Salad Spinner

Oh my gosh…Before I leave for a while I had to show what a beautiful salad I harvested from my mesclun mix this morning.

It has been raining a couple of days so I look this morning and it had taken off growing like crazy! I have always grown black seeded simpson but this is my first year growing a mixture.

I also got to use my new salad spinner.

I love to just take the basket out and fill it straight from the garden, then come in, wash and spin away. I don’t know how I did without it all these years. If you don’t have one it is a great gadget to have and invest in.

So much for my show off, I am so excited!

SUCCESS!

A shot of my sunflowers blooming before I go into a monolog
of sourdough.

My sourdough adventure has taken me through highs and lows.

I decided I needed more coaching than I received at the first
bread site I used.

Their motto seemed to be, take a cup of flour and a cup
of warm water…. Go forth and multiply.

Maybe I exaggerate a bit.

After the Lurch failure I figured there had to be more to it.

After finding Wild Yeast Blog raising a starter link ,I realized failure was due to-

1- using water that was too warm plus
2- using a kitchen that was too cool

I fixed the water by using my insta-read and the cool kitchen
by shutting off a bedroom from the air conditioning and started Lurch II.

I had to lug the stuff up and down the stairs. To the kitchen to feed,
to the bedroom to grow. I felt a bit silly but my efforts paid off
along with the wonderful coaching at Wild Yeast Blog.

I didn’t have rye flour but Wild Yeast said they also had success
with wheat flour so that is what I used. I placed tape at the top
of each feed so I could see the progress.

After day one all was well

After day two all was well

After day three, just like coached, the cultured seemed dead.

It picked back up after day four and then on day five I started
feeding white flour only and left out the wheat.

This was when things slowly seemed to die again. There were bubbles
and foam but no growth for about 7 days.

I decided to experiment with the leftover feed and added the wheat back
into a separate container but left the original untainted after about
5 days.

The experiment not only doubled but tripled in 12 hours while the original
only grew to half its size, but I knew something must be up.

On the eighth day I was about to give up. The stuff was growing about
half its size each 12 hours. Suddenly after the 8th day AM feed I
checked and cheered SUCCESS! It had doubled in 4 hours!

I did begin to feel guilty about throwing out all that flour through
the process, but eventually found I could refrigerate it and use in tortillas,
waffles and even flavor regular baked bread and biscuits.

Now off I go into the field of real sourdough baking!

yeah

Covered Up and Freezing

Freezing.

I am not talking about freezing weather but freezing fresh produce.

We are covered up right now in corn, tomatoes, and peppers. Some of my hot peppers are being frozen today because my bells and sweets are maturing a little slower (good thing for me or I might not get it all done!)

My favorite way to fix corn is to grill it while brushing melted butter mixed with fresh parsley or oregano, but I also have to freeze some corn to keep it from getting away from us.

tomatoes and corn

Freezing corn is simple. Just scald the cleaned ears in a covered pot of near to boiling water a few minutes. The corn will turn a bright orangey-yellow. Then transfer the hot ears to a cold bath of water before drying and bagging to freeze.

Peppers are even easier to freeze. Just gut them and wash and dry. Use gloves for hot peppers. Then bag to freeze.
Remember frozen peppers are only to used in cooking, because once they thaw they loose their crisp.

hot banana peppers and a few jalapeno

I have thrown some hot frozen peppers into salsa, because the texture of salsa sort of covers the softness, as long as you have some crisp onion to go in too.

Then the tomatoes are best roasted in my opinion( I am roasting some as I type), but you can freeze by dropping them into boiling water a couple of minutes then transferring to cold water. The skin will slip right off and you can bag them up to freeze.

With all this freezing going on today time was limited at lunch.

todays limited lunch

My Cup Runneth Over

My cup runneth over with cappuccino.

I recently got my machine out. I usually pack it away for the summer.

While cappuccino is good any season, I prefer it through
fall and winter.

My machine is a Mr. Coffee.

I’m not familiar with other brands but
here are a few pointers about mine, which I am familiar with.

1- You can get burned like the dickens if you don’t follow the
manufactured instructions.

2- Never try and clean out the little steamer hole with a toothpick.
It can break off in the hole and stop up the steam and you’ll
never get it out. You will have to take it back and get
a refund, acting like you don’t know why it won’t steam properly. (exaggerated)
Use a needle instead.

3- A good cup is said to be 1/3 cream, 1/3 coffee, 1/3 foam. I have
achieved that a time or two.

4- Don’t try and pour your coffee from the carafe with the lid on.
The lid will fall off into your cup and you will loose all that great
tasting foam on your counter, like I did here. I have done this
a zillion times (exaggerated again), and still try to preform this
impossible feat.

5- If you do loose your foam just top it off with more coffee.
It still tastes pretty good despite the fact that it isn’t perfection
in a cup.