Lithuanian Apple Cheese

Sep 20th, 11

The cottage I am calling home right now is blessed with an apple tree so rich in fruit that a branch broke under its own weight on Sunday night. Needless to say, yesterday’s preserving experiment centered around apples.

I recently had a chance meeting with a fellow student who hails from Lithuania – an adventurous, beautiful, and super earth-conscious woman. The first time we had the opportunity to get together in a social setting, she brought a special treat from her home country – Apple Cheese! This was not a dairy product, but a little cake – reminiscent of fruit leather, but about three-quarters of an inch thick, and spiced up a bit. It was heavenly! An internet search revealed only one reference to apple cheese. Fortunately, this reference offered a recipe!

I began by peeling and chopping 10 large apples, and placing them in a saucepan over the stove. I warmed it up to low heat, added the 90 grams (just under a half-cup) of sugar and half-teaspoon of salt, and simmered for many hours. I found that the task was very compatible with schoolwork. It offered the occasional opportunity to stretch my legs and stir the mixture, a minimally distracting but constructive change of pace.

After a while, the apples became soft, resembling a chunky apple sauce. Here, I added the spices – a half-teaspoon of cinnamon and a quarter teaspoon of cloves.

With time, the mixture began to homogenize. I wasn’t keeping track, but it certainly took longer than the 3 hours indicated in my recipe. I had a dear friend over for dinner, and we chatted into the evening, stirring the thickening mixture, and delighting in its progress towards the desired consistency.

When you decide to pursue your own apple cheese adventure, I definitely recommend starting early in the day, and having plenty of stationary or home-based social plans. When it was well past my bedtime, I finally gave up and ladled the mixture into a plastic tub. It probably had another half hour before it would have reached the intended consistency, but the need to wake early for work won over.

Here’s the final product! My friend came over for lunch today, and sampled it with me. I would like to have continued until it was truly apple cheese, but we both agreed that this little concoction was comparable enough to pass muster.

This afternoon, those browning peaches will finally get some attention. I also have plans to put up some pickles this week. Stay tuned!


Post ID: 535
Preserving

Plum Preserves

Sep 18th, 11

It’s my favorite season again – autumn! As temperatures cool, the trees begin dedicating their energy to two imperatives: survival and generation. As they pull sugars from their leaves for winter storage, they leave behind the lovely pigments that we so enjoy. And as they channel sugars into their many wonderful fruits, it is time for us to harvest.

For the sustainable homesteader, this is a busy time. A wealth of food abounds, but we know it is short-lived. And so begins the season of preservation.

This week I have begun to feel a bit like a ping-pong ball, bouncing back and forth between regular daily activities and the stove. In the contemplative moments spent at the latter location, I offer up my grateful thanks to the historical innovators who contributed to the simple but essential technology of Mr. John L. Mason’s easily sealable home canning jar.

A few nights ago, I discovered two stands of plum trees, for whose presence we can thank an anonymous university landscaper. The fruits of these trees are tiny, but wonderfully sweet. I have not yet identified the variety by name. The first stand is a tangle of branches, apparently representing both purple and yellow plum trees. This is where I went to fill my bicycle baskets yesterday. Needless to say, today’s preserve will be a plum jam.

If there is anything that goes naturally with the preserving season, it is companionship. Rinsing, chopping, and stirring quickly become natural and thoughtless processes, busying your hands but leaving your mind free for other endeavors. Sharing the experience with friends makes it go very quickly, and gives rise to rich and wonderful conversations, like I enjoyed yesterday over the tiny plums. Other times, I prefer solitude while I peel, chop, and stir – enjoying the company of my own thoughts, a book on tape, or the “random” function on i-tunes.

These plums were so tiny that it would have been inefficient to remove the pits by hand. I just halved each one and cooked them until mushy. Then, realizing that I was without a Foley mill (a brilliant though technically simple kitchen tool that enables the super-efficient separation of fruits from their seeds), I searched the cottage for an adequate tool for straining out the many tiny pits. I found, to my delight, that my stainless steel flatware drainer had just the right sized holes. Resourcefulness gold star!

