The Frogs Are Talking...

...and they're saying it's an early spring.  In a normal year spring peepers are making noise by now:

Spring peepers

However, I have been hearing them intermittently for a couple of weeks.  Also, last weekend I heard American toads when I was out running in the woods:


American toad

Although the link (referencing NC) indicates they can call in Februrary, around here I don't recall ever hearing them before March-April.  Yesterday I heard upland chorus frogs, too; they call about the same time as the peepers but usually start a little later.

Upland chorus frog

By mid-April all will be silent.  We are pretty likely to have more frost here in north Georgia, but the warm weather that has predominated for the last few weeks is bringing fruit trees out of dormancy.  Sometimes this works out okay; sometimes it does not end well.

The Sauerkraut Tide

I noticed this the last (and first) time I made kraut in the fermenting crock, but didn't comment on it.  This time it has been a little more dramatic.

There's a definite ebb and flow of the water level (in addition to evaporation, which is slow and steady).  One morning I noticed the moat was almost dry, so added back up to the bottom of the notch.  The liquid level had overflowed a few hours later.  I then remembered what Holly mentions on her fermenting crock how-to page.  Pressure changes can pull water up.  I think it might also be related to changes inside the vessel itself.  At any rate, I haven't tried seeing if I can jiggle the lid and liberate the water, but I am now not as disturbed if I see a sudden water level change.

It has been almost three weeks; I'm going to try to let it go another week to 28 days.  The house is still cool (65-70).

More on Sauerkraut

Last year I wrote about my experiences with sauerkraut after the first few batches.  I'm doing more now, and have learned a few things.

Another sauerkraut resource is makesauerkraut.com.  It has an extensive amount of information in the form of step-by-step instructions for crocks and jars, recipes, and reviews of various fermenting tools (including jars, weights, airlocks, crocks, and more).

I start by chopping up cabbage with a knife.  I don't use a mandolin or food processor (neither of which I have).  Impressed by the admonitions to be precise on the makesauerkraut.com, I weighed the cabbage as I cut it.

Two pounds is indeed about equal to a processed head, but I had some variance. Much of the weight is in the solid core, which I did not include, but even with that and some of the outer leaves removed, some heads were around two pounds, and some were substantially more.

I was originally going for 10 pounds, because I have a 5-liter crock and 2 pounds per liter is a general benchmark.  However, as can be seen, my cabbage is pretty coarsely cut, so eight pounds filled the crock leaving barely enough room to get the weights in.  Think of it this way:  Assuming equal density, a pound of sand occupies less space in a container than a pound of gravel.

I mixed it up in two-pound batches, because those are easy to deal with.  I'm using a bit less salt than recommended on the makesauerkraut.com pages, sticking with one tablespoon per two-pound batch.  It has worked well for me in the past.  So far, I haven't had any failures with cabbage.

After salting and squeezing a bit, followed by some gloved-fist crushing and stomping with my wood bat, I sealed it up.  I plan to let it go the full 28 days.  As previously, I added a little salt water to the mix because I didn't have good coverage from just the cabbage's liberated juice alone.  I added less than a cup of water that had salt added at the rate of 1.5 tablespoons per quart (or 1.125 teaspoons per cup).

I'm planning to let it go a bit longer because I've learned that I was indeed stopping my fermentations too soon, as mentioned in the previous post.  The gaseous phase is only one of the steps in the fermentation process, and stopping things when that concludes is too soon.  Another factor is that now that it is winter, my house is around 70 so the temperature should be favorable.  We shall see how it goes.  The quantity I'm doing this time around is the same as last time, except that it's all in the crock rather than split between crock and glass jar.  This is the first time I can't see what's going on.  It is, however, bubbling, so that is a good sign.

Rose Campion and Violets

Long ago, someone planted rose campion in the yard.  It is a biennial flowering plant; the first year it sprouts and grows close to the ground.  The second year, it sends up stalks, blooms, then dies.

I have it cropping up everywhere, including in the middle of the yard.  It's very effective at seeding itself.  From my perspective, it has some advantages:

1)  The flowers are pretty nice and it will bloom to some degree for much of the summer.  The picture was taken on May 5 last year and it bloomed into August.

2)  It thrives in conditions of utter neglect (this is its most important attribute).  It survived for years and spread with no care whatsoever, and last summer / fall in Georgia was seriously dry (almost no rain for weeks on end).  It did fine.

Another flower that is only around for a short time is the violet.  They are native to Georgia.  In early spring they bloom.  This picture was taken about March 15.   The flowers are only around for a couple of weeks, however, though the leaves persist.

I notice them mostly in areas with filtered sun or shade, though they may grow in areas that get more sun.  As natives, they also grow with no TLC and so are much appreciated.

Wood cutting

This is not an area where I can claim much expertise, but I have found a few things that work.  I have a wood-burning stove, and have wood from a variety of sources:  fallen dead trees, trees cut down because they're too close to the house or have other issues, and trees (usually dead) cut down by the power company because they are close to power lines.  The latter are usually cut into fireplace- or stove-length logs for me, but the others are very long and need to be sectioned.

