baby life

I For a long time in January, we kept saying "it just feels like spring is almost here!" The weather was mellow and warm, and even though the trees and shrubs were still spindly and naked, winter seemed to have lost its bite. I think half of it was that we were on the flip side of the winter solstice.

Now, in mid-February, there's no wondering or hoping. Spring is here, and everywhere new life is bursting out of what seems like nowhere. The cover crop in our garden, after huddling close to the ground for months, is leaping and leggy and brilliant green. The snowberry and salmonberry are leafing out along the trail; our side yard is full of unfolding bleeding heart. We even seeded things in our greenhouse the other day--enough onions for the world, or at least the town of Concrete, and spinach and peas. I'm ready to get the picnic table back out on the patio!

No, there's still a lot of rain yet to come. It's not picnic table season.

But my very favorite sign of spring this year is baby lambs! We found them in the barn Monday morning, wrinkly and awkward and almost alien-like in their long-leggedness. And just darn cute. These two are ahead of the curve; there are still four mamas yet to give birth. I have now become obsessed with baby lamb watching and eyeing those mamas for signs of labor, at least, the signs that Storey's Guide to Raising Sheep has told me about. Monday afternoon, I did a close read on the labor and delivery chapter, and took a bunch of notes. Luckily, most of the time labor goes fine and the mamas don't need any help. But I do have the page about labor assist, with all sorts of handy diagrams, flagged. Can you just imagine us with our Storey Guide and sanitized cooking-oiled hands, ready to reach in?

This morning, triplets appeared in the barnyard. All of them healthy, mama included, which is not necessarily expected when lambs come in threes. Monday's, 1601 and 1602, have already graduated to a bigger pen with access to outside, and you'd never know just a few days ago they were wobbling and weaving instead of leaping and prancing. 

Sunday, we expect chicks. Needless to say, it's super distracting. Who wants to be consulting Chicago Manual of Style when there is so much new life outside?

touching four seasons

We've fallen into a season-driven existence here. And I don't mean simply seasonal eating. The seasons drive the cycles of our days, too. In the height of last summer, we were spending tons of time outside--my work days were bookended by garden watering and tending; we ate out on the patio, then worked in the garden or walked the trail, not coming inside until dark at 9 or 10. It was projects galore. In the depths of this winter, our garden soil is so frozen that we can't even hack out our last few carrots and beets. We tuck the animals in for the night at 3:30 or 4--although yesterday we noticed we were coming back from the sheep barn at 4:30 and it wasn't yet dark, a milestone!--and then we hunker down inside by the wood stove for evenings of cooking, playing board games, and playing music. The rain shushes on the roof and wind roars in the trees. The windows are vast and dark and show nothing at all except the reflections of the cheeriness inside.

Yet, as I am cooking dinner tonight, with the wood stove flaring orangey-red across the room, fall and summer and spring feel close. I'm cooking potatoes and carrots from our fall garden, and  roasted tomatoes (the last, sob!) from summer. They're so sweet I think they might conjure summer right here, like a potion, if I purée and drink them. And spring is on the mind; our seed order is on its way this very minute and we'll start seeding in the greenhouse in just about a month. I can feel it—the lighter evenings, the salad greens, the radishes. 

We may appear deep in hibernation, but the ground is thrumming. For a moment, the dark windows are full of promise. 

csa obsession

I have always loved the idea of CSAs since I first read about them back in my intern days at Mountaineers Books (in The Urban Farm Handbook). But I've never been a part of a CSA until last fall. And the shipment that arrives on our doorstep once a month isn't full of vegetables but of flour!

I first read about Bluebird Grain Farms and their grain CSA in the same book I mentioned above (it's a great book). I've dreamed about doing this CSA since two falls ago, when I realized how much flour we were using for our weekly loaf of no-knead bread--and how little I knew about it. We were using mostly white bread flour because it bakes into soft open crumb bread, but white flour is basically wheat with its most nutritious parts, the bran and the germ, removed. Bread was a big part of our weekly diet. We weren't (and still aren't!) going to change that. Were we actually eating anything worthwhile?

Fast forward a year, and we finally signed up for the CSA. Bluebird Grain Farms is just across the pass from our home; they grow, harvest, and mill organic hard red spring and hard white spring wheat, as well as rye and some ancient grain varieties. They are the sort of small, family-owned business that I feel very strongly about supporting with my cash whenever possible.

