Still Going...

Remember what I said about November in my last post? Well I take it all back. This November has been one for the record books- it's been sunny, mostly warm and pretty much the nicest November I can recall. Friday it hit 16 C (that's 60 F in American)and the overnight low was 11 - that's more like the beginning of October! All month we've had mainly highs in the double digits, a trend that continued this weekend although it's raining now. It cools down at night of course; we've had a couple of light frosts so far, but still no snow and even on the coldest nights we've barely hit freezing! Which is why I still have carrots, beets and a few herbs and flowers still outside, as well as brussel sprouts in the garden. If I'd known we were going get away with this kind of weather this long, I'd have planted more fall crops. And yes that's one foolhardy tomato plant in the bin with the beets. It, along with a handful of others, sprouted in Sept and I thought I'd yanked them all out but it appears I only took the top off this one and it kept growing. Now it's about 8 inches tall, it's got a thick sturdy stem and seems very healthy. I think it's a sign that I'm supposed to try to winter it over in the sunporch.

Inside the food preservation continues- I know I said I was pretty much done with canning this year and I am, all but the beets which are currently sitting in the fridge awaiting pickling. There's one more canning workshop to go as well- we'll be making pear mincemeat which is a first for me so I'l let you know how that turns out - I'm not fond of teaching stuff I've never made before but we've had some requests for it so I'm willing to give it a shot.

At home I'm onto the non cannable condiments now. I grated up a nice chunk of horseradish to make a pint of the extra strong stuff in vinegar- this stuff is guaranteed to clear your sinuses!

I've also soaked some mustard seeds and made a fiery mustard based on this recipe. I'm thinking of doing a horseradish version as well.

I got my hands a few last hot peppers and some local garlic to do another batch of chili garlic paste , since the one I made early this fall is all but gone already. All of these are small batches and stored in the refrigerator. When the chilly weather finally arrives, we'll be ready for it!


The science experiments, aka vinegars are almost wrapped up as well. The cider vinegar is the clear winner this year- literally! It's a gorgeous amber and still smells of apples. I used some of it in the mustard. The red wine vinegar is still murky and some mold was growing in the sides of the vessel, above the liquid so I decanted it into some clean jars and there's a new mother growing on the surface on couple so I think I'll leave them a little longer. Speaking of the mother, the chef (our friend who's temporarily couchsurfing with us), convinced me to add a mother from one of the vinegars to a jar of moisten red fife wheat flour to see what would happen. Well it's bubbling up a storm right now which means something's (likely yeast) growing in it but I have no idea what we plan to do with it next! It smells good tho so I'm guessing we've made a sourdough starter- guess I might have to take up baking.

Another advantage of having a chef for a housemate, besides the obvious, is having someone to talk with about food! The Russian being a typical meat and potatoes kinda guy couldn't care less about how to make vinegar or mustard from scratch. The chef on the other hand compares notes, offers up suggestions and brings home all kinds of treats and leftovers. We've both been scouring local thrift shops for old cookboks and are amassing quite a collection. Looks like I have some more projects ahead of me this winter!

Food Storage Friday - the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

So it was an up and down kinda week. It started on a high note, being Thanksgiving and the most perfect weather imaginable and it could't help but go downhill from there. My intentions to eat unprocessed were also a bit like a roller coaster- we had some highs, some lows and a bit of inbetween- here's the round up.

The Good:
Preserving continues- this week I did more tomato sauce, tomato salsa, tomato jam (sensing a theme here?) and red onion jam.


Last week's drying experiments all seemed to work out well so there are more trays in the oven and more jars filling out the shelves.
The most fun and interesting projects are the vinegars. I love having science experiments in the kitchen! I used the last of the white grapes, a bag of frozen purple grapes and some homegrown cider (from the apples I picked on Sunday) and set them to ferment on top of the fridge- all are bubbling like mad as the yeasts go to work on them. The screw caps are only loosely on; the gases produced as the sugars ferment into alcohol must be able to escape or they'd blow up!



The bad:
Thanksgiving was a chance to go to two different turkey dinners- one on Sunday and one Monday. I had no say in the preparation of either turkeys (as it should be when one is a guest) and could only contribute sides. For Sunday I prepared two pumpkin pies, made from whole pumpkins which I roasted and pureed, and homemade pastry made from store bought flour and lard- we'll call that one a draw.


