Sauerkraut from a novice

My five week old sauerkraut is tasting pretty good. I posted a couple photos on Facebook and from the questions and interest that followed, decided I should revisit my food blog and post how easy it is to make decent sauerkraut in photos.

I have a lot of cabbage and carrots that need to be put to good use. Here I've washed and started to clean up the cabbage. The bowls contain fennel seed, juniper berry, and salt. I decided later not to use the fennel seed and juniper berry.

The long white root is Daikon radish. 

That's a good sharp knife and the pink thing we found at the Thrift Store. It has a very sharp blade. It's called a mandolin. 

Salt, fennel seed, juniper berry. 

Decided not to use the fennel and juniper in this one. 

Going more toward curtido.

 Tule is chewing on the cabbage core.

 Cabbage and Daikon radish

Carrots now added and also salt. 

I'm using the rose salt.

Now you work it. My left hand is out of the photo because I have a cut on my finger and don't want to get salt in it. I found I could do this just fine with my right hand. Squeeze and crush and toss vigorously for a good 5 or 10 minutes. You start to get liquid, the brine.

I added these chile peppers. They are hot

And cauliflower.

 I worked the whole thing some more than found a wide mouth gallon jar and handful by handful pressed the wet, salty vegetables into the jar. Then pressed down some more with my fist.

I placed a clean rock on top and pushed it down. 

You can see how the liquid rises. 

I'll push it down again from time to time.

This will sit on my kitchen counter or in a cool place out of the sun with a cloth over the top.
I'll press it down as needed to keep the juices on top.
We'll taste it as it goes along but best to let it ferment for a couple weeks at least to develop the probiotics.

Please ask permission if you'd like to use these photos or blog. Thanks.

No knead, hot oven, long ferment bread

This rainy Sunday I baked the no-knead, long rise bread I started yesterday.

The recipe: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/08/dining/081mrex.html, I followed pretty closely. All whole wheat flour. Baked in a hot oven in a preheated cast iron skillet with a makeshift lid for the first half hour. Crusty, chewy. Here photographed on JB Blunk's wood board made from drift wood and Rufus Blunk's Bishop Pine shelf (in progress), just drying in the house now before patching a few knot holes and voids. And below that in one of these photos the Bishop Pine floor boards Rufus harvested and milled, now worn after twelve years of life and sun. Crusty, knotty, earthy, slowed life. It's good.

Apple Varieties

Gloucestershire

Ingrid Marie

Gloucestershire, Jonagold, Boskoop, Ingrid Marie

Food and Homeschooling converge in great powerpoint presentation

Found this on a Raw Milk Google group I subscribe to -

In front of a large audience in an auditorium, Birke Baehr, an eleven-year-old
homeschooler, executes a brilliant presentation of his PowerPoint on What Is
Wrong With Our Food System? Bold Birke says, “you can either pay the farmer or
pay the hospital."

http://wp.me/phmll-1cH

Silas makes wood boards

Silas and his friend, Tano, spent a number of days making wooden boards to sell at the Inverness fair. The ones in front here are made from Dutch elm. They also used madrone. Rufus helped them salvage the pieces - staying away from cracks, rotten parts, and blemishes. They did a rough cut then planed to the right thickness. They marked with a pencil and cut with a jigsaw. Rasp the edges with the surf form tool and finish the edges. Then fine sanding with an electric sander and hand sanding. Oil with food grade oil.

Tension and bad press in agriculture

Visited Rancher John yesterday. He tells me of the negative publicity around agriculture. How one or two negative stories in the press leave a bad impression broadly. In some ways the classification of organic - which tries to redefine agriculture - also diminishes agriculture. That both the organic and the other agriculture is part of one unified thing. There's a tension emphasized by the negative press yet the whole of agriculture needs to be supported. Back when my grandfather had a ranch, most people had some experience of where their food comes from. Or at least they weren't more than one or two people removed from an experience of agriculture.

Breakfast

Wake in the morning. Lemon and lime juice in water.

My homemade French style ORIGINAL yogurt.

Ground flax seeds.

Ruth's fresh figs.

Plus cup of coffee with cream.

Not a caterer but well-connected to good food

I was asked to prepare the lunch for a storytelling workshop in Point Reyes Station this past weekend. Served under a large bay tree.

Quiches, cookies, and bread from Tomales Bakery. Organic produce from our garden and from the Civic Center Thursday Farmer's Market. Served on platters and in bowls crafted by local artist Rufus Blunk (www.rufusblunk.com coming soon).

David Darling, Martin Shaw, Coleman Barks (not pictured, Lisa Starr)

Coleman Barks and Martin Shaw tickled by Bay Laurel tree.

Fiddleback bay wood bowl

Bay wood

Strawberries and nectarines on bay platter.

Carrots and Meyer lemons on bay platter.

Caoba platter (from our time in Nicaragua in 1986) holds Tomales Bakery bread.

Cutting board (madrone wood). The cleaver was a gift from Ed Brown a few years back.

All photos by me, Elizabeth Barnet.

sushi rolls without the rice

Our garden now has lot of lettuce. I'm excited about summer fruits and vegetables and lighter fair.

Cucumber, carrots, lots of lettuce, cucumber, avocado, toasted sesame seeds, and salt on sushi nori made a delicious lunch the other day.

raw milk in The Economist

We drink raw milk we get directly from a Jersey dairy. So lucky. Once you taste it you know it is something other than even the best local organic milk in bottles.