This flour is milled to order. That means a number of things: the flour is young and nutritious. If you're going to eat whole grain flour because of its nutritious value, then this is the way to do it.

However, the flour is immature. Aged flour (perhaps one month or older) tends to have stronger gluten-forming properties and bakes better. Plus the bran and germ, when left in during milling, interfere with the gluten-forming properties of flour. The result? Bricks for bread, apparently, and bricks that don't even really hold together on top of that. So when we got our first CSA delivery, I did all sorts of research on baking with fresh purely whole wheat flour. Usually, you have to make compensations, a main one being adding something like vital wheat gluten, which gives those gluten networks a big kick skyward and helps the bread rise, be less dense, and not crumble apart. Also, all–whole wheat recipes often call for adding sweetener, like maple syrup or honey, to smooth whole wheat's earthy and sometimes bitter flavor. Flour from hard red wheat berries is not ideal for cakes, cookies, and pie crusts due to its high protein content. Low protein flours lead to softer baked goods. So you usually want soft red or soft white wheat flour, or not even whole wheat flour at all. (And this is really just scratching the surface of the science; I could go into waaaay more detail thanks to a bread-related project I've been deep in for work. Way more detail than most people, but luckily not Tim, or so he says! want to know). 

I decided to not make any compensations at first, for experiment's sake. And thus I discovered the mystery of Bluebird Grains flour: it needs no babying or assistance when you have the right recipes. (I did bake a few crumbly and less-than-ideal loaves before I found the right recipe). I really don't know how to explain it, because frankly you could spend decades reading forums bursting with stories about all kinds of complex workarounds for achieving the holy grail whole wheat loaf. But this flour just works. 

I make no-knead sandwich bread (http://www.veganbaking.net/recipes/breads/enriched-breads/yeasted-enriched-breads/no-knead-whole-wheat-sandwich-bread) with the hard red flour. It isn't a craggy artisan loaf with holes as big as your thumbnail. It has a tighter crumb, although not anywhere as tight as  store-bought sandwich bread. It rises. It's soft. It doesn't crumble. (Again, other sandwich recipes I tried struggled with these issues, but I've never had problems with this recipe.) And the flavor is nutty, earthy, rich, and totally worth obsessing over. 

I use hard red for pie crusts too. The end result has more heft and flavor than AP flour crusts, but it flakes and melts in your mouth just like pie crust should. For biscuits, I use hard white or einkorn. These biscuits are not the pillowy puffballs you get from a box (I do like boxed biscuits, so that's not an insult). These biscuits somehow manage to be light and hefty all at once, with a fresh deep flavor that does not actually need any honey or jam at all. In fact, honey and jam just get in the way. All you need is butter. 

I sat down to do some research tonight about baking with fresh flour, just to refresh my memory. And really, I discovered that I can't explain why I haven't had issues with it. I should. But I don't. So go buy Bluebird flour.

fall gardening for spring

Fall around here is mesmerizing. The trees ringing the pasture are orange-ing, the mornings are misty and cool, the fireplace is keeping us company again come evenings, and the elk are bugling right outside our back door (and under stars and moon we hear the wooden clack of antlers crashing in battle). 

Our garden is dying back (except the zucchini, which seems to be raging, raging against the dying of the light), and it's bittersweet. For next season, we'll be gardening in the pasture in front of our house. New neighbors are moving in next door, and so we're picking up our fencing and greenhouse and shifting to a new plot. I was somewhat devastated at first; that garden, my first very own garden, felt like my child. But good things abound: we hope to befriend the neighbors, we think this new plot will get more sunlight, and it's twice as big (yes, we measured). More space for more veggies! Our landlords are pretty awesome to let us till up their sheep pasture to grow things. 

We harvested our soup beans, potatoes, and winter squash. We'll still be harvesting carrots, beets, kale, fall lettuce, chard, some basil, and hopefully brussels for a while to come in the old space. 