Fruit jams essentially have two ingredients – fruit and sugar. (Another few moments of contemplative gratitude, please, for sugar refining technology.) The process is remarkably simple. Chop the fruit, remove unwanted components (seeds, stems, etc.), cook (usually until soft or translucent), mix in sugar, add pectin, and put in jars. It’s nice to give the jars a hot water bath for maximum sealing and sterilizing power, but I’ve even had success without this step.

The rule for most fruits is equal weights of fruit to sugar. With sweeter fruits, I cut back on the sugar. As far as pectin goes, there are proportion recommendations on the box. But especially tart fruits, like crabapples, have naturally high levels of pectin, and require little to no additions. You can even mix crabapple bits in with other jams if you can’t find any pectin around the house, or want to reduce your reliance on processed products.

For this plum jam, I used a sugar with pectin already mixed in. (This appears to be the norm in Sweden. Swedes love to make berry jams, and I can’t find plain pectin in the stores.) I cut them into smallish bits but left the skins on (I think it’s a waste of time and good nutrients to remove skins, and besides – the jam looks more interesting with purple flecks floating about…). I boiled the plums until they were a nice homogenous mush, and then dumped in what I considered to be slightly less than an equivalent weight of sugar and simmered for another 20 minutes or so. I ladled the mixture into jars, leaving ¼ in of headspace, placed the caps on, and submerged them in boiling water for ten minutes. I sat quietly afterwards, reading and listening for that ever-so-satisfying *pop!* of each lid seal as the jars cooled.

For the easily worried, take note: in canning, EVERYTHING is inexact. And no matter what the books say, so are temperatures. All my life, I was deterred by precise measurements, references to candy thermometers, and water bath times based on altitude. Until I read a recipe for “easy bread and butter pickles” online, stumbling upon the following confidence-inspiring words: “If the seal doesn’t pop, don’t worry! Just remove the lid, microwave it for five minutes, and put the lid back on. This usually does the trick.” This woman’s pickle recipe ushered me gently into the world of canning, and the encouragement of two wonderful friends, made me a permanent resident.

There is a pile of peaches on the porch that are starting to get brown spots… So, stay tuned for more preserving adventures later this week!


Post ID: 500
Preserving

Free Fruit!

Aug 9th, 10

I have been in Sweden for a week and a half now, and have few leads on a long-term apartment. Having no garden of my own, so my eyes are constantly drawn to the gardens of others in the area. One of the more remarkable things I have observed here is the plethora of fruit trees. Where Americans like to landscape with crabapples and redbuds, the Swedes adorn their yards and public spaces with trees bearing edible fruit.

I can understand why Americans shy away from this. Traditional fruit tree cultivars are genetically larger than their ornamental counterparts. In order to keep an apple, cherry, or stonefruit tree small and round, skilled pruning is required. Though the average US landscaper will expend herculean efforts ensuring that a lawn is unanimous in vegetative representation, and can be measured with a micrometer, I have found that they are careful to avoid “high-maintenance” landscaping options, like pruned fruit trees.

For the first week I was here in Linköping, my daily walk to the city center took me past a private dwelling landscaped with cherry trees. I was cheeky enough to pluck a fruit and taste it, and it was clearly a fabulous pie cherry. Being too nervous to tap on their door and attempt, in broken Swedish, to barter for the harvest, I have now watched these cherries ripen and die right on the tree.

I will not be so shy next year. In my early St. Louis days, I would make daily summer strolls past a house with an enormous dwarf peach tree, to collect whatever had fallen over the fence. As I worked up the courage to talk to strangers, I made good neighborhood friends by introducing myself and asking about their fruiting trees. Many of my St. Louis neighbors actually had no idea what to do with their fruit, and happily allowed me the freedom of the harvest. In this way, I obtained, pears, black walnuts, and permission to tap a sugar maple, though I never obtained my own tools for doing so.

One of the sadder moments of my 6 years in St. Louis was when the City cut down a lovely plum tree (somewhere on a city grass-scape near the Hampton/I-44 exit, as I recall). It was widely understood that the destruction of this treasure was intended to discourage the congregation of homeless persons who took advantage of its bounty.

