Walking

I've been keeping close track of my walking for several months, but this month I thought it would be fun if I figured out approximately how many miles I've been walking. Here are the details for June: 823 minutes, averaging 27.4 minutes per day, totaling approximately48 miles. Not too bad, eh?

Sunday's Word, Week #26

leveret

–noun

a young hare.

I thought this was appropriate considering my meat rabbit aspirations.

Keeping Cool

This is how you can keep cool when it tops 98 at your place.

You and hubby finally come to an agreement to purchase a pool after hearing him talk about it for two previous summers. Then you go through the task of figuring out how to set it up.

Then the kids start playing as it fills.

And finally, you forget to take pictures after it is completely filled, because it is so hot that you resort to drinking vodka tonics as you fend off requests to hop in the pool. Then you end up relenting and almost have a heart attack because the water is so cold.

Heat Wave

The weather has been unkind to us this year. First we had a winter I thought would never end. In fact, it only ended a few weeks ago in my mind. Now we are hit with a heat wave. It was in the low 90's today and should be in the upper 90's for the next three days. That is not my kind of weather. I just want to melt when it gets over about 82. My comfort window is right between 70 and 77 degrees.

How Not to Candle Eggs

This first thing you should know about candling eggs to check for fertility is that you should never drop an egg. Of course, that seems obvious, but if you try to speed up the procedure and hold more than one egg, you significantly increase your chances of dropping an egg. And then if you drop an egg, your daughter might look at you like you are a cold-hearted killer who threw the egg on the floor on purpose.

If you do accidentally smash an egg, it does give you an opportunity to examine the insides of a fertilized egg. It is actually fascinating. I was hesitant to look at first, but seeing the blood vessels forming and the changes that the yolk undergoes, is really quite interesting. All the girls were very intrigued as well.


The candling itself was very neat. Through the light source under an egg, you can see the yolk through the shell, a large mass that wiggles if you rotate the egg. If the egg is fertilized, you will see a small mass that is darker than the yolk. Sometimes it's a tough call and I didn't remove any eggs from the incubator because I couldn't bring myself to make that decision yet. I will candle again in a few days with a brighter (hopefully) light source and make sure.

Lion's Mane Mushrooms

Aren't these some of the funniest mushrooms you've ever seen? They kind of remind me tribbles from Star Trek. They have these fine, hair-like fringes. When you cut it, you have a main chunk, with lots of loose pieces, as though you've just given it a haircut.

These are purchased from a new mushroom vendor at our farmers market. They also have shiitakes, maitakes and oyster mushrooms.

What I ended up making with these Lion's Mane mushrooms is a Yukon Gold and Wild Mushroom Gratin with Blue Cheese. My friend gave me a giant chunk of blue cheese left over from a wine tasting (thanks Jacki!), so this was perfect timing to try the recipe, provided with many other mushroom recipes by the mushroom vendor. It was delicious. The potatoes were smooth and slightly sweet, the cheese sauce was creamy and not as tangy as you would think a blue cheese gratin would be. The baking and added cream really mellowed it out nicely. The mushrooms were earthy (I added some crimini to the Lion's Manes). Served with a salad and bread it was a perfect dinner for a mild summer evening.

Almost Enough Strawberries

But not quite. See that empty spot in the new freezer compartment? I think it could hold a few more bags. I think I will make another trip to the strawberry u-pick farm in the next couple of days. I'll only pick a couple buckets this time. We've frozen most of them (with the exception of a good amount that sat out too long and got all mushy and bad this last time) and haven't eaten a whole lot of them fresh. I was imagining buttermilk pancakes with a fresh strawberry puree and whipped cream, but that didn't pan out this week. Maybe I can squeeze it in with the next picking. We ate some fresh, made one batch of smoothies and froze the rest. My frozen total is 26.25 pounds. I'd like to hit 30. I think that's a safe number. You may call it greed if you like. I call it taking advantage of a local and short-seasoned treasure.