This evening, we planted one row in the new space of favas and shallots. Not to be harvested until spring and midsummer, respectively. How odd, to tuck seeds into the ground knowing that a whole winter and spring of waiting lies before us. It's an investment in the future. 

mutton

About a month ago, we added to our home butchery repertoire mutton. Or, as my uncle's girlfriend Eve says, the French way, moo-tone. Which does sound much more elegant. I think mutton has a bad rap, and that was evident in the price we paid for it (half of what we'll pay for lamb later this fall). But this ewe grew up on lush pastures right outside our back door, lived a quiet and peaceful life, and I have to argue that it's taste-able in the mutton curries and roasts we've cooked so far. It's fall-apart tender and, when paired with either red wine and herbs and garlic or toasted Indian-style spices and ginger, just delicious. You would be hard pressed to differentiate it from beef. I'm serious. 

Researching specific mutton recipes has been somewhat difficult online. The BBC has a few; some very Indian websites have some (confusingly written!). But not much. So we've taken the tips we gathered from Eve and from some articles on the BBC, and basically crafted our own recipes each time we've cooked it.

This is the curry I came up with. It would be equally yummy with lamb or beef. The key is toasting the spices and then concentrating all the flavors slowly with the tomato juice. Also simmering the meat for a loooong time, until it's as tender as pot roast. 

Spice mix

1 tbsp fennel seeds

1 tbsp cumin seeds

1/2 tbsp coriander seeds

pinch peppercorns (maybe 1/8 tsp) 

seeds from 5 cardamom pods 

generous pinch red pepper flakes

1 cinnamon stick 

shake of paprika 

Toast all the spices but the paprika in bottom of dutch oven until aromatic. Set the cinnamon stick aside. Then grind the toasted spices and the paprika in a spice grinder and set aside. 

Curry

2 tablespoons butter

1 onion, chopped 

1-inch piece of ginger, peeled and minced

4 garlic cloves, minced 

1 (14-oz) can diced tomatoes 

Grapeseed oil

1 pound mutton, cubed into 1-inch chunks 

1 can coconut milk 

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.

Melt the butter in same dutch oven over medium heat. Add the onion, cook until glossy, and add the ginger and garlic. Cook until aromatic. Add the ground spices and cook until more aromatic. Add a splash of the juice from the diced tomatoes and cook until it’s evaporated and a golden crust is on the bottom of the pan. Add more juice, scrape the pan, and cook again until evaporated and another golden crust coats the pan. Continue this cycle with all the juice you can get out of the tomatoes—probably four or five rounds of this. The last round, use the juice to scrape up the browned bits and then transfer everything to a bowl before it has a chance to brown again. 

Pour in a splash of grapeseed oil and wait for a moment for it to heat up. Add the mutton pieces and brown on all sides, turning quickly—you just want to seal the juices. Add the onion mixture back to the dutch oven along with the remaining tomato chunks, the cinnamon stick, and the can of coconut milk. Bring to a simmer. 

Cover and transfer to the oven for about an hour and a half, until the meat is tender and easy to shred with a fork. Salt to taste. Remove the cinnamon stick. 

Serve with bulgar or brown rice. 

 

zucchini abounds

Post-vacation garden harvest

It's that time of the year (and has been for a while) when your neighbors start to ask "Can I give you some zucchini?" and you run away screaming.

We planted four zucchinis, and at first it seemed like the perfect amount. Every day, we had one or two on-the-small side squashes, perfect for sautéing with green beans as a dinner side. But for the last few weeks, we've been so overrun that I'm now avoiding peeking under the umbrella-like leaves at all.

Upside, I've settled on a zucchini bread recipe. The first two I tried were just not right--even my usual favorite people at America's Test Kitchen didn't win me over in the end with their attempt to better old-school zucchini bread recipes by toning down the amount of oil and nixing such add-ons as cinnamon, nuts, and chips. The result? Bread that was too light and flavorless, I thought. Boring.

I rediscovered the winning recipe thanks to my mom and a 1970s-era church cookbook. This one brings on the vegetable oil, cinnamon, nuts, and chocolate, and manages to be moist and light at the same time. The spices and add-ons give the zucchini the helping hand it--let's be honest--really needs. Because the irony of zucchini bread is that it's not about the zucchini. At least, that's what I've decided after a double batch of it cleaned me out of flour, sugar, eggs, and chocolate chips, and made barely a dent in our pile of squash. The zucchini is merely an excuse to consume slice upon slice of chewy chocolatey nutty cinnamony quick bread with morning coffee.

