Suburban Entwife

Planted: Nothing, but Ben transplanted beans, peas, soybeans, and salsify into containers along the side of the house.

Harvested: Nothing yet.  I might grab some more wild onions on my way home.

Preserved: 12 4-oz jars of dandelion jelly, which hasn’t set yet.  It is delicious — I’d like to try a lower-sugar version, as this is *very* sweet, but it will be lovely on many things.  As several recipes indicated, it tastes a lot like honey.  Sweet and slightly tart and spicy, and a color almost exactly like medium honey.  If it doesn’t set, then I will have dandelion syrup and all will be well.

Stored: 20 pounds rose matta rice, and I put all the bulk grains into plastic buckets.  I’d like to get another 20 pound bag of rice, preferably jasmine, and then I think I’ll call the grain storage good.  (Eventually I’ll get whole corn as well, but that needs to wait for us to use up the cornmeal.)

Prepped: I finally went out and got bobbins, pins, and thread for the sewing machine, so I can get that set up, and I also picked up safety pins and circular knitting needles in two sizes.  I’m not sure how likely it is that I’ll really get serious about knitting, but several things that I really want to make are easier with circular needles, so they seemed like a good investment.  I have a big container of very multi-grain “pancake flour” from all the different grains I’ve been testing in the grain mill.  Even lentils work, though not quite as well as some things.  I made slightly less whole-wheat flour by sifting out some of the bran.  It’s really a better way to collect wheat bran than it is a way to make white flour, but it was an experiment.  I explored the big Indian grocery on Moody street, which will be a good source of several spices I’d been having trouble finding, as well as dried fruit in large bags.  And limes.  Limes are eight for a dollar.

Cooked: Delicious pancakes and excellent lentil soup.  I’ve made lentil soup many times before, but I seem to have hit upon a really good recipe.  Lentils, one large onion, salt, and a hefty pinch of medieval pepper seasoning.  It also helped that I very nearly burned the lentils, resulting in a nice toasty flavor.  It would have been even better if the onions had been caramelized in some oil first.

I’m full of interesting cooking today :-)

The rice bread turned out beautifully — it was basically just cornbread with coarsely ground rice substituted for the cornmeal.  Two cups coarsely ground basmati rice (almost indistinguishable in texture from beach sand), two eggs, about a teaspoon of baking powder, about 1/4 cup sugar, ground ginger, and enough rice milk and water to get it to a nice batter.  Bake in a glass 9×9 dish at 350 degrees until crispy on top and browned on the bottom.  Deliciousness.  And, except for the fact that our grain mill is thoroughly contaminated, gluten free.  It holds its shape well, and has a nice crumb to it that you don’t always get in gluten-free things.  I actually like the texture much better than the cornbread I’ve been making; I think it’s the coarse grind that does it.

So, it turns out that the millet wasn’t too small, it was too soft, wet, and/or oily.  After cleaning the mill plates, we tried grinding the new spelt and had the same problem.  It’s probably fresh enough that it still hasn’t quite dried thoroughly.  We then tried running some basmati rice through it, which is extremely dry and hard, and have had no problems.  We’re currently grinding some rice at the texture of medium-coarse cornmeal…I want to try making rice bread on the same principle as cornbread.  Or I can make some sort of congee-like object if that doesn’t work.  Yum.  I’ll dry out the spelt in the oven, and maybe the millet, and see how that works.

I made pancakes for breakfast.  They were impressively delicious!  1.5 cups flour, 1 cup rice milk, 2 eggs, 3 level grapefruit spoons of baking powder (I couldn’t find the teaspoon), salt, and sugar.  The flour was 2/3 millet and 1/3 kamut.  I fried them on the griddle and they were sweet and fluffy and wonderful.  They had that nice light taste and texture despite being completely whole-grain…pancakes are an excellent use of weird flours since they don’t depend on gluten very much.  Millet flour worked particularly well, but I think it’s actually too small to grind in the grain mill.  It was easy to grind, but ground very very slowly, as if most of it wasn’t actually engaging with the mechanism.  For my next trick, I will attempt to make cream of wheat :-)

Planted:  Nothing yet.  But the peas and beans that were in the bit of the garden that is no longer allowed to be the garden are coming up, along with one or two of them that are in the actual gardeny bit, plus something that I can’t identify and what may be salsify.  I will transplant the beans and peas to pots and put them vaguely useful places.  Possibly including my desk at work, and the desks of anyone else who wants refugee green beans.

Harvested: Nothing so far.

Preserved: I dried some wild onions.

Stored: 50 pounds of wheat, 25 pounds each of spelt and rye, four cans of coconut milk, and four pounds of Asian wheat pasta.  Yes, coconut milk is a necessity. ;-)  It will be joined next week by that concentrated curry paste in cans, I think.  And some honey.

Cooked: Pumpkin bread (using stored pumpkin and freshly-ground kamut flour), leeks with anchovies (using up that random can of anchovies), and helped in the preparation of tangerine jelly, Korean tofu-mollusk soup and Korean spicy barbecue noodles.  The leeks were delicious — the anchovies just gave them some salt and savoriness without being overly fishy.  I sauteed them in the oil from the anchovies, then added in about a third of the actual fish.

Learned: How to grind grain.  We ground the kamut and some of the millet.  Millet is easier to grind since it’s so tiny…I can grind that one-handed, which I couldn’t do with the kamut.  It remains to be seen how well this will work for replacing all our flour, but it can definitely form a good fraction of it.  It’s useful that grinding flour is something that can be done in small chunks as a break from other things, and it is excellent upper-body exercise.

Because this seemed like such a good idea, and yet I didn’t post on Thursday:

1. My coworkers weren’t mad at me for mis-setting my alarm clock and thus not waking up to be picked up to go to the conference.

