Corn and Rye Bread

A few months ago I discussed cornbread.  I slightly modified the recipe to use whole wheat flour instead of white, and due to a mistake in mixing the ingredients, made some further modifications.  I've used the same recipe ever since.

A family member is visiting who is sensitive to wheat, so I decided to try an alternative.  Instead of 2/3 cup whole wheat flour, I used 2/3 cup whole rye.  I also dropped the vital wheat gluten.  I didn't make any other modifications (either to ingredients or baking time).

The results were good.  The texture is somewhat smoother--rye dough is sticky, and it might be that same quality that transfers into the finished product--and the flavor is slightly different, but certainly okay and in no way inferior to the normal recipe.  I was surprised it rose so well.  I was expecting it to be more compact.

I'm not sure I'll do this routinely, but it's something to have as an option.

Processing pumpkins

This is one case where I definitely don't use state of the art methodology.  I do it the old-fashioned way--slowly, awkardly, and potentially painfully.

The standard approach is to cut the pumpkins in half, scoop out the seeds, then put the halves face-down in about an inch of water and bake at 450 for 45 minutes.  This will soften the flesh, which can then be scooped out and used.  This entire procedure can also be used for butternut squash, which I consider to be essentially the same for all practical purposes.

Cutting can range from difficult to horrifically hard.  It all depends on the rind.  The pumpkins I processed last month were very tough.  That may be good for storage, but it's not so good for cutting.  The problem is that the pumpkin is small, and moves around as you try to get leverage on it.  And a knife--I tried three--isn't the best tool for tackling something like that.  A saw or hatchet would've been better.  A clean hacksaw has possibilities and I'll consider it--though that would lead to fragments of rind embedded in the flesh along the cut.  When you're putting great force on a sharp object partly embedded in something that's unstable, there's obvious potential for injury.  It took 20 minutes or more to cut two pumpkins; you can see that the edges of the cut are pretty ragged.

Then I put them in the oven and all went well.  After 45 minutes the flesh had softened so much that it almost fell out of the shells, which themselves seem to have some potential for future use for... something.

There may be a better way.  Jill Winger at The Prairie Homestead suggests putting the pumpkins in the oven whole (at 350 for 45 minutes to 2 hours).  At that point they cut open easily and can be processed as above.  I might give that a shot next year...or later this year when I tackle the butternut squash on the kitchen counter.

So far the only thing I have done with pumpkin and squash is make puree for various dishes--pumpkin pie (shown above), pumpkin casserole, and pumpkin scones (the latter courtesy of the Paratus Familia Blog; they also work well un-iced).  The pumpkin casserole recipe I use (from somewhere online that I don't remember) is:

2 c pumpkin puree

1 c evaporated milk

1 c sugar

1/2 c self-rising flour*

1/4 tsp cinnamon

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

6 tbsp butter

Preheat oven to 350. Combine all ingredients (mixing the dry ingredients first helps avoid lumps in the flour) in a casserole dish.  Bake at 350 for 1 hour (covered for 45 min, open for 15).

*In lieu of self-rising flour can use 1/2 c all-purpose flour, 3/4 tsp baking powder, 1/4 tsp salt

This comes very close to being pumpkin pie filling minus the crust, so it is almost a dessert in itself.

One other thing about processing pumpkins: the seeds.  There are a lot of ways to roast them; I just toss them in some salt water for a few minutes, then put them in the oven at 400 for 15-20 minutes.  They usually turn out okay.

Last, what to do with all of the puree?  It takes a pound to do a pumpkin and about the same for the casserole (2 cups = 1 pound, more or less).  I got about four pounds from the two pumpkins above (which is more than normal).  I got about six pounds from a tan cheese pumpkin last year.

I put the puree in one-pound lots into containers and freeze; they stay good for about a year.  Over at Dehydrate to Store there's a video on dehydrating pumpkin puree; I haven't done it yet but it looks like it has some potential as an alternative to freezing.  Pumpkin puree is apparently one thing that cannot be safely canned (even in a pressure canner), so alternative methods are needed.  The fresh pumpkins themselves (uncut) don't keep all that long; butternut squash will last longer, but at some point it will probably make sense to process before you are ready to use them.

Kerosene lighting

I've been aware of Aladdin lamps for a few years.  The online consensus-backed up by some YouTube videos is that they are very bright (see also this one).  They also are reported to put out a lot of heat.  I toyed with the idea of getting one for a while, but never pulled the trigger.  Some of them are very nice-looking, but they are hideously costly.  You can get one for about $135 [update 11/22: now $199; welcome to Inflationworld].  If you look around, nice used ones may show up on Craigslist, eBay, or retail antique dealers.  If you want a pedestal design and shade, the price is probably going to end up north of $200 [Update 11/22: now over $300].  So that deterred me.

The mantle is another factor: Aladdin has changed them recently because of concerns with thorium, which was in the old design.  The new mantles aren't as bright, but I'm willing to stipulate that they're still brighter than any non-pressurized alternative (though there are many variables with flat-wick lamps that impact their brightness).  Mantles are somewhat fragile, and from reading various comments from users, the mantles need to be replaced with some degree of regularity--though that would depend for the most part on the amount of use. The mantles represent an ongoing cost; though flat-wick lamps also need new wicks periodically, those are cheaper and they are consumed at a lower rate.

I was partly interested in a good light source for emergency use--the power here does not go out often, but it has been out for about 24 hours a couple of times while I've lived here due to ice.  I wasn't sold on the practicality of a kerosene lamp for that purpose.  I have flashlights and batteries, plus options to run low-wattage things (like strings of LED Christmas lights) for a time if the power is out.  When I began to plan for a kerosene heater as well, it made more sense to get something for lighting that could use the same fuel.

I ran across this duplex (double-wick) lamp offered by Lehman's one day, and decided to give it a try [Update 11/22: no longer available].  I'm willing to spend $50 on a speculative basis.  It arrived in July, which was not necessarily a good time to either 1) find kerosene or 2) use a lamp that puts out a lot of heat as it runs. So I didn't do much with it until fall, when its heat output would be an asset.