Now that our freezer is stocked with loaves, I'm trying other things to conquer the pile. Zucchini blanched and frozen. Zucchini in vegetable soup. Zucchini soup puree. Zucchini slices baked with bread crumbs and parmesan. And, because it's a losing battle, zucchini for the chickens. They love it!

Zucchini Bread 
Adapted from Westminster Presbyterian's 1970s cookbook 

I prefer to use zucchini that's over 1 pound here--save the smaller ones for stir-fries or salads, as they're moister. The larger ones are dryer, which is better for this bread.

2 1/2 cups grated zucchini
2 cups sugar
3 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
3 cups flour
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 cup chopped nuts
1 cup chocolate chips

Toss the zucchini with 1 tablespoon of the sugar and set in a fine-mesh sieve over a bowl. Let the zucchini drain for about 30 minutes--you'll be left with greenish water beneath and much dryer zucchini. Squeeze the squash with paper towels to sop up any excess moisture.

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F and prepare a loaf pan or a muffin tin by oiling the bottom and sides, then dusting with flour. Alternately, use parchment paper or muffin cups.

Cream the remaining sugar and eggs; add the oil and zucchini. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. Stir the wet and dry ingredients together until just combined. Add the nuts and chocolate and stir.

Pour into the prepared loaf pan or muffin tin. Fill the loaf pan about two-thirds of the way full; fill the muffin cups about halfway full.

Bake a loaf for 1 hour or muffins for 25 minutes, until the tops are more golden than glossy and a toothpick stuck in the middle comes out clean. Let the bread rest in the pans on a cooling rack for about 7 minutes. Then remove and let cool all the way (or, okay, as long as you can wait).

You can freeze the loaves wrapped in plastic wrap, then tinfoil or butcher paper.

i am not a canning person

My summer canning marathon is over, and I now remember how much I do not like canning. I forgot in the eleven months since my last canning marathon. Mostly because those months were accented by yummy canned goods: sweet cucumber relish folded into salads, cardamom plum jam smeared on toast, tomato sauce spooned over pasta. My efforts last summer, which included one epic weekend where I think I did seven different canning projects, were, okay, totally worth it. We gave pickles and jam as Christmas gifts and brought them as host gifts, shared them with family and friends, and just finished the last jam a few weeks ago.

This weekend, while Tim was across the country for a friend's wedding, I decided to revisit some highlights--hot-cumin zucchini pickles, dilly beans, and sweet cucumber relish--as well as some sweet cucumber pickles that our landlords served once and I've been dreaming about ever since. I made it to the jar-filling stage of my first project, the relish, when it all flooded back. Oh no, I do not like canning at all. It's the water-bath canner on the stove hissing hurry up as I pack the jars; the millions of precise steps in the recipes shouting you forgot, you forgot; the sneaky jar lifter slipping its grip and whooping ha!; the heat in the kitchen stickying my skin. 

Maybe I spent too much time with canning equipment this weekend. 

As I relayed my frustrations to Tim on the phone midway through the marathon, he said, "Maybe you are not a canning person." And something clicked for me. I actually felt relieved. He is right. I am not a canning person. 

Sure, I will probably continue to make a few small batches of pickles and dilly beans and relish each summer. How can you not when you have eleven pounds of cucumbers languishing in the fridge? I will probably try new canning recipes, too, because I always fall for the romance of new recipes and home-preserved self-sufficiency. Come rainy November, I will definitely be delighted to crunch into a dilly bean and might even feel nostalgic for steamy nights spent slaving over the stove with tools that seem less anthropomorphic after a few months of separation. 

But I am pretty sure that we are fermenting people. It's not just that fermenting is less work--you throw things in jars with water and maybe salt, check on them every evening or so, and let the microbes pull the weight. It's that fermenting seems looser and more forgiving to me, in my experience. Instead of trying to nuke all the microbes, good and bad, out of a jar and hope for a sterile environment, you nurture the right microbes so that they can demolish the bad ones. If mold grows on top, you skim it off. Not a big deal. And then you get to eat the good microbes, which do good upon good in your gut. 

I could wax scientific, thanks to the fantastic fermentation guide I copyedited this summer (Fermentation and Home Brewing: The Ultimate Resource), but no. I'm going to go put my feet up and eat some ice cream. It's recovery time.