On Nature's Wrath and Windfalls

It's been quite a week; earthquake and hurricane alike in a region not known for either phenomenon.  The earthquake was at least as palpable as any I experienced in 14 years of living in California.  I was staggered to learn how far we were from the epicenter.  In the moment it felt to me like a very local event.  We took the hurricane seriously and prepared by clearing the yard of potential projectiles, storing water, getting all the laundry and dishes done, filling the empty space in the chest freezer with bottles of water, keeping the oil lamps and matches handy, and taking showers a few hours before the storm was due.  We came through unscathed, with only a brief loss of power.  We're near a major hospital and I suspect our grid is somehow "privileged" because of that.  Our power loss may have been only a second or two; it happened while we slept.  We got about as much rain as predicted, roughly seven inches (18 cm).  The chickens weren't at all happy about the extremely waterlogged backyard, but the sun shone beautifully today and chickens have very short memories.  All signs point to the ground drying out fairly quickly.

Hurricane Irene gave us a jumpstart on the apple thinning that our old apple tree usually commences in late summer.  These apples are still undersized and have developed nothing of the sweetness they will hold in a couple of months.  (We don't know the variety, but it harvests exceptionally late.)  For the past couple of years I've collected the early drops and donated them to my farming friend for her hogs.  We typically can give her as many as ten or twelve buckets-full over the course of a six weeks or so.  The pigs don't mind the incredible tartness of the apples apparently, and my friend is happy to accept free food which she knows has not been sprayed with anything.  Though her farm is not certified organic, she has a good relationship with her customers which is based on trust and integrity.  She'll accept any sort of excess garden produce she has confidence in, as well as acorns or hickory nuts for her pigs.

I am happy to provide the unripe windfalls to her.  At the cost of very little effort to myself, these sour fruits can provide value as food, if slightly indirectly.  I don't even have to take them to her since her husband passes our home on his way to work.  He picks up the buckets on his way home and returns the empties later in the week.  I see this as another instance of something from nothing.  This is a prominent aspect of my homesteading mentality - making an effort to prevent waste and finding a way to get value out of what would otherwise be useless.

Of course, it doesn't hurt at all that farming friend often donates to me the hog jowls that her customers disdain.  We have no formal agreement on this, and I always offer her half the jowls back after I've turned them into guanciale.  I definitely feel that I get the better end of the bargain.  But the reality is that both of us are making an effort to reduce waste, and we both benefit.  I cannot recommend it highly enough to aspiring homesteaders: make friends with small-scale local farmers!  It's good to know other gardeners too, but farmers and homesteaders can benefit each other in many ways.

I'll mention also the other use of unripe apples that fall from the tree, even though I have only theoretical knowledge of it.  Apples are very high in pectin, and the more so the less ripe they are.  Before powdered or liquid pectin was commercially available in stores, underripe apples were used to thicken jams and jellies.  Just as with most old domestic arts, this one is still viable today.  If you have your own apple tree and were so inclined you could use early windfalls and drops as a free substitute for store bought pectin.  I've no doubt google would furnish you with the details.  If I ever become so ambitious, I promise a blog post will be forthcoming.

Pee in the Garden

My crusty old uncle Jay told me one of his characteristically amusing yarns once while we were puttering around his garden.  He looked kinda like Colonel Sanders, but much leaner, and he spoke with a lovely Louisiana drawl.  (He was an uncle by marriage.) His story was about a writer who composed a lengthy poem dedicated to his beloved, who liked to garden.  He entitled it, She Sits Among the Lettuces and Peas.  His editor liked the theme, but suggested he come up with a more tactful title.  The poet considered this advice and then submitted the revised manuscript under a new name, She Sits Among the Cabbages and Leeks.  I can hear Jay's gasping sort of laughter now. 

Nope.  This is not an April Fool's post.  I decided that this would be the year we start using pee in the garden in some sort of systematic way.  Human urine contains abundant nitrogen, a key nutrient for plants and soil microorganisms.  My husband has used the compost pile for the odd leak now and then with my encouragement, but we've never approached the use of urine with any organized intent.

I'd heard of the value of urine in the garden from various sources.  After all, garden centers sell urea (which is actually fake urine) as fertilizer, and I know that some compost enthusiasts use pee as a compost activator.  Sharon Astyk has written in her inimitable comically informative way about the renewable and cheap nature of human pee.  I attended a session on humanure systems at the PASA conference last year, and was sold on the concept even though we don't have access to a good supply of cover material to make it work.  I read Carol Deppe's The Resilient Gardener, which further extolled the virtues of urine.  And it's not just crackpot greenies talking about this.  Heck, even the Washington Post reported on the concept.  Researchers at the University of Kuopio's Department of Environmental Sciences in Finland...

...concluded that urine produced by one person over a year would be enough to grow 160 cabbages -- that's 64 kilograms (141 pounds) more cabbage than could be grown in a similar plot fertilized with commercial fertilizer. They recommend collecting urine from eco-type toilets, storing it, then scattering it on the soil around the plants rather than directly on them. 

