Category: Food

Pickling day

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These are half-gallon jars.

I wanted to make some no-heat, no-cook pickles to be eaten within the next few weeks as opposed to being preserved for the winter. This is an easy process, because the canning process is unnecessary — there is no need to use a water-bath canner or a pressure cooker. I also wanted to ferment some pickles naturally without using vinegar.

The abbey garden is providing cucumbers for the table, but not enough for putting up pickles. So I bought half a bushel of beautiful fresh-picked cucumbers from a farmer who lives just north of here. The cost was $15 for the half bushel.

To further reduce the amount of work, I used half-gallon wide-mouth jars. For about two hours’ work, I ended up with three gallons of pickles.

Two gallons of the pickles involved nothing more than a vinegar solution poured over the packed pickle jars, with some spices. They should be ready to eat in two or three days. The process for the fermented pickles is to fill the jars with brine on top of the packed cucumbers, spices, and a few grape leaves. They’ll take a month or so to ferment before they’re ready to eat. I used airlock caps that I bought from Amazon. The airlock caps allow fermentation gases to escape but keep outside air from getting in, reducing the risk of mold.

Though pickle cucumbers are supposed to be able to take the heat of the canning process, still I like the idea of pickles that have never been heated. They should be nice and crisp.

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Chicken crimes

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I had been watching the first tomato for weeks, ever since it was the first bloom. Just two days ago, it had started turning red. It was to go into the ceremonial first tomato sandwich of the summer. But, this morning, Sophia the chicken followed me into the garden through a gate that I had left open. The chickens are not allowed into the garden during garden season. Her chicken eye immediately spotted the red, and my gardener eye immediately spotted Sophia making for the tomato. Before I could head her off, she had taken a bite.

Tomato number 2 will make the first sandwich, and the remains of tomato number 1 will go into a curry.

The angelic side of those devil blackberries

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For eleven months of the year, blackberries are terrible neighbors. They come up everywhere. If you get anywhere near them, they reach out and grab you with their briars. Their stems are as tough as Kevlar, and it’s very difficult to cut them back.

But for one month of the year, blackberries pay you back with — blackberries. May was a good growing month, so June promises to be an outstandingly good blackberry month.

There will be pies.

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Bush cherries

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I believe it was four years ago that a gardener friend urged me to go to Tractor Supply and get some of the cherry bushes they were selling. The potted bushes were very small — not more than two quarts, as I recall. I have never known a bush that is so hardy and grows so fast. The bushes have been heavily pruned at least twice, and once again they’re starting to block the path from the garden to the orchard.

As for the fruit, I wouldn’t say that it’s the best fruit in the world. But it has the virtue of being very early and very prolific. The pit-to-fruit ratio is not all that great. But who can turn down fresh cherries in May. Bush cherries would make a fine, fast-growing hedge.

The muffins are whole wheat, sweetened with maple syrup and honey.

Watch out for pits!

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The 2016 apple crop is coming along great.

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Someone told me recently that the abbey is looking shaggy. Oh well. Better shaggy than barren.

Publix

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Until today I had never been inside a Publix store. A new store opened last week in Winston-Salem, across the street from Whole Foods. I decided to check it out.

It’s a nice new store and all that. It reminded me of Safeway stores in San Francisco. But it seems to sell pretty much the same generic products that other grocery stores sell, and I couldn’t see any particular reason for shopping there and dealing with the slow-moving, indecisive throngs who also had come to check it out.

So I just left and went to Whole Foods as usual, appreciating Whole Foods’ product line even more.

Homemade seitan

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In the 1970s, I just called it gluten globules. These days we call it by a fancier name — seitan. The fancy name makes it sound hard to make, but nothing could be easier. It’s a fantastic and versatile meat substitute.

In the 1970s, I actually isolated the gluten by washing the starch out of a dough made from unbleached flour under running water. That’s for the birds. These days, you just start with gluten flour.

You’ll find recipes for seitan all over the Internet. It’s just a dough made of gluten, cut with other ingredients that tenderize it (such as chickpea flour) and seasonings. Then you shape it and pre-cook it by simmering it in water or steaming it. Then you fry it!

Seitan made from only gluten would be very rubbery. By adding chickpea flour, soy flour, barley flour, or brewer’s yeast (or all or some of those), plus some olive oil, the seitan becomes tender. You can adjust the “bite” of the seitan by varying the proportions. You can season it as a chicken analog, a pork analog, a beef analog, a sausage analog, or no analog at all. Ingredients to consider include tomato paste to redden it, soy sauce to darken it, Worcestershire sauce, barbecue sauce, garlic powder, curry seasonings — let your imagination be your guide. I have found that seitan steams beautifully in the Cuisinart steam oven.

I’ve written here before about my deep suspicion of the anti-gluten movement. Sure, a small percentage of the population truly have a gluten problem. But speaking strictly for myself, my Celtic genetics love gluten, and you’d have to kill me to make me give it up. Seitan is one of the best high-protein, low-carb, earth-friendly proteins I know of.

I’ve been on my low-carb repentance diet for about a week now. Technically, the roasted carrots are a no-no. But I skipped breakfast to earn the carrots. Over a period of three years, I’ve let my ideal weight creep up by five pounds. It’s no carbs for me until the five pounds are gone. But I’m not going hungry. It’s really very true that, on a low-carb diet, you really don’t get very hungry.

Frittata

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Continuing in low-carb mode, the daily question is: How do I use all these eggs that the chickens are laying and also keep carbs down. Frittatas (frittati?) quickly come up on the list.

This frittata is made with artichoke hearts, Trader Joe’s fake sausage, some grated gouda cheese, and a teensy bit of potato. It’s garnished with yard onions snipped on the way back from the chicken house with the eggs.

I think that a well-seasoned iron skillet works best for frittatas. The frittata may be done before the top browns, so be ready to throw on a little extra cheese and hit the top of the frittata with the broiler for a few minutes. Beat a little cream into the eggs to make everything nice and fluffy. Don’t even think of using milk! The frittata should rise a bit in the oven, particularly around the sides of the skillet.

Soon there will be asparagus frittati.