Monday, November 17, 2008

long time no write!

I sorta knew this would happen, though. I get so busy with work, keeping up with housework and kids, and also doing projects here and there. I think it's hard because I don't blog because I don't have PICTURES because who wants to read a boring old blog with no pictures???

Well, I do take them sometimes but then the time it takes to upload them and get them arranged... I just end up not blogging at all. So today I'm going to blog about my recent stuff with NO pictures just because I don't have them yet.

The biggest news is that we got a truck! It's so nice, I've had it less than a week and have already been hauling lots of stuff (mostly leaves ;)

Let's see... the garden is coming along nicely. I have 17 bags of leaves in the garage for the summertime compost pile and about 1 1/2 truckloads of shredded leaves that were delivered in a pile next to my manure. I still never got my chipped wood mulch from the landscaping company but you know... I have SO MANY leaves I think leaves & compost & household waste will actually be enough. I've just done a few layers of leaves/manure/leaves/manure and they are about halfway full. I also have a fair amount of kitchen waste and chopped up pumpkins in there, too. Yesterday I went for a morning run and one of the houses on my route had some bagged leaves so when I was done I went back with the truck and STOLE them from the curb! THey were really wet and full of water and when I opened them they were already fermenty-smelling which is GOOD for my purposes because it'll get the beds going pretty good.

Craigslist is great! I picked up a truckload of bagged leaves yesterday and a couple weeks ago had someone delivery 2 truckloads of loose leaves and I didn't even have to do the hard work! It's been great.

We did make a cheese a couple weeks ago - first attempt at a farmhouse cheddar. I think the milk we get here has been treated somehow because it just didn't form a very good curd. I still managed to press it into a cheese but there was so much whey in the cheese still so it took about a week & half to dry out enough to form a rind and right now I'm fighting a battle with mold. I think the rind is now dry enough that it won't mold but we'll have to see. It'll be about 2 or 3 more weeks until we break it open. In the meantime I'll be making more cheese next weekend probably... didn't get any made this weekend but I have this coming Friday off so maybe I can get more done this coming weekend if it's 3 days.

Last weekend (or was it 2 weeks ago? I don't know!) I pureed my pumpkins. Baked them in the oven until soft, scooped out the seeds and threw them away, then scooped out the pulp and used my kitchenaid food mill to process it. I think I'll just use a regular food processor next time - the lack of "waste" material made it so there was pulp extruded out the back where the waste normally goes so either next time I'll wash the skin before I bake it and throw that in with it or just use a food processor. All in all I got about 8 cups which is 4 recipes' worth. Not nearly enough! I'm glad I'm starting to grow my own... this year I can save seed from the biggest/best sugar pumpkin and so hopefully in a couple years will end up with bigger sugar pumpkins. Oh, and in case you were wondering - I cooked the pumpkins with the seeds IN because we don't eat them, so of course they get composted... and if you cook them first, they don't SPROUT. I wanted to be able to throw the waste into the garden beds but didn't want to have little pumpkin seedlings sprouting up everywhere. Plus they are super easy to scoop out once the pumpkin is cooked and soft.

On Friday Tommy brought home a big box of windfall apples from a friend - they are all bruised and small but I thought I could at least use them for applesauce. We don't really eat a lot of applesauce but I know Eleora likes it so I figured I'd make some and could can them in pints instead of quarts. Again I used my kitchenaid food mill and this time it worked GREAT! I was so happy because for one thing, the apples were free (though I did add some honeycrisp in there that I'd had on hand in the basement, maybe 1/4 of the apples) and so I didn't feel bad about wasting parts or throwing away entire apples that were bad. After all, when you compost, there's no waste, right?

So I made 12 pints of applesauce, using about 2 big mixing bowls worth of apples (they were all very small) and a bag of cranberries. Some of the cranberries I left out and put them into the finished applesauce for an interesting look but most of them I cooked & pureed along with the apples. I spiced it up, using lots of fresh & dried ginger and molasses, and it turned out really really excellent! Even Tommy thought it was really good and he is not really a fan of applesauce normally. I didn't add any sugar and so it wasn't overly sweet but the molasses gave it good depth and went well with the ginger and cranberries. So now Tommy can take a couple jars of it to his classmate (and classmate's parents) who gave him the apples in the first place :) How's that for a trade? And the Kitchenaid food mill... I gotta thank my sister Sarah for turning me on to that thing because it made it SOOOOO easy. And of course all the leavings got put into my garden beds and covered up with leaves.

Other than that, not a whole lot is going on. I need to make granola tonight because I have to have it on hand. I'm up to exercising 6 days a week now, running/walking 3 days and strength training 3. Mondays are my day off :) I'm really enjoying the time early in the morning, especially when I go running outside because it's so crisp and still in the mornings. Anyway, what with exercising, running after toddlers, cooking, working, and nursing (which burns the equivalent of about 40 minues of jogging) I'm finding it difficult to eat enough calories so granola is perfect since it's very nutritious, natural, and calorie-dense with a good proportion of carbs to fat to protein. And I've lost 13 lbs so far - in about a month.

Another cool thing... many people won't understand except those who have the same compulsive need to bake as I do. I love baking... but my husband doesn't really eat "treats." So I don't bake very much, not nearly as much as I want to, because I end up eating it all myself! But I just took over birthday duty at work from a co-worker. She's been bringing in cupcakes for people's birthdays for a really long time and mentioned to me that she's burning out on it. I happily told her I would take on the duty so this is cool because I can pretty much make whatever I want. Not just cupcakes... but pound cakes, cinnamon rolls, etc. All kinds of stuff. This is great! It's about 1-2 birthdays a month and so I think that'll get it out of my system and I won't have to eat anything beyond one serving.

Anyway, that's pretty much what's been going on these days. Someday I'll post more pictures :) At least I'm still writing for now!

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Making granola!

So I decided to make granola the other day... found a recipe online, modified it a bit (of course!) and voila! Fantastic! I think my oven runs hot because it's pretty dark so next time I'll cut the baking time a bit but wow... what a great tasting breakfast, also great in my yogurt and it keeps me filled up for a long long time. Great quick energy for me to grab before my walks in the morning.

Here's the recipe as I made it:

Cranberry Pistachio Vanilla granola
2 c thick rolled oats
1/2 c slivered almonds
1/2 c pumpkin seeds (raw)
1/2 c chopped pistachios
1/4 c hulled sesame seeds
1/2 c raw sunflower seeds
1/4 c wheat germ
1 c cranberries
1/4 c oil
1/2 tsp vanilla
3/4 c honey

I threw the almonds and pumpkin seeds in a bowl
Chopped up my pistachios,

Added the wheat germ,

... Sesame seeds,

... and sunflower seeds.

I poured in my oats,

Mixed it up

All mixed!

Now the liquids - oil goes in a cup. Measure the oil separately in a larger measure and swirl it around to coat the sides.

Measure honey in the oil-coated measuring cup and pour it in


Add vanilla
Warm up the mixture in the microwave so it gets thin

Pouring on to the dry mix. The fact that I heated it up helps the liquid absorb into the dry mix.

All mixed!

Closeup of the texture

In the oven on a baking sheet with sides (sides are important!)
And the finished granola! I think my oven was hot since it got VERY dark.

Adding the cranberries. You add dried fruit after it's been toasted otherwise they get all brown and hard.

All mixed!

Closeup of the granola... yum! It comes out of the oven pretty moist but it crisps up well after it cools.

I enjoyed my granola all week long in the mornings with milk and also in my yogurt at work. I'm going to make more today because I ran out yesterday. It's a good dense food for me to eat - I have trouble eating enough calories some days especially when I exercise a lot (nursing burns like 500 calories!) so its good for me to have on hand.

Saturday, November 1, 2008

Halloween!

I feel like I've been gone for AGES! Our internet was down for a while and I've been busy busy busy this week. So I'll do a couple posts this weekend, probably :)

We've been sick here at our house so not a whole lot exciting has happened during the week. Last weekend we carved our pumpkins. Wola wasn't super excited about the pumpkin, she thought it was "Yucky Gross" but she did try and help a little with scooping them! So Tommy carved her a skull (surprise surprise!).

I ended up doing Eric Draven with a crow on his shoulder, and Tommy freehanded the Misfits skull. His pumpkin didn't turn out well for the picture but it looked really cool, you can sorta see a glow through the part where he peeled off the skin and it just looked really eerie.

Then, this week, we had a pumpkin carving contest at work and my team decided to do our boss's face. I ended up doing the design from a photo of him, and it turned out really well. We won the contest, of course :)

And then after all that, we got home too late last night to even have any trick or treaters. So now we have candy in the freezer... lol. One of the casualties of my late shift but hopefully next year I'll be on a better schedule.

Wola helping Tommy with her "ponkin"

Tommy's Misfits skull
Eric Draven with the crow on his shoulder (You know, the movie "The Crow")
Wola's skull

Here's the pattern I did for the carving of my boss' face. I wish I had a picture of it lit up but no candles left!Wola had a harvest party at daycare so she's pretty worn out. She was a skeleton this year :)
Sophia is a ladybug :) You can't see them but there's these cute little antennae attached to the hat.

Monday, October 27, 2008

Finished planting my garlic!

So I got it all done. A bit late in the season perhaps, but at least it's planted. I bought a half pound each of Music Pink and Inchelium Red.

My dilemma was that my beds are not filled yet, I plan on filling them sheet-compost-style over the fall and winter but my garlic needed to go in immediately. So... in a divine inspiration (thanks to the people at GardenWeb who got my wheels turning) I decided what to do.