For Monday's dinner we shopped at the Sorauren market for local veggies in the afternoon and prepared a roasted cauliflower dish, a root vegetable casserole featuring local carrots, beets and kholrabi, and baked sweet potatoes.


But at the dinner I also indulged in store made veggie and dip platter, cheese and crackers, pumpkin cheese cake, and gravy made from a packaged mix among other things. All of this was lovingly prepared by my sisters who spent the better part of two days preparing to feed a large group of people. In our family of 13 kids, we were brought up to eat what is put in front of us, and it is not good manners to critique someone else's food choices while scarfing them. Count this as a delicious fail.


The Ugly:

The Russian and I both worked a long physical day yesterday. When we got home at 9 pm neither of us felt like cooking. We still had some leftovers we brought home from Monday's dinner and hot turkey sandwiches seemed like the perfect solution, except we had no bread. I sent the Russian to the corner store and this is what he came home with:


Yeah that's Wonderbread. The epitomy of processed food. We weren't even allowed to eat this when we were kids- my mom had the sense to recognize that the amount of sugar and refined flour in it exceeds any possible nutritional value so we never bought it, even on sale. But if you're hungry and this is what's available, you eat it. Which is why things the October Unprocessed kinda bug me sometimes. It's all well and good to talk about eating unprocessed foods but many people just don't have access to these kinds of choices. Did you know if you get your food from a food bank KD (Kraft Dinner mac and cheese) is considered a protein source? And Beefaroni is both a protein and a vegetable source. I'm not suggesting this is a good thing by any means but choosing not to eat those things and then being smug about it seems a bit holier-than-thou sometimes. Most food banks can't provide perishables like fresh vegetables or dairy. And if you have to chose between paying rent or buying fresh veggies, which do you chose? Our weekly Farmer's market is full of locally grown, mostly organic crops but I sometimes can't afford to shop there. I know how lucky I am to have the time and the know how to make much of my food from scratch but if I had kids to think about, I know my priorities would change in a heartbeat. I know at least one participant in this challenge (Canadian Doomer) has small children (and a lean food budget) so her efforts to keep to it are much more impressive than mine.

Today find me in a bit of a riled up mood- this weekend has two major protest events going on in the Toronto area. Tomorrow,Oct 15th, the Occupy Wall St movement moves north to Toronto and Montreal among other Canadian cities. I haven't decided yet if I plan to attend. I support the idea of people making their voices heard and there are certainly many issues in this country that need to be addressed. However the lack of a unified message is troubling and the city as a whole is gearing up for this like it will be a repeat of the disasterous protests that occurred during the G20 summit last year.

Sunday's rally has a much clearer purpose and purposes to be an amazing event- Foodstock is a fundraising gathering to protest the building of a mega quarry in the heart of Ontario farmland and will feature over a hundred of Canada's top chefs serving up local fare accompanied by a program of great Canadian bands- all for a minum donation of $10. This event I'll be attending rain or shine!


But back to Wonderbread-we eat so little bread in this house that I've never bothered to bake our own. Last night made me realize that having a homemade loaf of bread (or even an unbaked one) in the freezer for just such times might not be a bad thing. Anyone have a good beginners recipe for bread?

Probiotics Part 3- Making Vinegar.

Last September in the frenzy of havesting and canning I ended up with an overabundance of local grapes. It was a few days before I could get to them all, the fruit flies were swarming and in desperation I juiced a large quantity of them. I flash heated the juice to pasteurize it, filled 3 litre jars and set them aside to be used later. A few days later I noticed that one of the jars hadn't sealed properly and had a small amount of what appeared to be scum on the surface. When I lifted the lid the distinct odor of yeast and alcohol hit me right away; unbeknown to me, I was making wine!