 Shown above (the one on the left) is a tree that was leaning over the house last spring.  It was damaged in an ice storm, developing a crack in the main trunk, so I wanted to pull it down in a controlled way rather than risk having it break apart in a storm and fall on the house. So I asked someone to help me get it onto the ground.

Once it was down, it was as shown below.

 

It wasn't terribly large in diameter, but was pretty long and was blocking the area where I normally park, so it had to be cut up.  Below is a view from the other end.

It could be cut up with a manual saw, like a bow saw that can be bought at any hardware store.  However, it would take a lot of time and probably be pretty fatiguing to cut up that much oak by hand.  I used a chainsaw.  Since I don't use the saw very often, I have a battery-powered one (so I don't have to mess with 2-stroke engines, fuel stabilization, etc.).  Battery-powered saws are also a lot quieter.  Nice ones are made by Stihl, Husqvarna, Oregon, and others.

First I cut off most of the smaller limbs then began making cuts to the trunk, using cubits as a rough guide to length (my stove will take 20" logs).  Eventually I had just a long section of trunk and used a timber jack to lever it up off the ground for remaining cuts (I got mine at Northern Tool).

 

Timber jacks are easy to use.  Just set the hook, pull the lever toward the ground, and the trunk--even a very heavy one like this water oak--pivots up.  It starts to get harder to do as the remaining amount of trunk is reduced; eventually, some other support will be needed to do the last cut (like a saw horse or two concrete blocks).

The finished result (with some unrelated pine logs in front) is shown below.  It took less than an hour to cut the tree up (and as can be seen, the interior of the trunk was rotting).

From this point, to make firewood, the larger logs need to be split--using a gas-powered splitter, wedge and maul, axe, or other method.

Whole Wheat Bread Success Story

As I have previously written, I sometimes do 100% whole wheat loaves using the no-knead approach described in that post.

The picture at right shows the same white/soft whole wheat loaf as in the previous post.  There's a decent amount of rise but it's overall pretty dense and the crumb structure shows small gas pockets (versus larger ones obtainable with some mix of white flour).

This is typical of whole wheat loaves, and it's true even with added vital wheat gluten (VWG)--as the one at right has.

Fast forward to this month, and I baked a whole wheat loaf using standard red wheat flour.  I forgot about the VWG and left it out.  I realized that too late to add it, but was committed at that point and went ahead.  I expected an even denser than normal loaf, but the end result was pretty good:

This is impressive.  One key factor is that it has gotten cold here in Georgia (comparatively), so I'm now heating rather than using air conditioning.  I have a seasonal temperature swing of about 10 degrees (79 summer, 69 winter) and I have previously observed that I get better results in the winter. During the day the temperature drops even lower, to as low as 63.  As one of the instructional videos at Breadtopia notes, counter and oven rises are to some degree offsetting: a vigorous pre-baking rise usually means less oven spring, while less rise during the fermentation time leads to a more dramatic rise in the oven.  That's part of what probably happened here.

The flavor is not impacted either way, and the individual slices are still pretty dense.  A 100% whole wheat loaf (particularly with red wheat) is not something everyone will like.  I like it okay although I wouldn't want to eat it all the time.  As noted in the other bread post, I usually use a near-50/50 split of whole wheat and white flour.  It gives consistently good results, although it is also affected by the seasonality issues mentioned above.

Cornmeal Brownies

First, an apology:  the fonts on this may be messed up on your screen.  For whatever reason, I can't get them to save in anything other than micro type.  I tried a few things, but haven't found a fix.

Cornmeal brownies?  Seriously, yes.  Although the concept may sound a little gross, they are actually pretty good.  I found the recipe one day at Grit magazine's site. I adapted it a bit to make it a more conventional brownie recipe (black walnuts are okay for brownies; peanuts are not so much).  I ended up with this:

1/2 c cocoa powder (I used dark)
1 stick of butter
1/2 c flour (I used white flour)
1/2 c cornmeal
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
4 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 c sugar
1/2 c brown sugar
1/2 c nuts (black walnut, but almost any other nut would be fine--and 1 c will also work with the same baking time as described below)

I mixed it all up and found that I had to bake it longer than the recipe suggested: I left it in for 40 minutes at 350 degrees.


This shows a cutaway view of the first pan (I have now made two)--the flavor is nice.  There's definitely a texture of granularity because of the coarseness of the cornmeal, but what I tried tasted basically like brownies.  Of course, the black walnuts may impact that, too, since they are fairly strongly-flavored.  In the second batch, I used 1 cup of nuts and it worked well.


One other note is that I tried a new cooking fat to grease the dish beforehand: tallow.  I'd read about it and wanted to try some, so hunted down a jar online.  It's definitely pricier than the partially-hydrogenated lard I have been using.

When I opened the jar, I was greeted by a faint, unmistakable, and not necessarily welcome beefy aroma.  It had a slight flavor to it, too.  Crisco and processed lard are very neutral.  I may have more to say about tallow in the future.  It worked and it is no longer perceptible in the finished product.


Overall, this recipe has definite potential.