If you are tiring of strawberry posts, fear not, blueberry season starts next month.

Living the Hectic Life

Okay, so maybe I just have a lower tolerance to planned activities than the average person. We have had an art camp for the last week that will continue this week for Maddy and swimming lessons for Isabel in the same time frame. I'm only responsible for picking Maddy up in the afternoon; a friend is taking her in the morning. Still, I'm finding our family non-schedule thrown into a tizzy. I don't know how you public or private school parents do it for nine months out of the year, this following somebody else's schedule thing. I find much of my day consumed by waking and preparing children to leave, taking children, running errands while we are out, picking up children and then finally having a bit of time to straighten up and then prepare dinner. The girls are cranky because they are used to a slower pace and more time at home doing their things. The two girls doing activities are loving what they are doing, but I find them needing downtime in a way that they don't normally require.

So, I will take this opportunity to apologize for not keeping up with reading your blogs or commenting on your comments on my blog. I do read all of the comments and appreciate them, but find myself short on time to reply, at least for the next week.

I'm hoping to get back to our usual pace next week, at which time I should do some yard work, because I think our neighbor (single, retired and hires gardeners) is finding it disturbing to look upon our backyard from his deck. It's not his fault that his deck looks over our yard (nor is it ours). I don't exactly have the time or the money that is available to him and his well coiffed yard. However, it's kind of bothering me to look out at my backyard, too, so that is probably the more important point. I should also try to get some kind of edible plant into my garden, besides the two radishes, three spinaches and forty some odd garlics and the strawberry plants that the dog keeps pooping on.

Summer Solstice

To ring in summer, we spent a great evening at our friends' house. Several of the families from our homeschool group were there and there was delicious food, interesting chat, a bounce house for the kids, a hot tub that was mainly used by the kids and a stunning view of the valley from the home's deck. We stayed chatting until after midnight, which is not that late when you are single, but pretty late for a family. We were the last family and got into politics (good and invigorating, not bad and argumentative) so before we knew it, it was late, late.



Another fun thing is that I got to meet an online friend who was up from Arizona looking for property. We met her the first time on Friday night and her family was also able to make it to the potluck. Fortuitous timing indeed!

Sunday's Word, Week #25 (a day early)

ewery

–noun, plural -er·ies. Archaic.

a room for storing ewers, towels, napkins, etc.

Taking to Water

My little Isabel, the girl who is still terrified to have water trickle down her face when her hair is washed, has been asking for swimming lessons for months. She loves going to the neighbor's house to splash in their pool. Who can explain her fear and fascination with water and swimming? I was finally able to get her into summer lessons, because the evening school year lessons seem to always have a waiting list. She was thrilled to learn she was finally getting lessons. She is in semi-private lessons and has one instructor to two students. She has a great instructor who motivates and congratulates her and doesn't push her past her comfort level or imply that he is going to catch her and then not, in an effort to force her to try something she wouldn't otherwise consider. I know that if he had done that once, she would have been too fearful to continue. She is very much like me in her relationship to water. I still recall the incident that scared me so badly that I still don't swim. I'm grateful that she was paired with such a kind instructor. She is taking one more week of lessons and I hope she gets the same one. Maybe later in the summer she can take another round of lessons. She has progressed quite a bit in one week and is feeling more comfortable and taking more risks that she used to do.

Strawberry Greed

Clearly another trip to the strawberry fields is needed. We only got 14.75 pounds of frozen strawberries from those five buckets. We ate some of them fresh, but didn't get any smoothies or strawberry shortcake made. In short, we haven't had our fill of strawberries yet.

The Resposibility for Bringing Forth New Life

It is a great responsibility. And don't you all get your panties bunched up and/or get all excited. It's not another baby we are having. We are hatching chicken eggs for my friend Jacki. She's had major hen losses to raccoons, so she needs to replenish her flock and asked if we'd like to help. Of course, how could I turn that offer down?