I didn't know what to expect.  I have some battery-powered LED candles, and figured that amount of light was about what I'd get out of a single-wick lamp.  I was surprised.  The duplex burner (two 1 1/16" wicks) puts out a lot of light.  It's not like an electrical light, but it's more than enough to read by if sitting close to the light source.  The picture makes it look like it's somewhat brighter than it actually is, but it's close.

I also got a lantern (the second picture above); they have some advantages over lamps.  They can be carried around more easily and are more weather-hardy.  I bought a #2 Champion from W.T. Kirkman, though other brands and cheaper versions can certainly be found.  I liked the galvanized finish.  This lantern has a 7/8" single wick.  It's also brighter than I thought it would be--my expectations were apparently too low before I started this--but it's noticeably dimmer than the duplex (as you might expect, with only 41% as much wick width as the latter).  The lantern also puts out less heat, although the Kirkman site helpfully estimates the heat output: 1400 BTU per hour (compared to about 10,000-23,000 BTU/hr for a kerosene heater...that suggests they have limited potential as mini kerosene heaters: one lantern, the Jupiter, was designed with a large font/tank to enable it to burn for a long time and heat greenhouses).  The light output is estimated at about 12-14 candlepower with a max of 20--getting from there to lumens seems to be somewhat of a messy calculation.  However, it's also bright enough for reading and general low-level illumination, though you wouldn't mistake it for an electric table lamp with a 60- (or even 20-) watt bulb.

You may be able to see in the picture that the walls are a bit darker with the lantern; the difference between the two is reasonably close to how they look when viewed live, but to my eyes, the brightness of the duplex lamp was about equivalent to that of the second picture, meaning things were dimmer still for the lantern.  Either would work fine for non-electric lighting.

What about fuel efficiency? I have not done a fuel consumption test.  Patrice Lewis, on her blog, has.  She used a lamp with a 3/4" wick for her test and found that it consumed about 0.61 ounces of kerosene per hour (2.5 cups used in 33 hours).  If the amount of fuel consumption is linear at a 1:1 ratio with wick width, that would mean the 7/8" wick lantern uses 0.71 ounces per hour and the duplex lamp uses 1.71 ounces per hour (if you ever had any doubts, yes, algebra has real-world uses).  If all of these assumptions and calculations are correct, the duplex lamp is a fuel hog, relatively speaking.  The Aladdin should be somewhat more fuel efficient than an equivalently-bright flat-wick lamp if it converts some of the heat to light through making the mantle glow.  However, I've seen some sources--like Jack's Country Store, which sells them--report that consumption is about 3 ounces per hour (if they use that much, they really would put out a lot of heat).

And what about fuel?  K-1 kerosene can be bought at big-box stores in the early winter months as heater fuel for around $9-$10 per gallon [Update 11/22: LOL--$14 to $18]--they advertise it as ultra-low in sulfur, and therefore low emission.  It can be bought at the pump at service stations for maybe half that amount.  W.T. Kirkman has a summary of fuels as well as a list of ones to avoid.  The only ones I have used so far are Florasense, which definitely has a kerosene-like smell when it burns in the lantern, not so much in the lamp, and Klean-Strip kerosene substitute (which still has a smell on first lighting in the lantern, but it soon dissipates).

One other thing about the duplex lamp: The chimney assembly comes off of the burner for lighting--you don't have to pull the chimney up by itself then get it back into the prongs after lighting.  I found that tip on a YouTube video that I can't locate at the moment.  It makes things a bit easier.

There are other options for emergency lighting--the aforementioned LED Christmas lights will do a decent job if you have a battery and inverter to run them (this isn't as hard to set up as you might expect; some car starters have small inverters and outlets, and you can also hook an inverter up to your car battery).  Or you can use LED lanterns (like the Streamlight) with a couple of sets of batteries at the ready.

Kerosene lamps and lanterns are in many ways antiquated and sub-optimal; they are relatively dangerous; they pollute as they burn; and they are relatively inefficient.  There are a number of international initiatives to transition rural areas in the developing world to solar LED lanterns.  However, for some uses, the inefficiencies of kerosene are bonuses.  Winter ice storms are one such situation.

Reviewed: 11/1/22

Cranberry Sauce

I made some sugar-free cranberry sauce today.  I've been doing it for a few years.  Originally, I didn't can it and only made it as needed, storing it in the refrigerator.  I also used aspartame as the sweetener, which worked in terms of sweetness, but changed the consistency.  At the end of the season, I'd buy bags of berries, put them in the freezer, then try to use them in ensuing months.

Whey Low works much better as a non-sugar sweetener.  And when I started canning it, my experience with cranberry sauce in the off season improved.  Warehouse clubs often get three-pound bags of berries, which is too much if you just want a side dish at Thanksgiving, but works out well if you're doing a canner load of sauce for use in the next year.

I use this recipe, adapted from the Ball Blue Book (BBB):

About 21 1/3 cups of cranberries
10 2/3 cups each of water and sugar (or Whey Low)

The berries have to be picked over carefully.  I always find a lot of bad ones.  They're often off-color and squishy; they may be translucent pink, or turning black.  If you don't get all (or most of them) out, the cranberry sauce will have an off-odor and flavor, somewhat reminiscent of PineSol.  Tonight I started off with nine pounds and culled out about 26 ounces, or 18%.  It took about an hour to do so.  I used the above amounts of water and sugar, but didn't measure out the berries.  From past experience, I know that nine pounds will net out to about 8-9 quarts.  Tonight I got about 8.5.  They can be canned in the boiling water bath canner.  I do them for 25 minutes.

 To make the sauce itself, I just boil the water and sugar, then add the berries.  They'll start to rupture immediately.  I stir them and eventually mash the few remaining stragglers against the side with the slotted spoon I use to stir.  Everything fits into a 16 qt. stock pot, though it is tight at first.  Until the berries break down, it will be nearly full.

You can see a couple of things in the picture.  One is that foaming becomes a problem as it continues to cook (and boil).  Another is that the berries (even once they burst) float at the top of the mixture, leaving a more syrupy consistency below.  I try to balance out what goes into each jar, but obviously miss the mark sometimes.  Still, it all works out and they're good.

