As often happens when the summer season winds down and  the fall begins, I sort of fell out of the habit of blogging.  Resolution:  Get back to it!  Fall is always crazy busy for me, and I seem to get slammed with allergies or something every fall as well, so the period between September 1 and December 31 flies by before I can even turn around twice.

So a general catch-up.  In October, we finally completed construction on our commercial kitchen/commercial coach/food service facility!  (What it’s called depends entirely upon what government agency is currently inquiring.  They apparently don’t speak to one another, and they all have different terminology, and none of them have guidelines for exactly what we’ve done.  I didn’t think it was that outside the box, but apparently so…)   Very excited to have the facility up and running, but unfortunately it came about 18 months too late for the bills.  So, we’re going to be ramping up actual production slower than I’d anticipated, because I’ve had to take a full time job in the Real World ™ again.  But life is funny, because the job I’ve gotten is right up my alley, should be busy and fun and the people are wonderful, and a regular paycheck should ease a lot of stress around here, not to mention regular health care again!   And if it means I have to focus more sharply and take it a little slower on the food production, well, that might actually be helpful anyway.  I was feeling a little unfocused, and now I have to really narrow it down and get organized, which is how I operate best.

In October, we also went to our biggest show ever, the Tacoma Holiday Food and Gift Show.  It was both a great show and a bad show.  It was great, in that I sold more product than I’ve ever sold anywhere.  I met a lot of great customers, gave out a lot of cards, and got some wonderful feedback on my products.  I learned a lot about what did and didn’t work for my packaging.  I got a banner for the booth, and learned a little more about display techniques specific to food, and got a handwashing station built.  I got easily transportable containers filled with necessary equipment for sampling food, and for administrative purposes.  I’ve learned a lot about the shelf life of my non-preserved food products (and it’s all good news…remarkably long shelf life for having no preservatives beyond sugar!)   On the down side, we spent more than we took in, largely because the show was insanely expensive to enter, and we had to drive about 100 miles each way to get there, one of us towing an RV, and the other of us making the trip twice in the same week.  I won’t be doing the show again, but it was a good experience.

So.  Coming up in 2012, lots of changes.  We have a greenhouse to start plants for the first time, so I’ll be out poking around in there earlier than I used to be.  We’ll be getting new chickens later in the spring, though we’ve nixed the idea of Blue Andalusians because they’re so loud and Jersey Giants because they’re kind of boring.  Still hunting Lavender Orpingtons!  We’ll be reconsidering the idea of a very small CSA locally, with a slightly different, non-subscription model including canned fruits and jams.  And we’ll be posting old-fashioned, small-batch, handmade foods to our website, finally!   The first up will be Cherry Almond Vanilla Jam, Ginger Peach Jam, Rhubarb Orange Marmalade, and Blueberry Lavender Jelly.  Very soon we will be producing another batch of our sold-out Pflaummenmus, which is a wonderful, lightly sweetened spiced German plum jam which has received rave reviews, even from some native Germans, which was enormously flattering and a bit surprising to me.

Looking forward to a great year with all kinds of changes on the food front and around the Homestead!

This is the time of year where you can’t leave your car windows rolled down, for fear that your neighbors will jam zucchini through the window and run away.  And if you hear the doorbell, you better get there before the person runs away and leaves a basket of orphan zucchini on the porch.  Unless you’re me.  For some reason, I can’t manage to raise prolific zucchini out here.  I tried planting three zucchini plants this year, just to have enough…and they turned out to be yellow squash.  Well drat.  On the other hand, I can honestly say to friends, “Yes, I’d love some!” when they offer me excess zucchini, so I suppose that’s my lot in life, to be the sink for others’ zucchini overload.

Why do I want zucchini in the first place?  I have to say, the primary reason is the following recipe.   It’s probably my favorite cake.  It’s moist, and not overwhelmingly chocolate, and has just enough orange to be different.  And did I mention that it’s moist?  Amazingly moist.  So good.  And crazy easy.  Anyone can do this, seriously.  You might find yourself wishing for more zucchini!  (Incidentally, one medium zucchini will generally suffice for the three cups called for.)

Chocolate Orange Zucchini Cake

Ingredients

• 2 1/2 cups flour
• 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 2 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 3/4 cup butter
• 2 cups sugar
• 3 eggs, beaten
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 cup milk
• 3 cups grated zucchini
• 1 Tbsp orange zest
• 1 1/4 cups powdered sugar
• 1/4 cup plus 2 Tbls fresh squeezed orange juice
• 1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour regular bundt pant. In a medium bowl, combine the flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. Set aside.

In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beat well. Add 1 tsp vanilla and the milk, beat well. Stir in the dry ingredients, mix until well blended. Fold in zucchini and zest and 2 Tbls of the orange juice.

Pour into prepared bundt pan. Bake for 50-60 minutes until a toothpick inserted halfway between the edge and the center comes out clean. Allow to cool.

When cake is completely cool, invert onto a serving dish. In a small bowl, combine the powdered sugar, orange juice, and 1 tsp vanilla until smooth and it drizzles easily. Pour glaze over the cake.

Strawberry season is either nearly over or completely over, depending on where you are in the country.  (We have maybe a week more here…got a late start this year!)  Raspberries are up next, then we’ll be into boysenberries, marionberries, tayberries, blackberries, blueberries…yum.

I had so many strawberries this year, I made four batches of jam, two gallons of strawberry ice cream, a batch of strawberry shortcake, and now a strawberry pie.  Strawberry pie is one of my favorite ways to eat fruit.  This recipe works with just about any berry, though.

I eated a piece before I thought to take a picture...

Whatever Berry Pie

• About 3 pints of whatever berries you have (all the same or a mixture)
• 1 cup of sugar (more if they are really tart, less if they are super sweet)
• 2 Tbls Clear Jel (or corn starch)
• Water
• One blind-baked pie crust (just means you baked it with nothing in it)*

Wash your berries.  Remove stems and cores from strawberries.  Line your baked pie crust with about two pints of the berries, depending on their size.  Don’t fill the crust all the way; leave room for the jelled part of the filling.  You can slice strawberries or leave them whole, other berries you can just pour into the pie crust.

