Welcoming Winter

Like the spring before it, Winter 2011 has been...unpredictable, to say the least.  That's good news for the gardeners trying to eke out a few more harvests off the late-season lettuce, kale, carrots, and radishes; not so good news for us winter sports lovers.  I know, I know...how can I possibly be a gardener AND a winter sports enthusiast?  I'm not sure, really.  All I know is, I love both with equal passion.

I find there's a certain magic in winter:  the morning you wake up with frost coating your lawn and rooftop; those first flurries skittering fast and furious past your wiper blades, then magically disappearing when they hit the ground; how your breath puffs and glows in the soft light of the streetlamp while walking the dog.  Then there's the holiday lights, the fogged-up spectacles, a cup of steaming tea or cocoa, the snow angels, the impromptu snowball fights, and the comforting heat of a thick soup.  What's not to love?


But my favorite of all is downhill skiing.  We CAN do it in the Midwest, believe it or not!  Sure, the runs aren't as long as those on the East Coast or the Rockies, but I find it's enough.  We make our own snow when Mother Nature doesn't bless us with the falling-from-the-sky kind.  Ever see a sunrise through the veil of a snow gun?  You should; it's an amazing and beautiful thing.









My boots and skis have been itching all year for this...

I find there's a certain freedom in speeding down the side of a mountain, connected to the ground only by a pair of boards on your feet and every muscle from the waist down.  In skiing, everything's backward:  go up to slow down, go faster for more control, shift weight to the downhill side to turn.  It's a surreal experience, learning to trust your legs instead of your feet, your ears instead of your eyes.  But once you learn, it's the closest thing we have to flight.





Then there's night skiing.  The snow takes on an ethereal glow, illuminating terrain and paths you could have only dreamed of seeing in the daylight.  It's a completely different perspective.







Winter is a special and beautiful time for those with eyes to see it.  What better way to revel in it than to get out and play?  Listen close...the snow is calling, and the mountains waiting...

 

Making Butter

Recently on the latest season of the reality travel show The Amazing Race on CBS, the contestants traveled to Europe.  While there, one of the tasks they completed was churning butter.  That got me to thinking:  why can't I do that?  Seemed like a simple enough task, and no one I know has ever done it.  At least, not since kindergarten with the marble in a glass jar activity.

That didn't work out so well in my class...we broke the jar.  Cream and butterfat everywhere; not pleasant...

But surely, as an adult I could do this.  So I whipped out my trusty stand mixer, got some heavy whipping cream, and got to work.  Supposedly it was really fast and easy; all I had to do was pour the cream into the bowl, whisk it up, and the butter would magically appear 1 to 5 minutes later.

Fail.  I overlooked the fact that you had to LET THE CREAM SIT OUT.  Apparently, it needs to "acidify" a bit before you use it; to the tune of 18 - 24 hours.  Wait...what?  Doesn't that go against some kitchen cardinal rule or something?  Leave milk/cream on the counter; it gets sour; you throw it out.  Right?

Not for butter, apparently.  If the cream is too cold, it will never separate.  Trust me; I tried it for the better part of 2 hours the first time.  Heavy cream is made of two parts:  microscopic fat gobules, and the liquid that keeps them suspended.  Allowing the butter to sit out at room temperature for a day or so allows the chemical bonds to weaken to the point of being physically broken via agitation.  Once the cream's fat (butter) is separated from the liquid (buttermilk), you can use each product separately for its own purposes.  Voila - two products for the price of one!

So I tried it again, with MUCH better results.  It takes only a couple minutes, and is actually a really fun activity to do with children.  It's also a whole lot of fun to impress people with it at a potluck, because very few of us know how to make our own butter anymore.

Here's how you do it:

1.  Select fresh whipping cream.  Organic or pasture-fed, preferably.  Most cream you see on grocery store shelves has been ultra-pasteurized, which makes it harder for the fat-liquid bonds to be broken down.  You'll get a higher quantity of butter if you use the fresh stuff.  As for organic or pasture-fed, this will impact the color of the butter.  Cream originating from pasture-raised cows has a higher CLA content (conjugated linoleic acid), a higher level of Omega-3 fatty acids, and more Vitamin E and beta-carotene than its conventional counterpart.  This can be seen clearly in the color of the end product:  pasture-raised butter is a deep yellow color, while the butter from a cow fed a "conventional" diet of grain is almost pure white.


