Hello Spring! I’ve gone dark myself busy starting seeds, planting out previously started seedlings, harvesting nearly the last of the winter crops and prepping garden beds. I was getting so turned around I finally made a seed starting schedule for myself and was stunned to realize I am starting 144 varieties of herbs and veggies this year! These are just the annuals and don’t count any perennial veggies or fruits I have on the property.
I have been having troubles saving anything but images but I’m hoping next week to get my seeds starting spreadsheet up so you can see what all I’m planting because the list is pretty long and that way you can see my starting dates, both for spring/summer crops and for my fall/winter harvest and early spring eats 2011.
Because I’ve been so busy in the garden this week I haven’t actually done much cooking. I know it’s ironic but during peak planting and peak harvest I don’t have time to cook! At times like these it’s nice to have things in the freezer or make up huge batches of other things so that family members can fend for themselves.
I managed to squeeze a few things in though. In addition to my regular sandwich bread with Bluebird grain hard red wheat I made the world’s worst brioche using Azure AP flour and white whole wheat. The reason I say it was the world’s worst brioche was because apparently I picked the only recipe in the book with a major typo. I’ve been curious about vital wheat gluten because I know so many other bakers who swear by it but I’ve always been a little suspicious of it. How do they make it? Nobody knows.
But I bought some once in the name of thorough testing and honestly didn’t notice much of a difference using it in my sandwich bread so it’s been languishing in a cupboard. When the recipe called for 2 1/4 cups of it I figured it was a good way to get rid of it. But once the bread was baking I started thinking how odd it was that all the other recipes in the Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day book only called for 1/4 cup of it so I went to their website and saw that indeed it was a typo. Leave it to me. Incidentally if you ever want a product tested for failure I can help you out there. New automated postal machine? Broke it. Countless software systems? Broke them. My blog? Broke it. I should have been a software tester.
I made some of the brioche into what was supposed to be cinnamon crescents but the dough had so much spring that they all uncurled and ended up like squares of tough, chewy bread with cinnamon topping. The kids ate most of them anyway. The rest of this loaf ended up French toast.
I had to make up for the bread flop with a loaf of dark rye using Azure rye berries and Bluebird Grain hard red wheat.
The kids have been clamoring for crackers lately so I made some wheat thins from Bluebird Grain soft wheat using the King Arthur Flour recipe. I took some down to the man lair and offered them to my husband who immediately sat upright and popped one in his mouth. “Wheat thins!” he exclaimed right off the bat. When I asked him how they tasted he said “All I can see is Sandy Duncan in a wheat field eating them right out of the box, one after another.” In case you don’t remember this was the commercial for wheat thins in the late 70′s, early 80′s. My husband was a latch key kid and watched a little too much tv. I had to stop taking him shopping early in our relationship because he would sing the jingles for every product we would pass.
Finally today a major storm system blew in and I wasn’t able to keep working outside so I got around to cooking again. I harvested some front yard rhubarb and gathered some backyard eggs to make an old standby, rhubarb custard pie.
This recipe is from my mother in law and it’s superb. I used to think the best way to eat rhubarb was in a crumble with homemade vanilla ice cream on top but this pie converted me. The creamy mace and nutmeg scented custard wraps around those little tart rhubarb pieces for a match made in heaven. It might not look like much but it tastes divine!
And of course the fact that rhubarb follows hot on the footsteps of chives means it heralds spring in my garden so it will always hold a dear spot in my heart.
I had also saved a large bag of beet greens from my overwintered beets and made a gratin with them using Golden Glen milk, Skeeter’s garlic which I had previously roasted and froze, fresh Bay Leaf off my tree and Greek oregano and English Thyme from the garden and Lentz spelt breadcrumbs from a 100% spelt bread flop. The recipe was from my Herb Farm cookbook which I will be using heavily this year in an effort to learn to cook with all the amazing herbs I have growing in my garden.
And today was the day all of Chubby’s finery was ready for the smoker. You recall that a few weeks ago I went to try my hand at butchering a pig on Ebey Farm. I’ve been carefully salting or brining and air drying the meats and loaded them all up in the smoker today. Oh my bacon goodness. Pickle Man wanted bacon for dinner and dessert and of course requested more for breakfast. The trick will be freezing it before he eats it all.
Instead of saving the loin and the tenderloin since those cuts are very lean and quickly dry out when cooked I cured them for use as Canadian bacon and cottage bacon. And of course I cured the belly as breakfast bacon. It’s really interesting that just by changing from salt and maple syrup rub to liquid salt and sugar brine or omitting sugar and instead adding garlic and thyme you get completely different flavors.
Everything came out stupendously and oh so much better than any bacon I’ve ever had before. The salty sweet goodness and then hickory smoke is unreal. I just wanted to roll in it all. I will be posting on curing specifics over the next few days as my schedule allows but I think everyone needs to make their own bacon at least once just to see how easy it is. Since my friends and I slaughtered and butchered the pig it was amazingly cheap. You just can’t beat $2.40/# pastured all natural bacon. And from a gastronomical standpoint – priceless.
All in all it’s been a busy week but not much in the way of food photos. It’s supposed to rain all week so maybe I’ll make up for it.
Happy not quite as dark days!