The Whey Low does admittedly make this an expensive indulgence.  The three bags of berries cost about $14, and the amount of Whey Low (a little over four pounds) costs probably $30 or so (without any discounts, which are easy to get if you're willing to go on their e-mail list).  I could use sugar, which would cut the price dramatically. For preserves I use sugar; Whey Low would be prohibitive.  But for cranberry sauce, I figure it's worth it to lighten the load calorically.

No-Knead Bread

I've been baking my own bread for a little over six years now.  I usually bake about one two-pound loaf per week.  In all that time, I have kneaded a batch of bread dough just once--the first time I made it.

I claim no originality with the process or recipe.  All credit goes to Jim Lahey and Mark Bitten; the first video they made on it can be seen here:  No-Knead Bread

Numerous permutations of this recipe can be seen in videos produced by Breadtopia.

This is also similar to the "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes per Day" approach.

The nice thing about this process is that you don't need precision.  My own recipe has drifted over the years; what I currently use for the most common loaf I bake is this:

2 cups unbleached bread flour
1 3/4 cups whole wheat flour (of any kind)
1/2 tsp salt
1 3/4 - 2 cups water
1/4 cup sourdough starter

I bake it at 475 for 30 minutes, then 15 minutes at 450.  I don't use much salt... I slowly backed it off over a period of time and now I'm happy with the minimal amount I use.  When I bake for others, I bring the amount of salt back up because I know most people would find my bread to be pretty bland.

I started off baking in a Pyrex pot, but soon moved to a Romertopf because it makes nice traditional loaf-sized bread and is good for sandwiches.  Rather than lay the dough on a towel or the counter, I put it in a proofing basket to rise the second time (with a liner).

The inside of the loaf when baking the standard white/whole wheat flour mix looks like this (not the same loaf as above):

Regardless of flour blend, my process is: mix it all up in a bowl; let it rise under plastic for a number of hours; turn it out onto a floured counter top, dusting it with flour on top, patting it out a bit and folding it into a sort of oblong loaf shape; put it in the proofing basket for a few minutes; drop into the preheated Romertopf; bake; remove and let cool for about 24 hours before cutting (both to cool and to build a nice crust).  Then I start storing it in the refrigerator as I use it up.

Regarding rising times: those have drifted.  12 hours / 2 hours will work, but a wide range of times will work.  Most commonly I let the first rise go 9-10 hours and the second more like 30 minutes.  In the summer my house is pretty warm, so the dough rises a lot; in the winter, not so much.  A shorter second rise seems to lead to more rising in the oven.

I use a number of different flour combinations, adding up to a total of 3 3/4 - 4 cups:

All bread (white) flour
All whole wheat flour (white, red, white soft)*
As above with rye flour substituted for the whole wheat
As above with buckwheat flour substituted for whole wheat (only did this one; didn't like it much)

*When baking with 100% whole wheat, I add 1/2 cup of vital wheat gluten, for a total of about 4 -  4 1/4 cups flour & VWG.

The baking times are always the same.  As noted above, I preheat the Romertopf--for 20 minutes as the oven is warming up to avoid having the loaf stick; it almost always slides right out.  Above is my standard white / whole wheat mixture; below is the most recent loaf I've baked: 100% soft white wheat with VWG.

As you can see, the crumb structure is much more dense than with some white flour mixed in, but I'm very happy with the results. The individual slices are heavy. The loaf is shown sitting on my fairly cheap bread slicing guide. I think I prefer the white flour mixed in, but this is certainly viable.  The reason I have experimented with all whole wheat is that I have some unground wheat on hand.  Any baking I do with that will be either all whole wheat or I'll have to mix in store-bought white flour.  Red wheat has a definite bite to it, while white is more bland.  In general, hard wheat is more available than soft, but as you can see, soft will work okay.  I also use hard wheat flour in places where soft is more traditionally recommended, such as when making cakes. 

I haven't used commercial yeast much in the last several years; I have a sourdough starter I originally got from Cultures for Health that is still going strong. My sourdough approach pretty much follows the video on the Breadtopia site.

A few observations:  I don't mix my dough to be as wet as shown in the video.  The texture is obviously different with whole wheat flour in the mix, but even so, if the dough is too wet, it makes a mess in the proofing basket and is a mess to deal with when trying to pat it out on the counter.  Rye is pretty sticky, too.  Regardless of flour type, somewhat less water works fine.

As noted before, the recipe is incredibly forgiving of deviations in almost any of the ingredients or other parameters.  Too much water causes some problems, but the bread will still be usable.  Too little is probably okay.  Flour can vary a bit.  Rising times can vary.  Baking time can vary.  Too little would obviously be a problem, but I've left it in too long on a couple of occasions and it has been okay.  I certainly have had loaves that have disappointed, but they are always usable.

The bread is good.  I obviously bake it to my own tastes, but it beats almost anything I can buy.

I've spoiled myself at this point; I used to be happy with store brand white or whole wheat sandwich bread, but now those are almost inedible--soft, airy, salty, nasty.  What I bake is worlds better.

The amount of work involved is minimal, and it's pretty cheap.  Ten pounds of flour costs $6-$7, and I can get five two-pound loaves of premium bread from that much.  That much good bread in the store would probably cost... I don't know; I haven't shopped for it lately... probably at least $20. The long rising times can easily be built around my work schedule.  I either mix up the dough before leaving for work and bake when I get home or do so last thing at night so I can bake the next morning.


Grinding my own wheat flour would make it a bit fresher, and I have done that before.  I'm pretty satisfied buying pre-ground whole wheat, however.  I've experimented with a lot of different varieties and want to try growing my own. Speaking of which, it's just about time to plant it.

If you've never baked your own bread; give it a try.  It's worth it.

Eulogy for a Pear Tree (Deer, Take III)

Earlier, I mentioned that deer can be a problem, but that there were ways to limit or prevent the damage they do to trees that I have tried that work.  Although it has limitations as trees grow, a circle of welded wire or field fencing--or even chicken wire--seems to be effective.  After complaining to myself about the hassle and expense involved, I eventually decided to give it a try and
have adopted it as the method of choice for every young fruit tree I've planted...except for one.

