Tuesday, June 27, 2006

The Antithesis of Pretty Gardening Books

Ahhh, this is better--much more my style . . . .

Monday, June 26, 2006

On Gardening Books

There is a certain type of gardening book that I just shouldn't read.

I'm speaking of the kind with the big glossy pictures of English cottages covered with roses, herb gardens inside little stone walls, gorgeous green lawns with crisp edges. Or the kind with perfect, jewel-like courtyards tucked up on city balconies, eclectic potted gardens on rooftops--in short, wonderful.

Why should I avoid these, you ask? Well, because they're very inspiring. They give me all kinds of ideas about what to plant and how to structure things. And then I step outside . . . and realize that I have neither a tumbling down English cottage, nor an eclectic little rooftop terrace. I have two untidy forsythia bushes, one of which seems to be dying; some scraggedy, raggedy, patchy grass; a view that looks straight into our neighbors living room; and six beautiful, bountiful tomato plants. With the exception of the tomatoes, it's a little disheartening, and looking at other people's perfect gardens only makes it more so.

And we're always saying, "Oh, we don't want to do too much--we'll be moving next year," but we're getting ready to start our third year at this house with no end in sight. Even setting that limitation aside, there's still always a fine line between the garden I'd like to have, leaving enough space for the dogs to romp, and not pissing off the lawn mowing guys by having too much for them to mow around.

But after reading pretty gardening books into the wee smalls last night, and then stewing about it all day at work, this evening I just had to do something--anything to improve my little plot. So I pulled out our little weed-eater and edged the grass. Then I started thinking about Sunflowers.

I planted some Sunflowers this year, but the mowing guys accidentally killed them before they got much past the seedling stage. I meant to replant them, but just couldn't think of a good way to protect them. By the time I thought of it again, at the first of June, it seemed like it was too late.

Today though, I was on a mission. I decided that, even if they're just hitting their growth spurt in October, I wanted Sunflowers. So I dug out a little bed close to the woodpile, outlining the edges with wood to hopefully mark it out well for the mower guys. It took almost 20 minutes to chop out a little 2x2 bed in the weedy grass. I gathered up all the Sunflower seeds I had left and evenly spaced them, thinking that way I'd definitely get more than I need and could thin later. Satisfied that I had at least made things a little better, I went to pick up some tools.

When I came back the Wee Welshman was happily sniffing out the seeds, carefully picking them up out of the dirt with his teeth, and crunching them straight down his fuzzy little throat.

There is a certain type of gardening book that I just shouldn't read.

Sunday, June 25, 2006

Bottling Day (Homebrew Day 8)

Last night Sweet Husband took a final hydrometer reading on the beer and decided it was time to bottle the beer.

The hydrometer measures the specific gravity of the beer, allowing you to figure out the alcohol content. When the reading is the same for several days in a row it means it's time to bottle.

This is what the beer looked like when we began.

The beer is syphoned into a bucket for bottling to avoid getting the scummy sediment from the big bottle in the final beer.

The beer flowed into the bucket fairly quickly.

The nutrient rich gook in the bottom of the big bottle went into my garden.

Meanwhile Sweet Husband and Best Man Friend started syphoning the beer into bottles. We've been collecting bottles for a few weeks, but we still ended up having to buy a few.

The bottling was a two person job. Best Man Friend kept the bottles coming while Sweet Husband controlled the hose.

I ran the capper, and Best Man Friend's Nice Girlfriend packed the bottles into waiting boxes.

All told we ended up with 47 bottles--they'll be ready to drink in about 3 weeks!

Friday, June 23, 2006

Boil em, mash em, stick em in a stew....


It was a nice evening. Sweet Husband and Best Man Friend were out doing some car work, and I wanted something to do outside as well. The vines had almost completely died back, so I decided it was time to dig up my potatoes.

After a long week at work, running my hands through the crumbley, warm, black dirt looking for potatoes was very soothing. There were 23 (counting the one I had for lunch the other day). Some are a little small still, but, as Best Man Friend said, they are going to be some very good eats.

Thursday, June 22, 2006

Bottom (Homebrew Day 5)


In case you ever wondered what the bottom of beer looks like....It's stopped bubbling as much, but it's slowly turning a darker color.

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

It's the First Day of Summer....

...and I searched all day for some appropriate snippet to post. But, wouldn't you know it, it was just waiting for me--I FOUND THE FIRST RIPE TOMATO TODAY!!!

It was one of my pretty little yellow pears!


And we have midgets as well--not ripe, but they will be soon enough.


Not to mention we're going to have a feast of edamame later this week.


And Sweet Husband pulled up our very first homegrown onion.

It was a good day....

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Po-tay-toes


The leaves of my potato plants are beginning to yellow and wilt, so I decided it was time to check and see if there were potatoes forming. I rifled through one end of my earthbox quickly and pulled up these three potatoes. As you can see, one was nice and big, but two were pretty small still. I think I'm going to let them stay in the ground until next weekend to see if they'll get a little bigger.