It sounds so easy, right? You put the eggs in an incubator and wait for them to hatch. If you have that impression, you would be wrong. That the impression I had too. It's actually got quite a few steps and that is where the responsibility for doing it right comes in. It really isn't unlike being pregnant, especially for the first time. You want to do everything right to assure healthy babies and no losses. With eggs, it requires the correct, constant temperature; moisture, air flow, turning two to three times per day at the same time each day, washing your hands because the shell is permeable and susceptible to contamination and checking twice during the incubation period for egg fertility and removing the ones that don't have an embryo. If all goes well, you have a lot of chicks in about three weeks. So, at least we don't have to fret for a full nine months.

After that, Jacki will brood all the chicks and some will become hens and live a happy life roaming the vineyard and laying eggs for our consumption and the cockerels will become dinner. In the fall, I will have my first experience with chicken processing. This prospect worries the squeamish part of me. The logical part of me knows that it is hypocritical, as a meat eater, to expect others to do the dirty work and I do all the consumption. So, I will swallow my trepidation, when the time comes, and do the same thing that meat eaters had to do for a long time before our modern food industry, help process my meat.

Strawbery Season Is Here

We made our annual trek to the strawberry fields today. They just opened on Saturday. It's a little late according to my memory. Oh well, there were plenty of big, ripe juicy ones and small, sweeter ones to go around. We headed out with my friend April and our combined five children.

What a difference one year can make. Last year Isabel needed pretty constant supervision and advice on which strawberries to pick. This year she picked almost a full bucket in the time that Juliana and I had picked a handful, then stopped and hiked to the end of the fields for a potty break and back. I can't remember the exact phrase, but the one about many hands making light work is so very true. We got five buckets in less than an hour. Maddy has been a good picker for years now, but having two made it great. They far out picked me; I was fielding questions on the ripeness of strawberries from Juliana. Processing to go into the freezer when we got home went much the same way, with the addition of some grumbling because processing isn't quite as fun as the picking part.

Last year we froze about twenty or twenty five pounds of strawberries and it was just the right amount, because we ate our last bag a couple of weeks ago. So, we'll see where this puts us and we might just be going out again next week.

Coconut Bliss

Yes my friends, it is indeed a coconut bliss. It is also vegan, if you go for that kind of thing. This ice cream is so divine. I splurged on a pint of straight up coconut to accompany local strawberries for last night's Father's Day dinner. I wish I had bought two, because I could sure use some right now. It is so smooth and creamy and coconutty.

It doesn't only come in plain coconut. They have a coffee flavor, chocolate hazelnut, and some other delicious sounding flavors, that I couldn't remember, because my mind stopped at coffee and the dark chocolate hazelnut.

They are out of Eugene, Oregon, but the great thing is that you can get it in most of the Western half of the US. (Sorry Mom, yet another reason why Florida sucks.)

So, go grab a pint today and try to share with your loved ones. If you can't, I will understand; it took a great effort to share it with my family.

Happy Father's Day

I hope all of you spent a wonderful day with your husbands and/or your fathers. We had a lovely, relaxed and warm day over here.

What's For Dinner this Week?

Since I haven't done this for awhile, I thought I would share my weekly meal plan with you. It's the first week that I went our local farmers market (though it is the third of the season, but I don't plan to miss anymore!).

• Oven Baked Chicken and Rice with Cream of Mushroom Soup (homemade of course, none of that Campbell's junk), asparagus
• Father's Day Dinner: Fish (whatever good one I find at the store), roasted potatoes, roasted zucchini, roasted kale, some kind of strawberry dessert
• Mustard Greens with Garbanzo Beans, rice
• Mushroom Lasagna (with beautiful mushrooms from a new vendor and the ricotta that I made last week from the mozzarella), salad, crusty bread
• Oriental Goat Chops, stir fried vegetables, rice

What's on the menu for you? Are you all eating seasonally or locally?