That one is dead now.

Last spring, I got three pear trees.  I had been thinking about pears for a long time, but had shied away from them because of the plum curculio issues (which also plague apples and peaches, as previous posts had noted).  I didn't really want more high-maintenance trees. Eventually I decided to give them a try.  I have multiple apples and peaches already, so spraying three more trees with Surround won't be all that much extra work.

So I got three trees--two container, one bare root--and planted them.  I got them in the ground very late in the season for Georgia; it was early May.  I ran out of welded wire fencing after circling the two container pear trees, but the next time I was out where I had planted them, I took along a four-foot roll of chicken wire.  I dropped the roll next to the bare-root tree, but "didn't have time" that day to pound in the t-posts and fence it in.  Ditto the next time, and the next... eventually I stopped thinking about it, although every time I mowed, I had to move the chicken wire roll (still laying next to the pear tree) and I'd think, "I need to make time to do that."  In the meantime, I saw no indication whatsoever of deer damage, so was telling myself that maybe pear trees weren't an attractive target.

To some degree that may be true.  What caused the death of my young pear tree was a buck rubbing against it--as the picture shows.  He broke off the entire top of the tree and scraped off most of the bark.  You can see how he pushed it around by the hole worn in the ground at the base.

While it might be possible to salvage this by cutting it just above the graft, I'm going to start over.  I have a few months to decide if I want to add another pear tree or do something else.

More on Black Walnuts

I'm starting to process the black walnuts that have been falling.  Most of the nuts are on the ground now, with only a few left in the trees.

The first step is to get the hull off, which requires a bit of work the way I do it.  I mentioned earlier that corn shellers can be used to de-husk walnuts, but I'm not entirely sure whether that's intended to be when they are fresh--like in the picture at right--or when they've dried down.  You'll see various things online about hulling them; generally, people recommend it be done when the nuts are first collected.  If you wait until the husks dry around the nut, it's tough to remove them.

The texture of the husk is fairly meaty.  It's apparently edible, because you can buy pickled walnuts that include everything--shell, nut meat, and husk--in vinegar (the nuts are picked in an immature state for pickling).  I was interested in trying them until I found out they didn't shell the nuts... eating the whole thing isn't very appealing.

So I remove my husks and try to do so quickly.  The picture above was taken when I had just picked up the nuts.  They start to turn black almost immediately.  Black walnuts contain juglone, a somewhat herbicidal chemical that inhibits some other plants (but not all).  The nut falls to the ground; the husk deteriorates around the shell, and limits plant growth around where the nut will sprout and begin to grow.  So one has to be careful where the husks and washing water are dumped.

I use the hammer method, described very well in this video.  He's a lot faster at it than I am.  I pound away on the nuts inside a bag to try to catch the husks--they're messy and will stain anything they touch.  I use rubber gloves. The bag at left probably took me about 10-15 minutes to do.  Inevitably, you'll find some that have husk fly larvae in them (as shown in the picture below).  The first year I picked up my nuts, I was aghast when I discovered a few little worms in the box.  Don't worry about them.  They're pretty harmless.  They eat the husk material but don't penetrate the shell to get inside the nut itself.  I just work around them.

The husk flies may provide a somewhat beneficial service to the tree, by breaking the husks up a bit and making it easier for them to fall apart and decompose once they hit the ground. On my trees, the eggs laid by the adult flies pretty much reach a dead end, because I toss them in the trash. 

 

The adult husk fly itself is a pretty attractive bug.  I have seen a few of them on the trees, though not often; one spring, I even found one in the garage sitting on some nuts that I hadn't gotten around to hulling the fall before (they were well-dried down by then). 

As noted in another post, corn shellers can also remove the husks though I have never tried that method.

After the nuts are close to hull-less (hammering can't get all the material off), I put them in a bucket and wash them in water, similar to the process followed in the video above.  The final result is as shown.  I don't get them completely clean; I get them clean enough.  When cracking, the dried hull material will flake off the shell and make a bit of a mess, but the only alternative is to use a lot of water and/or a brush to scrub the hull tissue out of the grooves in the shell.  I'm not going to do that.

Once cleaned (or semi-cleaned), the nuts will keep well in the shell for a long time--over a year.  I still have some from last year I need to crack.  Ones I have done recently have been fine.

 

In the picture above you can see that some of the nuts are larger than the others; the big ones come from what I believe is probably a named cultivar tree.  The other tree might be native.  I get usable nut meat out of both.

 

Fairy Ring and Tree Cattle

There's nothing substantial to this post, but I noticed recently that I have a fairy ring in the yard.  This isn't a very good picture--it would be nicer if the grass was shorter, but the same rain that made the mushrooms bloom also made the grass take off.  Once mowed, the ring is much less apparent.

This is the first year I have noticed this ring, and it is relatively small--less than five feet across.  The mushrooms themselves are fairly large, and I have no idea what kind they are. I assume they will be back next year, in a somewhat larger circle.  We shall see.

This is near the blackberries growing near my garage that I referred to a couple of months ago.  Before the blackberry bushes, that spot had a big rose bush that eventually keeled over, then the rose bush rootstock grew up and bloomed for a few years.  As a nearby crepe myrtle has grown up, it has gotten too shaded, so the rootstock rose has been ailing, as well.  Finally, I pulled everything out.  When I yanked up some of the old canes, I saw some very curious little bugs.  They moved very fast but in herd fashion--like antelope or cattle.  I poked around on Google for a while and found that's exactly what they're called: tree cattle, aka bark lice.  I saw the nymph form.  Eventually, they ran away.

Before this starts to resemble a Jim's Journal strip (unless it's already too late), I should stop.

More on Beans

I made another pot of beans with the pressure cooker last night, as discussed previously, but after soaking the beans I discovered I didn't have any onions--which was a problem.  I have never made beans without fresh onion, but I decided to give dried minced onion a try.  I had some of that in the pantry.