One quart cream = 1 lb butter & 2 cups buttermilk


2.  Allow the cream to sit at room temperature for 18 - 24 hours.  You don't have to open the container; just letting it sit there is perfectly fine.

3.  Pour the cream into the stand mixer, and whisk.  Start at low speed, then increase the speed to high to prevent splatter.  The cream will go through a couple stages:  frothy, soft peaks, hard peaks, clumping, and then final separation.  This will happen VERY quickly, so watch out!  Once the cream starts splattering again, back off the speed; you've separated the butter from the buttermilk.

4.  Pour the mixture thorough a colander to separate the butter from the buttermilk.  Save the buttermilk for biscuits, salad dressing, or pancakes.

5.  Rinse the butter with cold water in a stainless steel bowl.  Press the butter to the sides to release any buttermilk that might be hiding.  Repeat 3 - 4 times until the water runs clear; this will prevent the butter from going rancid later.

6.  Stir in any seasonings, if desired.  Salt, garlic and honey are the most popular.  Adjust to your tastes.

7.  Store in a glass/ceramic container.  You can also store butter in wax paper or aluminum foil, but it has a tendency to take on the taste of anything else that's sitting next to it.  So I find that glass containers keep it fresher, longer.  Butter can be stored at room temperature (3 days), frozen (3 months), or in the refrigerator (3 weeks).

ENJOY!!!

Healthy Snacking...Apple Chips

Nothing says "fall" like apples!  Around my house, we use them for everything:  desserts, breads, muffins, butter, sauce, soup, jelly, snacks.  Of course, apple season isn't complete until we've downed at least 2 gallons of cider.



This year, I decided to experiment with drying apples.  I always loved apple chips as a kid, downing bags of them at a time.  But now, as an adult, I usually can't eat them without having a heart attack over the price tag.  C'mon...$3.50 for a sandwich-sized baggie?  You have GOT to be kidding!!


Apple chips are the perfect guilt-free snack:  no greasy fingers, a satisfying crunch, sweetness, chock-full of nutrients, and low in calories.  Personally I'm not as concerned about the calorie count as much as getting my "3 a day" quota in for fruit servings...but some people are into the calorie-counting thing.  And as an added bonus, dried apples have a nice firm texture so you don't have to worry about that icky softness that some fresh apple varieties have.

So how do I make my own?  It's simple, really.  So simple that I can't imagine how I've gone so long without doing it.  All you need is a corer, a knife, some crystallized fruit preserver (a mix of vitamin C and sugar to prevent the apples from browning), an hour of time, and a food dehydrator.  If pressed, I suppose you COULD use the oven for drying, but most models don't have a temperature setting low enough not to burn them to a crisp.

1.  Wash, peel, and core the apples.  I usually do 3 or 4 at a time to stay ahead of the oxidation (browning) factor.  If I'm industrious with my spacing, I can get anywhere between 12 and 15 apples into my dehydrator's six drying racks.

2.  Cut the apples lengthwise, then slice each half into 4 or 8 slices, depending on how thick you want your chips to be.  Thinner slices are reminiscent of a potato chip, while thicker slices are more like a sweet jerky.   I've done both, and still can't decide which I like better!

3.  Soak the slices in a fruit preserving solution for 10 minutes.  Mix 2 quarts of water (8 cups) with 2 TBS granulated fruit preserver until dissolved.  Dump in the apple slices, and wait.  This will prevent the apples from browning, and act as a preservative.  This is usually when I start cutting up my next batch of apples.
 
4.  Remove the apples from the solution, drain, and place on the drying rack.  They can be as far apart, or as close together, as you wish.  So long as they're arranged in a single layer and not overlapping, it's all good.  If the apple slices are close together, it will take longer for them to dry...but only by a few hours.  If the slices overlap, parts of them won't dry properly and you could get mold growth.

5.  Dry the apples at 130 - 135 degrees F until dry and leathery.  Depending on the temperature, altitude, and humidity of the house, this will take anywhere between 6 and 48 hours.  Now my favorite part:  testing the apples to see if they're done!  Grab a few slices and eat them...fully dried apples should be leathery.  Thin slices should be crispy, while thicker slices should snap apart like jerky does.

6.  Allow apples to cool to room temperature, and store in an air-tight container.  Allowing the apples to cool prevents their container from getting condensation on the inside and re-hydrating the apples as they're being stored.  I like to keep my apples in a glass jar, or in a plastic bag.  They'll keep for awhile...exactly how long I can't say, because I always eat them within a week or two!

Enjoy!

Canning Tomatoes

I'm pretty proud of my garden.  We harvested about 175 lbs of produce this year, with about 140 of that being tomatoes.  EXCELLENT!  Of course, the tomatoes didn't all come in at once; they trickled in around 30 lbs a week or so.  Perfectly manageable for the first year of my garden...but I hope to increase production for next year.

So what to do with them?  True to my relatively new-found Betty Crocker skills...I canned them.  And why shouldn't I?  We use diced tomatoes like crazy at my house, and at $1.79 per 14.5 oz for the organic brands, I figured I could make my own organic diced tomatoes for a whole lot less.  And now that we're eating what I've canned, I can enthusiastically say that there is NO comparison between my tomatoes and those you buy in the store!

Sure, it might be the hard work talking.  But I doubt it.  There's a certain depth and complexity to the flavors of my diced tomatoes that I've never experienced from the store-bought kind.

I ended up canning 21 pints of diced tomatoes, which has a retail value of about $42.  Not a bad savings, considering I spent only $6 on seed.  Of course, time is money...but I don't count that, because gardening and canning are hobbies, a labor of love that fill me with immense satisfaction...and a way to eliminate those free hours alone while my husband is diligently studying to earn his Master's degree.

Before canning any product, pre-processing has to happen first.  In the case of tomatoes, this involves washing, cutting out the core and any bad spots, scooping out the seeds with a finger, and blanching them in boiling water to get the skins to come off.  Not hard work, by any means, but it can be tedious after the first 30 lbs.  Enter the iPod and Pandora radio, those magical inventions to dispel tedium!  Put on some fun dance music, and I get a workout while my canning gets done!

If I'm feeling REALLY industrious, I'm usually making bread at the same time as doing my canning.  And why not?  Bread requires no babysitting once it gets started, and rises quickly in a nice steamy kitchen.  Baking requires the oven; canning, the stove.  It's going to get hot and take a few hours anyway, so you might as well pull your hair back, put on a tank top and shorts, and make your appliances earn their keep.  Go big or go home, right?

My pre-processing setup looks something like this:  freshly washed and weighed tomatoes on the right; cutting board, knife, goop bowl, and compost receptacle in the center; clean cookie tray for keeping runaway tomatoes and their juices in check on the left.

Once my sauce pot of boiling water (aka the blanch bucket) has reached a nice rolling point, I'll drop in a few tomatoes, 4 - 5 at a time, and set the timer for 45 seconds.  After that, they get pulled out and dropped into an ice bath to stop them from cooking.  When the tomatoes have cooled enough to touch, I put them in a colander over a bowl to drain any excess water.

The skins should just fall off practically on their own by this point.  If not, don't stress; those were unripe parts of the tomato, and you don't want to keep those parts anyway; they're tough, white, and flavorless.  I squeeze the remaining good parts of the tomatoes into quarters and drop the pieces into a soup pot.

To can them, I use what's called the "hot pack" method.  It's where you heat whatever food you happen to be processing in the jars so you get more food volume per jar.  A cost-saving measure, really, to prevent you from buying/sterilizing more jars than absolutely necessary.  It also cuts down on the time you need to process your jars in the water-bath canner, which is fine by me.  For tomatoes, simply add enough water to barely cover them, heat to a boil, and let the whole thing boil there for 5 minutes.

At the end of 5 minutes, your tomatoes are ready to be ladled into their sterilized, warm jars.  It's very important that each pint receives 1/2 tsp of canning salt and 1 TBS of bottled lemon juice BEFORE you ladle in any tomatoes.  The salt acts as a preservative, and the lemon juice increases the acidity to prevent the growth of C. botulinum, a bacteria that causes a paralytic illness called botulism.  Canning is a science, but it isn't rocket science; just follow the processing directions to the letter and use your common sense when inspecting the contents before eating them, and it's perfectly safe.

Once the jars have been filled with only 1/4" headspace, place them in a water-bath canner and boil hard for 40 minutes.  Remove the jars and allow them to cool for 24 hours on a towel-covered counter.  If you did everything right, you should hear the tell-tale POP of the jar being vacuum-sealed.  If you didn't hear one; it's not that big of a deal, just put that jar into the refrigerator and use it within the month.  The others can be stored at room temperature in a pantry for up to a year.



Happy canning!

