From Scratch

Except for my unwavering preference for canned, wobbling, slice-able cranberry "sauce," I think I've always been The Root Girl at heart. I remember having an intense desire as a child to see a pumpkin pie through from its natural pumpkin state to its more delicious reincarnated dessert self. This weekend I finally got to check that off my bucket list. Last weekend, I made my first batch of (free range organic) chicken soup. I suppose the theme of my most recent undertakings have been "items from scratch."

It is such a strange thing that we have gotten away from - this idea of taking whole, growing items that we have in our everyday environment and turning them into something we might normally pry from a metal can. Through this "from scratch" process, we somehow take out the mystery but maintain the magic. At the end of each process as I stand staring at these recognizable foods that weren't there a few hours ago, it amazes me. I think it would for many of my generation. We have grown up shaking things out of packages and not knowing our local butcher. Now so many of us find a desire to return to the root of things and find satisfaction there.

When I am in the midst of these projects, onlookers, and even myself at times, question why I would want to do this thing. Why am I laboring for half a day over something that could be picked up at the store in 15 minutes? I don't always know why (though I can usually come up with several valid points afterward), but I know it feels good. I also come across many discoveries that remain hidden behind the scenes ordinarily. For instance...

Chicken soup Jello. After the work of boiling bones and picking apart meat and ladling off fat, adding spices and vegetables and canning what could fit into 10 pint jars, I still had leftover chicken noodle soup that found its way to the refrigerator. Well. I found myself shocked to see that after chilling, this homemade concoction had turned itself into one shivering gelatinous blob. I guess this is the idea behind Julia Child's aspics, but that wasn't exactly what I had been going for. When heated, everything goes back to normal soupy soup, but this gelatin had me a bit concerned about what could be a ridiculous cholesterol content or some misstep I had made along the way. Turns out that the normal process of using bones to make the broth is really very nutritious, that the gelatin is basically pure protein (only the yellow top being fat) and we probably don't find this from our commercial chicken soups because they are likely making things as cheaply as possible from things like chicken bouillon cubes. The homemade version is not only more nutritious, but there is a whole lot more chicken and it's actually cheaper!


The pumpkin pie experience was a bit quicker than the chicken soup canning, and it also reminded me a bit of jack-o-lantern making. What began as a lovely cheese pumpkin from the farmer's market found its way to an outdoor chopping, seed scraping, and became a pile of wedges in a big steam pot. The wedges eventually softened into pumpkin goop to be mixed with lovely sweet fall spices, and the seeds were roasted with butter, Worcestershire sauce, and garlic salt. My very first ever homemade crust was slightly temperamental, but no different from working with crumbly clay. The result from one pumpkin was two lovely brown pies that have the soft taste of something like a heritage recipe, and one quickly eaten pan of savory seeds. This is what the bounty of the harvest means to me.

Agri - Culture

This weekend was what I believe will become an annual tradition for me and mine: Pick Fest. The way I came to discover this little gem was through a new favorite local band, Foxhound. I fell in love with their folksy sound when they were featured on a radio program, but I was disturbed to find that they had no recorded tunes available for purchase. The saving grace was that they would be playing again at a local orchard in a few months. I had forgotten entirely about this until I saw it advertised with tickets at a low low price of ten dollars, and realized that I could also pick my own apples while at this outdoor folk fest concert! While we talked it over, imagining what it might be like, some thoughts came up: Would they be picking through our bags to find our smuggled food items? Would there be pick pockets among the crowd? Perhaps they would be pickling the apples for $5 a jar?



When we arrived, it was even better than I had expected. A shuttle took us to the top of a large hill where we were surrounded on all sides by many different varieties of small apple trees. Winesap, Johnathan, Rome, Golden Delicious - they're all here! People milled through the rows with big baskets hanging off their shoulders and tried not to twist their ankles on the fallen apples hiding in the grass. In the middle of all this, food and drink and hippie tapestry vendors flanked a big area filled with straw and bales for sitting. A red truck bed formed the stage where the musicians picked banjos, maneuvered fiddles, and tooted into jugs. An unruly bunch of two-year-olds tossed themselves around in the straw in front of the stage, making giant nests and jumping into them, throwing bits of straw into each others' faces, and mashing their own fashionable fall caps into saucers while their parents enjoyed hard cider a few yards away.

