Sourdough

In these strange times we are living in, there is some comfort in knowing that old traditions are still alive and well.  Baking has fallen back into the forefront of many people's minds and I am grateful that useful knowledge about making such a basic staple of our diets still exists in the world.  I have jumped on the sourdough bandwagon this month and am trying my hand at making my own sourdough starter.  It is easier than you think.  It can also waste a lot of flour if you don't plan ahead well, but that being said, it can also waste nothing if you use it to it's full potential.

The basic starter is super easy.  I followed the directions on the King Arthur Website: Mix 125g of flour with 125g of water.  Stir it well, then let it sit in a warm place (mine is on top of the fridge) overnight (or two nights if your house is chilly like mine).  Once it starts to show some activity you can start feeding it.  Feeding consists of removing some of the starter (about 1/2 cup) for a new batch and then adding 100g of flour and 100g of water.  That 1/2 cup is removed so that you can keep your starter to a reasonable level.  If you don't "discard" some, you will eventually end up with enough starter to run a small commercial bakery.  Most recipes say "discard" the extra starter, but that is where the magic happens.  That discard can be used to make any number of different baked goods.  Once you have fed your starter mix once or twice a day for about a week, your starter is considered ripe and ready to be used for anything.

Because it is just me in this household (the cat and chicken's don't really count), I only need to make about one loaf of bread a week, maybe two if I'm eating a lot of sandwiches.  That means that to make the most efficient use of my starter, I should keep it in a way that I will only need to feed it once a week.  The way I do that is to keep my established starter in the fridge.  The cool air won't kill the yeast in my starter, but it will slow it way down, which means that I can get away with feeding it less often (about once a week).  Every time I feed it I will use the discard to make a new recipe.  I am discovering that all kinds of things can be make with sourdough starter, not just bread.  So far I have made a loaf of bread, an handful of hot dog buns, and tortillas, and pretzels.

On my list to try are cinnamon rolls, pancakes, and dumplings.  The things that I have made so far have turned out better than I would have thought and I can't wait experiment more with this new "old" knowledge.

Updates

It has been awhile since I have written regularly on this blog, but I came across it again and I realized that I had been missing out on sharing my story with the rest of the world.  A few things happened since last summer so I though I would take a moment to bring us all back up to speed on the happenings around the homestead.

I had an addition of 8 more hens to my flock.  They came from a friend of mine that could no longer keep them.  They are 3 ameraucanas, a black sex link, and 4 anconas.  They are a little more of an handful than my docile older gals, but they do lay some colorful eggs.  My egg cartons now hold green, white and brown eggs.

I have also finished my garden clean up for the spring and have been working on getting all my beds turned over in preparation for planting.  Some cold tolerant crops went in the ground this week.  These included potatoes, onions, peas, carrots, parsnips, lettuce and spinach.  I am hoping to plant out my brassicas soon too, but the nights have still been dipping into the 20s, so I will have to wait a bit longer. 

My seedlings that I started this winter are coming along beautifully as well.  I have 3 varieties of pepper again (jalepeno, paprika, and spanish mammoth), broccoli, brussel sprouts, cabbage, celery, thyme and basil.  I just planted my tomato seeds and I hope I am not starting them too late.  My garlic started coming up a few weeks ago and they are already over 6 inches tall and looking very happy.

Over the winter I had time to do a little extra preserving. I made my first attempt at homemade instant mashed potato powder.  I also dried onions and crushed them into powder to be used for seasoning in many of my homecooked meals.  I dehydrated my late harvest of parsnips that I finally dig up just before the official start of spring.  I also dehydrated any extra mushrooms that I bought on sale.  Turns out they are great additions for breakfasts and dinners alike.

In my fiber world I have been working on spinning a few pounds of wool that I bought at the local fiber festival last fall.  I wanted to try a variety of different wools to see how they worked up and so far I have been pleased with the results.  I have also added knitting to my repertoire this winter and manage to make a couple of pairs of socks and started working on a cardigan for myself.

All in all things have stayed fairly busy around here even though I haven't taken the time to post much since last year.  With all the crazy going on in the world right now, I am quite happy that I have a nice home base to work with and now I will have a little more time to share the goings on here since I am temporarily out of work like many others in the country.  I hope that if you are reading this, that you are well and making the best of whatever situation you find yourself in!

Graditude

The world can be a pretty scary place these days, but I am still looking for the good.  Today I am reminding myself how very lucky I am.  I have a warm house to live in.  I have good food to eat.  I have many wonderful friends that have taken the time to ask how I am doing, which means that they are thinking about me even though we are apart.  The weather is warming and spring has arrived which means that my garden will be keeping me busy again soon.  I have had time to work on projects that I had been putting off for when I had more time.

I find that if I can keep myself busy then I have an easier time being positive about what is going on around me.  I have no shortage of hobbies.  I have learned to knit this winter and have been adding to my collection of fiber crafts day by day.  I have spent hours spinning new yarn from roving bought from local farms at the fall fiber festival.  I have also spent hours in my kitchen cooking up delightful meals from ingredients that I grew and preserved myself.  I am grateful to live in the unique and special place and time, and though it hasn't always been easy, it has always been worth it.

Busy Season

It has been a very busy month for me as summer has begun.  I have had the usual rounds of weeding in the garden and general upkeep on things around the house.  I have also been doing a bit of traveling and sight seeing so I have not had the time to post updates here.  Even so, there is still garden happenings going on here.  My first harvests of peas and broccoli have started to come in.  I have harvested my garlic and am curing it in my back room.  I have started digging up my volunteer potatoes one by one and having them with breakfast or dinner.  I have also harvested a few of the smaller onions to add to my meals here and there.