2. I got fresh hot homemade crepes for breakfast on Friday.

3. The lilacs are blooming and the sun is actually warm.

4. I am enjoying a book called “Ents, Elves, and Eriador: The Environmental Vision of JRR Tolkien”.  Because I am a dork. ;-)

5. Classes are over for the semester and I get my Tuesday and Wednesday nights back, and with them, sleep.  Lovely, lovely sleep.

The pun kind of had to be made ;-)

Last night, Ben re-invented Korean spicy tofu-mollusc stew.  It was utterly delicious, and turned kimchi from an evil substance that fills the apartment with fumes to the tasty spicy sour concoction that I enjoy in Koren restaurants.  It is authentically made with chili oil instead of (or possibly in addition to?) kimchi, but it created approximately the same effect, though there’s just something endearing about the layer of almost incandescently glowing red-orange oil on the soup when you get it in a restaurant.  It is a good thing to feed to people who think tofu is boring, provided they eat shellfish.

Boil mussels until they open, then removed the shells.  In the same water the mussels had been boiling in, add cubed silken tofu, sliced ginger and garlic, chopped greens, kimchi (we used the tail ends of a jar of daikon and a jar of cabbage kimchee), honey, leftover cooked rice, noodles, and sesame oil.  SImmer until veggies and noodles are cooked, add mussels and simmer for a few more minutes.

Yum.  Kimchi can also be used to create Korean “barbecue” sauce for noodles, which Ben has made but I have not experienced yet.  Its newfound usefulness goes along with my new food storage plan.  Kimchi comes from the Korean grocery store in wide-mouthed glass quart jars with tight-fitting plastic lids (or pint jars, or plastic gallon jugs, but we usually get the quart size).  As we use kimchi, I am transferring bulk grains and beans into the kimchi jars for immediate use in the pantry.  Larger quantities will be stored in the basement, and the uniform size of the jars will make it easier to track how much of each thing we use.  If we run out of uses for the kimchi jars, we can also return them to the store and get 25 cents back.  (The store owner makes it herself.)

Planted: Nothing so far.

Harvested: Quite a lot of dandelions from overgrown areas, plus some wild onions.  No sign of the legumes and potatoes in the garden yet, but the garlic seems to have survived the move relatively unphased.

Preserved: Started a batch of dandelion jelly — this is probably not going to get finished until Sunday at the earliest, so the soggy dandelion bits are going in the freezer for now.

Stored/Managed: I ordered 50 pounds of wheat berries and 25 pounds each of spelt and rye.  On Monday we went to the co-op and got several pounds each of popcorn, forbidden rice, kamut, honey, couscous, and balsamic vinegar.  The pretty glass jar I had the popcorn in shattered spectacularly when I went to put it in the cupboard, so that was an adventure and the popcorn is now in a plastic container.  And under the radiator.  And in the corners of the dining room.  And probably other places as well.  The two butternut squashes from the December pickup are still doing beautifully.  Inspired by someone on Sharon’s food storage list, I am going to implement a shiny new food storage maintenance plan this weekend.  We have a volunteer pest controller with many many many legs who rather startled me when he introduced himself from behind the cup in the bathroom this morning.  He will probably be evicted if I find him again because legs and skittering and eep.

Prepped: I rescued a pasta jar suitable for canning from the neighbors’ recycling bin.  I’ll be going to the grocery store later to get pectin and canning lids — if they don’t have canning lids, the jelly will have to wait until I mail-order them or otherwise find somewhere that stocks them.

Cooked: This week has actually been rather culinarily uninspired.  Ben made a kimchee-gefilte fish stirfry while I was far, far away from the terrifying food.  I think that’s as much excitement as the kitchen needs for one week.  I did make some very nice bread.

Worked on Local Food Systems: I had a good chat with a coworker moving to the area about the CSA and farmer’s market.

Learned: Mainly that I really shouldn’t have downloaded the new version of that computer game.  I have been killing orcs instead of doing useful things.  At least it’s an open-source computer game?

Next fall I will be taking Cataloging and Theological Librarianship.  Unless I get off the waitlist for YA Fantasy and Speculative Fiction, in which case I’ll take that, but I don’t have high hopes.  What, you may ask, is theological librarianship?  I’m not exactly sure either, but it involves things like managing church/synagogue/Vatican/other religious entity libraries.  No, I’m not really planning on doing that professionally, but it looked kind of interesting.  And, most importantly, it fits in my schedule and will be held online.  I am amused at the extent to which my life next fall will consist almost solely of books and religion.  With a side order of preserving and eating local produce.  If anyone I know in person reads this thing, will one of you drag me out of the library at some point and make me play Settlers or something?

I’ve seen a couple people I know post things they are thankful for on Thursdays, and it seems like a nice practice that I’d been meaning to take up, plus the cute alliterative value of doing it on Thursday.  I am thankful for many things today, but five seems like a nice round number:

1. Grain Mill!  See previous entry. ;-)

2. On a related note, we found a carpenter!  The board to bolt the grain mill to would be the work of about five minutes if we had a drill press, but we don’t, and aren’t going to get one any time soon.  I’d been a bit worried about how easy it would be to find a carpenter we could get to who would do such a tiny project, but we found one who lives just up the road, has been living in Waltham for 50 years, and would be quite happy to drill two holes in a piece of wood for us for a nominal fee.

3. I have been reading “The Path of Blessing” by Marcia Prager, which is an excellent book discussing, among other things, analysis of Hebrew blessings that is like morphology only even more filled with nift.

4. I have student workers who are awesome and move books with astonishing speed.

5. I found a recipe for dandelion jelly that got me really excited about fun foraged food projects, which woke me up after I’d been having a sort of blah day.