We managed to get a recording of Foxhound via a small portable device stealthily placed on the truck bed. The other bands were great also - Vinegar Creek Constituency and Manatawny Creek Ramblers. See a theme in these folk band names? In the midst of much toe-tapping and hand-clapping, we ate an apple dumpling, three kinds of cheeses, crackers, and hot apple cider with the sweet smell of the day all around us. One break we took from the music found us among the trees, picking the best apples for a sauce that I would can the next day. There's just something about homemade applesauce picked, cooked, and canned by hand in the course of a chilly fall weekend.

Immediate gratification vs. Immediacy

It's fair to say that I'm a picky eater and always have been. As a child, I survived mainly on applesauce, mashed potatoes, white rice, and pickles. My diet opened up a bit as the years wore on, but when I got to college and had a vegetarian roommate, it was all the incentive I needed to try vegetarianism. I had been going off the meat stuff for a while, and eating a delicious variety of meatless international foods was eye-opening and satisfying. This way of life (along with having my own apartment) gradually introduced me to cooking for myself. When I couldn't be sure that something was meat-free (even some vegetable soups are beef or chicken based), it was time to make it myself. I also found that I liked cooking...the pride I took in my very first apple pie can be seen in the snapshots I took of it just after it came out of the oven. Note: if I ever start framing and displaying said photos on my nightstand or mantle, it's time for an intervention.

These days, a recent slough of farming books and slow food movement ideas have been crossing my mind. I get most of my weekly groceries from the farmer's market, and I find that even when I don't really need that much, I just like to be in that space. I've been through an inner struggle that led me back to fish (sustainable low-mercury) and eventually chicken (free-range organic). This has continued my need to cook for myself and see exactly where my food originated and how. My newest purchase of a pressure canner continues the trend as I will now be able to store all of these amazing farmer's market items for use through the year. This brings me to my ultimate point: immediate gratification vs. immediacy. Let me explain.

NPR started it. As I drove to the sounds of the jabbering economists I normally tune out, I couldn't help catching one of them say that before the recession, we were operating under the assumption that never-ending growth was possible and perpetuated by our superfluous credit usage. Now, after having everything tank, we must strive for a system that is simply sustainable.

This same idea is something I believe many of us are unconsciously internalizing. Maybe in a financial sense, but also in an overall lifestyle change. That idea of moving from consumerism (swiping the credit card for movie tickets, restaurants, travel) to sustainability (using cash at the farmer's market, trading in our gas-guzzlers, making our own bread). Essentially, moving from immediate gratification to immediacy itself. There is an unusual pleasure in seeing where one's food comes from, how it looks in its whole state, and learning what you can do with it. It is knowing that you are a human animal and can take care of yourself without the help of a can opener. It is seeing a process from beginning to end rather than having something mysteriously appear wrapped in cellophane. It is asking the farmer himself the best way to prepare and eat what you are buying from him (try that at a grocery store).

I'm not saying that I have given up movies or going out to dinner or even grocery stores themselves. What I am finding, however, is the innate pleasure in interacting with my immediate environment in a way that is natural, simple, and honest. This same pursuit is also finding its way into my art (hopefully another post to follow with some saggar-fired pots). This pursuit in itself is aesthetically-satisfying...I am a little bit in love with the happy pumpkin-looking squash I plan on canning for pie later this winter. Between my lovely, warm colored squash and a metal tin of pumpkin mash...there is simply no competition.

I hope this post hasn't been too rambling for you. Here are some pictures to make up for it.

So Long Sweet Summer

I don’t have new pictures for this post, so we will have a smattering of summer recap photos.