Normally I put in two onions, but the amount in two onions varies.  It's probably usually about two to three cups of diced onion.  Usually, dried vegetables and herbs seem to rehydrate to about a 3:1 ratio; one teaspoon dried equals about one tablespoon fresh.  So I tossed in 3/4 cups of minced onion.  I also added more water.  Normally I put the water level right at the top of the beans (sometimes slightly more if cooking in a non-pressurized pot), but I added quite a bit more because I knew the dehydrated onion would absorb water, rather than increase the water level as fresh onions do when they cook down.

In the end, I put a bit too much extra water in.  Another alternative would've been to rehydrate them before adding to the pot, but that seems to be unnecessary.  The picture at right shows the pot after I had scooped out a generous portion for dinner.  The flavor was okay. A whole cup would have worked, too, but the results with 3/4 cup were fine. I wouldn't mind doing them this way again (and probably will; I have more minced onion that I haven't been using much of and I need to learn to use it for more than marinade). Minced onion keeps for a long time if properly packaged.

I could also substitute dehydrated / minced garlic, though I have no experience with it.  The only dry form I have used is powdered.  The bacon would be another problem.  It's an important component in the recipe and I'm not immediately aware of non-fresh or frozen alternatives.  I do know about canned bacon, but that's already cooked and might not work very well.  I may try it sometime just to see how it goes.  This time, by the way, I used thick-cut bacon, which was much easier to slice into small pieces than normal thin-cut bacon is.  I dropped it back down to four ounces, and that was fine (both in terms of flavoring and deterring foaming).

For the record:  It took 25 minutes after the cooking time ended for the pressure to drop in the cooker.  The guidelines for beans in the manual say the pressure should drop on its own rather than via venting.

Lastly, I ran across a site that has nutritional information for generally wholesome foods; pintos are on their list:  World's Healthiest Foods-Pinto Beans.

Acorns

I have a lot of oak trees.  Mostly I have ones that yield red acorns, but I have some white oaks, too.  And near my suburban house, there's a subdivision with about six Shumard oaks planted at the front. At the office park where I work, there are dozens of water oaks planted at the edge of the parking lots and in small plant islands in the lots themselves.  Because the oaks fall on pavement, they are easy to find and if not collected by me or the squirrels, they get crushed by cars and/or vacuumed up by the landscapers for dumping in an inert landfill.
 

Oak trees in the fall are beautiful--at least some of them are.  Some have leaves that turn a drab brown.  The picture at left shows some of the oaks I'm talking about, in addition to other trees--hickories and dogwoods...maybe a few others.   However, I want to focus on oak trees for food rather than ornamentation.

All species of oaks produce edible acorns, and all of them have too much tannin in them to be palatable straight from the shell.  I have tried with a variety of oaks: red, Georgia, Shumard, and white. The whites are close, but still too bitter--and they are reported to have the lowest tannin level.  Apparently tannin matters to some degree to deer, as well; they like white acorns the best.

For humans, something needs to be done.  Many sites and books suggest using water to leach the tannin out.  This book by Samuel Thayer has an extensive discussion of processing acorns.  However, there are many subtle variations. Generally, 'most everyone I've read recommends several changes of water at temps from room to boiling.

I have been picking up acorns for years and doing nothing with them.  Although drying them for a while is recommended, there is a difference between processing and indifferent procrastination.  Now is the time of harvest; later is the time to figure out what to do with them--so I have told myself for the last several autumns. My co-workers think I'm a little odd for picking up handfuls at the office.  So far, I have nothing to show for the effort.  Finally, I decided to try a pilot project.

Acorns are often targeted by insects; Thayer's book covers this in detail and has recommendations for identifying bad acorns easily when processing a lot. For my pilot project I didn't need to stress about it.  I picked up some newly-dropped acorns earlier this week. I cracked three and one was good (for what it's worth, a much greater proportion of the ones I've cracked from the office park have looked good; they are very clean).  I diced the Shumard into about six pieces, put the chunks into a coffee cup, filled it with water and microwaved it for a minute--not enough to make it boil, but enough to get it to simmering temperature.  Every 12 hours or so I changed the water for a couple of days.  Each time, the water was less tan-hued by the time I changed it.

After several water changes, they were edible--the bitterness was (mostly) gone.  This is less than an epic finding; all I have done is verify what others have reported.  However, it is encouraging that it's a viable process, if somewhat labor-intensive.  The taste of the nut meat itself was pretty bland.  I don't know if it would be any different if I had dried it first, but during the leaching process I assume it'd rehydrate to whatever extent it could--so that might not matter much.

I'm not sure I will do this on a broad scale, but I certainly have the acorns available if I want to.

Update:  The above obviously depicts beginner-style experimentation with the concepts.  This blogger shows the results from decanting and leaching--the latter being quicker, given sufficient equipment to process the nut meats before leaching.

Black Walnuts

It's almost black walnut time in north Georgia.  I've had a few nuts dropping for a while, probably due to drought, but the main drop starts about now and lasts for a few weeks.  The ones that have dropped already probably are not mature.  The ones that dropped in July definitely were not ready.

Nuts are harvested when they hit the ground.  They're covered in a spicy-scented thick green husk, which is removed to reveal the nut itself.  English walnuts, which are the more familiar variety, also have husks but they split apart somewhat easier.

The nuts themselves are pretty tough.  A normal little hand-held nutcracker probably won't work well (though I haven't tried to use one myself).  Forget about the decorative ones that star in Christmas plays.  Once the husk is gone, what's left looks sort of like a normal walnut, except that the ridges are sharper.  The photo is of some of the nuts I harvested last year--you can see that some have mold on them; I'm not sure why, but I cracked a few of those and they were all bad.

The first nuts I processed I used a hammer on; I just carefully whacked at them using the driveway as a backstop.  It worked ok, but was very inefficient.  I damaged a lot of the nutmeat and probably spent upwards of 20 minutes per nut.  That was just a demonstration project to assess the viability of the nuts.  I soon decided that I did want to harvest my nuts and went searching for a better nutcracker.

