food & recipes: March 2009 Archives

I moved into this house in November, with my sweetie, excited to be in a new community and excited about having a yard. Somehow, as the economy continued to crash--and crash--and I started to read more blogs about sustainability, I become interested in doing more urban homesteading, following a diet closer to Nurturing Traditions and Weston Price's theories, growing vegetables and making more of our food, or trading for it.

At the same time, I became fascinated with permaculture, the study of environmental and agriculture systems. There are some great Yahoo groups around permaculture that I have been reading and I've tried to put some of what I learned into practice.

Here's what my goals are for this spring and summer:

• Recycle/compost food scraps
• Cut down on using bags and plastic of alll types
• WALK MORE, DRIVE LESS (this is a pleasure)
• Establish and maintain an herb garden we can cook with
• Develop a worm bin and keep it going to we can use the compost
• Build a series of container beds w/ fresh potting soil, manure, and gravel/stone(the bottom layer)
• Plant vegetables: sow carrots, radishes; plant tomatoes, squashes, peas and beans
• Keep the lettuce, chard and aragula happy; plant more of it
• Plant vines along the fence: japonica, jasmine
• Establish the lemon tree and keep it alive so it fruits
• Establish a pattern in trading for eggs--offer marmalade(it is coming out great), cake, soup, cornbread, all of which I make really well)
• Get involved  more with fruit foraging and with Forage Oakland-I love what they are doing.
• Start going to the East Bay Permaculture Guild meetings and learning more by doing with others
  
• Have fun with the above, this is a marathon, not a sprint, as we say in start up land.

Meanwhile, there is so much to read, and to learn; I have to remember this is change for the long haul, and it can't all happen at once.

Sunday Cheg BJ came over and we made marmalade. This was my second go round with 3 fruit citrus and I was excited. However, BJ and I didn't synch on how to cut the fruit; she peeled the ring VERY thin, like the chef with great knife skills she is, and we ended up with a very loose jam that hasn't reall jelled (I like it when a fork will stand up for a few seconds, but not for forever.)

So now I have 12 jars of runny marmalade, all neatly canned. UGH.
What am I going to do?  Cheat.

Yep, I am going to throw these suckers back in the big pot, pull out the candy thermometer and shoot a load of pectin into the mix. Then re bottle and can again.

PS The oranges in this batch are foraged from a friend's neighbor in Mountain View, and the lemons are local. The grapefruit....bought.

So I am a soup junkie.
Especially in the cooler weather, soup, like stew, is so comforting. And so affordable.
Over the past three months, I've evolved a routine for making soup a couple of times a month.
First, I buy organic chicken backs, usually at Mangiani's, my favorite butcher (tho out of my way), then onions, parsnips, carrots, greens. The next steps are to make organic chicken soup stock, and then to turn that into all sorts of yummy soups.

Here's how you do it:

Ingredients
2 lbs organic chicken backs
1 lb chicken parts, thighs preferred
1 parsnip
1 large onion
3 carrots
3 cloves garlic
Water to fill kettle (8-10 cups)
Pepper corns
Sea salt

Method:
Wash the chicken and put in kettle.Peel the veggies and put in kettle. Add 8-10 cups water and bring to a low boil. Skim off the scum, reduce heat to medium simmer, cover and cook for 2 hours.  Taste and when flavorful, take off stove and strain. Put the liquid in a container, then put the other ingredients into another container.  24 hours later, skim fat off the chicken stock and throw out or put aside. You're now ready to make soup.

I usually take half the stock and make a soup, and freeze the other half for a later date soup.
For about $5.00, I have super flavored stock and the ingredients both for a great chicken soup and the stock for another soup.

The rainy, Sunday morning, early spring breakfast:

• Lemon Ricotta pancakes made with 1 tbl evaporated cane sugar, vanilla, whole wheat pastry fluour, raw milk.
• Rhubarb-strawberry compote
• Bueberry-apple conserve
• Home made chai
• Sectioned fresh grapefruit and naval orange

Much joy

Pancake recipe here, with my modifications: Ricotta-Lemon Pancakes (originally published in Williams-Sonoma Essentials of Healthful Cooking).
Makes 10 pancakes

1 cup part-skim ricotta cheese
1/4 cup raw milk
3 large eggs, separated
2 tablespoons evaporated cane sugar
1/3 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 tablespoon grated lemon zest
1 tsp fresh lemon juice
Pinch of cream of tartar
Organic butter

Place the ricotta in a large bowl. Add the milk, egg yolks, vanilla, and sugar and whisk together until blended. Add the flour, lemon zest, and 1/4 teaspoon salt, and using a rubber spatula, fold until just blended.

In a separate bowl, combine the egg whites and the cream of tartar and, using a whisk or a handheld electric mixer set on medium speed, beat until soft peaks form. Using the rubber spatula, carefully fold the beaten whites into the ricotta mixture just until blended. Stir in the lemon juice.

Place a large nonstick griddle or frying pan with low sloping sides over medium heat until hot enough for a drop of water to sizzle and then immediately evaporate.

Brush the surface with butter. For each pancake, ladle 1/3 cup batter onto the surface. Cook until small bubbles appear around the edges of the pancakes and the bottoms are lightly browned, 4-5 minutes. Turn and cook until the other sides are lightly browned, 2-3 minutes longer.

Serve with any or all of the following: maple syrup, honey, jam, stewed fruit, nuthin'.