Put the remaining berries into a saucepan, and crush with a potato masher or some other mashing instrument.  Add the sugar.   Pour about 3/4 cup of cold water into a small glass, add the 2 Tbls of Clear Jel or corn starch, and stir until completely dissolved.  Pour this into the berries and sugar.  Stir well.  Cook on medium heat, stirring constantly.  Bring to boil, and boil until the mixture thickens and turns clearer, about3-5 minutes.   Pour the thickened berry mixture over the fruit in your pie crust.  Stick in fridge until firmly set, several hours to overnight.  Serve with ice cream or whipped cream.

*So, er, about the pie crust.  You can get a premade frozen one at the store, and just bake it at 425 for about 20 minutes, and that’s fine.   Or you can get some of the Pillsbury pre-rolled dough, put it in your pie pan, and then do the same.  Or you can get a Krusteaz “just add water” mix, roll it out, then put it in the pie pan and bake.   (If you do either of the latter two, you should use a pie chain, pie weights, or dried beans to hold the crust down flat and prevent it from bubbling up or shrinking.)

Or you can make your own crust.  It’s not that hard.  It’s just a step further than the Krusteaz, really.  And it tastes better.

Pie Crust (one double crust or two single crust)

• 2 1/2 cups of all purpose flour, pastry flour, or a combination (I like about 1 cup of pastry flour to 1 1/2 cups of all purpose)
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 cup of very cold butter, lard and/or shortening (I usually use 1/2 cup of butter, 1/2  cup of lard or shortening)
• Ice water

Measure the flour into a bowl.  Stir in the salt.  If you are using a combination of fats, take the shortening or lard and “rub” it into the flour, with your hands.  You’re aiming for a texture like corn meal or crumbs.  Then dice the butter finely and toss into the flour mixture.  Mix as little as possible, but distribute the butter evenly.  (If you’re using all one kind of fat, rub it all in, or cut it in with a pastry cutter or two knives.  It will just have a shorter flake to the crust is all.)   The final texture should be like coarse meal, and it should still have bits of fat in it.

Sprinkle the flour mixture with 1/4 cup of ice water, and toss with a fork.  Add more ice water and toss the mixture gently until it’s all dampened, and you can squeeze it into a ball.  Don’t knead, just gather and press.  The goal is to work the dough as little as possible, and keep it as cold as possible to keep the fats from melting into the flour.

Divide the dough in half.  Put one half in a ziploc bag in the fridge, save for another pie.   On a floured board and with a floured rolling pin, roll out your dough into a circle to fit your pie pan.  It’s easier to transfer to the pie pan if you roll it  up on your rolling pin, put it over the pan, then unroll it.  Flute the edges with your fingers, or just trim the dough to the edge of the pan.   Fill the crust with a pie chain, pie weights, or dried beans, and bake at 425 for 20-25 minutes until lightly brown.  Cool completely before filling with the berries.

Today was one of those days where I puttered in the garden.  “I don’t want to weed the garlic,” I thought. “Well, maybe I’ll just pull that one big weed.”  And I pulled it.  And it came out easily, and then I thought, “Well, maybe just one more.”  Before I knew it, I’d weeded all 40-ish square feet of garlic, and then I just sat there and watched the garden, and watched my kid untangling the red and silver streamers meant to keep the birds out of the strawberries (they work, incidentally.)   I glanced over and saw the top of one garlic plant all curled over and pointy.  Huh.  A scape.  I’d read about them last year, but had ignored mine and allowed them to go to bulblets and fall off on their own.  I reached over and pulled it off and bit into it experimentally.  Yup.  Garlic.  Kinda tasty.  I ate the rest of it slowly, and the thought occurred to me that with plants like these, or their wild cousins, it’d be easier to forage and cook yummy foods in survival mode.

A pile of garlic scapes from my garden. About 3/4 of a pound.

Garlic scapes are the curly tops of hardneck garlic.  They come out in the late spring (or here, with such a damp and dark spring, they’re just ready now.)  They are edible, and they taste like a cross between garlic and an onion.   I’ve never seen them in a farmer’s market, but I’m told sometimes people sell them at local farmer’s markets and fancy grocery stores.  They only come out once a year, so once they’re cut, they’re gone.  I’ve heard that if they sit on too long, they become stringy and hard, about they time they start to form little bulblets.  You can let them do that, and the bulblets can be planted to make more garlic, but it takes a long time for garlic planted that way to become viable; planting from bulb cloves is easier and quicker.  I’ve also heard that if you leave them on, it makes your garlic smaller, because the plants are putting their effort into their bulblets instead of growing large bulbs.  And that if you leave them on, it makes the garlic you do harvest store better and longer.   I left mine on last year, and my bulbs were small, and they stored very very well, so there may be something to that.

Garlic scape pesto. My cow butter dish approves.

So what do you do with a garlic scape?  I made pesto tonight.  It’s a brilliant, bright green; if you’ve only ever had pesto from a restaurant or a store, you’re probably used to a kind of dark to forest green color.  Freshly made pesto, especially with scapes, is almost electric colored.  Really good.  It has a fresh bite, but it’s not as overpowering as you’d think it would be.

Garlic Scape Pesto

• 1/2 pound garlic scapes
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/4 cup pine nuts
• 2 oz sharp sheep cheese, like peccorino or manchego
• olive oil

In the bowl of a food processor, combine the scapes, salt, pine nuts, and cheese.    If you have the little insert cup with the hole in the bottom for drizzling olive oil into a mixture, fill that up and turn on the processor and let it run until the mixture is smooth.  If you don’t, drizzle some in slowly through the chute as it blends.   You may need to stop and scrape down the sides of the processor once in a while.  If your scapes are a little tougher or older, you can sautee them first in a few spoonfuls of olive oil.  You’ll only need a few minutes, until they soften.  A blender will work in place of a food processor in a pinch, but it’s harder to get things smooth.

