Fermentation

Apparently we planted plenty of green beans this year. 

Phoebe and I have canned three batches of dilly beans so far. I think this is going to be it, but the bushes have been pumping out the beans, so we'll see.

We have not made pickled beans in years, not since that Christmas party when she brought a jar of them for the gift exchange. They became the hottest item of the night. No particular reason we hadn't made them. They are a little labor intensive, but sooo yummy.

Last year was the first time I ever made pickles. (The recipes in the links are not quite what we did but close.)

We have some food allergies in our family, including garlic, which means no conventional pickles. I grew cukes last year and made pretty decent pickles. I tried again this year, with good results. They sat in brine on the counter for 8 days. I did 13lbs in the first two batches. It was hard to keep up with the garden so some of the cukes were on the larger side. But they taste great.

When I was pulling them out of the crock to put in jars, I found a funny thing. I had accidentally put a zucchini in with the cucumbers. 

I sliced it up to try it, and it was quite good. So today I started my third crock, this time half cukes and half zukes. I am excited to see how they are.

All this fermentation made me think it was a good time to check in on my sourdough starter. (Sourdough is a bit of a misnomer, as you may know. Natural yeast is a better term. You can have naturally yeasted breads that are not very sour, depending on your starter.)

I started this starter 5.5 years ago. I was in a period of low employment, to put it nicely, and Phoebe reminded me that I always enjoyed making bread and that she always enjoyed eating fresh bread. I found a great site, and started learning how to make authentic bread.

My starter has survived some neglect over the years, but was never as ugly as what I saw when I opened the jar I keep in the fridge.

It was super nasty! Foul smelling, dried out, black on top. I was surprised, because I had refreshed it just 4 months ago. It has gone longer than that that before without such a dire result.

I don't keep a lot in reserve, so once I scraped through the muck, there was not a lot of clean starter underneath. I took about a tablespoon out, and fed and loved it for about a week. Now it is healthy and ready to go.

I don't usually bake much bread in the summer, as running the oven at 550 for an hour or two doesn't work so well in our un-airconditioned house. But since I went through the trouble of getting the starter refreshed I figured I might as well.

UPDATE:
The cuke/zuke pickles were a flop, at least on the zuke side. Super squishy, fall apart in your hand mushy. Not sure what the difference was. It was much hotter that week, so they may have fermented faster. Maybe only one zuke in the crock reacts differently than 50/50. Whatever the case, yuck.

On the bread front, much more success.

A pretty good result for me: nice crust, not too dense, spunky sourdough flavor. Took it up to the homestead where Phoebe and some hard working young women were an appreciative audience.

Two Christmas Books

The first Christmas book is one our daughter June gave me. It was 3 years ago, and I was just learning how to bake bread. As I have said before, work was very, very slow, and I needed something to do. Phoebe reminded me I like to bake bread, so I did. 

With help from a great website (http://www.thefreshloaf.com/) I started learning how to make artisan bread. In an inspired moment, my daughter got me a blank sketchbook to use for bread recipes.

And use it I have. Every time I bake I write in the book. I will transcribe recipes into it, note different approaches, and their results. 

I also add other recipes I want to be able to find easily. With information available on the web, in books I own or read, and things others tell me, having one place to store all the info has been really handy. 

I don't bake much in the summer, so when fall rolls around, I can read the last few entries to catch up to what I learned earlier in the year. This may sound fairly elemental, but I am terrible about retaining information. So having a place to put it, and find it, has really been a great thing.

The second book also involves June. When she was 3, and her brother 10, we bought a Christmas book. It is called The Christmas Secret, by David Delamare. He is an illustrator who lives in Portland, and we saw a signed copy of his book in a shop.

We have read the book every Christmas for the 20 years since then. We read it in two parts, starting on Christmas Eve Eve, then finishing the next night.

This year, as you may know, June is in Russia. She is staying there for Christmas, so we are having our first holiday without either our children home. (Her brother Jake has made it home every year until this one.)

But we were not going to let a little thing like a 12 hour time difference and half the globe stand in the way of our tradition. So yesterday morning, her Christmas Eve, we read the first half of the story to her over Skype. I would hold up the photos so she could see them. She knows them so well she would say "Lift it a little higher so I can see the mouse."

This morning we read her the second half. It was very sweet, and makes my Christmas feel a little more Christmasy.

Yesterday after we were done I found an email address for the author. I wrote him a quick note telling him how much the book meant to us and what we were doing this year.

To my surprise he got right back to me. He said he usually gets a note about that book every year. Mine was the first this season. They were very touched and grateful for the story. That, in turn, gave me another high point for my Christmas Eve.

If you have a holiday tradition in your family, tell us about it in the comments. We love hearing about other homestead lives.

I am very grateful for what this year has brought. I humbly hope next year will be as kind to us, and just what you want. Thank you all for sharing it with us.

From all of us at the homestead, Phoebe, myself, the kids and critters, please have a yummy, warm, loving and laughing holiday. 

Bread

I started baking bread at Christmas two years ago.  I was enduring a long stretch without work, as the economy did its thing. The kids were home for the holidays.  I think it was Phoebe who gave me the idea, and I ran with it.

I decided to try making artisan bread, by hand, with just the 4 ingredients mankind has been baking with for ages: flour, water, yeast and salt.

I found a great website, The Fresh Loaf, which has a vibrant baking community.  The guy who runs it has a really helpful post on making Your First Loaf.  I whipped up a loaf, and although it was not what I was looking for, it was a big hit and did not survive the night.

One of my first tries.