My Root Cellar



Apparently fall is a woeful time for me and blogging. I'm sorry for the lack of substance here recently. Writing is a way of processing life and, admittedly, it sometimes takes me a while to process. Kind of like winter cooking, which is suited to braises, stews, and roasting, all of which take time.

 

This morning, I walked to my garden and spent an hour cleaning it up. I pulled up everything except green onions, chives, parsley, and snapdragons (which were amazingly still blooming!), chopped it all into smaller pieces, bagged it, raked the dirt smooth, and stared at it. It's hard to believe that my garden had come full circle again and is now laid to rest for the winter.

 

I got an organizing bug in me after seeing my garden look so neat and tidy, so I came home and whipped my root cellar and freezer into shape. Except for my grandparents, I can't remember anyone having a basement when I was growing up in Portland. Thus living in a house with a basement for the last two years has been a revelation. I have stored winter vegetables in the basement the past two years, but I've decided to be more organized this year, mostly to avoid wasting food.

 

I unpacked my whole freezer and re-wrote my whiteboard list below. I am thankful that my freezer is in pretty good shape. I've realized that my freezer is a better place for storing ingredients that can become a meal rather than pre-made meals. I love to cook so much that I just don't eat pre-made meals. If I'm in need of a quick meal, I usually make an easy meal like peanut butter and jelly toast or scrambled eggs. It's one of my weird food quirks. I'm pretty proud of this list:

 

 

The last two years, I've bought squash at Green Bluff on a whim. Bad idea. I regret to say that much of it was wasted. This year, I bought just the squash you see below: delicata (delicious roasted with olive oil, salt, and pepper), sweet meat (which I'll bake, puree, and freeze in two-cup portions for baking), a Red Kuri (no idea how to cook it, so this is my splurge!), and four butternut squash (wonderfully versatile). I'm prone to impulse fruit/veggie purchases, so I can't guarantee that I won't end up with more squash. But if I don't, I'm content with what I have here:

 

 

My lovely canned goods! I've already shared a photo like this on my blog, but I'm really proud of them. Canning, freezing, and root cellar goods are three of the big ways I like to preserve the precious fruits and veggies of summer and autumn for the lean winter and early spring months. Drying is another big method, but I haven't done much with it yet. 

 

 

On an impulse, I did buy a 10-pound bag of local Yukon Gold potatoes at Green Bluff to add to my stash of red potatoes and fingerlings. It was only $5! I've separated the potatoes by variety into three newspaper-lined boxes. At Green Bluff, I recently purchased two 4-lb bags of red and yellow storage onions for only $1.50 each. A steal! I'm so excited! The last component I'll add to my root cellar is about 20 lbs of Stayman Winesap apples that I'll be picking at Green Bluff tomorrow. The farmer told me these apples are "good keepers." Excellent! That's what I'm looking for! 

 

 

I've been thinking of buying a Dutch oven, so my co-worker was kind enough to lend me his, which is the exact Dutch oven I wanted to buy. I've been testing it out with various recipes, including Butternut Squash Risotto (picture below). The risotto was easier to make than I expected and delicious in an earthy way. With squash, onions, white wine, and homemade chicken stock as some of the ingredients, I happily ate the leftovers for lunch (all week). 

 

 

Today, I simmered the bones of two roasted chickens for three hours, adding in chopped onion, carrots, two bay leaves, and fresh thyme after the second full hour. Happily, the chicken bones have enough meat on them to make Chicken Soup with Herb Dumplings. I'm thinking this Dutch oven will be my next big kitchen purchase.

It's been a good and productive day. I love the possibilities for delicious, healthy meals that are just waiting to spring forth from my cans, freezer, and stored veggies.

How are you preparing for the winter months? Do you can, freezer, dry, or store summer and fall vegetables or fruit?

A Final Garden Update: Potatoes, Oh My!

I've had a blog idea brewing in my head for two weeks now, but I haven't quite got to a place where I'm able to put my thoughts into words. For now, I wanted to share with you the final update of the year from my garden. It was a wonderful year. Here's a tunnel view of part of my garden:

 

A lot of what you can see above were volunteer plants, like the parsley, nasturtium (yellow flower), and alyssum (white flower) in the foreground. Below, you can see the huge stalks of cosmos that grew WAY taller than I expected. You can also see my bean patch and the potato foliage in the center right of the photo.  