Now since wine making wasn't really on the agenda and and I didn't have the proper equipment nor knowledge to do so, I probably should have just thrown it out right then. But the science nerd in me was intrigued so I pour the entire contents into a 2 l plastic bottle and loosely capped it so the gases could escape. Then I stuck it away in warm corner and let it do its thing. After a couple weeks the process seemed to be complete- the bubbling had stopped and the liquid smelled strongly of wine. Appearance wise however it didn't look so nice- it was clouded and murky and looked like nothing you'd want to drink. And without taking a crash course in wine making I didn't think there was anything I could do to make use of it. Then it occurred to me that I could let it turn into vinegar! It seemed simple enough; after all a bottle of red wine left open for too long will eventually turn to vinegar on its own. I looked around online to see if there was any information on how to ensure this process took place but there wasn't much out there. I recalled reading a recent article in Edible Toronto ( a fantastic magazine about local food that's distributed for FREE around the GTA) about a man who calls himself and his product line Mr Vinegar. Roger Lambert and his wife Joyce have been making their award winning vinegars since 1994 so in my books that makes them experts. Roger was gracious enough to speak to me by phone and answer all of my questions!

Here's where the science nerd part kicks in again. All alcohol is made by yeast acting on upon sugars and plant carbohydrates- in this version, grape juice- to produce ethanol and carbon dioxide (the bubbles). If you were making wine or beer you would add a specific strain of yeast to your base substance; in my case it was wild yeast which are naturally occurring on grapes that started the process. Once the yeast has consumed all the available sugar they die off and you're left with ethanol. To continue on to vinegar you need another microbe -bacteria known as acetic acid bacteria. The most common of these are the Acetobactor family. They break the alcohol down to form acetic acid- the key component of vinegar. I asked Roger how I would go about ensuring that these bacteria found their way into my poor excuse for wine. He suggested two things - the first was to leave the lid off to encourage fruit flies to enter. That was pretty easily done since my house was still swarming with them. The second was to add some flowers- any kind. It seems Acetobacter are found naturally in rotting fruit (and transported by fruit flies) as well as in the nectar of flowers. I threw in some lobelia, mums and tomato flowers for good measure- now my wine looked odd but pretty!

Roger and I also discussed a possible third source which is to purchase vinegar that includes the 'mother'. A mother is a large colony of the necessary bacteria that is found on the surface of a batch of vinegar. Unfortunately once the acetobactor have consumed all the ethanol available they tend to die off and the mother sinks to the bottom. This is important to note because Acetobactor are oxygen dependent- hence why we try to keep air out of red wine. To keep your culture alive you must continually add more of the source of food- ethanol, and it must be exposed to air. Most bottled vinegars which contain a mother don't actually have much in the way of viable bacterial cultures but they are still more healthy than those that contain sulphites which are added to stop the process cold and kills off all the bacteria in the process. You can also buy packaged mother starters from some homebrew supply companies.

I left my 'wine', flowers floating and open to the fruit flies for several weeks. Per Rogers instructions I also added some white vinegar to help acidify the starter. Soon after, a weird shiny mat appeared on the surface just as Roger described and the smell of vinegar began to overpower the wine smell. After another month or so I noticed that the mother had sunk to the bottom so I decanted the liquid from the container, strained it and bottled it. It tastes like a fruity version of red wine vinegar although I suspect I might have left it a bit too long; some species of Acetobactor can further convert acetic acid into carbon dioxide and water and mine's a bit watery I think. I definitely won't be using it for canning since I don't know the percentage of acetic acid, and I don't think I'll be stealing any gold medals from Roger with this batch. Truthfully it was a bit messy and time consuming to produce a small amount of vinegar but the satisfaction of knowing where the ingredients came from, start to finish makes it worthwhile. Next time I'll do a much larger batch.

I am eager to attempt other kinds of vinegars which use different starting ingredients. I think the next obvious choice is apple cider vinegar. There's great instructions (using much better equipment) for this at Local Kitchen .

If you make your own beer you can also try making malt vinegar from it. You can even use mass produced beer but most will contain sulphites to impede the growth of the bacteria so aren't as reliable. Any type of alcohol can potentially become vinegar so the possibilities are many. White vinegar is made from -go figure- white spirits, predominantly rum. Champagne vinegar is popular as is white wine. Roger takes things to a whole new level; he makes fruit vinegars from things like blueberries and peaches, even a cucumber vinegar and my new favourite- maple syrup vinegar!

If you live near Hamilton, Roger will be teaching a workshop on vinegar making at Mohawk College in May!

Details

Location: Mohawk College - Fennell Campus - 135 Fennell Ave W, Hamilton, ON

Date: May 14th, 2011

Time: 10:00 am - 4:00 pm

For more information, email ask@mohawkcollege.caThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .