Seasons in the Soil » Food

Random things

Annette — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 00:52:02 +0000

Looking forward to the (short) series Doomsday Preppers coming up on National Geographic. They had a standalone episode last year, with one guy repeating the same long phrase about coronal ejections over and over – but he and his wife did build a tilapia tank out of their pool and used that waste to fertilize crops in a very nice setup. I’ve been reading the comments on some sites about the new series – in the clips for which I could swear I saw the Dervaes clan briefly, so that part will be muted out or forwarded on the DVR if that’s the case, since they annoy me – and I have to say that some of the fringe dwellers on those sites are absolutely batshit insane. Between the people with grandiose conspiracy theories about how the military is gearing up to take over at least one major city and the armchair commandos blathering about OPSEC, it can be amusing when it isn’t a bit scary. I watch this sort of show for the same reason I watch things like Hoarders: morbid fascination.

I’ve also been watching some bee-related documentaries and working up some reviews of those, including the single most annoying line out of all of them.

Mount Mulch is being taken down, slowly but surely. The back garden area has two walkway areas to mulch to be complete before I move along to the herb garden and berries up front. I figure Tuesday to finish the paths and begin on the other stuff. Wednesday is yet another trip to the dentist, so Thursday will be the day to pick things back up again. Instead of banging/jarring my head around working outside after the dentist, I’ll be starting the wine (riesling!) that we’re going to make here. Fun stuff.

Did that hurt?

Annette — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 01:29:43 +0000

Sometimes I wonder about these things, especially when we get an egg that is huge compared to normal eggs. The five normal eggs weigh about 2 3/8 ounces each. The whopper weighs in at 3 5/8 ounces. We’ve gotten several double yolkers since we’ve had chickens, and this one will likely be another – or perhaps a triple. That would be something to see.

Fifty bottles of beer on the wall

Annette — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 04:57:35 +0000

Bottling day at the ranch for the German style lager we brewed. Started on Monday, completed Saturday night. Not too bad, as far as hobbies go, and much of the week was spent waiting – as is the case for most things around here, like waiting for dough to rise, or seeds to germinate, or something to ripen, or a canvas to dry. When the bees finally arrive and are hived, we’ll start the waiting game with them, too.

Step one: siphoning.

As it turns out, this is better with two people, so one can hold the siphon while the other pours in the priming sugar (and takes photos).

It’s a dark beer.

Very dark, to the point where a flashlight comes in handy to see the bottom of the siphon to make sure it isn’t embedded in the gunk at the bottom.

The bucket fills as the carboy empties.

And eventually it’s down to the last that we’re taking out.

Time to bottle!

Capping. Take a cap, center the capping tool over it.

Lean into it and push the handles down until they crimp the cap on the bottle.

Release.

Repeat. Forty-nine times.

Before you know it, you have a couple of cases of beer, ready to go into the cold room to age.

Then comes the cleanup.

I wonder if the chickens would like to nibble on this. Would they get themselves a buzz going?

Chief bottle washer

Annette — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 03:39:30 +0000

Ever wonder about that phrase? Wonder no more.

Bottling bucket, spigot, siphons, bottles, and caps, all washed and ready to be sanitized Saturday. Also known as: bottling day.

Before bottling, though, there are a number of other things that have to be done, primarily outside. Unlike our neighbors to the north, it’s going to be rather balmy here for the next week or so, with temps in the mid to upper 70s. Winter in Florida. Have to love it.

Bier!

Annette — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 00:12:45 +0000

Almost.

As I mentioned the other day, I started a batch of beer. It took a few hours for the yeasties to get their gobble on, but when they did, the airlock was bubbling away.

All the crap around the neck is where the foam went pretty high in the carboy. It settled into percolation quite nicely, seen in the foamy activity at the top.

Yesterday, things slowed down a bit, and today, they’ve slowed down a lot – an indication that the yeast has done its business and belched out alcohol from the sugars it ate.

The foaming is almost completely stopped, and there is just the occasional bubble hitting the airlock. Sniffing the top of the airlock, you can smell the alcohol quite clearly. On Friday, I’ll wash and sanitize the bottling bucket, bottles, and caps, then transfer this into the bucket (with the priming sugar). Saturday: bottling time. Once bottled, we’ll store the beer away for a few weeks to age. I suspect there may be a tasting of fresh beer here at the ranch. In the name of research, of course.