 

I spent about 30 minutes digging potatoes yesterday and harvested a wonderful amount of Red Norlands and Rose Finn Apple and Russian Banana fingerlings. It was so much fun to dig around in the garden in the nippy, sunshiney fall air and pull up hidden treasures from the dirt: rose-tinted and golden yellow fingerlings and bold red potatoes.

Here are the potatoes spread out on newspaper in my basement to "cure" for a couple days. Curing potatoes helps them keep better in a cool dark place in the winter. I thought this picture was funny because it looks so much like a science experient! I can't wait to expand my science experiment into the kitchen...yum, chemistry!

 



 

I tried to take the picture below to show how tall my cosmos are. You can sorta tell. :)

 

I thought the texture of the petals on this calendula were beautiful. The fringed edges almost remind me of a lion's mane.

 

I was in my garden to harvest today for perhaps the last time this season. Each night, the temperature dips down a little farther. The heat in my house has finally ticked on, and my bed has three layers of blankets. The trees are starting to tint crimson and gold. I picked all my green tomatoes today to try ripening them inside. I cut all the blossoms left on my zinnias and snapdragons and added to them nasturtium, cosmos, and black-eyed Susan blooms in two Mason jar bouquets. The simple beauty of consistent flower bouquets in my house for the past three months has been a particular joy. I love that my garden can be a place of combined beauty, utility, and wonder. I pray I can take the wonder and beauty of creation into the hunkered-down winter months until the winds of change bring us the new life and green stubble of spring.

 

Thanks for enjoying my garden with me this year!

Making Ricotta Cheese

I got it into my head that I wanted to make ricotta cheese this weekend. I think it was partly because my favorite cooking blog posted a tutorial about it recently and partly because I would be up on the South Hill where I could get milk from a local Spokane dairy:

 

 

I met the woman who owns this farm with her husband last March when I took a cheese-making class. The milk is pasturized only to 145 degrees, not homogenized, and has the cream on the top like in the good old days. I used a recipe from a blog called Annie's Eats. The ingredients are simple: white vinegar, milk, salt, and lemon juice. 

 

 

After mixing salt and milk, I heated the milk to 185 degrees, took the milk off the heat, and stirred in the lemon juice and vinegar. After leaving the mixture to curdle for about 10 minutes, I poured it into a curtain-lined colander over a bowl to catch the whey. I used the curtain in place of cheesecloth and it worked perfectly.

 

 

Here is the colander over the bowl of whey:

 

Here's me squeezing more whey out of the cheese. I have to admit that it was ridiculously fun to squeeze out the warm whey. My housemate was laughing at me.

 

 

It's amazing how much whey is left over after making the cheese! Good thing my co-worker sent me a link to a blog with 16 uses for whey. I'm thinking of freezing some of my whey in ice cube trays, using it to water my house plants, and cooking potatoes and oatmeal in it. I tasted it, and I can hardly describe the taste: fresh, slightly sour, rich.  

 

And here's the finished product!

 

It's amazing that eight cups of milk makes only two cups of ricotta. It made me realize how precious cheese is and why it's expensive. I have several ideas for how to use my cheese. I'm thinking of spreading it on sliced ciabatta bread with salami (from Trader Joe's!) and garden tomatoes. I'll let you know how it turns out. :)

Have you made something from scratch before? How did it turn out? Was it worth the effort?

Gratitude



In this season of late summer bounty, a post about gratitude seemed necessary. In fact, the words were chomping at the bit to get out on the "page" and the pictures practically leapt off my camera. Without further ado, here are the things I'm grateful for with hope that they will inspire your own gratitude.

 

1. Fresh summer flowers. I'm thankful to have planted zinnias and cosmos in my garden this year. I'm even more grateful that miniature black-eyed Susans, snapdragons, marigolds, and nasturtiums appeared in my garden as if by magic (also known as re-seeding to the practical among us). I've tried to keep a fresh bouquet on our dining room table at all times. 

 

 

2. Simple and creative summer meals. The top photo is caprese, which is simply stacks of sliced fresh mozzerella and tomatoes sprinkled with basil. The bottom picture was my dinner tonight: zucchini nachos with garden tomatoes, zucchini, and green onions and lots of cheese.

 

3. Provisions for winter. My mom willingly threw herself into two huge canning projects with me over Labor Day weekend. We canned 23 quarts of peaches and 20 quarts of applesauce. It gives me joy to see the bounty of summer stored up for the cold and dark days of winter. 