I culture the cream with a culture called villi and the milk with a culture called fils. I purchased the villi and the fils milk from Gem Cultures (http://www.gemcultures.com/, nice family-run 30 year old business). I bought some Benoit Yogurt in bottles to start some yogurt. I'll add the yogurt to milk, raise the temperature to about 110 degrees and keep in my Excalibur dehydrator over night. (The Excalibur is a box dehydrator with shelves. You can remove all of the shelves to use the box as a low-temp atmosphere. The oven might work but I haven't done this.)

This article is in The Economist. The link was posted on the Raw Milk Yahoo group I subscribe to. (http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/RawDairy/)

http://www.economist.com/node/16322762

Tritileia hyacinthinia - White Brodieia

Kat Anderson supplied the bulbs of Tritileia hyacinthinia last winter. We planted them as single bulbs in a bathtub to avoid gopher worries. We are hoping to increase the supply. One important issue here is that Kat could hardly find these Native California bulbs available for purchase in California. She purchased these from Holland. Although I heard yesterday that Mostly Natives in Tomales has them available currently.

In the last couple of weeks the bulbs have been blooming. I am not sure just when to dig them up to harvest the bulbs in order to have more to plant next year. I dug up one the other day in accordance with the directions I have to dig when the bulb is in bloom.

I think you can see in this photo, the cormlets that surround the original bulb. So increase, it did!

Freeing the kernals

Freshly harvested Bromus carinatus

"The most crucial step was freeing the teosinte kernels from their stony cases."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/science/25creature.html?th&emc=th

I've been working on freeing the kernals from the husk of Bromus carinatus, a California native grass seed, and haven't - let us say - gone into full production. It's little by little. I'm researching the machines that remove husk, thresh. Grinding - and then developing recipes - is more straightforward.

Some items on today's food agenda

Soak anasazi beans overnight
Soak garbanzo beans
Cook anasazi beans
Decant sauerkraut from crock
Visit ranch for milk
Feed villi culture

Braised collards are a regular part of our evening family meal. These are the perennial tree collards of which we have a 60 foot row of plantings. Stack the dry leaves and shred finally using a sharp cleaver. Braised in a goodly amount of coconut oil with salt.

The braising seals in the yummy flavor of the greens.

You can brown whole garlic in the oil before you braise the greens.

Curing Sprouts and Pressing Oil from them

Thanks to Cynthia L, yesterday I learned about a website www.seedsofsustainability.org that teaches a less-water intensive way to sprout seeds. And new ideas for how to use them. Most interesting to me is the idea that you can sprout seeds and then dehydrate them. I'm already doing that with almonds and walnuts and sometimes sunflower seeds. They suggest doing that with other sprouts. They call it curing. And the describe how to do it. Great stuff.

They describe squeezing oil out of the raw, soaked, and cured seeds.

Sunflower sprouts

Sunflower sprouts.

Where to find organic sunflower sprouts in the shell to plant in a tray of dirt in the greenhouse. Then clip for lunch.

Served the ones I bought yesterday with avocado and lime juice and salt.

These sprouts taste nutty and delicious.

Soak walnuts over night in salt water. Dehydrate in my Excelsior dryer. Crispy, slightly salty, and raw walnuts. Good with homemade sauerkraut and goat cheddar cheese.

Some people go to church every Sunday. We milk a Jersey cow named Lucy every Sunday. A week ago there was a frost and a lot of tomatoes once destined for the market were lost. Where can the bounty go before its lost? If there's no room in the market all the bounty that seeks a recipient, then maybe across the street or in the parking lot or around the corner. Is there a parallel to the origins of a black market? Also, the butterfly lady says right on the edge of Levy Road is where she finds a concentration of butterfly eggs. That's why you see her there floating along next to the fast moving cars. She is spotting tiny eggs on host plants and transporting them to the safe haven of her house.

Seems like every time you put a fence around something there is actually the potential for something else. I have been thinking a lot about margins, borderlines, or transition places. Think about the weeds that grow next to the crop you planted. Purslane, for instance, Rufus pulls it out with a vengeance. But then there is that salad Savilia makes that tastes so good and feels so nourishing.

As things get fenced in, is there potential on the outside? Is there more than salvage to be had? What is the real purpose and the real strength of those fences?

Purslane salad and Mickey Murch show at GRO

My daughter who is eight saw Mickey Murch's show at Gallery Route One
with my husband today. Many people told us we should.

When they came home Savilia didn't come into the house for lunch. I
didn't know they had returned but when I looked out into the garden
Savilia was slipping under the remay cloth that is keeping the quail
from our lettuce starts.

After awhile I called to her in her garden play house to ask if she
wanted some lunch. She said, "No, I am making lunch!" She later
brought in a plate with a salad she had prepared and offered it to us.
She also told me she had been to Mickey's show, watched the film,
brought home a lettuce start, understood directions to plant the
lettuce and make a salad.

She made salad out of purslane and dill and tomatoes and a barely ripe
strawberry and meyer lemon juice all harvested from our garden. It was
a delicious salad. I have never tasted purslane prepared so well.

That's encouragement to see the show.

PS Purslane is considered a weed by many. And indeed it takes over our
garden when we let it. But I have heard it has a high percentage of
Omega 3 oils and is very nutritious.