In any case, the apple tree seems to be the favorite around here. There are literally dozens of neatly pruned apple trees, representing at least three varieties of apple, on my bicycle commute to the university. And they are all bearing ripe fruit in a capacity far beyond the needs of the community. I often take an apple or two off the sidewalk, and nibble it as I go.

Yesterday, I finally identified a tree that had no clear ownership. It was in a grassy island of an apartment parking lot. Still careful to exercise discretion, I took only fruits that had fallen. This did not limit the quality or quantity of my harvest, however. I rode home with a mound of apples in my bicycle basket.

Dinner was crispy tart apples and cheese. (The Swedes really know good cheese.)

Now to rededicate myself to my language studies in anticipation of future fruit-tree friendmaking!


Post ID: 483
Uncategorized

Nolan: the Fiber Adventure (Part V)

Aug 5th, 10

Well, I am still finding my footing here in Sweden, and dwelling temporarily in a broom cupboard-sized flat with no outdoor access. As the situation gives me little to report garden-wise, I will entertain you today with a Nolan adventure, which actually took place a few days prior to my departure from St. Louis.

I finished spinning Nolan’s fleece in the nick of time – the entirety of the fleece needed to be turned into neat little balls of yarn in time for our journey, to get around the “no shipping animal products overseas” regulation.

I ended up with thirteen hanks of 2-ply sport-weight yarn (nowhere close to the thickness of the worsted weight I was going for). Courtney was right – once you try spinning lace, it’s hard to train your fingers to make a bulkier product again. No worries, though. The thinner strand means I have more yardage – I just have to choose a pattern for a lighter-weight product.

Setting the twist would normally just involve one 15-minute soak. But it was obvious as I was spinning that Nolan needed yet another bath. So this event served a double purpose. I drew a shallow bath of straight hot water, probably somewhat closer to 115 than the recommended 120 degrees by the time it made the journey from the water heater and into the porcelain tub. I used liquid dish detergent, just as I had when washing the raw fleece.

The hanks tessellated neatly to fill the tub without compacting.

At the end of the half-hour soak, the color of the water was evidence that using soap had been a good idea. Another good idea I applaud myself for was the use of a spare tension-mount shower-curtain rod at about waist-level, for hanging the hanks when they came out of the water. My collapsible wooden drying rack would have been thoroughly insufficient to accommodate 13 hanks of wet wool.

After wringing out the soapy hanks, I drew another hot bath of clean water for the soak. Since I was treating this as a wash, I soaked them for another 30 minutes.

To avoid rust getting onto the white wool during the lengthy drying process, I placed some old towels between the rod and the drying hanks.

In our humid St. Louis weather, I was worried the hanks wouldn’t dry in time to put them in my bag! But they did, just in time! I ran, pyjama-clad, to Courtney’s magical fiber room at an ungodly hour of the night, to wind them into yummy little Nolan cakes.

Hurrah, they made it to Sweden!


Post ID: 465
Uncategorized

Goodbye, Garden!

Aug 1st, 10

I hope you will forgive the dearth of posts this past week. This was the week we finally took our leave of St. Louis. Leaving the climate was quite easy. However, leaving the garden was as difficult as I had expected it would be.
I have made my little urban yard into a joyful sanctuary over the past four years, and will miss my peaceful morning tea on the porch. I built much of it with my own hands, including the farm-fuel-style water tower, the raised beds, pond, and even the porch itself!
Already this season I have had harvests of strawberries, asparagus, peas, potatoes, onions, carrots, many types of beans, herbs, radishes, and cherry tomatoes. But the best is yet to come! I am joyful that the gentleman moving in to our home will both appreciate, maintain, and even expand the agricultural operations of the plot. Here’s a sampling of what I walked away from on Monday:

Ready to harvest:
Onions; Green, Yellow, and Purple Beans; Carrots; Cucumbers; Swiss Chard; Salad Greens

Almost ready to harvest:
Roma, Pear, Beefsteak, and many Cherry Tomatoes; Sweet Corn and Popcorn; Beets; Second planting of Herbs

Awaiting a later harvest:
Canteloupe Melons; Winter Squash; Turnips; Cabbage; Second planting of Radishes

Besides the veggies themselves, there are other things that have brought me joy. I am sad to leave my mutant marigold before it goes to seed. This flower germinated with three leaves instead of the customary dicot two. It has grown to gargantuan proportions, and I was eager to grow new generations of seeds for cross-pollination, to try to isolate a strand of these funnyflowers.

