine and putting up a new batch!!   Oh, and how can I forget?  We are eagerly awaiting the season premiere of Downton tomorrow night!

Expecting Something Furry:  Dot seems to be nesting, and we are anticipating babies in the short term, a first bunny litter and the kids are looking forward to it!  You may be inundated with bunny pictures soon! :)

 

A Little Bit of Summer Bliss

Last fall we went foraging for elderberries when we made our first batch of wine.  It is coming along nicely and we are excited to bottle it this coming fall.  In the last couple of weeks the elderberry bushes have been full of flowers.  We decided to scope out locations of the plants now, because the flowers really make them stand out.  This way when we head out this fall, we should be able to find them more readily.  Since we were out anyway, we took a large brown paper bag and filled it with elderflowers.  I have heard so much discussion about how elderflower cordial is amazing, and since I'm in the cordial making kind of mood, we did just that. 

This was a great task to get the whole family involved with.  Since the stems are mildly toxic, we needed to remove all of the flowers.  This process was surprisingly easy and we found they brushed off quite well.

What we ended up with was just over eight cups of elderflowers.  We began by making a simple syrup in a stockpot of 5 cups of sugar and 3 quarts of water.  We cooked it until all of the sugar was completely dissolved.  While that was happening we transfered the flowers into a small crock and combined the grated the zest of one lemon and juice of three.  We were winging it on this recipe due to the volume of flowers and several of the recipes we found all had different techniques.

What is different about making this cordial as compared to the fruit cordials that I have been pumping out, is that instead of  cooking, macerating, and then straining the fruit into beautiful cordials, this one steeps like a tea.  Once that simple syrup was completed we poured it over the flowers and citrus, covered the crock and let it steep for three days. 

At the end of that time, we strained it and transferred it into quart jars that are now in the fridge and ready to use.  It was a little sweet for our taste so we added some of our acid blend (that we had on hand for wine making) to it.  This could also have been accomplished by adding more lemon juice.  We included these cute little jars in this weeks farm bags. 

One thing that I am loving about this cordial is that a little goes a long way, therefore allowing the amount we made to last longer.  I have found with the fruit cordials, I use more of them to get the desired taste/effect.  With the elderflower, we use 2 (me) to 4 (B) Tbsp. to 8 oz of liquid.  So seltzer water for soda.  I'm looking forward to trying it as part of a martini, maybe this evening.  This refreshing cordial tastes like elderflowers smell and that is a little bit of summer bliss.

Homemade Hooch

The last couple of days have been all things fermented.  We did our final racking of the 9 gallons of wine we put down last fall.  The remnants of the wild grape wine made a fine sangria, and the little taste of the elderberry/rhubarb did not disappoint.  I cannot wait until this fall!

Last year I made homemade vanilla extract, which has a rather large vodka component.  This year in the spirit of the cordials that I have learned to love, I found a recipe on pinterest for  rhubarb gin. 

 

Well 'tis the season, rhubarb season that is.  So the rhubarb gin is steeping.  Such a simple recipe and process, I cannot wait to taste the rewards in just about a month!  By the way, I have a new favorite word....macerat.. the act of allowing the rhubarb, in its natural form, to just steep in it's juices with sugar...and get oh so happy!

I have also begun my first homemade sourdough starter, but that fermented diddy will be for it's own post once I get further into the process...and process it is!  I'm looking forward to our pending homemade hooch.  There is after all, more to come.   What do you think a good chunk of that honey is going towards in the fall???  Why mead, another little venture into homemade hooch.

Silent Sunday

Silent Sunday

Raspberry Tip

Our berry patch has really started to do well.  We planted two kinds of raspberries, one of which is called everberring.  This variety produces fruit in the fall and on this seasons new growth.  We have spent much of the late summer noshing on fresh berries from the vine and are now bringing them in to preserve for winter treats, and with our new found fever for wine making, we are planning on a raspberry mead as well.