I soon found one:

It's available at:  http://www.masternutcracker.com/.  The website is not the most user-friendly, but there's a form that can be printed out and you can e-mail in advance with any questions you may have. There is at least one reseller I know of, and may be others:  http://855sheller.com/.  The tool does a great job and can crack the nuts with ease (it works on other tough nuts, like hickory).  There do appear to be some knockoffs available for sale from a lot of outlets; they do not seem to function as well:  Master vs. copy.  I've ordered from the Master site twice and have had very good experiences.

855 Sheller also sells other crackers, including one that can be used with a drill to process nuts quickly--they have posted videos on their YouTube site showing it in action.  If I had more trees, I would probably have to do something other than crack them one at a time, but I don't get a very big harvest.  It's more of a novelty for me at present.  Maybe someday the trees will be producing more, and I have just planted a new improved cultivar tree (Thomas Myers) that is advertised to yield big nuts with thin shells (I think one of my existing trees is something like this, or another big variety; the nuts run 20 to the pound).

A much easier option is just to buy them; the little packages at the grocery store are expensive but chopped black walnuts can be had from Amazon and other places relatively cheaply thanks to the business model of Hammon's, a Missouri company that buys nuts from small-scale harvesters who pick the wild nuts up off the ground.  There do not appear to be very many commercial producers.  The trees themselves are more often grown for their timber value, which can be substantial.


 

Beans (and Dealing with Old Beans)

I love beans. I have grown Kentucky Wonder pole beans and bush pinto and cranberry beans (I have also planted cranberry beans from the store; as far as I know there are no hybrids [ditto for store-bought pintos]).  This post is about cooking with pintos and cranberry beans.  I like cranberry beans more--they're somewhat sweeter--but both are good. I'm not a real fan of kidney beans, black beans, or others--at least when i cook them myself.  I do have some Anasazi beans; they turn out okay.

Until very recently, my procedure was invariably this:  soak one pound of beans for at least six hours.  Before soaking, the beans have to be sorted through fairly carefully.  There are usually a number of bad beans in the bag, and there will often be some small dirt clods and rocks.  The beans themselves grow in pods above ground level (unlike peanuts), but modern harvesting methods make it pretty easy for foreign objects to get into the finished product (however, in a one-pound tranche of dry beans, you probably will not find more than a couple of rocks). After soaking, some sites recommend draining then rinsing, to limit gas byproducts of bean consumption.  Other sites say that doesn't help much.  Even if it helps some, it probably won't eliminate the problem: Beano and similar products can help with that.

After soaking, set the level of the water at just barely above the soaked beans; add two diced onions, a few cloves of garlic (4-6 usually, sometimes 10 depending on size), and bacon (4 ounces); then cook covered on low heat for about 90 minutes. When I lived in Denver at higher altitude, they had to be cooked for about two hours.  At that point, check for tenderness; if the beans are done, cook on slightly higher heat with the lid off for another 10-20 minutes or so--this will cause the beans to cook out some excess water (if there is any, which there usually is), and allow them to skin over a little.  The final result is usually really good.  I've been cooking them this way for a very long time.


The last few pots, I've switched to a pressure cooker. A friend in Denver suggested I do that long ago, but I never did until recently.  I stuck with the tried and true method above.  For pressure cooking, the procedures are similar, but the cooking time is less. I adjust the water level to just below the soaked beans (the onions release a lot of water while cooking and I don't cook them down like I do with the open pot). I upped the bacon to six ounces because the pressure cooker manual said a teaspoon of cooking oil should be added to cut down on the amount of foaming during cooking.  I figured the extra bacon would add enough fat.  So far, I do not seem to have any foaming issues, but I don't put much into the vessel (one pound of beans into an eight-quart cooker).  The manual says six minutes at pressure, but I cook them for 12 and the results are good.

It takes me about a half hour to cut everything up and add it to the pot--I'm not that fast--and then pressure cooking time is about 45 minutes overall: it takes a while to heat up to pressure, then still longer for the pressure to drop after the 12 minutes.  That's still substantially faster than cooking in a non-pressurized pot, and heats the house up less (a plus in summer).

Why'd I get a pressure cooker?  Trouble with old pintos.  I bought a 10-pound bag of pinto beans, and had a few that didn't get cooked for a couple of years.  They looked fairly old soon after I got them and looked worse when I finally tried cooking the last few pounds (old pintos turn dark brown).

Utah State University has guidelines on softening old beans.  Cooking the normal way didn't work.  Even after two hours, they didn't soften and tasted pretty gross.  The first attempt was just about the worst pot of beans I've ever made.

I then tried one of the suggestions--adding baking soda to the cooking water.  Didn't work.  Another suggestion was to freeze the beans after cooking.  That helped a little one time, but failed another.  Maybe freezing after soaking, before cooking might help.  I didn't try that.  Finally, I decided to get a pressure cooker.  I cooked the first load for 15 minutes and it worked--at least it made them tender.  The taste wasn't 100%, but they were ok.

Why go through so much trouble? After all, they cost less than a dollar a pound.  But sooner or later, I'll have more old beans to deal with.  So I was motivated to find a way to make them work.  As a byproduct, I have now implemented a way to cook even fresh(er) beans that's quicker and somewhat easier.

Above I mentioned that they usually turn out well.  That's not quite right.  Usually, they turn out heavenly.  It's probably a little weird to be so euphoric about beans, but for whatever reason, they are just about my favorite dish.  One pound when cooked will last me for several meals.  They're usually the main course.  I add a little bread on the side sometimes, or cornbread.  I know I don't add enough grains to get full protein out of the beans, but that's okay.  If I have to in the future, I can do that.

Many thanks to the person in Denver decades ago who schooled me in how to do these; she brought them to a party; I loved them; and she explained how she did them.  I've been making them ever since.

Pickled Okra

I pickled some (more) okra last night.  Most of it came from the farmers' market, but I did do another quart of pods from my own diminutive set of plants.  I'm growing burgundy okra and it has turned out well.  Last year I tried to grow it but the deer got it all before it produced anything.  Output has been modest and has trickled in, so it has been a challenge to do anything with it.