I have also enjoyed my raised beds made from recycled containers, including my big stock tank garden with its water feature, and my steamer trunk herb beds.

Earlier in the season, I built “Supertrellis” for my cucumbers and melons. I sadly forgot to get a last-day photo of it, so here is one from the day Supertrellis was conceived. On the day I left, the vines were about shoulder high up the arch.

But by far, the most difficult thing to leave will be my chickens. Oberon the Rooster, and Winifred, Charlotte and Eleanor the hens have been my most adored companions at home. Raised from day-old chicks, each of my little birds has a unique personality and a loving nature. They dog my every footstep when I am hoeing, and settle near my feet when I am sitting. (Eleanor prefers my lap). They are the force that motivated me to wake early every morning, and that got me out of the house on the coldest of winter days, to sit and cuddle on the porch with a lap full of chickens and a mug of hot tea. They ate my garden pests, cooking scraps, and grass tips, and the hens turned these into rich, tasty eggs almost daily. Oberon watched over his flock, myself, and my husband, and comically attacked visitors. He crowed a beautiful melody that not one neighbor found complaint with. The greatest comfort I take in leaving is the knowledge that they can keep the stability of their home, as the new owner is joyfully keeping them. (And Oberon is establishing a relationship with him.) But I still cry over them daily, and probably will for a while.


Goodbye, home!


Post ID: 439
Uncategorized

Planting potatoes!

Jul 17th, 10

The many potatoes I harvested earlier in the week showed a very obvious sign of my neglect. They were turning green. Potato best-practices generally involve adding to the mound of soil around the stem as the plant grows to encourage more rooting (again – see the similarities to tomato plants!), and to keep the lower tubers from reaching for the sun.

My tubers did indeed see glimpses of the sun, and I unearthed them just before they broke the soil with dozens of new sprouts. Had I left them in the ground, I might have come later to find a remarkable potato colony. But I harvested them. Oh, well.

When potatoes see the sun, they not only send up sprouts, but they also start turning green. Green potatoes are said to contain mild levels of the toxin solanine (they are, after all, nightshades). It is really unlikely that green potatoes will ever cause noticeable harm to your constitution, but considering they usually have sprouting eyes anyway, I like to recycle them back into the ground for a second chance at my signature cheapskate harvest.

I learned to plant seed potatoes from a book. Probably not a book the average person turns to for gardening guidance. I still argue that Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House” series is one of the seminal works of early American historical nonfiction, for ANY age. In any case, after the long battle of convincing my husband that the cheesy TV series of the ’80s had no relationship to the exquisite narrative of the original text, we proceeded to read the 9-book series aloud to eachother over the course of several months.

Somewhere in one of the books, Wilder recounted the simple process of planting spuds. There happened to be a green potato wasting away on our kitchen counter as we were reading, and so the following morning, I followed the simple steps she described.

She spoke about slicing the potatoes into medium sized pieces, each with at least one eye.

Then, she described laying them out to “scab” for a day. Indeed, the following day, the potato chunks had formed what could quite accurately be described as scabs over all the exposed surfaces, sealing in the moisture and serving to protect them from the activity of eager subterranean arthropods.

Finally, she spoke of laying the potatoes in shallow furrows and mounding soil over the rows.

Laura Ingalls hated harvesting potatoes. A writer of unmatched poise and diplomacy, she rarely complained. However, she made no secret of her discontent with the grit of dirt under her nails as she dragged her fingers through the soil in search of tubers for dinner.

I’m sure that if every second of my gardening life was a struggle for mortal survival, I would probably not relish the experience as I do. But the ecstasy I felt when I first dragged my fingers through the dirt and pulled up beautiful little fully-formed potatoes is not something I will soon forget. Whenever I place little seed potatoes in the ground, It’s all I can do to resist jamming my hands under the soil until the harvest!


