First Attempt at Cream Cheese = FAIL.

Boo hoo.
This made me quite sad. The lox turned out great, though not as salty as they should be. The bagels are eagerly anticipated, but the cream cheese was a failure. Thanks to my Flickr buddy, i know for next time not to stir, to use a wide mouth jar, and to get that fermented cream out of the picture as soon as possible.

Stupid fermented cream.
I strained the cream cheese solids from the whey with a cheese cloth and pitcher, hanging the cheese cloth by a spoon for a few hours. Homemade cream cheese is wetter than what you're used to at the store, more gelatiny looking. My process was fine. The results, not so much.

If i taste the cream cheese at the back of my tongue it tastes just right: tangy and sour. But at the front of my palate is an unpleasant taste of "funk." The husband was resistant to even try "that stuff" (to my chagrin) but i forced him to and he agreed: funky.

So it look like i'll have to BUY my cream cheese to go with this weekend's brunch.
so sad.

Pamper Your Body

A good friend of mine recently moved to my town. I couldn't be happier. We're both artsy, crafty folk and are both on the same wavelength with all this healthy eating i've been talking up lately (sprouted and soaked whole grains, fermented foods, cooking for your thyroid, yadda yadda). It's great to have someone to dork out about this stuff with, and it's super great to have someone else working on different projects and sharing with each other!

Mandy stopped by the other day and I exchanged eggs, homemade herbal hair rinse, and samples of my latest cooking projects for some homemade body scrub she made.
I took a shower that evening, and let me tell you: this stuff is great! I was feeling all tense and nasty, and after rubbing myself with this gritty goodness i felt calmer, and softer - really gets the grunge off while adding some nice moisture as well.

Here's Mandy's recipe:

body scrub:

• oatmeal  (ground)
• white sugar
• brown sugar
• sea salt
• flaxseed (ground)
• honey
• vitamin c (acne, anti aging)
• vitamin e (anti aging)
• olive oil (for young skin)
• avocado oil (for mature skin)
• flaxseed oil (acne, psoriasis, eczema, scars)
• borage oil (for problem skin such as psoriasis or eczema)
• jojoba oil (for acne)
• tea tree oil (for sensitive or inflamed skin)
• lavendar oil (hydration, evening skin tone, clearing blemishes)

*There are many more essential oils that are good for the skin.  I would recommend finding the ones that best fit your skin type.

I ground my oatmeal, flaxseed and/or any vitamins that do not come in an oil form first (in a food processor).  Then I combine the dry ingredients together.  Your sugar, oatmeal and/or sea salt will be the main ingredients. I use more ground oats than any other dry ingredient because my skin is sensitive, but if you want a more gritty feeling scrub then use more sugar. Next you add the oils.   Use a base oil such as olive oil and your honey to get a good consistency for the scrub.  Last you add your essential oils  A little of this oil goes a long way.  I use about 10 drops of essential oils.  If I use 2 essential oils then I would use 5 drops of each.  I also use high quality organic products, and local honey!

 

Mandy's food processor wasn't working, so my scrub is a little coarser than she'd have liked. I don't care - i love it!

Thank you, my friend. Next we must bake together!

Check out Mandy's photography site here, her new website will be up soon, featuring her installation pieces and other work as well.

Do you ever share projects with friends? What's your favorite thing to give or receive from a friend?

Homemade Crackers

My lox is ready! What better way to celebrate (other than bagels and cream cheese which WILL HAPPEN) than some homemade crackers. This was my first time making crackers - and i have mixed feelings:
A. i may never buy crackers again as it is sooo easy and cheap to make and i can flavor them exactly as i see fit
B. i may never bake crackers again as they are so freakin' delicious i can't stop eating them!
hahaha.
Anyway, the recipe i used is a mix of several cracker recipes i found online from Towards Sustainability,  Chowhound, and Bliss Tree. I added fresh herbs and pepper from the garden and chose the oils i prefer:

• 2 cups flour
• 1 tsp finely chopped fresh rosemary
• 1 pinch finely chopped fresh oregano
• 3 cloves garlic, also finely chopped
• 5 chile pequins, mashed
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt (i used fine sea salt)
• 1/3 cup oil (i mixed olive and safflower)
• 3/4 cup warm water
• +garlic salt for topping

Pre-heat oven to 400. First mix the dry ingredients, then add first the oil then the warm water. Mush to form a consistent dough. Divide in half and roll out on two greased cookie sheets. I would roll them out thinner than i did and get to the far sides of the cookie sheets. Sprinkle with garlic salt and cut with a pizza cutter. Bake for 10-12 minutes.
Mine did not get totally crispy in this time, i used whole wheat flour and didn't roll them as thinly as i could have. I recommend either rolling them more thinly, or increasing cooking time to at least 15 minutes. I rebaked them after they'd cooled by 4 minutes and now they're perfecto.