At any rate, I had about a half pound of my own okra plus six pounds from the farmers' market.  Flipping over to the NCHFP, one can see that six or seven pounds of okra ought to net out to around eight or nine pints.  I knew that was wrong.  As I have noted elsewhere, I usually don't get as much food content into the jars as the guides say for whatever reason--and for some things, I have been waaaayy off.  I knew that I'd get more jars of okra than forecast--I expected about seven quarts.  It ended up being the equivalent of seven quarts; I did six quarts and two pints.  Interestingly, I upped the liquids to seven cups each of water and vinegar, and probably had about two cups left over--so the quantities of water and vinegar were okay.  I also increased the salt proportionately by another two tablespoons.


It wasn't possible to get any more okra into those jars.  I packed them very tightly and even crushed one or two.  Hopefully the end product will be okay. The jar with the burgundy okra is at the right front in the photo to the right.

Thoughts on Tomatoes

I've been growing tomatoes for a few years.  I've had a variety of problems at times, but usually gotten a decent crop.  Some years (like this one) I get a very good one.  As I mentioned in July, I dehydrate most tomatoes, but also can them sometimes, too.  This year I had enough at one time to can, but I went ahead and dehydrated the lot.

I usually have blight problems--generally early blight.  This year the blight is more limited.  Generally my tomatoes are pretty well done by now, but then they get a second wind in September and I end up with some green ones at the time of first frost.  This year I'm still getting tomatoes in mid-August and will dehydrate them, as well.


 I've never had too much trouble with blossom end rot, which can be attributed to calcium and / or dry growing conditions as the tomatoes are developing.  Sometimes my tomatoes get mushy while developing and I toss them; occasionally I get severe bug damage.  There are usually a few stink bugs on them when I go out to the garden, but the damage they have caused is limited.

Last year--for the first and only time ever--I had some tobacco hornworms and saw one that had been turned into a host by parasitical wasps.  Very gruesome, but I was happy to help the biological controls work.  Otherwise, the hornworms haven't been a major problem, either.

I've become convinced that there are subtle variations in growing conditions that influence what varieties do well.  I always grow at least two or three types--almost always heirlooms--and individual types seldom do well in two consecutive years.  Cherokee Purple is an exception; it has usually performed very well but this year my two plants have been duds.  One year Amish Paste was worthless, yielding one tomato from one plant all year; another year it produced abundantly.  I used the same package of seeds to start plants both years.  One year some heirloom start from Home Depot whose name I can't remember produced about 60% of what I got off of five plants.  This year Mortgage Lifter has done okay but it usually flops for me.  Homestead is doing well this year; it might be the unknown Home Depot plant from a few years ago or it might be new (you can tell my record-keeping is not 100% of what it needs to be).  I tried Nebraska Wedding, a yellow determinate variety, never worked for me despite trying two or three years.  I never got a single tomato.  One of my favorites for flavor:  Frankenstein Black.  I started it from seed a couple of years and it produced a decent amount.

It might be there there are other factors: seeds and starts (I've done both) are variable, so that might be what accounts for the problems rather than growing conditions. I don't know--it may be a combination of things, some observable and others not.  In a practical sense, it doesn't matter: the solution is the same.  Plant several varieties and at least one will probably do well.

Bread and Butter Pickles

A couple of weeks ago I processed some cucumbers.  My overall harvest isn't going to be all that great; the vines are not looking like they'll produce that much longer.  But I did get enough for a load of bread and butter pickles, my favorite.  The Ball Blue Book and Pickyourown.org have similar recipes, which I generally follow.  One exception is that I don't salt and ice the cucumbers; I just fresh-pack them, cutting the salt a little. PYO mentions draining and rinsing after icing.  The NCHFP site calls for icing beforehand, as well, but skips the rinsing step. So although I use a bit less salt, my finished product might have more salt in the brine.  I end up with a brine that is about as salty as what one would get by using Mrs. Wages' bread and butter mix.

My cucumbers this year were all yellow (Edmonson from Southern Exposure and Miniature White from Seedsavers).  The recipes above call for onion, so I added some white onion slices, using store-bought ones (I haven't grown my own onions yet).

The procedure is pretty simple: slice; mix the brine (with the various spices indicated, plus sugar); add the slices (onion and cucumber) to jars; pour in the brine, and process.  I got about 1.1 lb. of cucumbers per quart (when mixed with the onion).  That's a bit less than anticipated by the recipes above, which suggest around 1.5 lb. per quart (or per two pints).  As I have noted elsewhere, I'm usually not able to pack as much into jars as the recipes suggest.  Hot- vs. raw-packing matters, but in this case the recipes are for raw pack, as well.  I had two bowls of cucumbers, not the one suggested by the picture above.  All that notwithstanding, I'm happy with the results (shown below is also a jar of pickled okra I threw in; I used a different brine mix for that).

Pickled Carrots

I don't grow carrots in the garden.  I have done radishes, but never carrots.  I don't have tilled soil that goes down far enough to accomodate carrots. I got some Paris Market seeds one year (a shorter variety) but never planted them.

Nonetheless, if I ever do grow them, I may end up with enough to need to preserve them somehow.  Then again, maybe I won't.  Excuses falling by the wayside, I decided to try pickling carrots last month--just because.  The concept is interesting, and I like pickled vegetables.  I've done cucumbers (dill and sweet), dilled green beans, and asparagus.  All have turned out well. I've also done peaches.  I've bought commercially canned okra.  But I had never tried carrots.

As I mentioned before when discussing peach butter, I usually don't get very creative with canning.  Canning guides admonish against that as a rule, but the keys with any canning recipe are that if it's destined for a boiling water bath, the pH has to be below 4.7, and with either boiling water or pressure, the temperature has to get to the required threshold for the required time to kill pathogens.


The National Center for Home Food Preservation has a recipe for pickled carrots and Pick Your Own has essentially the same recipe.