Post ID: 402
Gardening, Harvesting

Nolan: the fiber adventure (part IV)

Jul 16th, 10

As I begin section IV, I would like to once again voice my appreciation Courtney for her invaluable coaching through my fiber adventures, and the loan of many important tools. Also, to Kate for the loan of her spinning wheel until the day of my departure, which is now a mere 12 days away.

Spinning, spinning, spinning! The spinning process is relaxing and hypnotizing. I have found that I can get quite lost in time when I’m spinning. My best friend during these times is Librivox.org. If you have any mindless work to do and never experienced this fabulous website, then it’s time to change your life! Free audiobooks, recorded by volunteers, covering a vast number of works in the public domain, with more added each week. Librivox comes to the rescue of my idle mind when spinning, knitting, painting ceilings, cleaning house – you name it!

My goal here is to create a “worsted weight” yarn, the industry name for your mainstream yarn thickness. To accomplish this, I am spinning two smaller strands and plying them together for strength.

When the wool is carded, it is much like a loose cotton ball, and I can draw out tendrils of fiber (known as “drafting”) and begin adding the strengthening magic of twist. As the wheel spins, it pulls gently on the fiber. Once sufficiently twisted, I allow the spindle to take up the yarn by loosening the hold of my right thumb and forefinger, and feeding in more drafted wool from the left hand.

The bicycle-pedal physiology of modern wheels is pretty ergonomically accommodating. My legs and core feel no discomfort, despite several hours of spinning a day for the past week. My back and neck, on the other hand, are a bit stiff from all the leaning-in.

Once two bobbins are half-full, I can ply them together. Plying is a quick and rewarding activity. The two bobbins sit on the pins of the “lazy kate” and the yarns are directed through a metal loop that makes the feed smooth. Courtney taught me to spin single-ply yarn counterclockwise, and to ply multiple strands clockwise. Countering the direction of the original twist, the yarn plies cooperatively.

When a bobbin is filled with my yarn product, it is time to wind it into hanks. Hanks are loops of loosely wound yarn. The significance of hanks goes beyond just freeing up bobbin real estate. The loose structure is important for setting the twist (stay tuned for the Fiber Adventure part V). To create a hank, the bobbin is again threaded through the lazy kate, and wound by hand onto a “niddy noddy.” The simplest little innovation, a niddy noddy allows you, with a simple repetitive wrist motion, to wind a continuous yard-long loop. The motion was awkward and foreign to me at first, but I started to feel dexterously robotic as I got the hang of it!

Before slipping the hank off the niddy noddy, it is important to loosely tie it in four places. Mercerized cotton, or any other fiber not likely to felt to the end product, is best for this purpose.

In a few days, when all my hanks are finished, I’ll “set the twist!”


Post ID: 404
Home Arts

Hash browns: breakfast from beneath the soil

Jul 14th, 10

A week or so ago, my potatoes flowered. (Although distinct from one another now, the lovely little five-pointed potato flower belies the shared ancestry of potatoes and tomatoes.) In any case, flowering potato plants announce the beginning of the potato harvest.

For a longer-lasting potato season, you can drag your fingers through the soil several inches from the base of the plant and harvest “new potatoes”, little thumb-sized yummies. After disturbing the roots like this, it is important to ensure the plant is well-watered for the subsequent few weeks. If you do, the main tuber (potato root) will continue to radiate out baby potatoes.

Alternatively, if you prefer large potatoes, (or are irresponsible and neglect the watering a bit much…) it’s time to break out the potato fork and harvest the whole patch. Once the top of the plant dies, the potatoes will rot in the ground if not harvested.

My potato planting has always been guided by the “don’t let anything go to waste” voice inside me, which, joining forces with a deeply rooted skinflint nature, often leads to unintelligent or inefficient decisions. Against the advice of gardening professionals, I plant grocery store potatoes. Spuds from the grocery store are supposedly treated with a mild chemical that would prevent growth and sprouting.

Now I definitely do not purchase grocery store potatoes for the sole purpose of planting. However, any potato that sits on the counter long enough to grow green buds is instantly relegated to the garden. I figure the spuds would just go to waste otherwise, so I’ll try my chances. Besides, having the genetic makeup to overcome the preventative formula and form green sprouts, they probably have the constitution to handle the neglect they will likely suffer in my garden.

In any case, I was pleased with the harvest.

