Five Green Acres

Tomatoes have been the thrumming beat moving us steadily through the days of late September and early October.  Some stretches of milling, peeling, or canning have been marathon-like, blocking out all else on the To Do list; others have been snuck into the regular workings of the day like rags plugged into a drafty window.  Now lining the shelves of our pantry are various representatives from the Tomato Clan:  stewed tomatoes, the backbone of the pantry and only repeat visitor, as well as some new visitors -  Tomato Soup, Ketchup, Pizza Sauce, Plain Tomato Sauce.  Slated to arrive shortly:  Spaghetti Sauce.  Three boxes of Grandma’s Roma tomatoes are waiting patiently for their transformation, the final bit of tomato canning for the season.  I hope.  I think that I, too, have participated in the grand tomato metamorphosis:   my blood has no doubt turned tomato, the bouquet of scent that is My Own now carries with it the unmistakeably essences of garlic, onion, and basil.

It should be said that these tomatoes are not from my own garden, for the most part.  The Blight that was pandemic this summer found our overcrowded, not weeded, not-properly-supported tomato plants the perfect place to take up residence.  So I secured 30 lbs from a local grower and stewed them.  And then I bought three bushels (150 lbs) of the biggest tomatoes you’ve ever seen from the farmer’s market.  And we made ketchup, soup, pizza sauce, and running out of steam in the last bushel,  just plain old sauce, unable to chop one more onion or head of garlic.  Somewhere in the second bushel, as we were elbow deep in blanched tomatoes, the phone rang.  It was Mom, wondering if we could use any of Grandma’s surplus.  Andrew laughed as he handed me the phone, that laugh that is a combination of irony and weariness and look-out-here-we-go-again.  Turning away good (free) tomatoes nurtured by Grandma’s magic hands is surely bad karma, and I try to respect the karmic rules at all times.  So they sit right now, a chorus of red voices chanting, whispering, and beckoning, the volume growing ever louder as they reach the peak of ripeness and pull me away from all else but the sink, the mill, and the giant roaster that will turn them into sauce.

Lucky for me, I have help.  Lots of it, in fact – Mom and Grandma teamed up to can 3o quarts of stewed tomatoes for us, securing their spots as Most Prized Mom and Grandma for a long time to come.

So here’s the math:

310 lbs raw tomatoes yield:

6 pints of ketchup

6 pints of pizza sauce

45 quarts of stewed tomatoes

6 quarts of soup

5 quarts of plain sauce

and an estimated 9 or 10 quarts of spaghetti sauce

That’s a lot of tomatoes.

There is something that I’ve been working very hard to remember,  a new mantra:

“All in due time.”

It’s the reminder I give myself when I feel guilt or regret or a Should-Have taking hold.  There are so, so many things we’d like to do here on the Acres, so many things we’d like to try.  Last summer, our first here, taught me that they can’t nor need not happen right away – we intend to be here for a very long time.  It’s a lesson in prioritization, in cultivating patience, (that most elusive of virtues!) and in cultivating grace.  Last summer taught us that setting out to garden all three fenced-in garden plots was far too much to bite off in the first mouthful, given that we were still steadily climbing the new Chicken Learning Curve.

I had hoped to can peaches last year.  Had hoped then regrettably let the intention fall through the cracks of Life.  This year, though, I was greeted by a stack of peach cases shouting their Hello as I entered the food coop where we buy our groceries.  “What’s that?” I ask.  “On sale?  Yes.  I think I shall.”  So not one, but two cases (36 lbs) of peaches found our way home that day.  Though I didn’t check, it’s likely we won the Peach Award, to join our Cabbage Award on the mantel of fame.  Rock hard, they sat atop the washer and drier for a week or two, (probably closer to two) while they ripened.  And precisely 4 days after they were at their peak ripeness, I found a fat sliver of time to process them into Food for the Winter.  Better late than never, right?

I was in good company, as I often am, up until the Hot Stove with All the Burners Lit portion of the exercise commenced.  The kitchen was enveloped in the heady aroma of ripe, about-to-burst peach essence.  I like to think that a little of that essence will remain a part of the fragrant bouquet that is The Kitchen, greeting us as we return home from an extended time away.