Garden Clean-Up

Like all good things, gardens come to an end too.


But what a lovely day to do it!  Blue skies and puffy clouds...perfect fall weather!

It was a good year; eggplants, tomatoes, potatoes, flowers, herbs, peppers, squash, corn...they all made it to the table.  And now, this is all that's left...

So now it's time to put the garden to rest for next spring.

But it's such a big job...







Honors Students to the rescue!!











What would we have done without them??
So many things to be done!

Collect what's left!
















Do you see anything you want to take home?

Tomatoes, perhaps?

Tear down anything that moves!


















Pull what you can...we don't want to see those weeds growing next year!

Got tomatoes?

Where should we put this stuff?
We can't throw it away...





















Got it covered; we're building compost bins!
First we'll dig the holes and set the stakes.

Is that sledgehammer big enough to handle the job?  How about the ladies wielding it?  Be careful; you don't want to miss!

Then we'll put up fencing to keep it all inside...











And fill it to the brim!

We'd be lost without our volunteers...



And Wayne's truck, for that matter...











Isn't it amazing how a small group of strangers can come together and get so many things done?








Time for socializing!

And goofing around..."American Gothic" style!

And for having pictures taken with people we won't see for awhile!










With only a few lone tomatoes left behind...

Our garden rests quietly until Spring.

Homemade Fertilizer

Not every person is happy to say, "I've got worms."  Gardeners, on the other hand, will shout it joyously to every corner of the universe if you'd let them.  And why shouldn't we?  Worms do so many things for us, for our plants, and for the soil.

Worms are Nature's fast-track garbage disposals, daily ingesting their body weight in plant waste and depositing the waste (politely called casts or castings) in a form that plants can use.  Unlike the wastes of many other animals, worm castings are actually more nutritious coming out than they were going in.  Excellent fertilizer, in other words.  Cultivated worm waste, also called vermicompost, can contain 8 times more nitrogen than compost alone.

Feeling squeamish?  That's a perfectly normal reaction, but there's really nothing to worry about.  Worms' digestive tracts contain no bacteria, so we don't have to worry about nasty things like salmonella or E. coli in worm castings.  Worms are vegans, consuming absolutely no animal products or oils of any kind, so there are no smelly by-products released during their waste production...meaning that you can keep them in your garage or basement, and they'll happily make all the fertilizer you could ever need.

Really, it's easy.  All you need is a 10 gallon tote with a small hole drilled in the side, some moistened shredded paper, a bowl of chopped (meatless) kitchen scraps, and a handful of red worms.

The variety of worms is very important.  Red worms, also known as red wrigglers, are the best species of worm to start making vermicompost.  In the wild, they occupy the top 6 inches of soil, ingesting organic matter and leaving their castings behind them.  Most of the worms you see on the sidewalk after a big rain are actually nightcrawlers, not red worms.  The difference between them and red worms is that nightcrawlers are HUGE.  They require more space than red worms, often digging up to 6 feet beneath the soil surface!  So obviously not a good choice for a 10 gallon tote, or even a 30 gallon one.  Red worms can be purchased from bait shops, the internet, or donated from a friend who also has a worm bin.


It doesn't take much to get a worm bin going.  Just moisten the shredded paper to very-wrung-out sponge level, put the worms in, and give them a bowl of kitchen scraps.  If you're just starting out, a bit of sand or garden soil would also be helpful; worms don't have teeth, and need to ingest small rocks to help the food move through their digestive tract.  They'll eat just about anything; just be careful about hot peppers, onions, potato skins, garlic, and high-citrus fruits like tomatoes.  They don't like those too much, and you'll eventually have to pick them out later.  But anything else is fair game:  celery, carrot, apple, banana, bell pepper, moldy bread, zucchini, eggplant, cooked pasta or rice, lettuce, cabbage, spinach...the list goes on forever.


Worms like places that are moist and dark, so I like to bury the food in a corner, kind of sandwiched in on top of some paper, and then bury it under a layer of newspaper to discourage fruit flies.  You'll have to add more shredded newspaper eventually, but don't stress about it.  Just add more as you need it.  I use my shredded bills and credit card offers for their bedding.  By the time our shredder is full again, it's just about time to give the worms fresh bedding.


Then, you wait.  I usually don't feed my worms more than twice a month.  They don't need much attention, really.  Just keep them in a place where the temperature is between 50 and 75 degrees Fahrenheit, and they're happy.  And they reproduce like crazy, doubling their population every six weeks; so even though the start-up is slow, they'll soon eat you out of house and home!