 

4. Garden bounty. Today, I picked all the veggies you see below in Dottie's and my garden. (I'm harvesting veggies in Dottie's garden while she's out of town.) Lots of green beans, four cucumbers, four zucchini/summer squash, and a bowlful of Sun Gold and Juliet tomatoes. That being said, does anyone have zucchini recipes they'd like to share with me? :)



 

 

5. A working kitchen sink! We were without a kitchen sink for exactly a week. As I made dinner on Wednesday night, I had several impulses to take my dishes to the bathroom to wash them. I was so happy when I looked over my shoulder and saw this shiny new faucet to dispel all thoughts of inconvenience. 

 

 

6. Visiting with old friends. I've gotten to see my friend and former housemate Heidi four times in the past week for which I'm very grateful as she's now started a busy semester of school and work. On Tuesday, I spent time with my friend Sam and her husband Andrew. Sam and I went to Whitworth and studied abroad in England together. Tomorrow morning, I'm having breakfast with my freshman year roommate and her husband. (I'm also grateful we're meeting at the Petit Chat bakery!) Old friends are comforting because they remind me of the good ol' times, but also of the new ways in which friendships are preserved over time and distance.

 

7. My first-ever baby shower for a friend. It's a new season of life I'm entering with marriages of friends and now the babies of friends. Tomorrow, I get to attend two baby showers, one for my college friend Angela and another for her sister-in-law Karinda. I had my first experience with gift registries at Target today and, despite being confused about baby stuff in general, I managed to buy some pretty cute duds. For the record, the baby bib says "Revved up for Snacktime." I thought that was perfect coming from me. :) 

 

8. My ice-cream maker. I have to say that my impulse kitchen purchase of the summer has turned out to be brilliant. In the past week, I made Thin Mint Peppermint Ice Cream and fresh peach pie ice cream with chunks of cinnamon sugar pie crust. My mom and I enjoyed both ice cream flavors over the weekend.

 

9. Inconveniences and struggles. On Sunday, my pastor talked about the story of the ten lepers in Luke 17:10-19 in a sermon titled "Eucharistic Repentence." He used "eucharistic" to reflect its root meaning of gratitude and "repentence" to mean an action needing a 180 degree turn. Gratitude, especially for the hard things, does take effort, a 180 degree turn to recognize that even inconvenience and suffering come from the hand of a good God. Sometimes, like in the case of the 10 lepers, "eucharistic repentence" means turning from a lesser good to a greater good. The nine lepers probably ran back to their families and were full of graitude for health and wholeness. That's good! But the tenth leper who returned to Jesus was the only one to direct his gratitude in the most proper place: to the only One through whom healing and wholeness was possible. The sermon gave me a lot to think about. In this season of late summer, I have many good gifts for which to be grateful. But there will be seasons of life that aren't as cheery and the call to be grateful will be no less.

 

10. The Giver of all good gifts. "Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change" (James 1:17, NRSV).

 

What are you thankful for in this season of your life?

Canning Peaches Without a Kitchen Sink

It is possible to can peaches without a kitchen sink! And I have pictures to prove it. :)

Here's my game face:

Here are the instructions I followed from my grandma's Ball Canning Book: 

The peaches!

 

The work station:

  

Here's a view of the work station with the broken faucet in the foreground:

  

By the time the cans of peaches were simmering for the second time (I wasn't sure if they had sealed the first time), I was starving, so I ate the whole box of mac and cheese. :)

  

The outcome! The Tupperware on the left is peach sauce (like applesauce). I had a number of peaches left that were pretty bruised, so I cooked down the peaches, added sugar and cinnamon, and then mixed in cornstarch to thicken it. It tastes like the filling of a peach pie. Yum!

  

So while a broken kitchen sink is an inconvenience, it can't stop the process of preserving fresh fruits and veggies for the summer! What fresh produce are you enjoying?

You Never Know What a Day Will Bring

My mom has a saying. "You never know what a day will bring." I came home today and unloaded all my stuff as usual...lunchbox, Costco purchases, purse, keys. I was buzzing around the kitchen mentally preparing to start canning a small batch of peaches when I decided to check my phone. I had two texts and one phone call, all from my housemate. One text read: "The kitchen faucet is broken. Like out of commission broken." I gasped and looked up. Sure enough, the top of the faucet had broken off. I desperately tried to latch it back on to see if I could get some water out of the tap, but no luck. Well, there goes canning peaches, was my first thought. Momentary panic ensued considering I'm supposed to can many quarts of peaches and applesauce this weekend. I hurriedly sent a text to the landlord and called my parents. Of course this would have to happen in the middle of preserving season!