The Cream of the Cream Cheese

See, you really hadn't heard the last of cheesemaking from me. The most recent endeavor was cream cheese. As I mentioned before, I've made a sort of wild cream cheese, which is done by leaving raw milk on the counter until it curdles and separates and then straining. This is a long process, because you would be surprised how slowly raw milk curdles. It took more than a week. The resulting cream cheese was reasonably creamy, but much stronger and wilder tasting than the cream cheese we all know from the store.

There was a cream cheese recipe from the most recent Mother Earth News (along with the mozzarella recipe that I tried earlier this week). It is super easy. You basically take 2 quarts of cream at room temperature, add a mesophilic starter culture and let it sit out for twelve hours. I did this and when I went to strain it, it wasn't quite thick enough. I was disappointed, but strained it on the counter anyway. Well, with the additional hours that it took to strain, it thickened up, so I restrained it to get more whey and less cream dripping through and that did the trick. So, essentially after sitting at room temperature for about 24 hours, I ended up with a super thick, incredibly creamy, slightly tangy, delicious cream cheese. It even got Maddy's approval and she is the major cream cheese consumer in our family. I haven't bought commercially produced cream cheese in a long time, so she was thrilled to have a whole quart jar sitting in the fridge now.

Here's a breakfast of cream cheese on some of the toasted whey bread that I made earlier this week.

J. really enjoyed her toast and cream cheese!

Enlarging My Cold Storage Capacity

I've been dealing with an increasingly crowded refrigerator, with all my homemade concoctions taking up so much space in glass jars along with our other food. It finally came to a head today when I got my milk order, my weekly eggs, a lot of vegetables from the farmers market and my Azure Standard bulk order. So, we decided it was time to buy an auxiliary fridge for the basement. Years ago we had a second one, but we bought it used and it gave out after about 1 1/2 of service.

Being new, this also won't be a power hog than an older one would be. It was mighty hard to stick to our guns and buy a basic, no frills smaller one. All those refrigerators are so new and shiny and the ice water dispensers in the doors were beckoning to me (our current main one doesn't have these features).

I'm thrilled with the new space, but Lawrence is also very happy. He's intimidated by going into ours and looking for food, because there are so many of my "experiments" as he calls them, and I don't have everything labeled, because I know what they are. He's hoping the experiments will go downstairs and the recognizable food will go in the main one. So, now I will have space to put my gallon of whey, mustards that are aging to tone down the spiciness, extra eggs, giant block of raw cheddar, extra milk and veggies. It will be so much safer now, opening the main fridge and not having a possible deluge of glass jars.

A Better Whey Bread

This is all that's left of the first two loaves of whey bread that I made on Monday. It was actually pretty good, but I've had better, so I'm going to search for a new recipe. I think the recipe that I found had been mis-typed. It called for four cups of whey to four cups of flour. That makes a batter, not a dough, so I had to increase the flour, which threw off the amount of yeast and salt, I think. It was tasty, but rather heavy.

This was a slice that I enjoyed with my coffee yesterday morning. Mmm, toasted with European cultured butter.

No Recycling for Your Brita Filter

At least not yet. Hopefully, this campaign will persuade Clorox, the parent company of Brita, to start a filter recycling campaign. In the meantime, please sign the petition!

Making Cheese For Real

I've made chevre and a sort of wild cream cheese before, but that only involves setting milk out and adding a culture or just letting it do its thing and straining. Heating and monitoring the temperature, adding stuff, stirring, kneading, straining, salting...that's real cheese making.

I went cheesemaking supply shopping with Angelina on Friday and finally got the courage to buy citric acid, rennet and mesophilic culture.

Yesterday, I swallowed my uncertainty, pulled out the mozzarella recipe in the current issue of Mother Earth News and dove into the world of cheesemaking. It was amazing to see these ingredients transforming almost like magic in my very own kitchen. The girls were laughing at me, but it was seriously cool.