The best way to use the vermicompost once it's done is in a compost tea.  Tea is created when you dissolve the castings in water for about 24 hours, then strain it to remove any debris.  I like to use vermicompost tea in a 1:6 solution to prevent fertilizer burn on my plants.  And the plants love it!  Truly, my home-made vermicompost puts Miracle-Gro to shame...and it's free, which is another added bonus.

Autumn Garden Prep

It's so cold and blustery this week in Central Indiana!  Thanks a lot, Tropical Storm Lee...thanks a lot.  But on the positive side, this sudden shift in the weather gets me thinking about the changing of the seasons.  Autumn is coming, and with it means putting the garden to bed...while welcoming apple season with open arms!

We only have a few weeks left of good harvest time left, and my garden plants know it; production is starting to slow down a bit.  But just because the harvest is over doesn't mean we gardeners get to take a rest!  Autumn is the season in which we must prepare the soil for next year's planting.  The work's just begun.

Unfortunately, a lot of people forget this part.  Whoops.  I know what you're thinking; I get it all the time:  "Come on, seriously?  Of all things, why is it important to prepare the soil for next year?  Doesn't it just sit there, waiting?  That's all it needs, right?"

WRONG.  Soil is a natural resource, and a preciously fragile one at that.  And probably one of the most overlooked, simply because it's EVERYWHERE you look.  But good soil is a special thing indeed:  a gardener can have the blackest thumb in the world, but so long as the soil he's working is good, his garden will be beautiful.  Conversely, an award-winning gardener can do everything right by bad soil, and his plants will still die.  Plants require a good soil to live, and one thing we can do is manage that growing medium so that it will continue to support life.

So here are a few suggestions on how to get your garden (soil) ready for winter:

1.  Clean House.  Remove all plants, vines, dead leaves, spoiled fruits, weeds, and mulches.  If they're not diseased, toss them in the compost pile.  They'll break down over winter and form a good growing medium for you to use next year.  The reason for this is to prevent insect pests from having a place to hibernate over the winter months.  If there's no shelter in your garden, they won't lay their eggs there...and the troublesome offspring hatching from those eggs will be less likely to chew on your plants!


2.  Amend the Soil.  Here you've got options.  If you have aged manure or compost available, spread a layer 1 - 3 inches deep over the top of your growing area and till it into the soil with a spade, hoe, or mechanical tiller.  If you're buying manure/compost from the store, you'll want about 20 lbs per 100 square feet.  The compost/manure will decompose into the soil, releasing the nutrients so they'll be available for the plants come spring.  It's smelly and hard work, to be sure, but your plants will thank you!


You can also do a cover crop, sometimes called "green manure."  This technique involves sowing a mix of legumes and grasses about 4 - 6 weeks before frost, which is about Autumn Equinox here (Sept 21-23).  Plants included for winter cover crops are winter wheat, crimson clover, and rye.  Some sources say to plant hairy vetch or mustard in the mix...but these plants are invasive in Indiana.  If they flower or go to seed, you'll have a HUGE problem on your hands, and will have a very difficult time getting those weeds under control.

The plants in a cover crop will germinate and establish themselves before the frost, then go dormant during the coldest part of winter.  They'll grow a bit during mid-season thaws, but mostly their purpose is to fix nitrogen in the soil and prevent the soil from becoming compacted or eroded during the cold season.  Four to six weeks before the last frost in spring, about the Spring Equinox here (March 21-23), chop the plants down to the ground with a weed eater or loppers, and till everything into the soil.  The plant material will decompose quickly, and provide nutrients for the growing season.

The key is to NOT let any of those grasses or clovers flower or go to seed.  You don't want them to reproduce; just grow and die.  You shouldn't need a whole lot of seed to do this; just a pound or two of each cover crop should be enough to cover 1000 square feet.

3.  Cover the Soil.  If all else fails, and you can't get your hands on compost, animal manure, or cover crop seed, cover the soil with leaves.  This will prevent the soil from blowing away during winter, and will prevent the worst of the elements from weathering it.  But be careful; you don't want to till the leaves into the soil.  Fallen leaves have a high carbon content, and the microorganisms in the soil will use up any nitrogen left over from the growing season to decompose them.  Best to simply use them as cover, and then pull them off in spring when you're prepping the garden.


Happy Autumn Prepping!