I used peeled baby carrots (note that the NCHFP has a separate recipe for pickled baby carrots, but it's basically the same except that it substitues a volume measurement for the carrots instead of weight).  Because no pre-processing is involved, unlike most things I can, this was a quick job.  I just dumped the carrots into a couple of large Cinderella-style mixing bowls and looked over them to see if there were any that needed to be culled or trimmed (ever eat a bad carrot? They are not good). I used six pounds of carrots (two bags of three pounds each).  This is about ten percent more than two times the amount in the recipes referred to above, but I think the syrup mix was adequate the first time (i.e., 11 cups of vinegar with 2 cups of water).  By the time I did the second batch, I forgot that 11/2 worked so I upsized it in the same proportion, using 13 cups of vinegar and proportionally more water, plus an extra 1/3 cup of sugar and a bit of extra salt.  The second time, I probably had almost two cups left over. 

When I can, I run the jars through a dishwasher cycle, which cleans and heats them.  So I didn't even start processing until the dishwasher was running.  Getting the syrup mix up to boiling was relatively quick, and once I dumped the carrots in, it took a relatively long time to get it back to boiling for the three-minute simmer referred to in the instructions (six pound of refrigerated carrots really cooled things down).

The dishwasher was in its dry cycle by the time I got the carrots back to boiling, so I started filling jars as soon as I could.  The first time I did eight pints and one quart; the second time I did three quarts and three pints.  If you're counting, you see I got more the first time, at least in terms of jars.   In the first batch, the last pint was only about half full of carrots; the rest was syrup.

To fill each jar, I pretty much just followed the directions--into each empty jar went two tablespoons of mustard seed and one tablespoon of celery seed per pint, then carrots were ladled in using a canning funnel; I shook and tapped the bottom of the jar on the counter top to settle the carrots as compactly as possible.  Then I put in enough syrup to get the headspace to about 1/2".

Overall, they turned out pretty well.  People who have tried them have either grimaced and walked away after just one or two or eaten them with gusto.  They are somewhat sweet, as you might expect given both the flavor of carrots and the added sugar.

The other methods for preserving carrots include dehydrating and freezing, but both of those require blanching.

So now I have a bunch of carrots, but I've already eaten a fair number.  I don't think I'll have any trouble going through these in the next year or so.

Deer, Take II

Earlier I described a few ways I tried to keep deer out of my garden last year.  They were mostly unsuccessful.  One that was partly successful was a motion-activated sprinkler.  I set it to maximum sensitivity and it would fire a five-second blast of water when triggered.  It seemed to limit the damage, but there was one major problem: the hose bib in the back of the house is right next to the master bedroom.  I could hear the water start and stop for each five-second blast; it woke me up at night.  A couple of times it would fire twice in a couple of minutes; I'd get up and go outside to look; I'd see deer.  However, multiple alerts every night was not really going to work for me.   I only used it for a couple of weeks (if that) then gave up for the year.

So far, this year I am having success with a higher fence.  The original fence was four-foot chicken wire, with one foot bent horizontal as a deterrent to digging under the fence.  That is now buried under grass and thatch.  It works pretty well against rabbits, but doesn't deter deer.

So I drove in some more seven-foot t-posts (in addition to the ones from last year that I strung the twine on) and added another three-foot band of chicken wire.  I stitched it to the bottom section with the remants of the twine, plus some new line.

It's ugly.  It's not at all straight, symmetric, or anything else.  But it's working ok, so I'm not unhappy with it.  So far the only thing I've had to deal with is voles / mice (or whatever they are); they went after my green beans hard when they first started to climb the trellis.  Some Tomcat bait took care of them in short order; the bait was gnawed on; the bean damage stopped; and I smelled something rotting out there about a week after placing the bait.

For the gate I drove two posts and fashioned hooks out of nine-gauge wire I have for a future kiwi trellis.  I lashed the hooks to the posts with 16-gauge wire, then hung a section of welded wire fencing that is about four feet high and six feet long (I hung it sideways).  That's also ugly, but also working.

These pictures show the garden before anything was growing there.  Now it's more populated, with okra, cucumbers, Kentucky Wonder green beans on one of the trellises, tomato plants, some late-planted Blue Clarage, and lots o' weeds.  So far, other than the vole issue with the green beans, most has been well.  Stink bugs like the green beans and tomatoes, and Japanese beetles have been seen on the green beans and okra.  Those problems are manageable.  Deer that clear-cut the okra in one night are not.

Whole Wheat Apple Pie

I've long had an interest in making a whole wheat (w/w) pie crust.  I definitely prefer w/wt bread, and have made w/w brownies, cake, and other things.  Pie crust has been a challenge, however.

My latest attempt, version 3.0, didn't use 100% w/w.  I used a 50/50 mix with unbleached white flour as the other form.  The basic recipe is a cup of flour, 1/4 cup oil, lard, butter, or shortening, 1/2 teaspoon baking powder, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 cup of water.  The standard directions for making a flaky crust are to use butter or lard and cold water, keeping the fat as solid as possible.

I ditched that and used sunflower oil.  I've done w/w "crusts" in which I've just mixed up the above ingredients without the water, made a friable, loose mix without much cohesion, and poured it into the greased pie pan that way, then patted it roughly into shape.  That obviously only works for a bottom crust, but can do a fairly decent job for a pie that normally only has a bottom crust, like pecan, pumpkin, or sweet potato.

For version 3.0, I went ahead and rolled it out with w/w flour-covered bottom and top layers of waxed paper.  In the dish, before the top crust, it looked like what's shown at right.  As you can see, my edges weren't that smooth.  My rolled-out crusts look more like an amoeba than a smooth-edged disk.  However, I more or less got something I could use.

The finished product was not that good (and as you can see below, definitely not ready for competition in the nearest county fair).  W/w flour is denser than white; I would say I ended up more with something like a stuffed-crust pizza (that happened to have cinnamon and apple slices as the filling) than a pie.  While it wasn't all that great, it was still usable.  I will probably lighten up on the w/w content next time.  I gave a slice to a friend at work, who thought it was fine.

This was not made with the Striped June apples.  I canned the filling last fall, following the recipe on the NCHFP site.  I made it sugar free, using Whey Low in place of sugar. It was mostly GoldRush and Stayman apples, with a few Arkansas Blacks and maybe a Yates or two thrown in.   That's a subject for another day.