These are SO GOOD. They taste a lot like those rosemary crostini crackers you can get at Whole Foods, but less oil or sourdoughy.  They filled the house with a delicious garlic smell, and readiness was determined with the sound of sizzle, slight browning, and a lifting of the edges and puffing of the center.

The lox is also super good. Maybe a little dilly - i have a hard time pegging dill as a flavor, but the husband mentioned "dilly." It was tricky to cut up without wasting, but the chickens and dog appreciated the skin. We're excited to pair it with bagel, as the crunch of the cracker was a bit discordant with the smooth of the salmon.
**next day: yes, i think the lox is perhaps 'too dilly' Next time i'll season with more fresh chives and a little less dill, and maybe def use all the sugar/salt mixture - i didn't use it all this batch as it seemed to be more than necessary.

PS: i stored the lox on a sheet of wax paper in a freezer ziplock. Two bags in the fridge, two in the freezer.

Can't wait for my next cocktail party so i can serve from scratch crackers with my from scratch dips.

Things just keep getting better and better around here.

Souring Milk and Online Networking

Yesterday i mentioned my frustration with my attempt at cream cheese. The curds refuse to separate, and the cream at the top has gotten FUNK KEE smelling/tasting. Kind of like a really moldy blue cheese. Not in a good way.

In response to my pondering of my non separating cream cheese, my "friend" and fellow "urban homesteading" group member on Flickr:  L.Z. had this great advice or me:

No, don't worry. Just scoop out the fermented cream and let milk continue to separate. (Scoop out the 1/4" of the top of the cream first and discard if you will and than you may use the rest of the fermented cream as sour cream. Leave the remaining milk to "work" a couple more days.) Sometimes it takes longer because of the lower room temperature and very fresh milk. So just BE patient.

Unfortunately, i've already mixed the cream up a few times so i'll have to discard it all - my chickens really don't mind being the benefactors! (again, i cannot stress enough how adorable the sound of chickens lapping up liquidy treats is. Delightful.) So the chooks got my fermented cream this time - but thanks to a like minded friend in the land of 2 dimensions (aka the internet) I've learned a valuable tip and will save my sour cream next time.

All divided nicely and the milk is back on the counter. Hopefully it does its thing SOON as the lox are ready and i'm geared up to try homemade bagels!

Have you ever gotten a helpful tip from an unexpected source?

Rain. Rain. Rain.

Not the best time for rain, in my opinion. Should be great for the bluebonnets, but not so great for those of us trying to prepare our soil for planting season. It's not ideal to work the soil when it is wet as it damages the consistency (can we say mud clods?).

The rain is also bringing a fleet of snails to my gardens. I broke down and bout $30 worth of Sluggo yesterday, which apparently i could have gotten for about 10$ cheaper here. Sluggo is about the only pest product i use in my garden, and it's organic and doesn't damage the native wildlife or good bugs. Just evil snails! Apparently it ruins their appetite and then kills them. Death to snails!
My cauliflower is just putting on a head that is peeking out - and of course it is covered with the snails and their poo, and now sluggo. Hopefully i can convince the snails to leave it alone.

The rain brings some happy things as well: growing lawn, germinating back yard (which has been quite forlorn and chicken scratched for a while now), and germinating baby mustards and kales. I hope they do well this season - the kale is a last ditch effort to succeed at all with my favorite veg (it doesn't love summer, but it might do SOMEthing) and the mustard is destined for sautees, pickles, and eventually to seed to make mustard. I'd really like to be making all of my own condiments by the end of the summer, even if i have to barter for some tomatoes if i skip planting those summer beauties this year.

The lemon tree is happy to be outside and getting rain water, heavily laden with half a dozen or so lemons i should harvest soon. Last year i harvested all in one batch and juiced them, storing the juice in the freezer. This year i've been taking them more one at a time, using the juice fresh in things like mayo and cheese. It's about time to harvest them all, though as they seem to be ripe and it's time to set new flowers.

 

 Inside the house i'm frustratingly waiting for my cream cheese to turn into cheese and whey - the milk refuses to coagulate, though the cream at the top smells and tastes kind of like a really stinky blue cheese - not my favorite thing. Will keep waiting though and hope that it does its thing in time to make bagels with the lox that i made.

Speaking of the lox: it's a bit hard to tell when raw salmon has been sufficiently marinated to be no longer 'raw' but edible. It looks mostly the same. The directions called for marinating for 2-6 days or so. Last night it had been in the fridge under its weight for about 4 days. Unfortunately, some of the liquid (whey, juices, and salt/sugar mixture) had escaped from the layers of saran wrap, foil, and baggy. I'm not sure if this adversely affected the results and would have preferred to know that the salmon was fully encased in what it was supposed to be marinating in. So i sprinkled a bit more whey and salt/sugar and recovered. I'll try it again tonight and hope that it was not a poor decision to introduce new whey. Cross fingers.