Pools are closing for the season, my favorite roadside ice cream stand has a week left, and the last few tomatoes are dangling on browned vines. It’s the end of summer, folks. I would have denied it for another month if possible, but these markers will not allow. It’s not that I dislike fall, not by any stretch. I actually love fall. I love sweaters and rainy days and crunchy leaves and hot cider and pie. I think Thanksgiving may even be my favorite holiday. Oh, but summer…

As someone who has (somewhat) recently fallen in love with eating out of my own garden, fall marks the end of my bountiful season. Goodbye to fresh caprese salad, the basil has gone skunky, the mint is dried up and exhausted by the relentless sun, and this last batch of peach lavender ice cream is lackluster with peaches that were at the end of their fruity rope.

I’ve been reading The Dirty Life by Kristin Kimball again, and it inspired me enough with tales of a farm’s first hardworking year to get out into my yard and clean things up for the season. With gloves and hoe, I chopped up the overgrown weeds, pulled out the withered tomato plants, and stacked their cages. After a full summer of lovely growth that begins to tower over my head, I’m always amazed at the state of clear bareness to which the garden can return. I found that the soil was a wonderful shade of deep brown, nutrient rich even before I have added the compost that’s been sludging around my barrel.

A word about the compost. Normally I would say that my compost is a fairly balanced mixture of kitchen scraps and yard refuse. Your greens and your browns that keep it all breaking down nicely and smelling…not great, but not bad, either. Well, the other day I was taking another bucket out to be deposited into the hot, buggy barrel, and what I saw was unlike anything I had seen before. I suppose it had been a while since I had opened it up, and things were breaking down to the point of – tar? It looked like a tar pit, you know, like the kind that burps up dinosaur parts? It was almost black, the consistency of slimy mud, and all around it, just under the surface was the slithering of some seriously happy, fat worms. My guess was that maybe we had gotten a little kitchen waste-heavy and there wasn’t so much dried up brown stuff to even it out. Anyway, it was gross. It was gross in the way that delights nine-year-olds and myself. 

I also planted a crop of small lettuce heads that will give us a nice punch of crunchy green as the weather turns crispy. This was my first time not only doing a fall planting, but also harvesting the lettuce seeds myself from their fluffy little pods. Once the lettuce sends up its leggy flower shoots, the seeds are created much like dandelion puffs. You can then gently grab them, give them a few twists between two fingers, and the seeds drop off into your waiting palm below. Easy! These particular lettuces were gifted into my garden by my elderly Mennonite gardening friend, Verna. They are lovely small heads that can be harvested in single leaves or chopped at the base to take advantage of their tender hearts. I hope they come through!

Finally this week, I made one last batch of bright lime cilantro salsa with our own tomatoes and jalapenos along with a savory chicken and veggie pie. One to say goodbye to summer, one to welcome in the homey cool weather.

Lime Cilantro Salsa

Set a small pot of water to boil. Blanch 6 large tomatoes (or their equivalent) so that you can easily peel their skin away. Chop the tomatoes finely and put in your large mixing bowl. Use the rest of the boiling water to pour over half a chopped onion and a few cloves of minced garlic that are waiting in a sieve or colander. Add them to the mix. Mince two jalapenos with the seeds and white removed. It will be a spicy salsa this way. Rough chop a big ole handful of fresh cilantro and add to the mix. Add the juice of one big fresh lime. Salt and pepper to taste. Thank me later.

Savory Chicken Pie

I already had about a half cup of pulled chicken (free range organic), so I didn’t have to prepare that part. See if you can get your hands on some of that and then get free range organic chicken broth (they carry it at Weis markets). Set up your heavy cast iron skillet with 2 T of butter. Add 1 chopped up carrot, 2 chopped up celery stalks, a handful of chopped fingerling potatoes, and some chopped broccoli. Saute with a little water to steam everything for 5 minutes or so. Stir in 2 T of flour until it gets a little toasty. When it starts to stick just a bit, add 2 cups of chicken broth to the mix and scrape all of that goodness off the bottom. Let it cook for probably 10 minutes or until the gravy thickens. Add chicken, salt, and pepper to taste. Pour the mixture into a separate bowl and allow it to cool down. Run out to the store because you realize you do not have pie crusts. Get 2. Allow to thaw on the ride home, then pour your mixture into the first crust. Cut off the crimped edge of the second crust and flip it onto the top of your now covered pie. Crimp the new edges together. Cut 4 slashes in the middle of the pie just like the pie that little Jack Horner stuck his thumb into.  Brush the top with an egg wash mixture of water and egg. Bake at 425 for 30 minutes. Serve to an applauding audience. Or, cut up and freeze for the week.

Zombie Apocalypse Skills - Canning

I had been wanting to try canning for a while. I bought jars last year and bundled up grape leaves without being properly prepared for the process before me. That ended in a too-small pot unable to accommodate my jars, and bundles of grape leaves languishing in my fridge. This year, however, would be different. I spent the better part of my magazine-reading time perusing canning strategies, and I enlisted the help of my grandmother and aunt in passing down the nuances of the process to me.

Why can? And perhaps more importantly, why is it called canning if it is done using jars? Well, I don't know about the last part, but what I do know is that:
-it's a great way to save all the overflowing produce that seems to flood the garden in the summer (I wish I could can heat for the winter as easily)
-you know what you're eating (gives you another option besides the mysteryadoseoxalide-filled processed foods)
-you're saving money (maybe? after several seasons?)
-you're saving the fossil fuels that would have been used to get your store-bought tomatoes to the processing plant, store, and your home
-it passes down traditions through generations of a family
-it gives you some basic skills that will undoubtedly help you, should the zombie apocalypse arrive
-there are probably some other reasons as well...do you know what they are?

So. With a basket of garden-grown heirloom tomatoes, three bags of farm stand canning tomatoes, and a box of my aunt's cherry tomatoes, we canned eleven jars of whole tomatoes and three jars of stewed tomatoes. That's quart jars. Roughly enough tomatoes to last me until forever.

Since we got started later in the day than originally planned due to a morning power outage, the jars were still piping hot at 10pm. I decided to leave with just the three jars of stewed tomatoes, with plans to get the rest at - let's be honest - Thanksgiving when I will be seeing that side of the family again. Those are the whole tomatoes that we processed with the pressure canning method: that fail-safe, super hot, bacteria-killing powerhouse of a seal. The stewed tomatoes were finished off by simply ladling the boiling mixture into jars hot out of the dishwasher, screwing on the lids, and waiting for that satisfying pop of the seal setting. I had always only ever heard of pressure canning or water bath canning (where sealed jars take to a huge pot like a scalding jacuzzi) - never this non-processed way. Who knew it could be so easy?!

Well, it can't. I was nagged by the light bulb moment of dizzying possibilities in front of me - Sauces! Soups! All without a hot pot for hours on end! I did some research, and this method is called "open kettle" and strongly advised against by all kind of food and safety departments. The idea is that though the jars are hot and the food is hot, there is still that chance that bacteria can live inside an unprocessed jar, including the dreaded botulinum, a deadly bacteria that thrives in such environments.

One side of me argued that my grandmother and aunt had obviously been doing their stewed tomatoes this way for years and no one is worse for the wear. People are too swathed in anti-bacterial ointments and wipes these days! A little dirt won't hurt! But then the other side said, "Botulinum will." So I guess it's out with the three jars of open kettle and on to my cache of pressure-cooked whole tomato jars. Also, you should know that you really need to wait to add sugar to your sauces and any tomato product until after you reopen it, since sugar feeds bacteria and you really don't want to provide any more hospitable of an environment for that sort of thing to go on.

I guess the moral of the story is, learn from those who know, then research it for yourself. And you can always save the open kettle jars for the zombies. Special thanks especially must go out to my aunt and grandmother who spent hours blanching, peeling, coring, smooshing, boiling, and cleaning so that I could learn the tricks of the trade. More than anything, their generosity and love is what I will take away from this memory-making day.