Charm Your Own Cheese

(If you don't get the title, don't worry--it just means that you're less of a Harry Potter nerd than me.)

On our trip to the beer making store, I was inspired by the many books they had on making your own cheese. I've made labneh (yogurt) cheese before, but I decided it might be fun to try something just a little more complicated. I opted for this mascarpone recipe. It's simple in that it doesn't require a cheese press, but more difficult than labneh because of the warming step.


I began with some nice, locally gathered cream. I couldn't find "light cream" like the recipe called for, so I used heavy.


The next step was to heat the cream to 185 degrees in a double boiler.


It took a suprisingly long time, but eventually it got there.


Then I stirred in 2 tablespoons of lemon juice. After putting the lemon juice in, I kept the cream at 185 degrees for 5 more minutes, stirring every 30 seconds or so.


Next the cream went, pot and all, into my refridgerator for 12 hours.


This is what the cream looked like after about 6 hours.


And this is what it looked like the next morning, about 12 hours later.


After 12 hours I dumped the, now fairly solidified, cream onto a clean, white towel.


Then I hung it in the fridge over a bowl to let gravity drain out the rest of the whey.


24 hours later we had cheese! The texture was very nice, but the flavor was a little bland. A little salt helped though.

Monday, June 19, 2006

It's ALIVE! (Homebrew Day 2)


The beer has developed a funky, scumy looking stuff on top, and the cork that lets the air out is bubbling away.

Dragonfly


Look what posed ever-so-nicely for a picture on my garden fence the other day!

Sunday, June 18, 2006

Homebrew

I'm not sure exactly when it began.

At some point over these past few months we became super devotees of Food Network mad scientist Alton Brown. I think it was largely just a matter of timing. His show is on at 5:30 right when we both get home from work and are in the mood to just sit mindlessly in front of the TV for half an hour. And I'm sure it also had a lot to do with content. The how-to appeals to me, and Sweet Husband enjoys the "science behind the food"--a good his/hers combination that can't be found in "Monster Garage" or "Surprise By Design".

Largely our relationship with Dear Alton has been very enlightening. He's lead us on several culinary escapades that we wouldn't have otherwise taken. We've tried fresh artichokes and collared greens; learned to make pie crusts and how to process all sorts of cuts of meat.

Apparently, on Monday when I skipped Alton to take the Wee Welshman to agility, Dear Alton made beer. This evidently set off fireworks for Sweet Husband. He was quickly on a knowledge quest for all-things-brewing-beer.

I was pleased. Sweet Husband is one of those fortunate souls who loves what he does. Metal is his job and his fun. Which is great, but...well, it makes for a lot of metal. It makes it hard to buy him Christmas presents. So a new hobby is a good thing.

In pursuit of this new hobby, yesterday, we took a field trip to Bacchus and Barleycorn Winemaking and Brewing Supplies in Kansas City. If you've ever had any interest in making beer, wine, or cheese (more on that later) Bacchus is a good place to get inspired. They have all manner of supplies and information. The very Helpful Lady quickly set Sweet Husband up with a "Deluxe Brewer Starter Kit" and a "Wheat/Weizen ingredients Kit". This morning when we woke up, he was ready to make beer.

The kit ingredients assembled on our kitchen counter. A lot of this is actually used for the bottling as opposed to the brewing, but it was nice to have it all pre-collected.

This is the yeast. Inside of this bag was a little pouch full of liquid that Sweet Husband smashed to make the yeast start growing.

To begin with, everything had to be very well sterilized with a sterilizing solution.

It took a lot of water to clean this huge bottle . . .

. . . but we got there eventually!

All of the other equipment had to be sterilized as well.

In the meantime the biggest pot we own was coming to a boil on the stove. The instructions said to fill it with as much water as possible while leaving room for the other ingredients. The stuff Sweet Husband is pouring in is liquid malt.

Adding the dried malt.

Giving it a stir.

Adding the hops. These are pelletted hops--i.e. dried hops that have been crushed up and pressed out in order to make them keep better.

Irish Moss also went into the brew.


The mix had to boil for 45 minutes.

Meanwhile the yeast was growing.


After it had boiled for the required time, the "wort" went into a sink full of cold water to cool off.

While it was cooling Sweet Husband filled our jug with 4 gallons of water.

Next the wort went into the jug.

It looks kind of gross, but it actually had a very nice nutty smell.

Once the temperature was between 70 and 80 degrees it was time to add the yeast.

By that time it had ballooned up nicely.

If you like the smell of yeast, this stuff is for you. It was super concentrated.

A few sloshes to get things mixed around . . .

. . . and it was time to stop up the bottle. The special plug allows air to come out of the jug, but not go into it.

Last but not least--stored away! This whole process took about 3 hours. Now the beer has to ferment in a cool, dark place for 8-14 days before it will be ready for bottling. After that it has to sit in the bottles for a few weeks, so we should have drinkable beer by the end of July-ish. Updates on its progress will be forthcoming.