Here's how the magic begins. One gallon of milk (raw in this case) heating on a low flame.

After the citric acid and rennet have been added, the big giant curd separates from the whey and starts to pull away from the side of the pot.

Then the curd starts to sink.

After you remove the curds, you still need to press they excess whey out.

Then you have these lumpy balls of curds.

As you reheat them in hot whey (or the microwave) you knead them and they become more smooth and elastic.

Until they look kind of like this. Then, as best I can tell, they are pretty much done. I refrigerated them after this point. Then later that evening I made, pizza.

Isn't it amazing to think that the cheese on this pizza was still in the cow on Thursday?

I think that my mozzarella turned out the best that I could have hoped for on a first attempt. I didn't salt it quite as much as it needed. I also wonder how they get the balls so firm and round. Mine kind of flattened out. Maybe more kneading or squeeze more whey out in the beginning? I'm pretty sure that is just something that comes with practice. I also can't figure out how to get them braided. By the time one is warm and stretched out, the other braids would have become cool the best that I could figure out. Again, practice will probably reveal this.

I also located a recipe online on how to make ricotta from the leftover whey. You can make ricotta from the whey remaining from most hard cheeses. The flavor will vary depending on the cheese you have made. Many Italian recipes call for both mozzarella and ricotta (lasagna, most stuffed pastas) because ricotta is a kind of by-product. There is still lots of whey left over after making the ricotta, so you can use it for lacto-fermenting beans and grains and adding to soups and baking breads. The website with the ricotta recipe also has a recipe for dill whey bread. I think I'm going to try to make some whey bread today. Likely not the dill bread, because Lawrence doesn't particularly care for dill.

In making ricotta, you simply heat the whey to 200 degrees F. Then carefully pour it into a butter muslin lined colander over a very large pot or bowl.

I happened to not have any butter muslin and cheesecloth is not fine enough, so I used an old (clean) pillowcase.

Because the ricotta curds are so fine, it took forever to drain and since my colander didn't hold 1/2 gallon+ of liquid, it took several hours before I was able to get the last of the whey ladled in there. It was very late by the time I got it hung to drain overnight, so you don't get a picture of that.

Here's a photo of the jarred ricotta.

This ricotta has a really smooth, satiny texture. It's lovely. Not grainy like commercially available ricotta. You can also make ricotta from milk and that apparently isn't as smooth as ricotta made from whey either.

If you have always wanted to try cheesemaking, but have been hesitant. Do it! The worst you can do is ruin a gallon of milk and some cultures, but the more likely scenario is that you will end up with some tasty cheese. Sure, it might not look beautiful the first try, but with practice you will get it. You'll probably also be itching to try a new cheese, because I think it's very likely that cheesemaking is as addicting as cheese eating.

An Addition to the Family

Not the frog, we've had her for awhile, but the guinea pig is new.

Her new name is Elvira. The family we got her from had named her Keffie, but the girls decided that was an unacceptable name. She is named after Elvira in The Rats of NIMH, totally Maddy's idea. I was partial to Jenny the Guinea. That idea was vetoed. Elvira's nickname is Elvie. She is being treated like royalty around here and the girls are thrilled to have her.

Fun in the Mud

Today we spent the afternoon and evening at a nearby little lake, with part of our homeschool group. It was hovering around 60 degrees (maybe) with sun breaks and those hardy kids still dipped their feet in the water, squished in the mud and some tried to pretend they weren't trying to get wet. How were they not shivering when we adults were huddles in our long sleeves and wishing for hot coffee?

Food was yummy, conversation fun and a camping trip might be in the works. Unfortunately, I left my camera in the van and was too lazy and forgetful to walk back down and grab it. I did make a couple of trips back to haul things but always forgot the camera on those excursions. On one of them my mind was full of the peanut butter brownies with chocolate ganache that I was bringing back up!