Pinterest Peach Lavender Ice Cream

     Unless you've been camping, out to sea, or trapped under something heavy for the last year, you've probably heard a little something about a website called Pinterest. I had heard about it plenty, but I simply did not want to jump on the crafty, webby, picture posty bandwagon. Until maybe a month ago. Coerced by my mother, I slowly started to "pin" interesting ideas onto these cyber "bulletin boards." For those of you familiar with the website, you know it's a dangerous, time-sucking, ingenious place. You get to see all of the things you could ever want to do with Mod Podge, or fruit, or furniture design. For me, it doesn't stop at pinning these things - I find myself dashing out to get whatever supplies are deemed necessary for said creation, then spending the better part of the afternoon making it. I'm starting to suspect that Pinterest may just be what saves the economy. But I digress. This post is about one such creation - Peach Lavender Ice Cream.

Bee-flavored lavender buds

     Holy good loveliness in a bowl. This concoction is pure summer on a spoon, an herby taste of fresh fruit and sweetness. The link to the original recipe is here and it combines all the major players of peaches, dried lavender, honey, milk, cream, and coconut milk. Now, it does require some roasting of the peaches, drizzled with honey and sprinkled with lavender buds for about a half hour. This does not please me on a hot day, but, sacrifices. It also does a bit of a number on whatever pan you roast them in, but the scrubbing will burn the calories you're about to ingest. The only alteration I made to the recipe was to add a dash of vanilla so as to keep the ice cream from freezing into a brick after about a day. Did you know that homemade ice cream needs this little bit of alcohol for such reasons? You do now.

Peachy perfection

     I was thwarted in this regard, however. See, ice cream is great for hot days, but sometimes, hot days are not great for ice cream making. I was a little impatient and probably didn't chill the mixture as long as it needed, and the freezer probably didn't freeze the tub as completely as it should have, so after an hour of churning to no avail, I threw the whole soupy mixture in some Tupperware and let it chill out on its own. What resulted was an icy sort of sorbet that was hard as a brick of course. Too little churning. But icy or not, this stuff is so delicious. Once you chip away at it enough to fill the better part of a bowl, you're in heaven. I didn't know the gloriousness of homemade ice cream until just this summer, but I cannot say enough about how lovely the frozen freshness is. If you're going to do the heavy cream calories, do it right. Goodnight!

Glorious Garden, Savory Summer

     Today is one of those summer days that you just want to soak into your body and save for the dark days of winter. The weather is clear and breezy with sun galore, perfect for all your outdoor ventures. It's also the time of year when the garden is bursting with goodness. The powerful fresh herbs make masterpieces of a simple dinner, the tomatoes slowly ripen on the vine, and lettuces and peas still make an appearance with sweetness if you're lucky. And, as they say, it's puttin' up time. Canning, freezing, drying, and storing these jewels so they can reappear in cold weather's simmering sauces, soups, and baked delights. I always need to remind myself that despite appearances, those days will come again and the bounty will cease.

Bees are our friends!

    After an uncharacteristically crisp run this morning, I went out to the garden to do a little harvesting. Lavender for cookies and ice cream; basil, sage, and thyme for chicken, fish, and sauces; comfrey tea for composting and medicinals; mixed mints for tea, desserts, and beverages; lettuces for my salad today.

     There are three ways I'm saving my herbs. For things that will simmer or bake, I can freeze the accompanying herbs in ice cube trays to be tossed in for the cooking process. Same for some of the mints that wouldn't work well dried (as in beverages). Others will be dried hanging in lovely little bundles (lavender and mints for hot tea). The large spiny comfrey leaves are dried on low in the microwave, then crumbled into an airtight container.

     Speaking of comfrey, I learned today that it is pretty amazing. Contrary to what I originally thought, you probably shouldn't drink it or take it internally due to high levels of pyrrolizidine alkaloids that can damage the liver. But! It's a great fertilizer when blended with water due to high potassium and nitrogen levels. This particular crop was gifted upon me by my gardening guru - a little old Mennonite lady named Verna. She goes on walks around the neighborhood and often stops to talk and share her wisdom. She believes that everything that comes out of the garden should go back into the garden and is fond of using weeds as mulch. I stuffed a bunch of the leaves into my single smoothie blender to liquify with water and poured the lot on my tomato plants. Let the magic happen. It's also been used for 3,000 years as an external medicine to heal skin issues especially. Add it to your bath, use it in a poultice, have at it.

Comfrey "tea"

     And more importantly, get outside today!