A great trick for preserving your raspberries beautifully is; after picking, lay them out on a cookie sheet and set them in the freezer.  I normally leave them overnight.  They freeze beautifully into little individual nuggets.  Then I  simply put them in a freezer bag, label them and they are ready when I am.  I have found that the thaw nicely as well, and though they need to be handled gently, they won't turn straight to mush when you thaw them.

A Remarkable Season~ Garden Update

This has been truly a remarkable growing season for us.  We began with cooler than normal temperatures all through June, only to be thrown into almost two months of warmer than normal temperatures.  We have had next to no rain, the irrigation in the garden has worked great and we haven't had to mow near so much, yet the grass looks much like mottled, fresh cut hay.  Then, this week we had our first light frost on September 14th!!!  Let me put this in perspective for you.  We typically have our first frost right around Halloween.  It seems every year we think we are going to get cold and then have a lovely Indian Summer.  Then just as we approach a time when the kids are going to be trick-or-treating, they have to have coats on over costumes.  This week our highs have averaged in the upper 50's!  There are hints of sprinkles in the forecast, as well as a return to more seasonal weather (low 70's) for a couple of days.

What this all means??  Well, we have seen throughout this season that the garden has run roughly two to two and a half weeks behind schedule.  We normally process the bulk of our tomatoes during the last couple of weeks of August and first two weeks of September.  Just as our vines, heavy with fruit, were starting to ripen, it turned cold and everything seems to be in a state of pause.  Because of the extreme variations in weather, I stopped doing weekly newsletters/inventory lists on our farm bags.  I am varying their contents slightly from person to person depending on what has ripened that day.  The weather has been great for fall crops and this weeks farm bags consisted of Leeks, Beet Greens, Kale, Green Beans, and a few partially ripe tomatoes to be put in warm windows for a few days. 

Take a look at my post over at a sustainable life, where I discussed our first adventures in wine making.  This in mind, B and I spent several hours yesterday taking a country drive and foraging for elder berries and wild grapes along roadsides and ditches.  We came away with a 1/2 bushel of each and enough to start a five gallon barrel of wine.  For my purposes, I am stealing about 2 pounds of the elder berries to make some cordial.

This property once had a working orchard on it.  Sadly, after decades of neglect there are only a few gnarly trees remaining in various states of deterioration.  The apples are bumpy and nothing to look at, but this year (probably because of the drought) seem to be intensely flavored and amazing.  We collected a volume of fallen apples cut away the bad, kept the good and canned some amazing applesauce yesterday!  Adding to the homestead to do list...we are researching taking cuttings of these old trees so we can re-populate the orchard and one day never have need to go beyond our backyard.

I'm off to de-stem elderberries, and simmer some cordial!  Happy Weekend!!

A Watched Pot

Does Sometimes Boil.  Elderberry/Rhubarb wine fermentation appears to be well under way!

Beating the Heat

This first Friday of September has been very productive.  We have farm bag number seven ready for pick up and are thrilled that everyone will be able to taste the beauty of late summer in their meals.  It is funny how I start out a week wondering if we are going to have enough, to deliver the variety and quantity that I want to.  Then, by the time we are ready for people to pick up, the fridge is bursting and I am jotting handwritten notes on my typed contents list to add on extra goodies.  This week's bag has three types of tomatoes, tomatillos, beets, eggplant, enough green beans to freeze a few batches after eating fresh, and some of the first new potatoes and peppers.

As I walked around the property last night, I noticed many of the elderberry bushes were heavy with ripe berries, ready for picking.  So this morning we also spent a little time downtown at a great shop called D P Wiggly.  We got an impromptu lesson on wine making and bought the necessities for getting our first batch put down.  The first steps have been completed, but this topic deserves it's own post, so there will be more soon.

We also canned our first jars of roasted tomatoes this season and blanched more green beans for the freezer.  All in all a great way to beat the heat on this 92 degree Friday.

Happy Weekend!