The potatoes were not the only thing I harvested this morning. Feeling a hankering for hash browns, I turned to the onion patch. I am extremely pleased with my onion patch, as it is the first time I have every successfully cultivated onions from seed. The yellow onions seem to be outpacing the reds, for some reason.

They are definitely not mature yet, but I pulled out just enough bulbs to flavor my breakfast and to give the other onions room to expand.

My husband and I enjoyed our breakfast immensely!


Post ID: 368
Gardening, Harvesting

Apples galore!

Jul 12th, 10

Last week, one of my dearest friends in the world visited from North Carolina. Not only does his garden put mine to shame anyday, but he has always come bearing gifts!

I had no idea that apples ripened so early in the year, but apparently North Carolina has impatient apple trees. We had to make multiple trips between the house and his car when he arrived, rescuing several loaded bags of apples from the sweltering St. Louis heat.

Chad was kind enough to provide me with a photo of his backyard, which made my heart leap. The ground is covered with more apples than he could hope to recover, and the trees look like they are still fully loaded!

The true definition of organic, these trees were untreated, and the mottled fruit portended a good many hours of discriminating knifework. Chad and I worked late into the night, separating the tasty apple flesh from the parts nature had already claimed. Although yellow in color, the fruits had the tart taste of granny smiths. We nibbled on crispy apple samples while filling freezer containers with apple slices. We exhausted all my available containers at about the time the freezer reached critical mass anyway.

What to do with the remainder of the fruit? Pie, of course! We enjoyed it for the remaining few days of his visit.

Thank you, Chad!!


Post ID: 366
Harvesting, Preserving

Pumpkin pests II – nefarious partners in crime

Jul 10th, 10

I have now had the opportunity to view Anasa tristis in all its life stages.

According to the University of Minnesota’s department of entomology (http://www.vegedge.umn.edu/vegpest/cucs/squabug.htm), the nymph is the first of five instars. (Instars are life stages effectuated by the shedding of the exoskeleton to reveal a larger and often differently patterned body.) A. tristis individuals apparently take 4 to 6 weeks to fully mature.

Where the gardener in me may be irritated, the biologist in me is gleefully entertained. I managed to capture a shot of a recently emerged instar next to its shed exoskeleton. I also gathered together a small representation of multiple life stages for a family photo.

I was becoming confused, however, because I was quite certain that the new and increased wilting of the leaves could not be the result of the meagre population of A. tristis that remained. Fortunately, it seems that I have maintained my balanced relationship with the squash bug. Unfortunately, a newer, infinitely more nefarious insect has joined the front against my pumpkins.

…the Squash BORER, Melittia cucurbitae, has come to town.

M. curcurbitae is actually a striking moth. It is diurnal, with black wings, a dark red body and impressively spiky hind legs. Very Darth Maul. It has a wasplike shape in flight. Previously unaware of this species’ relationship with curcurbids, I had previously considered it with little more than passing interest. But according to the University of Kentucky’s department of entomology (http://www.ca.uky.edu/entomology/entfacts/ef314.asp), M. curcurbitae is the culprit in the recent pumpkin casualties.

Looking more closely, I could see the evidence that UKY described. Yellowy frass, or chewed up crumbles of plant matter, was forming around the base of many stems. Everything above those stems was wilted or dried. Why had I not seen egg masses? Because this little pest lays its eggs individually. Dang.

I was able to identify the little hole where the larva had bored into the stem of the leaf, and progressed downward toward the roots of the plant.

Slitting the stem, I revealed the offending grub. Distasteful though its appearance was, the chickens found it rather tasty.

If the grub killed only a leaf or two, I wouldn’t be so upset. But it continues rootward from its point of entry, killing all that would grow above it. Thusly, a larva originating nearer to the base of the plant would kill the entire plant once it reached the main stem. Fortunately, UKY had a suggestion for addressing this issue. They suggested burying various nodes along the vine, to encourage the plant to send out roots, and not depend entirely on transport of nutrients from the vine’s origin. I shall do this!

I have checked all leaves for evidence of newly boring M. curcurbitae larva, and cut off all offending stems. I will remain vigilant.


Post ID: 350
Gardening, Pests