mason jars

I found another use for mason jars-- lactofermentaion. I use mason jars for basic food storage, long term food storage and for organizing my spice cupboard. Plastic absorbs flavor and grease, glass is always easy to clean and mason jars are cheaply available all the time. I love mason jars. ANYWAY, onto lactofermentation. The easiest way to explain it is sauerkraut, or kimchee. That is what lactofermentation is. It's basically some food (cabbage is an easy one) salted down and allowed to ferment. To encourage the type of fermentation you want, add a few spoonfuls of whey (the watery stuff on the yogurt). I packed all this into a mason jar, weighted down the cabbage, so it was under the juices, and one week later I have sauerkraut. It's peasant food. Seems like a lot of peasant food is insanely easy to make. Bread, cheese, stew, etc. Now I can add lactofermented foods to the list. Another thing I made was pineapple vinegar using the outside peel of a fresh pineapple. It's basically the same steps, but no salt. I did add some distilled water to the mix. I like the taste of it. I understand pineapple vinegar is really common in Mexico. It sure is easy to make. Slice the outside skin and the core off a fresh pineapple (and eat the fruit!) cut it up, put it in a mason jar, add a few spoonfuls of whey, fill it to the top with distilled water, weigh it down so the solids are underneath the liquids and wait a week. Mason jars, the answer to so many questions I didn't realize I needed to ask.

March updates

The weather this year has been oddly warm. Most of my MN friends are hesitant to plant anything because they can't believe spring is already here. The trees and grass have given up on winter and are putting on their spring outfits. I did put some peas and radishes (that sort of thing) into the garden. I just got finished with putting in a new compost/garden bed and planting seeds. I'm really not very good at starting plants from seed, so we'll see how that works. I've got apple trees arriving next month and lots of other plants to put in the ground, put it seems a bit early for MN.

rendering out the lard

I did something today I've never done before-- I rendered out lard. It was really simple and I feel very frugal. The local grocery store sells the fatty bits of pork for really cheap. I cut the meaty bits off and ground them up into sausage. The fatty bits I put through the grinder and then dumped them all in the crockpot. I left the crockpot on low for a few hours and the fat melted out. It was really easy and now I have both lard and sausage meat in the freezer, all ready to use. I love finding another thing I can do myself.

broke my foot

Well, I guess I needed a new adventure. On an icy day I fell down an embankment and landed on my left foot. It's broke in two places. I am now wearing a huge boot and depending on the kindness of family. It's a straight forward break and should heal right up in six weeks. This makes exercising much more difficult. This makes everything I try to do more difficult, but not impossible. I am very blessed to have a removeable cast, which means I can still shower and I don't need to wear it when I laying in bed. That makes the healing more comfortable. I remember, a long time ago, when they were still putting plaster casts on everyone, I watched a TV program that discussed native African healers NOT putting casts on broken bones, just splinting them and letting the people remove the splints when they wanted to and those people healed much quicker. The idea was presented as native/westernized medicine. I still remember that program, it made sense to me. The people without plaster casts were much happier with how their healing was going. Nowadays the doctors seem to use boots and splints,instead of plaster casts, whenever they can. I'm just glad I'm one of the people who had a simple enough injury that I could use a boot.

winter garden dreaming

It's winter. That means time to plan the garden! We now live in zone 4. In Missouri we could, almost, get two seasons of growing in. Here it is one season, period. And you better be pretty choosy as to which varieties you grow. Every garden is a new chance to learn. I wish my summer gardens would grow half as wonderfully as the gardens I grow in my dreams in the winter.

I hired me a farmer!

It's the middle of January and there is both snow and ice on the roads. I'm not driving anywhere today. I just recently signed up for a CSA for our food for the growing season. A CSA is community supported agriculture. I hired me a farmer! I'm really happy about this. Eventually our own garden will be producing enough to feed us, at least that is my goal, but knowing we're going to get a lot of garden produce over the next growing season is a really happy thing for me. Randall, my husband, thinks this is really cool, too. Not only are we getting our vegetables and some fruit from them we are getting our eggs and meat from them. I feel so strongly about eating meat sparingly, but letting the animals I do eat have a happy life and a quick death. Buying meat from a farmer who lets his animals roam around in the grassy fields and the sunshine really means a lot to me.

my family

Here they are, all of them. These are my children. It was such a treat to have them all here at the same time. The house was noisy, to say the least. AND the food was flowing. Feeding this crowd three meals a day (and snacks) was quite a challenge, but it was fun. If anything we ate way too good. I love my family.