I took cardboard boxes and arranged them on the east end of the garden bed.

I put a shovelful of aged horse manure with sawdust in the bottom of each box.

Then we filled them all with bagged garden soil. Eleora is SUCH a good helper :)

Then I arranged each box with the garlic on top, approximately 4 inches apart

Dug in the garlic and covered them up

Topped with a thiiiick blanket of shredded leaves

And voila! Garlic beds. Since it's so late in the season and the garden beds are, of course, raised, I thought it might be a good idea to put the manure on the bottom. My hope is that while it decomposes (since it is now moist) it will generate enough heat to keep the garlic from getting too cold until it's established. I didn't put very much in each box since I was worried about it burning the garlic. Since the potting soil was probably close to 10 inches deep I'm sure the garlic won't get burned... so we'll see how that experiment goes.

The other experiment was planting in the cardboard boxes themselves. I figure, the sides will keep the soil walled in for now until I'm able to fill the rest of the bed and then they will decompose over time once surrounded by the soil on all sides. I tried to put leaves stuffed in the sides to insulate a bit more but also to hasten decomposition by providing organic material on the other side of the cardboard. I'm also going to pile up more leaves on the west side inside the bed to provide more insulation until I can get the bed filled.

Time will tell :)

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Adventures in Sourdoughland

So, this weekend I made my sourdough bread. Bear with me, it had been a while... the old apartment I lived in killed everything. I couldn't keep a starter there, and even my plants died within weeks of moving there. This is the first time I've made bread since we moved to this house.

Look, the sponge is nice and bubbly. Very active and ready to go. What I'm going to make today is an eyeball half-sorta version of the no-knead bread method. I'm just going to eyeball the amounts and I'll bake it in the style of the no-knead recipe in my homemade La Cloche styler bread baker.

Friday night I started the bread. I put a cup of whole rye flour into the bowl.

I added a cup of water to the sponge and stirred it in until it was thoroughly mixed.


I poured in the liquidy sponge and mixed it all well with a rubber spatula.
Then I added a cup of white bread flour and a cup of whole wheat flour.

You can see it's a pretty wet sticky dough. Not one you could knead with your hands! I left the dough as is and stuck it into the fridge overnight. In the morning, I took it out about 10am and let it sit to get to room temperature and watched it until it was risen to double.

Then, I turned it out on a WELL floured board. With WELL floured hands, I patted it out into a flat semi-rectangle. With the help of my spatula, I folded the dough over onto itself a couple times, flouring well as I went along.

Here you can see my rising "basket" which is actually just an old clean birdseye diaper on top of a small stockpot. I don't use flour on the diaper, but actually I use wheat bran. If you use flour, the extreme hydration in the dough soaks through it in no time and sticks to the cloth. You want it to not stick... wheat bran is ideal for this. Rice flour also works well.


I plopped the dough in, folded side down (smooth side up). I also sprinkled more wheat bran around the edges since as the dough rises, it will stick to the cloth unless you have something there to prevent it.
So then I realized that I hadn't added SALT. Bread is pretty tasteless without salt, even tasty flavorful sourdough rye! So I plopped it back out onto the board and tried to get as much of the wheat bran as I could off.

I patted it out, and threw on about a teaspoon of salt. Now comes the fun part - kneading it in! lol....


With lots of flour and frustration I managed to knead the bread, or rather, fold it in passably.

This way I could at least take pictures of the folding process, which I forgot to do before. First, you flatten out the dough and fold over the top third into the middle.

Then, you fold the bottom third into the middle also.

Then, you fold over one side onto the other...

And voila! Folded dough.


So I put it back into my proofing "basket" and covered it with a plastic bag to keep in the moisture while it rises.

After it had finished rising I promptly realized that I forgot to keep part of the culture out for continuing my starter! So I oh-so-carefully grabbed some from the top, trying to not deflate it. You can see how well it had risen.



I mixed it with some more flour and water in a pint canning jar. Here you can see my cool top - a coffee filter lets out the carbon dioxide that the bacteria emit so the jar doesn't explode.
So then I took the top off my bread baker and tried to oh-so-gently tilt the dough onto the bottom. It didn't work very well, I made TOO much dough for the size baker I made, and so half of it hung over. When it did that, I couldn't put the top back on so I baked it like that. 450 degrees and I didn't time it... sorry! :)


Here it is, out of the oven!

And cut. It's got a nice dense and somewhat sticky crumb like the rye I love. Flavor is great, though I shoulda put in more salt. Didn't rise much, but that could have been due to the overhandling of it and also the fact that such a high percentage of it is rye. Rye flour on it's own doesn't rise well, so you always want to add wheat flour and if you have it, vital wheat gluten, to help it rise better.

But it was sure tasty! :)