Tomorrow the agenda is (hopefully) cheesemaking and a bit of gardening.

Almost Like Winning the Lottery

This morning when I checked the mail, a great surprise was in there. It was a new statement from the hospital. We did get a discount from them on the appendectomy and it was about a $20,000 discount (about 80% of the total hospital bill was discounted). We still have bills from other providers to deal with, but this was the largest by far.

Food Prices on the Rise

We are lucky enough that we have been purchasing many of our products locally, including our animal products, which are mostly from pastured sources. We've been paying higher prices for these products all along and now that food prices are increasing, we are only seeing a small increase for most of these products.

The products that we can't obtain from local growers is increasing dramatically, however. Flour, rice, and maple syrup have all shot through the roof. Maple syrup has gone up more than 50% in the past six months. I have found an organic maple syrup farm that sells directly and will be ordering a gallon from them, at the very reasonable price of $51.60/gallon. Our bulk natural food supplier, Azure Standard, can't even touch that price anymore; theirs is $21.20/quart. Since we go through a lot of maple syrup, this is a good purchase for our family. You know that maple syrup isn't only for pancakes, though it is delicious and nearly obligatory. We use maple syrup to sweeten our homemade yogurt, it's great on hot cereals and sweetens some baked goods and homemade ketchup.

I've been attempting to stock up on some of these staples since it seems that they will keep getting more expensive. The flour has been backordered by Azure Standard the past couple of times I've ordered. I picked up the last ten pound bag of basmati rice at our local grocery store two weeks ago and will grab another today if they've restocked it.

I'm considering purchasing a grain mill and grinding my own flour, but don't know if I want to make that equipment investment right now. I'm sure the results will be well worth it if I did.

Are any of you changing your food purchasing habits? Looking for more direct sources to than you previously would have so that you can get better prices? Stocking up? Forgoing some purchases?

If you own a grain mill, do you love yours and have a recommendation for me? Dislike yours and want to warn me to avoid it?

An Outing to the ER, Again

This time it wasn't an inflamed or infected organ that needed to be removed before it ruptured and spewed deadly toxins into the abdominal cavity. Nope. It was a hole drilled through a finger with a 1/4" drill bit. 2 1/2 hours and untold dollars after we first checked into the ER, Lawrence was discharged with a Vicodin prescription and a bandaged hand, but (very, very thankfully) no broken bone. How a drill bit that size went completely through his finger and didn't shatter the bone is a miracle and one we really needed. His being out of commission again would be economically devastating for us, or nearly so. As a matter of fact, he is still trying to catch up from the scheduling mess created by his appendectomy. He is sore and will need some healing time, but a hole in flesh heals much more quickly than a shattered bone.

A Little Prize for Me

Look what came in the mail on Saturday for me! A prize that I won on the other blog to which I contribute. It is made by the lovely and talented Michelle at Oilcloth Junkie. She has a tutorial on her blog if you'd like to make and own one of these for yourself.

Making Stock of the Situation

I decided it was time to pull the bones out of my freezer and whip up some batches of stock. Lawrence was out of town for a few days, so the super-nose on him won't be offended by the smell of the beef stock cooking. (It has a rather strong, somewhat unpleasant smell.) I did one large pot of chicken and one huge pot of beef and for good measure I threw a pot of beans on there.

Many, many hours later after straining and putting it into jars, I ended up with about five cups of beef tallow, 15-16 cups of concentrated beef stock, one cup of chicken fat, and about 13 cups of concentrated chicken stock.

Plus, I got some labeling help from a five year old, who commanded me to rate her labels on a scale of 0-10.

Sunday's Word Week #24

angiocarpous

–adjective
1. (of a fruit) partially or wholly enclosed in a shell, involucre, or husk.
2. (of a fungus or lichen) having the fruiting body immersed or enclosed in the thallus.