And on Sunday we celebrated The Peaches, parading them in all their amber glory atop a waffle float.

This weekend found us with a milestone birthday to celebrate.  An intimate dinner with close friends was on the docket so we headed to the Farmer’s Market for the first time this season.  Each week at the market provides a slightly different snapshot from Mother Earth’s catalog and this week’s offering seemed to be especially earthy.  We set our sights on asparagus and morel mushrooms and were greeted with an abundance to choose from.  The mushrooms above, though not on our menu, were too striking to pass by without photographing.

These exquisite delicacies, however,  joyfully marched into our canvas bag and became the centerpiece of the evening’s meal.  It was a grand celebration of eating Local, In-Season, featuring mushroom stroganoff, grilled asparagus, and morels sauteed with bacon.  For desert – rhubarb torte, of course.  What a delicious season to be born into!  I had the best intentions of capturing the meal in progress, recording it in photos, but you’ll just have to take my word for it.  I was too busy partaking in the food, drink, and laughter to give it the slightest thought until all that remained were empty plates.   A sure sign of culinary success.  Happy Birthday Captain Daddio!

Bottled Sunshine.

It’s called Kombucha. (com-boo-cha)   It’s what you drink if  you like being that quirky guy at the office who’s known to partake of strange food and drink, munch on dried seaweed as a snack, or recite the elemental symbols from the Periodic Table.  If you’re not that guy, you may drink it for its purported benefits to digestion, detoxification, immune health, or overall energy-boosting power.  You may drink it because you like its polarizing, either-love-it-or-hate-it, slightly vinegary, slightly carbonated taste that’s like no other.  Or, like the ancient Chinese, you may be keen on investing in in the future, and choose to do so with what they called the “immortal health elixir”.  (Let’s turn to our trusty friend, Wikipedia, for more.)

Whatever the reason for drinking it, you might find yours in the dairy case of your natural foods store.  Or, like many others, you can brew your own.  Guess which direction we decided to go after trying (and loving) kombucha for the first time.  After a healthy initiation period with store-bought bottles, I found that our food coop offered a class on making it, and our kombucha adventure soon began.    I located a SCOBY, (Symbiotic Culture Of Bacteria and Yeast) the “starter” necessary to ferment the brew.  I chose some tea, a green tea that we had on hand, steeped it in a gallon of boiling water, added honey to feed the scoby, and tucked it away in a warm place to sit and think for a week.  I learned that bottling it after that week and storing it in the fridge for another week allowed it to build up a delicious carbonation.

A scoby - not much to look at, eh?

I soon came to appreciate the self-sustaining process.  As the brew ferments, the scoby grows a new layer, so that with each brew, the amount of scoby increases, allowing you to split it up amongst more batches brewing simultaneously.  It’s the key component of the Scoby’s “Plan to Take Over the World.”  (insert mad scientist’s evil laugh here)

Well, the journey began with the usual fervor that accompanies new and exciting adventures.  It was the latest and greatest thing to rock our world, and our universe orbited on the sheer excitement of kombucha for about 6 batches.  Anyone we talked to during that time was likely given an exuberant tour of my brewing operation.  Then Life crept in, bringing with it other New and Exciting Adventures which necessarily stole all of the Kombucha’s bandwidth.  Namely, Finding a New House, followed by Packing, Purging, and Preparing and finally, Moving.  The scobys were relegated to their off-season location:  refrigerated in a bath of enough kombucha to sustain them until they’re tagged in for action again.  They took up new residence in a new fridge and sat quietly waiting for that moment when they would again be called into service.  One dark day, however, during a Refrigerator Inspection and Inventory exercise (the one where 2/3 of the fridge’s contents are discovered to be inedible and are swiftly purged) it was discovered that the Scoby had mutated into a Mmoby, or a Moldy mess of bacteria and yeast.  Inviting Mold to a Kombucha party ruins it every time, leaving no choice but to evict the whole thing.  Mmoby joined the sad procession of expired leftovers en route to the garbage.