Ah, and now the sun is coming out, a friend is coming by to make crackers with me, and the dog is ready for a walk a little later. Must take advantage of these rainless hours!

More New Toys

Yay, another package. This from from my friendly USPS worker. He thinks i have a green thumb, i tell him i'm just lucky.
I do so love packages.
They do give me a big smile!

Anyway, i got two books in the mail today and can't wait to share what i learn from them over the next year.

I haven't looked through the cheese one yet, but i think i'm already salivating and scheming where i'll get my cultures and fancy cheese ingredients.
I flipped through the preserving book a bit, though - and immediately am faced with this dilemma:
I am not much of a recipe follower. I like to put what i want to put together together and in what ratios i choose. This isn't the best for preserving, as you have to have the EXACT levels of acidity and yadda yadda to know how much pressure and how long to process.
Hmm.
One of the first recipes i looked for was ketchup. 1 1/2 cup of sugar!? I do not want to add a bunch of sugar.

So I'll keep this post short and implore to you, my readers and colleagues:
if you preserve foods at home, how do you deal with the recipe portion of the process? Do you follow recipes strictly? Do you have old recipes handed down to you, or do you research in books or online for new ones? Do you have any sort of formula for swapping out ingredients? How can i facilitate my creativity in the kitchen without compromising our health?

I do so hope i will figure this out.

Many thanks for any insight you may share with us.

Now That's Some Spicy Kim Chee!

On Sunday I posted my process and recipe for delicious Kim Chee. It has been happily bubbling away on my counter for about 3 1/2 days now and it's ready. It was mostly ready last night, but i wanted to give it overnight just to be sure.

How can you tell it's done, you may ask? While it's fermenting, it smells nasty. If you open the lid that is. I was also having some problems with my seals - i'd replaced the old, rotten french seals on these 'made in France' jars, and the seal i replaced it with wasn't as wide as the original. Plus my recipe made a bit more than usual with that added half a purple cabbage so there wasn't enough room at the top - you really do have to leave that 1 inch of room! I kept waking up to liquid oozing out of the top. Not so pretty.
Anyhoo: solution= i removed some of the veg and put it in a separate little jelly jar. I also added another rubber seal to really seal that lid! Worked great.

Back to the when is it done issue: While it's fermenting it's quite okay to open the lid daily and press the veg down into the liquid (with clean hand or spoon!)(Some texts disagree with this and encourage you to keep it well sealed through the entire process to keep any oxygen out, i'll try that next time and report back if i notice a difference). You'll smell it - it will smell bad. You will wonder what the heck you're about to feed your family and why does it smell rotten. Never fear. In two - 5 or so days you'll open it and release a ton of pressure. Inside will be a zesty, softened mixture of veg that smells and tastes tangy, pickly, and spicy if you added hot peppers. Mine was still quite fizzy last night which is why i let it sit until morning. This morning the liquid was beginning to sink a bit and the veg definitely tasted like Kim Chee.

My recipe made 4 pints, in this case 3 pints for me and 2 jelly jars for friends. I added 2 jalapenos, habaneros and some dried cayenne and let me tell you

 it is spicy!

Serve kim chee with soup, as a condiment, in spring rolls, as a side dish, as a mid afternoon snack. 

Fermented foods, like kimchee,  aid in digestion and should be on your menu daily.
Fermenting foods is an ancient art - one of the first methods of preserving food that is often forgotten today. In the modern world so many things need to be mass produced and safe across a large range of variables and fermenting is best done in smaller batches. It is easy to do at home and perfectly safe if the correct precautions are taken: use fresh produce, clean jars and hands, and fresh (preferably raw if you can get it) whey.

Lacto-fermentation (in this case adding whey) preserves the food by inhibiting the bad bacterias with the lactic acid, and provides helpful enzymes and anticarcinogenic substances, promoting healthy flora in your digestive system. You may have seen the commercials for live yogurts being so great for your intestine and 'regularity'? The modern methods of pasteurization and high heat preparations have killed the lactobicilli in our foods - replace it by eating more fermented foods and get that body workin'!
This also goes for whole grains: there was a time when no one ate whole grains without first soaking, sprouting, or fermenting them - this was done to preserve the grains and to increase digestibility. The phytic acid on the bran of the grains inhibits the absorption of nutrients, minerals and vitamins that you're trying to get out of the whole grain. By soaking the grains first, you are essentially pre-digesting it and thus increasing the amount of goodness your body is capable of absorbing. So get rid of that 'puffed wheat' and 'bran flake' and soak yourself some steel cut oats for breakfast!

Have you fermented at home? what's your favorite recipe?
(i for one can't wait to make some pickles this summer!)