Toss with hot linguine or fettucine, and top with grated parmesan or reggiano cheese (or feta, if you’re adventurous.)  Refrigerate leftovers in an air-tight container.  Be aware that the pesto will darken in the fridge, and that’s normal.   Freezes well.  One way to freeze is to use an ice cube tray, fill the holes up with pesto, freeze solid, then turn out the cubes into a plastic bag.  Thaw as many cube-sized portions as you need for a meal!

The finished linguini. And freshly made tomato basil soup. Nom!

I’ve really enjoyed several of the books I’ve read by Sue Hubbell.  She’s a writer now in her 70′s, who was a librarian at Brown University until 1972, when she and her husband moved to the Ozarks to raise bees and sell honey for a living.  After they divorced, she stayed on and worked her 300+ hives, living in the hills of the Ozarks and becoming attuned to the country life.  She’s one of those authors with a really clear sense of voice; though sometimes her thoughts aren’t exactly linear, and bits and pieces of other thoughts get strewn into the essay, it’s never hard to follow.  It’s like someone writing you a letter, or maybe just sitting down with you, drinking a cup of tea, and telling you a story.

Among her other books I’ve enjoyed were “A Country Year”, which is a book of essays covering a typical year in her life, and “Broadsides from the Other Orders”, which is a book about bugs.  Yes bugs.  She’s not an entomologist, not even a scientist, but she’s one of those creatures that are endangered and perhaps almost extinct: a naturalist.  She observes.  She hypothesizes.  She studies.  She experiences.  And then she passes it on.

Having enjoyed those books so much, I don’t know why it took me so long to both discover she’d written one about bees and to read it.  I picked up “A Book of Bees” at Powell’s a few weeks ago, used, and put it on top of my growing stack of to-be-read books.  Fortunately, I don’t follow a FIFO strategy with books to be read, and I started reading it not too long after.

Aside from being a great read on its own merits, it was interesting to me because of the timeframe in which it was written and about which it was written.  It was published in 1998, but references 1988.  That was before Colony Collapse Disorder.  It was when honey was growing ever cheaper because of foreign imports.  It was long, long before keeping bees became trendy again.  It was before much of the uproar about insecticides killing bees, and even before the bulk of GMO crops were introduced (they began in 1994.)   So it’s both strange to read about beekeeping practices and thoughts on bees from almost 25 years ago, and a bit eerie to realize how clairvoyant she was.

“Some agricultural pesticides work so rapidly that the bees die in the field, but with others the bees struggle back and die in convulsions in their hive, where, as long as workers remain alive inside, they are carried out and piled in growing heaps in front of the entrance.  The honey and pollen may be contaminated, and the work force so depleted that the hive will probably die out, even if the workers have not brought home insecticides so potent that they will kill on contact all the larvae and developing brood, although that sometimes happens too.”

So even then, beekeepers recognized the dangers of insecticides to their bees.  It’s just taken the problem of CCD to get more attention to the matter, perhaps.

And she talks about swarms, with the usual resigned mild annoyance of the commercial beekeeper.  Swarms were not appreciated in the late 1980′s, for any reason; today, I can catch a swarm and turn around and sell it for $75 or $80 easily, even un-hived.  I don’t, though, I keep them!   Swarms are sought after by hobbyists and smaller-scale commercial keepers, and there’s actual competition on swarm lists.  The old rhyme:

A swarm of bees in May
Is worth a cow and a bottle (bundle) of hay
A swarm of bees in July
Is not worth a fly

still pretty much holds true, though most of us will still try to baby a July or even August swarm through the winter.  Sue says, “A farmer today would scorn a deal offering him a swarm of bees, even in May, for a cow and a bottle (bundle) of hay.  Cows at sixty cents a pound and hay at a dollar fifty a bale are pricey.  And a package of bees (the equivalent to a swarm, but better because it contains a new queen) is not. “

Granted, I can’t imagine anyone actually trading a cow for a swarm, prices being what they are, but a package of bees can cost $85 and up, and queens can run anywhere from $5 to $ridiculous.  The assertion that a package of bees is “better” because it contains a new queen is interesting; certainly, she’s probably got more laying years ahead of her, but she isn’t related to the package bees with her, nor are they necessarily related to one another.  A swarm has flown because the hive is strong enough to do so (usually).

I know how lucky I am to live where bees have forage much of the year.  She continues, “Early, or May, swarms have a chance of building up and proving useful to a beekeeper.  A swarm of bees in July, when the flow of nectar from flowers has dried up, could not even keep themselves alive, let alone produce any extra honey to be harvested.  Indeed, they would have to be fed lest they starve to death.” Our nectar flow doesn’t dry up here until August or even September, sometimes even later.  The bad news with that is that our winters are usually mild, so the bees are more active and require more food to see them through a winter.  I had one hive starve last year because they just weren’t populous enough to build up reserves, or keep themselves warm.

“In the days of the rhyme, there were no bee breeders who sold tidy packages of bees, and picking up a swarm was one of the best ways to acquire them.”

And it is again, at least for the organic, more hands-off beekeepers I know.  Me, I’ve never had a package of bees and wouldn’t have a clue what to do with them.  I have installed seven swarms, and inherited a full hive, but have never seen a queen in a queen cage, at least not in person.  I have no idea about the different temperaments of the various breeds of bees like Italian and Carniolan, though I’m aware of their existence.  I have only seen a couple of my queens at all, ever, since I let the hives decide when to requeen.  It’s not a better way, it’s not a worse way, it’s just a way.  My bees are here to help preserve their genetics, help pollinate the local gardens, provide me with a hobby and dinner party conversation topics, and maybe give me some honey if they have the time and energy to do so.  Commercial keepers see things differently, is all.

One last thing that caught my eye when reading this book.  She mentions a time a hundred years ago when bees mysteriously died out.  I can’t tell if she means just in general, they died mysteriously because they didn’t have the forensic science to know about viruses and bacteria, or if it was a larger scale die out.  I’ll have to research it and find out.