Late summer harvest

Annette — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 03:18:51 +0000

It’s been a grey, dreary day here. If we lived anywhere else, it would be a wintry day, or what we used to call a snow day when we lived up north. Except here in the south, it was mostly just rainy for a good portion of the day and overcast when the rain moved along. It was just one of those days where you want to curl up under a blanket with a good book. I sorted seeds and looked at some more seed catalogs (and worked) instead. And just to remind myself of what comes from all the hard work I put in on the ranch…

This was a late summer harvest – ok, it was in the latter part of October, but around here, that counts. I’m not able to munch on jalapenos like I used to, but that’s true of almost everything I grow around here.

There’s just something reassuring about being able to put up the fruits (and veggies) of your labor.

Wort’s that?

Annette — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 00:34:55 +0000

First you clean.

Then you put together your ingredients, get the mix into the carboy, pitch your yeast, put the airlock on, and wait for it to ferment.

It didn’t do much, at first. I was hanging out, checking on it now and again, to see if it would start bubbling away, but finally gave up and went to bed. At about 3 AM, I woke up to the smell of malty bread, and figured the little beasties were doing their magic. After a few days, the action should calm down, and we’ll move the brew into the bottling bucket.

Why brew your own beer? Why not? I can’t drink it, of course, since the radiation treatments did the tango on my mouth, but others can (and hopefully they won’t be poisoned by some stray bacteria missed during the sanitation or that sneaks in during the process).

Happy new year

Annette — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 18:26:35 +0000

May the year ahead be better than years past.

Hungry? DIY

Annette — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 00:28:50 +0000

What to do when you’re in the mood for sushi, but not in the mood to go out to eat it – especially if you’re me, and can really only comfortably eat one roll at a time these days (thanks, 9 month liquid diet!)?

Make it yourself, of course.

A little (fake) wasabi powder (it’s almost always fake, as we know, and most certainly in this case), a little soy sauce, a set of chopsticks, and it’s time to eat. I still can’t open my mouth enough to eat even these smaller cut pieces without making a mess, but since it was just me and the dogs, who cares?

Tomorrow: a brisket on the smoker, with cornbread, rice, and our own black eyed peas. Not a bad way to ring in the new year.

Some days

Annette — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 00:48:06 +0000

Sometimes, it seems like days just start off badly, as if the world wants to crack an eye at the sunrise, yawn, and roll over for a bit more sleep.

This morning was one of those mornings. The plan was to get up in the wee hours, get the smoker going, and have some pulled pork ready by the 1 PM games. I thought I had slept through my alarm, having had only two hours of sleep the night before. Not the case: I simply set it for PM instead of AM in my fog. When I did get up and go to get the smoker going, I found that the smoker portion of my Bradley was not working at all. I also found that I was going to have to go to the NOC to take care of a server that was simply down for no apparent reason and which would not respond to a reboot request.

Thinking the smoker issue may have just been built up sawdust in the feeder, I left the heating side of the smoker on, so it would be fully to temp by the time I got back, and hurried off to the NOC. Problem found: blown power supply. Easily enough solved by swapping out the power supply, but a pain in the ass for interrupting my day, which was already not starting off well.

Back at the ranch, I finally discovered the motor that powers the feeder arm was simply not working at all. I figured I could just rig something to keep the microswitch in the down position, hoping this would keep the smoker from knowing the arm was not moving. Didn’t work – the timer that feeds the wood expects the switch to trigger and then depress when the motor arm comes around once more. The switch is also not in a position easily reached when the control unit is back together. Alas, no smoking available. But the heat still worked, so I went in to rub down the butt and get it in the thing.

I made the rub, using my usual 20+ ingredients, and then dropped one of the bottles straight down on the tile while putting it away, shattering the thing and spewing glass everywhere. Swell.

By 9:30, the butt was finally on the smoker. We didn’t eat until the late games were well underway. It was good, but not as good as it usually is, of course. I also made rolls, mom made potato salad, and I’d made a huge batch of barbeque sauce the last time around, so at the end of the day, my sisters, newphew, mom, and I had watched a bunch of football and eaten good homemade food. Not a bad end to a day that started off so poorly.

On the plus side, it was another absolutely gorgeous day on the ranch, although unlike yesterday, almost all of which I spent outside, I did nothing outdoors today at all. Tomorrow after getting one of my eyes looked at, I hope to transplant some tomatoes at least to get the last ones out of the flats. From there, I’ll be left with the brassicas and the onions to get into the frames, and will be able to move on to breaking apart the garlic bulbs into cloves and prep for that planting. The great garlic plantout of 2011 is at hand.