Fortunately, we have a deep sink in the downstairs laundry room right next to the washing machine. After dinner, the top of the washing machine looked like this:

Not ideal, but actually it wasn't too bad an arrangement for the short term. I was also consoled by a delicious dinner I made. I've been so busy with cooking projects and other things that I haven't had much energy to cook meals for myself. Tonight, though, I used zucchini and garden tomatoes and green onions to make a fresh garden quesadilla with pepper jack cheese. As I sat down to dinner, I reflected on my housemate's second text which admitted several points of conflict between the two of us that we needed to talk through. When I thought of her text, my heart's pace picked up and my appetite drained away. Conflict is hard for me to deal with, especially receiving criticism.

After dinner, I set off on a walk feeling distressed. A paraphrased quote came to mind that seemed to apply to the situation: "If God took things away one by one that we had failed to be thankful for, what would be left? Would we have hands or ears? Eyes or lungs?" As I crunched along on the gravel path, I thanked God for basement sinks, hands, eyes, and ears, but I was still distressed. I started up the big hill that leads to Whitworth and each step seemed to pound out my frustrations. I was mostly angry at myself. Angry that my plans had changed because of the sink and that my own selfishness and short sightedness had caused conflict with my roommate that is yet unresolved.

When I got to the top of the hill, I was gasping for breath and tears stung hard in the corners of my eyes. I didn't feel at peace, per se, but I had come to grips with the situation, conflict and broken faucet both. I knew, despite my bumblings and the circumstances that cause me to cry out my mom's saying, that God was still present and at work, even when I'm too short sighted to realize my own mistakes. Thankfully, walking gave me the thinking space to recognize my guilt and made me eager to talk with my housemate. And thankfully, it's not too late to reconcile with her.

There's still one problem though. How does one can peaches without a kitchen sink?

Early August Garden Update

My garden (for the most part) is growing well this year. This post will show how far things have grown since my last garden post. My dad had the idea to juxtapose pictures of the garden in June with pictures of the garden now. I've done that with the first four photos. Here's the contrast with how the straw bales have grown:

 

We put black plastic in the center to keep the weeds down and it's worked well. We had some trouble with aphids on the tomatoes, so Dottie asked a man at a nursery what to do, and he said the straw bales need to be fertilized once a week. Dottie has been graciously adding fish emulsion (or, as she says, fish poop) on all the bales once a week, and I have also added granular fertilizer twice and will again this weekend.



 

Here's the main part of the garden in June. Everything looks so tiny!

 

 

Explosion! In this picture you can see hollyhocks (far left), bush beans, three varities of potatoes, cosmos, snapdragons, and you can faintly see basil in the middle of the photo. I also have four tomatoes, a bush cucumber, and some lovely volunteer nasturtiums behind the hollyhocks.

 

 

Here's the same patch as above, but from a slightly different angle. My cosmos bolted up, but the zinnias didn't do as well this year. I also planted carrots twice with nothing to show and my peas didn't do well. Dottie and I are wondering if something in the soil is bad, since it seems to be a certain patch. Any gardeners out there want to give their thoughts?

 

 

Here I have two lovely lemon cucumber plants. My family grew these when I was growing up, so my sister and I have always loved them. I've already picked one small cucumber, and I'm hoping to have a couple to take to my family when I visit next week.

 

These are Juliet tomatoes in the plot behind the hollyhocks. The Juliet is a thin Roma variety that Dottie loves to grow, so I thought I'd try them out this year. So far, so good! I'm also so excited because my heirloom tomato "Ananas Noire" that has big multicolored slicing tomatoes is looking so healthy! It has dark green foilage and the little green tomatoes are starting to appear. I'm praying the August heat will be enough for them to grow big and flavorful.

 

 

An baby English cucumber in one of the straw bales! Looking good!

 

A beautiful, delicate Seashell Cosmos. The cosmos have grown well this year, and I've already used several of the blooms for a flower bouquet. I love having fresh flowers in the house!

 

That's the garden tour for August! I'll have another report in early September. Oh, I can hardly wait! How's your garden coming along?