“Fashions in beekeeping change, as they do in everything else, and a hundred years ago in this country, when colonies died out mysteriously from moths and disease, the apiarist considered himself lucky to have hives which would swarm because it meant that he could replenish his dwindling stock of bees.”

If you’re curious about bees but don’t really want to read a whole book about the nitty gritty of how to build a super, what to do with it, how to requeen, what medications to apply…this is a great book.  It’s a smooth, easy read and is just an interesting window into the life of a rare female commercial beekeeper, who both appreciates them for the livelihood they provide, and communes with them easily as a unique and beautiful species.

Today was the Solstice, and coincidentally it was warm enough to declare it Hive Day.  The bad news is, I woke up with a screaming migraine.  The good news is, I took a few painkillers, got an ice pack and went back to bed for a few hours.  By the time my headache was gone, it was midday and the perfect time to start on the hives.  Working on the hives in the middle of the day means the foragers are out, and the hive is a little less crowded than it would be earlier in the day.  Must be why I love bees…they like to get a late start, just like me.

First we took care of the hives at our house.  We peeked in the Langstroth, and yes, they’re building comb on the bottom of the stupid inner cover.  Sigh.  We simply lifted the whole inner cover and one hive deep, and slid the second deep under it.  The hive now has two deep bodies, a hollow super, and the inner cover.  Eventually, we’ll treat the inner cover and the super as if it were a Warre box and remove it whole, cut out the comb, and replace it properly.  Later.  For now, I see that they’re happy and bringing in bits of pollen, and all seems well.

We moved on to the middle hive, which is the newest swarm.  If you missed the Facebook update, that’s the swarm I dropped on my bare left arm.  Word of advice:  don’t do that.  I got 10 stings for my trouble, though I didn’t react over much to them.  Anyway, the swarm is building beautiful, surprisingly straight comb in the bottom box of one, and did NOT settle in the lid as I had feared.   When we hived them, most of them didn’t seem to want to go into the box, and wound up bearded all over the front of the hive.  Peeking in, they do have one box nearly full of comb.  I’m a bit concerned that the queen might have absconded with part of the swarm, as they seem a bit sparse for as large a swarm as they were, but 1) they’re bringing in pollen, which generally indicates brood to feed and 2) it’s hard to judge how full they’d be if all the foragers weren’t out in force.  I’ll just cross my fingers and hope.  Right now they have three hive bodies, so they have plenty of room to work with.

Checked on the second Warre, which contains the swarm I caught at my parents’ house last year.  It was full to the top at the beginning of spring, but the weather was so awful they’ve gone through a lot of the honey that was in the top box.  Given the weather right now (overcast, muggy, plenty warm) and the fact that the wild blackberries are blooming like crazy, I expect them to be able to fill it with honey in a week or two, at which point I’ll hopefully harvest it and then give them a new empty box to work with.

After we got done with those three hives, we went over to my folks’ house.   The hive there is a Langstroth I got from someone last year.  They said it had been “a while” since they’d worked it, and they just wanted it gone.  They said it swarmed every year, which means it’s strong.  But, the wood just flat needs to be replaced, and the comb is so old it’s black.  Ew.   The renovations are something of a new thing to me, so we’re taking it in stages.

Today, we lifted off the top box and set it on the ground, then lifted up the bottom box, removed the old bottom board, and replaced it with a new, screened board with a sloped landing porch.  After that, I put a new, empty, clean brood box on top of the bottom board, and we resettled the two old nasty boxes on top of the new one.  That’s a Warre-type box replacement, where you add new boxes to the bottom.  Usually with Langstroth, you swap the hive bodies, and if you do want to add a new one, you add it to the top.  This is kind of an experiment.  We’ll see what happens.

After we did that, we took off the lid, inner lid, and the old rank nasty feeder box.  I replaced them with a deep inner lid (where I can baggie-feed or patty-feed them if I need to) and new outer lid, and left them alone.   We brought the old nasty wood home, and we will be burning it soon. Some of the wood is rotten, and it’s just in bad shape.

In a few weeks, we’ll go over and see what’s what.  The goal is to take off the inner/outer lid, remove the old top brood box  and set it on a sheet of plywood next to a brand new empty box, then replace the inner/outer lid on what’s left of the hive while I go through the nasty box frame by frame.  Honey frames will be uncapped and set out in the yard for the hive to scavenge, then melted down later. Their place will be taken in the new box by empty , foundationless frames.  Brood frames will be put into the new box as-is, including their attendant bees.  Then once the new box has 10 frames either empty or full of brood, we’ll remove the inner/outer lid again, lift the remaining oogy nasty brood box, and put the newly renovated box in the middle of the stack, between the remaining old box and the lower box we just put in place today, then replace the inner/outer lid, so we’ll have one oogy box on top and two new ones below.

A few weeks after that, I’ll again see what’s what.  I’ll probably repeat the entire procedure, but ideally the top box will have little brood in it at that point, and I’ll be able to just ditch the entire top box.  We’ll see.  If not, hopefully I’ll be able to find a place for brood-heavy frames in the lower two boxes.  The key will be to make sure the queen isn’t discarded or squashed!

It’s a mellow hive, thus far anyway.  We futzed with it and completely ripped their house apart from top to bottom.  We gave them new hardware.  We rocked and shook and poked at their house.  And they mostly just got confused because we changed the appearance of their home.  Once they got that figured out, back to mellow.  None of them challenged me at all, or got up in my face.  They have quite an abundance of big fat happy drones, and small happy workers.  They’re not bringing in tons of pollen either, but they are bringing in some.  I did see at least one drone larvae when we opened the hive, because it was wedged into the burr comb between boxes (not where you want to find brood, really) and I ripped open that cell when we were rearranging the hives.  Bummer.

At any rate, I don’t expect to harvest honey out of either Langstroth this year, but I’m hopeful that at least the one older Warre will generate a box full for us soon!

Rheum rhubarbarum sounds like some character out of a bad space opera, but it’s the scientific name of rhubarb.  Just one of those weird little trivia tidbits that get lodged in the wrinkles in my brain, probably because I’ve always liked the sound of it.   And right now, rhubarb is on my mind!

Three of my four monster rhubarb. That bed is 4 feet wide for scale.

About 10 years ago, when I got my first house with a yard, I planted a vegetable garden, including a small spindly rhubarb plant.  I didn’t know what rhubarb was for.  I’d never eaten rhubarb.  But I knew it was edible, and it had a cool name, and was supposedly easy to grow.  And it was inexpensive, and what the heck.  I planted it.  It grew.  Happily.  For two years, without me harvesting a single stalk…because I wasn’t really sure about it.  I’d walk by it and give it the hairy eyeball once in a while, as it started to look more and more like something out of Little Shop of Horrors.   I was mildly afraid it would grow pods, and then the neighborhood would be taken over by vegetable replicas of my neighbors.

And then one day, my mother in law saw it, and asked if she could have some of it.  “Um…sure.  What do you do with it?”  I didn’t even know how to harvest it, or how to tell if it was ripe.  She just ripped half a dozen stalks off at the base, and took it home and made a pie.  When we had dinner at her house later, my husband offered me a taste of his piece of pie, since I’d never had any.  I took a bite, and then took his plate and told him to go back and get himself a slice.  It’s amazing stuff for something that looks like red celery on growth hormones.

Since then, we’ve moved, and I transplanted my rhubarb.  I also split it, and now I have four giant alien mounds out living amongst the strawberries and asparagus.  It keeps us in ample rhubarb, which apparently you can’t get in parts of the country.  Alas for them!

Rhubarb leaves cast in concrete, for a future pond waterfall.

If you’ve never harvested rhubarb, here’s how to tell if it’s ripe:  Is the stalk big enough to use?  That’s pretty much it.  It’s always “ripe”.   To harvest it, grab a stalk down low and twist while you pull, to tear the entire stalk off at the base.  Discard the kind of woody base end, and remove and discard the leaf.  The leaves aren’t technically poisonous, but they contain extremely high levels of oxalic acid, which can damage your kidneys and stomach, and really is about the same as if they were poisonous. Don’t eat them.  Do make yard art with them.

And what to do with your rhubarb?  How about a buckle?  I’m rather fond of buckles, and I made this one the other day for my husband, to deal with the annual excess of rhubarb.

Rhubarb Ginger Buckle

Ingredients
¼ cup unsalted butter
½ cup sugar
1 large egg
¾ cup all purpose flour
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1/3 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups rhubarb, diced

Topping
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 cup finely diced  candied ginger

Preheat the oven to 350.  Butter an 8 inch pan.

In the bowl of a mixer, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  Add the egg, beat until thoroughly mixed.

In a separate bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder and salt.

Add the dry ingredients and milk to the butter mixture, alternating dry with milk, and beat until smooth.

Pour the batter into the 8 inch pan, spread out to cover the bottom of the pan.  Distribute the rhubarb evenly over the batter.  It will probably cover most of the batter to the point of it being hidden, and that’s okay.

To make the topping, in a small bowl combine the sugar, flour, cinnamon, grated ginger and diced ginger.  Add the cold butter, and cut in with a pastry blender or two knives until the mixture is crumbly.  Sprinkle the mixture evenly over the top of the rhubarb.

Bake 40-45 minutes, or until the topping is golden brown.  The center will remain very moist; a cake tester is not accurate for this dish.

Serve warm or at room temperature.  Excellent with vanilla ice cream or fresh whipped cream.

Some time ago I wrote about starting a greenhouse project.  The floor was complete on April 24th…of last year.  Then things happened and life went on, and the greenhouse project was abandoned for a while.  But now, it’s complete!

North East corner of the Greenhouse

It’s sturdy as heck, and quite a bit taller than I needed, but I can hang things from the inside rafters and my husband won’t whack his head if he goes inside, which is nice.  We bought the roofing material at a greenhouse supply place in Aurora, which saved us tons of money compared with buying pre-sized panels from a horticulture place.  Seriously, we saved probably 50%, even if you factor in having to drive 45 miles one way instead of 25. And the place in Aurora even cut them to size for us, so there was literally no benefit to buying the pre-cut panels.  Very weird.  But now I remember why I don’t go to the horticulture place much!

Inside the greenhouse, shelves along the south wall.

The windows are salvage from an old mansion down on the riverfront in Vancouver.  My folks found them at a VFW rummage sale for a few bucks a piece, and bought something like 20 of them, with the idea of using them in their own house.  Well, they turned out not to be right for their purposes, so we got them.  They’re wood framed, double paned, but not “energy efficient” so they don’t keep the solar heat out, though they do keep the heat in the greenhouse nicely.

Greenhouse door, ajar. It opens out, of course.

The door is an old sliding glass door off our old house, which was replaced when we moved out because, well, frankly it sucked.   Since my parents own our old house, we get most of the cast offs, and they go into projects like this!  Todd used a piano hinge as a closure, and then crafted a handle for it out of a piece of wood.  Super cool.

The floor is also cast offs from our old house; the main portion is bricks that used to be the floor of our gazebo area, and the outer edge is cinder blocks that were part of some raised beds.   The inside shelves are partly salvaged lumber, partly new lumber, and strong enough for either of us to stand on.  Can’t imagine the plants will get THAT heavy!

Shelves along the north wall, and the east wall.

There’s adequate storage space under the shelves for all the pots I have hanging around, and for the implements and things that seem to pile up.  Hopefully this means I’ll be able to overwinter some of my more tender plants, like the pineapple sage, and maybe have some winter veggies this year!

We will be moving the quince tree which is just to the east of the greenhouse, and way too close.  We weren’t really thinking greenhouse when we put the tree there!  But we’ll wait until fall, after it goes dormant again, to dig it up and transplant it somewhere more convenient.   And eventually we’ll paint the greenhouse to match the house, but we’ll wait until we get the rabbit hutch and kitchen trailer done, so we can paint those and the chicken coop and everything all at once.

And at some point, we’ll be putting gutters on both the chicken coop and the greenhouse, and installing a couple more rain barrels so that I don’t have to go far to get to water for the plants, and so I won’t have to hook up to our crazy-expensive city water to do it.   And Todd has plans to build me a potting bench out under the west edge of the greenhouse, under an overhang and up against the arborvitae.   I think he’s afraid I’m going to get dirt on the floor of his new greenhouse…

Greenhouse floor.

Greenhouse, looking at the east end.

One of the things I’ve been meaning to do for a long time is learn to make cheese.  It seems mysterious, but I know people who do it, and it didn’t seem so much hard as a wee bit complicated.  So when the Clark County Goat Association held a cheesemaking class for a mere $15, I signed both my husband and me up for it.  Sweet.

The class included instruction in making mold-ripened soft cheeses as well as a cheese-tasting for lunch.  I am pretty sure my husband would have paid the $15 just for the cheese tasting alone.  He’s declared Humboldt Fog to be “pretty good”.  At least I think he liked it…he’s only mentioned it about two dozen times since the class.

True to form, once I took the class I had to “do”.  I got a couple of gallons of raw cow milk, ran to the local Beer and Wine Supply shop to get some cheese cultures and rennet, and came home and made camembert and blue cheese.  I probably should have taken pictures of the process, but I didn’t think about it.  Suffice to say that right now, I have one larger and two smaller camemberts and one larger and two smaller blues hanging out in plastic tubs in my artificial cave (also known as the Jelly room, or the downstairs pantry.)  It’s a concrete-walled, concrete-floored room with no heat ducts.  It’s kept marginally warm by a refrigerator and the water heater, but it’s a pretty constant temperature all year.

Two weeks later, I was again faced with two gallons of raw cow milk, so this time I decided to make feta cheese.  It’s really not terribly hard to make, though you do spend a lot of time eyeballing a thermometer and waiting.  First, I sanitized everything.  And I mean everything.  All the utensils got soaked in a bleach solution, the cheesecloth and the tea towels I used to cover and/or strain the cheese got boiled, and the counters got sprayed down with bleach solution.  Milk is great, but it is a perfect culture dish for growing all kinds of nasty beasties.  For precisely that reason, I also heat-treated the milk.  This is to kill things like listeria, which like to hang out in milk and can make you really sick.  It’s not done at  as high a temperature as store pasteurization, and the milk is not homogenized, so it’s still a lot better for cheese.  Better flavor, better texture.  It’s done by bringing the milk to 145 degrees F for 30 minutes, then cooling it immediately down to either refrigerator temperature, or the temperature at which you’re going to cook the cheese.  I always heat-treat right before doing the cheese, so I only have to cool it to 88F in this case.

Cut curds, hanging out, releasing their whey.

Once the milk hit 88F, I sprinkled in the cultures.  For feta, it’s just a mesophilic starter.  To give it some of that “feta-oh-lord-it-smells-like-feet” kick, I added goat lipase.  Lipase is an enzyme that adds flavor to your cheese.  Since I was making a cheese that’s traditionally created from goat milk but I was using cow milk, I decided to add the goat lipase to kick the flavor up to the right strength.   With the cultures added, I let it hang out for another half hour or so, to let the bacteria have a chance to multiply and flourish.

After the cultures it’s time for the rennet, diluted in some distilled water.  I use calf rennet, but you can get vegetarian and goat rennet too.  Once the rennet is stirred in, it sits undisturbed for 30-40 minutes.  Don’t poke the pot, it disrupts the curding process and you get a mess.  You know it’s done when you cut it with a knife and it slices cleanly.  It’s called a “clean break”.  Basically, it looks a bit like milky soft jello.  Mmm.  Cheese.

Miss Muffet's lunch - two half gallons of whey and a bowl of soft curd.

Once that clean break was achieved, I cut up the curd with a long knife.  First came parallel cuts about 1/2″ apart, then I turned the pot 90 degrees and did it again, so the surface looked like a grid (if you could see the cuts, which I really couldn’t) and the curd was in 1/2″ by 1/2″ columns.   Then I held the knife at about 45 degrees and cut across the pot, so the knife angled down into the pot as I cut, starting at the edge.  By the time I got to just past the middle, the handle of the knife was bumping on the far side, so I turned the pot a bit and repeated, all the way around the pot, so the curds ended up sliced in something like 1/2″ cubes.  I’m so not tidy about it.  The point is to get them sliced apart and let them sit for five or ten minutes, to start releasing their whey.

Proto-feta, slowly losing whey over 24 hours

Once the curds have rested for a bit and it begins to look a little like tofu chunks in a yellowy soup, it’s time to start straining them.  I lined a large plastic colander with layers of wet cheesecloth, and then ladled the curd out into the colander.  It’s a lot of curd, really.  It just sort of hangs out in the colander, draining, for an hour or so.  I save the whey, and I’ll tell you why in a bit.

When the curds have released a good bit of whey, I pulled the corners of the cheesecloth up and tied them together, then hung the bag from a metal hook suspended from a cabinet knob, so that the bag hung over a pot to catch the whey drippings.  I was supposed to hang it for 3 or 4 hours, then take it out, turn it over to shape it, put it in another cheesecloth draining bag, and rehang for 24 hours.  I didn’t do that, I just let it hang for a bit over 24 hours.  It works fine, it’s just not quite as tidy looking when you go to cut it.

Cubes of feta cheese curd, salted and aging

After the 24 hours is up, the cheese comes out of the bag and gets sliced into 2″ cubes, more or less.  All sides of the cubes are salted with kosher salt, and then put into a plastic box for 3 days to age and release yet MORE whey.  There’s a lot of whey involved.    At the end of the three days, the chunks of feta are moved into a half gallon container and then covered with a salt brine made of 1/2 cup of kosher salt to 1/2 gallon of water.   They age for another 1-4 weeks in the brine, but are good for up to a year if kept in the brine and in the refrigerator.

Feta cheese, in brine, ready to eat

So what to do with all that whey?  Some possibilities:

• Use it to make ricotta.  Add 1 cup of milk per gallon of whey, heat it up to 190, then add 2-4 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar to make it curdle.  Strain through very fine cheesecloth, drain, salt, and eat within a couple of days.
• Feed it to your chickens, goats, or pigs.  They all love it.
• Use it in cooking in place of water, especially in mashed potatoes or baked goods.  It adds protein and tends to fluff up breads.
• Kickstart your sauerkraut or other lacto-fermented vegetables with some whey.  Makes  a great starter.
• Wash in it.  It’s supposed to be great for your skin.
• Drink it.  Some people like it, and swear by it for skin and hair.  I’ve heard people add it to juice and sparkling water to disguise the taste a tad.
• Pour it on your compost heap to give the good bacteria a boost.
• Pour it on your plants, particularly the ones that like a boost of calcium, like tomatoes.

Right now, I’m taking courses through the WSU Extension office to become a Certified Master Food Preserver.  Basically, it amounts to 40 hours of training and lots of reading, at the end of which I will owe a minimum of 80 hours of volunteer work passing on the information I have learned.  The purpose is to help keep people safe from food poisoning and foodborne illness, and to help people preserve their own foods in the safest, highest-quality manner possible in their own kitchens.  The WSU Extension doesn’t report to any particular agency, and takes no money from special interest groups or serve any particular agenda.

That’s all peachy, right?

Well, it’s really pointing out to me yet again the number of ways in which I “don’t fit” any particular philosophy or party line.  As a friend said about me yesterday when we were discussing another “I don’t fit either side” situation…I’m pragmatic.  I understand when a philosophical stance is useful, and when practicality rears its head.   I can fail to  trust someone’s motives, and yet still trust their conclusions or their product when I can examine the data for myself.    I can understand the science behind something, and still be comfortable leaving room for questions and new discoveries.  I can adjust when new data leads to changed recommendations, without thinking the science is invalid. (Actually, that’s how science works.  When contrary evidence arises, you modify your theory, test, and repeat.  But I digress.)

(The rest of this is taken from something I posted elsewhere, slightly modified.)

I guess it’s partly that I have a hard time seeing most things in life as black and white. I suppose that makes me seem either schizo or like I’m talking out of both sides of my mouth, or (hopefully not) like I’m just saying what people in a given situation want to hear. But it’s just that taking a solid stand on either side of a complex issue is rarely easy for me.  Complex issues tend to have good points on both sides, and I find that the truth generally lies somewhere between extremes.  One-point issues are easier. Something as nebulous and encompassing as “home food preservation” vs. “industrial food processing” is not a single-point issue.

I know from my own biology background, too much time spent waiting around hospitals, and reading about home canning and cheese making the potential risks involved in food preservation.  The risks are there whether you’re canning and preserving at home, or whether it’s happening in an industrial setting.  Some of the pathogenic organisms are carried in soil, others are omnipresent on human skin.  While it’s true that food from a clean, well-managed source and handled with good food safety practices along the supply chain carries less bacteria and less risk, no source is completely sterile.  The pathogens that cause food borne illness are present even in clean, well-raised food.   And some of the pathogens aren’t anything to screw around with.   Botulism isn’t common, but it’s a scary risk that results in severe illness, sometimes paralysis, sometimes death.  Listeria is more common, and though it’s of less risk to healthy adults, it can cause fetal malformation and miscarriage in pregnant women. Salmonella.   Heck, staphylococcus. Even some molds are toxic…aflatoxins, from molds that frequent breads and peanuts, are carcinogenic.

The large food processing facilities have the  same pathogens in their environment and foods, but they also have the controls to monitor pressure and temperature exactly, clean rooms,  and the testing equipment to check frequently to see what’s living in their foods.  Home preservers have to follow good procedures and then hope or assume that will be enough to keep their food safe.  The good news is, the procedures developed for modern home processing are very good and provide an excellent level of safety, when followed appropriately.

More and more people are home canning and pickling and drying, which is awesome.  Many are becoming highly concerned about their food sources and seeking organic foods, canning their own meats and fresh home-grown vegetables.  Some are simply reacting to a turbulent economy and rising food prices by making or raising more of their own foods.  I’m sure some of you do it successfully.  I have been doing it for years.   Problem?   I know many newcomers are taking shortcuts and not following proper sanitation procedures or processing procedures.  Heck, half of them can’t even successfully follow a recipe and constantly wonder why their jelly didn’t set, or why their peaches turned black, or how come too much stuff boiled out of their jar. (“I only left out half the sugar!” “I thought pre-treatment was too big a pain in the butt, and it’s just more chemicals.  Chemicals are evil.” “Half an inch seemed like a big waste of space in the jar, so I filled it up more.”)  Now convince me those same people are scrupulous about sterilizing jars, scalding lids, using clean towels, washing their hands, timing the processing exactly, and checking seals.  It’s ironic, really, because the whole point is to create healthier, safer foods.  Worse, I see many of the same people scoffing at proper procedures.  “My grandmother never did that.”  “There’s no way it needs to be boiled 20 minutes, 10 will be fine.”

Sure, most of them will live through it. Most home-canned things are low risk anyway (jams, jellies, pickles and salsa, the most common home canned foods, are all pretty low on the risk-o-meter.)  But more and more, people are pressure canning riskier foods, or are turning to lacto-fermenting techniques that when improperly managed can create a perfect environment for pathogens.  And as more make food at home, they’re making things in larger batches, cooling it improperly or not enough, and storing it in the fridge too long (or lord love a duck, in a pot on the stove, where they just turn it on again when they want to reheat it…yes, really.)

Again, most of the people eating stuff like that won’t get sick.  Healthy adults can generally fight off most of the common food-borne toxins.  Many of the ones that do get sick  either ignore it or fail to put their symptoms together with the home-made food they ate 1-3 days ago.  They’ll blame the flu, or a restaurant, or something else entirely.  And if that’s a risk people are willing to take, that’s fine. I do it. I haven’t bought jelly in a store in years. I live dangerously and keep farm fresh eggs on the counter for literally days.   I just wish people understood that “home” isn’t automatically “safer”, and in fact can be deadlier.   “Big producer” isn’t automatically safer either, but they do have way more checks and balances and tests in place than home producers do.  However, when a big one screws up, lots of people get sick and it gets announced on the news.   And authorities swarm in, the company loses money, and they correct the source and the problem.  Whereas when Aunt Marge poisons a bunch of people at Thanksgiving, everyone thinks they either overate, or caught the flu, and most of the time they move on none the wiser for the source of the pathogen. And then everyone gets sick again at Easter.  In either case, if there are small children, elderly adults, or immunocompromised adults eating the food, the results can be grim to deadly.