And so we remained in a Kombucha-less state for many months.  Many sad months, I should add, for extra dramatic effect.  After some time, however, rumors started spreading amongst the countryside that a King would soon arrive to claim his rightful title and return the land to Kombucha harmony.  And indeed, he soon arrived on horseback one crisp and glorious day, with a fresh Scoby in his saddlebags and strong, capable hands.  (I should also mention that he was exceedingly handsome.)  In the ceremony that followed, the Golden Manilla Folder of Culinary Wisdom was opened, the Kombucha Formula was extracted and bequeathed to him and, amidst the chorus of the Royal Troubadours, he was dubbed the Kombucha King.

His reign endures today, bringing harmony, good health, and immortality to this Five Green Acres kingdom.  His legacy is fated to endure well beyond his own reign, as he’s taken on an apprentice and is instructing him in the mysterious fine art of the brew.

And the people of the village rejoiced!

I’ve been meaning for some time now to report on our new bread program, but have been delayed for a number of reasons:

1.  I just had this baby.

2.  I couldn’t seem to remember to take any impressive “fresh out of the oven” pics before our pack of salivating bread bandits attacked the newest loaf.

3.  I really, really enjoyed the wide-eyed admiration I received when showing up with or presenting a fresh-baked loaf to guests.  Revealing how disgustingly easy it is for any Joe Schmo to make equally-impressive bread will surely taint the Domestic Goddess Rock Star status I’ve attained.  It’s an illusion, folks.  Sadly, an illusion.

4.  Soule Mama recently posted about her own bread program, and while I think the sun pretty much rises and sets over the Soule house in Portland, I am trying very hard to resist the temptation to turn my own blog into a cheap imitation of Soule Mama’s.

The bread program we’ve been following now for a few months comes straight from the popular, much-blogged-about Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day.  Really, who doesn’t have 5 minutes a day for fresh-baked, crusty bread?  I bought the book after reading Angry Chicken’s rave reviews, but like many books that I have to immediately run out and get, dropping everything else in mid-air, it arrived home to sit on the shelf and percolate for quite a while.  Over Christmas, I aquired some bulk flour bins (shown above), as well as some bulk flour and shortly thereafter made my first loaf.  As cliche as it is, the rest is history.  With this simple method, I’ve managed to kick my addiction to locally-made sourdough baguettes, saving us some money on the weekly grocery bill as well as adding some whole wheat flour to the diet.  We also stopped buying the multi-purpose soft sandwich bread.

How does it work?  It’s basically a No-Knead bread that you mix up in bulk, refrigerate, then forget about for 2 hours or until you’re ready to bake.  Then you pull out a piece, work it for about 30 seconds, let it rise for 40 min to 1 1/2 hours, and bake on a stone.  Easy-breezy. So easy, in fact, that you could find yourself pulling out a batch to rise and bake in the wee hours of your early labor, making sure that all present for the birth of your baby have access to fresh bread.  It is that good and that easy.

I’ve experimented with baking it free form on the stone, for a beautiful, rustic-looking loaf as well as in a loaf pan, for a more sandwich-friendly shape.  Equally good.  Above is about half of a pan-style loaf.  Below is a free form loaf, again half-eaten.  Let that be a testimonial for how good this bread is.

Isn’t it beautiful?  I might add that it’s the perfect companion to a mouth-watering mix of olive oil and basalmic vinegar or goat cheese or anything else you can muster from your fridge. Store it standing on end on your bread board to keep the crust from going soft and to keep the crumb from getting too dry.

Would you like to try it?  You can find some background info and also THE RECIPE here, from the generous folks at Mother Earth News.  I adjust the recipe by replacing about 1/3 of the flour with whole wheat bread flour to add some nutritional value.  It seems to be a good proportion and doesn’t weigh the bread down.

And with that, I’ve blown my cover, shattered the myth that I am Bread Baker Extraordinare.  Sigh.  It was fun while it lasted.  Do me a favor and act real impressed the next time I show up with a loaf to share.