Slowly but surely things are moving along in the garden.  The late arrival of summer has delayed the growth of my warm season plants, but now that things are starting to heat up I can see that things have been making progress.  After a couple of replantings, my melon seeds finally germinated.  I am hoping they have enough summer to produce mature fruit since they seem to love the hotter weather so much.  My squash needed to be replanted too, so they are off to a slow start as well.  The cucumbers are looking like a crop failure this year.  I replanted the cucumber bed three times this year and all I have to show for it is one tiny, sickly seedling.  I'm not terribly sad about the cucumbers though, because last year they were so productive that I probably canned enough pickles to last for the next three years.

My indoor started seedlings were off to a rough start also.  I think they went through an extended post transplanting shock phase because the weather stayed cooler for much longer than I had expected.  (Heck, in some areas around the valley, there was snow at the higher elevations on the first day of summer!)  They are starting to recover well in the warmer weather that has moved in and now I just need to make sure that everything stays nice and watered.

I know that summer is just beginning but the garden feels like it is off to an extremely slow start this year.  All the plants seem to be far behind in their growth compared to what I have seen in years past.  There are still a couple of months of hot weather ahead of us, so I hope that things will catch up in the next few weeks.  The real test will be seeing how long it takes to get the first harvest from each crop.  I am still keeping my fingers crossed that I will still have a productive garden this year.

Post Planting Cold Snap

The weather in the mountains never ceases to amaze me.  I thought we had wild temperature swings when I lived in the midwest, but once the weather got warm out there, it generally stayed that way until fall.  Here in the mountains we can have a few weeks of beautiful weather and temps in the 80's followed by days of wind, cold rain, and at some elevations, snow.  This year this cold snap came around just a week after the last average frost date for my area.  I know that the average frost date is just an average, but the warm temps that had been teasing me for the couple of weeks before the frost date lulled me into a false sense of security.  My garden was planted the week after mother's day.  This week I am crossing my fingers that the squash, cucumbers and beans don't germinate until things warm back up again.  I am also praying that the temps don't actually dip below freezing, or I will likely lose my corn, tomatillos, peppers and tomatoes.

The peppers and the tomatoes have been covered by a makeshift green house that will hopefully keep them alive through the cold snap.  The corn and the tomatillos will have to fend for themselves as I don't have enough hoops and rebar stakes to construct the low tunnels that could protect them.  Depending on how cold it gets over the next couple nights, things could get rough out in the garden. 

If I need to replant corn it shouldn't be a big deal, but the ones that have already come up have grown two inches tall and had a great head start on the growing season. 

The tomatillos seem to grow pretty fast so if I do need to replant them, they shouldn't be too far behind by the time summer reaches full force.  In a few days I will know what made it and what didn't.  In the mean time I will try to think positive.  Plants can be hardier than you expect and while this cold snap may stress some of them, if they make it through they will probably go on to become really good producers.

Tibetan Purple Barley

When I went to the food and farm forum this past winter they give out an information bag to everyone that participates.  In the bag there are various pamphlets explaining various farm related organizations that are active in this area and a breakdown of the day's scheduled events.  They always throw in a few surprises every year and this year I was happily surprised to find a packet of Tibetan Purple Barley seeds in my bag.

I hadn't given much thought as to what I would do with these particular seeds.  There were only about forty seeds in the packet so it wouldn't cover much ground.  I didn't want to loose the seeds in the sea of weeds that my yard becomes in the summertime and I didn't want to set them out to be free snacks for the local birds.  I decided to plant them in a long shallow planter this year which solved all of my issue quite simply.  By planting them in the planter I could be sure that the only thing growing there was this barley and I wouldn't lose them in the jungle of my yard.  I could also cover the planter with a screen until the seeds germinated to prevent birds from snatching them all up.

It has taken a few weeks, but they seem to be germinating little by little.  If I can coax these tiny shoots into growing more seeds for me I will be able to plant a larger area next year.  I am hoping they will thrive in my climate and I will be able to help continue a rare line of barley for generations to come.

Growing My Own Sweet Potato Slips

Last year was the first year that I had ever grown sweet potatoes in my garden.  I had one that had started to sprout new growth over the winter, so I decided that once the weather warmed I would tuck it into an empty spot in my garden.  I planted the whole potato, not knowing that there was a better way.  It still produced a couple small potatoes, so I ate one and saved the other for the next growing season.  Over the winter the single potato has sprouted several new vines.  Each vine has the potential to become a new plant in the right conditions, so I am setting out to do it a better way this year.

Starting with the single sweet potato, I stuck three toothpicks into the root so I could soak it in water without submerging the whole thing.  After a few weeks in water the sweet potato started to grow new roots into the water and it sent new shoots up into the air.  Sweet potatoes don't grow exactly like regular potatoes.  The part we eat is actually the root of the plant as opposed to regular potatoes which are tubers that grow off the stems of a plant.  Regular potatoes will send up new stems and the tubers form at the base of the stems that are underground.  Sweet potatoes can be cuttings of new growth that have the opportunity to form new roots (and therefore new sweet potatoes).  To make the slips I waited until the new vines were several inches long and then I broke them off of the rooted sweet potato and stuck them in their own jar of water.  I am hoping that they will develop a strong enough root system of their own in a few weeks.  Once they seem like they are off to a good start and the weather is staying generally warmer, they will be introduced to the summer garden where they can grow to their hearts content.