If you follow me around when I’m canning or making cheese, you may think I wash my hands an insane amount of times. You might think that washing clean dishes taken directly out of the cupboard before using them is paranoid.  Or that hosing the counters and cheese molds down with bleach water is weird. Todd thinks my refusal to eat most leftovers after 2 or 3 days is paranoid. Better paranoid than food poisoning.  Because I often share my food products with friends and family, it’s doubly important to me to make safe foods, because I would hate to make someone sick.  I don’t think I ever have, though it’s hard to know.  No one’s ever said anything, and many come and eat themselves silly at my house annually, so I take that as a good sign…

I know one reason folks are doing more home canning is a longing for something simpler, something more connected to the earth and their food sources and nature, and I think that’s awesome. The whole longing for the “good old days” and doing things like “gramma did” and “the pioneers did” is peachy…I love a good Little House book.  I love antiques.   I have a lot of old-time home skills I’ve learned as part of the same drive, and partly because I want to be prepared for that eventual Zombie Apocalypse.   But what gets glossed over in the nostalgia and the reconnecting with nature is how many people got sick and died in the past from things we don’t worry about much now, at least not in the industrialized world.  150 years ago, people died frequently from things like cholera (lack of sanitation) or simple infected wounds or systemic infections  (no antibiotics), or got sick from eating food that had bacteria in it because they had no refrigeration and no real clear understanding of the mechanisms of food poisoning. If your meat is green, cut off the green part and eat the rest, it looks fine, right? (Actually,as a side note, rotten food might not have dangerous pathogens in it, and food that looks fine might be teeming with something deadly.  Now you know.)   And it also glosses over that there was often no option; eat what you have or starve. Preserve what you have or starve.  In that case, some effort at preservation is better than none.  Things were done that way because that was the only way to do it, and it was safer than what ever had come before.   Some of the techniques for preservation, like making sauerkraut, were the best way we had for hundreds or thousands of years, and under modern scrutiny are still safe.  Some of them, like pulling a tablecloth over the Thanksgiving meal to keep out the dust and flies and the family dog, not such a good idea.

Industrial processes, such as mass-produced canning, was a revolution at the time it was introduced.  Some processes,  including the chemical cocktails and overpasteurization that produce shelf-stable foods that wouldn’t ordinarily be stable (milk, broth, meats, etc.) were seen as somewhat miraculous at the time.   We’re now realizing as a culture that it was probably merely a tradeoff, a “next step” in our pursuit of ever-better ways to preserve our food and feed ourselves in new, creative, tasty, easy ways. We sacrificed nutrition and some measure of “safety” in terms of bodily chemical loads and unnatural foods in exchange for convenience and ease of preparation and the ability to store foods long term with little risk of being poisoned and no need for refrigeration.  That doesn’t make the shelf-stable foods evil, it makes them what they are. Whether it’s worth the tradeoff is the current question on the table, and it’s being answered with a resounding NO by many people who choose to make their own foods from scratch and monitor the sources of their foods, the substances added, and the methods by which natural foods are manipulated until they barely resemble anything natural.  I’m one of them, much of the time.  HFCS, artificial sweeteners, they’re out.  Margarine is out, butter is in.  But vilifiying the creation of these formerly-miracle foods misses the greater historical context of the conditions that led to their creation in the first place.

There’s definite validity in the concept of eating whole fresh foods, in utilizing lacto-fermenting techniques to preserve enzymes and get good bacteria into our guts, eating foods made with fewer chemicals, avoiding overprocessed foods and nutrient-void foods like white sugar. Absolutely.  And as science realizes the dangers of chemicals like BPA, it makes sense to switch to another option for storage or cooking on a personal front; eventually the manufacturers will catch up, just ahead of the discovery of something else to avoid.  (Why plastics with BPA in the first place?  Because glass breaks, and metal corrodes and both are heavy and expensive.  Was a time when plastic was the miracle revolution too.  Again, historical context.  Me, I’m using more and more glass and ceramic and less and less plastic.)    And making food from scratch, heck yeah.  I’m all about that. Cheaper and tastes better, IMHO, and the control of the ingredients is easier.  Allergens are easier to avoid.  Catering to particular tastes is easier. And storing your good homemade food for later…I’m also all about reducing waste and having convenient foods I made myself instead of grabbing a Hot Pocket or what have you. But throwing out the baby with the bathwater by condemning all industrial canning/preserving/mass food processing techniques as inherently bad and evil or unsafe simply because they are “industrial”, and declaring anything one does “home made” to be superior in either quality or safety to me seems to be adopting a party line blindly without really examining the pros and cons of both sides.

The entire food system worldwide needs an overhaul for sure, from the ground up and starting yesterday, but having everyone in industrialized nations return to canning all their own stuff and preserving all their own foods is a giant step backwards.  Better to fix it, to transform our food supply chain and agricultural system into one that has the potential to deliver the safest, cheapest, cleanest food to the most people around the world, and not just to people who can afford it or are lucky enough to have access to it.  Unfortunately, how to do that in the light of large corporations and their lust for profit taking over the universe, I have no idea.  Home canning and food preservation is definitely a good alternative in the meantime, and always a good skill to have in case of that Zombie Apocalypse.  But I seriously hope people soon understand that “home” or “unprocessed” or “untreated” doesn’t automatically translate to “safer”, and take the measures needed to protect themselves and their families while preserving their carefully selected, wholesome foods.  Otherwise, I fear a return to the days where food poisoning was common, and this time it won’t be Big Ag responsible.  It’ll be Aunt Marge.