After being bombarded from so many directions, the idea finally worked its way up my priority list.  While we may not be able to employ a full humanure system, we can at least divert the less problematic of human wastes into useful channels.  Several million pounds of nitrogen are flushed "away" in the US every single day.  Homesteading is a process of learning to use what you've got, and learning to find value in what society so often treats as garbage.  This is one more resource available to us that we will no longer squander, one more dependency we can rid ourselves of.

Okay, a few technical details.  Urine should be diluted 1:7 with water if you keep yourself well hydrated, or 1:10 if you don't typically drink enough water.  Too high a concentration of the nitrogen in urine will chemically "burn" plants.  Of course, I like to streamline functions around the homestead, since convenience means my good intentions are more likely to result in good practice.  So I came up with a simple bucket hack.  All that's involved is marking the inside of the bucket to indicate the fill levels that represent the correct proportion of water to pee.  There are two ways to go about this, depending on how quickly you anticipate "contributions" being made.

The first approach is to work out the volume of just the first pee of the day per household.  Carol Deppe wrote that she uses only her first pee of the morning, since that is typically the most concentrated specimen of the day.  I've been doing this off and on for a while now, so I know generally what volume is typical for me.  From there one can multiply by 7 or 10 to get the volume of water, measure that quantity of water into a bucket, and mark the surface line with a permanent marker.  You may need to empty the bucket and dry the inside very well to mark it.  With this method you don't really need a second line indicating the additional volume of urine if your estimate is reasonably accurate.  But if you want to put a second mark as a check, go ahead and add your estimated volume of pee to the water and make a second line above the first.  Check your accuracy over a few days and adjust as needed.

The other approach is to start with how much liquid you want to carry in the bucket, which should take into account the distance you'll need to carry it, how you will be emptying the bucket (lifting?), and your physical strength.  So let's say you're comfortable carrying the bucket half full, or a third full, or whatever.  Put your first mark inside the bucket at that level.  Then fill to that line using a measuring cup to determine how much liquid it takes to fill to that level.  From that measurement, do your calculations - either multiply by 6/7 or 9/10, depending on hydration habits.  That will give you the amount of water needed for correct dilution rates.  Then empty the bucket and measure in the amount of water indicated from your calculations.  Make your second mark at that line inside the bucket, which should be below the first line you marked.  When you're ready to start, fill the bucket to the lower line with water, and when enough pee has been collected to reach the top line, it's time to empty the bucket.  Rinse, fill, collect, empty, repeat.  Free, renewable fertilizer.

There's also the direct method with no need to muck about with dilution or measuring.  Over the winter months I've just been adding my morning collection directly to the compost pile.  A well established and active compost pile should be able to sort out a concentrated dose of nitrogen and "digest" it, so to speak, before it is applied to the garden.  This approach feeds the soil microbes directly, which then later indirectly feed the plants where you apply the compost.  If you want to use this method, it's better to not let the collected pee sit around very long, especially at indoor temperatures.  The nitrogen in pee is such a valuable commodity that airborne bacteria will colonize the pee almost immediately and begin exploiting it.  The faster you get it into a compost pile, the more use it will be to soil microorganisms.

Now for the tedious caveats and common sense warnings, lest I fall foul of the hygiene police and the white knuckled.  Human urine is very nearly sterile when it exits the body, unless you happen to be carrying one of a very few nasty diseases.  Theoretically, hepatitis B, CMV (cytomegalovirus), and HIV (possibly others) are transmissible via direct contact with urine.  There's no data I know of on disease transmission through consuming food from soil fertilized with urine.  I regard healthy soil as a universal cleanser of toxins and pathogens of all stripes anyway.  Further, it's impossible to infect oneself with any disease.  Either you've got it, or you don't.  You don't pick something up from yourself.  If you're using your own urine in your garden, you have nothing to worry about if you're the only one consuming that food.  If you're super cautious, go ahead and test any member of your household for disease who might contribute urine to the cause.  Make sure none of you have any disease that could theoretically be passed on to another.  As indicated above, apply diluted urine around crops, not directly on them.  Finally, you probably want to steer clear of this technique if you sell to the market.  The last thing you need is a frivolous lawsuit.  To be on the safe side, use it on your fruit trees, berry bushes, corn (maize), ornamentals, or your asparagus crop after this year's harvest is finished.

So what are your thoughts?  Is pee in the garden just beyond the pale?  Do you already use urine (human or otherwise) as fertilizer?  If not, would you consider it?

Something from Nothing

Today is absolutely gorgeous.  Gorgeous.  The temperature outside is as warm as inside - in the middle of March.  The sun is shining, and the breeze is so gentle.  This weather is insane, but you know what?  I'll take it.  I puttered around outside most of the morning, just finding stuff to do rather than spend time indoors.  I pulled the covers entirely off the cold frames, planted some burdock, smoked the bacon I'm in the process of curing, admired the purple crocuses, watched the cats chase flies, set the hammock up, and generally basked in the finest day of the year so far.

A pile of grapevine trimmings has been hanging around since my husband did a severe pruning a few weeks ago.  I'd been meaning to check them out, but what decent weather we've had lately has been devoted to more pressing chores.  But today - ah, today.  Any excuse to be outside would do today.  So I made these.

Now I know they aren't exactly works of a master craftsman.  But I was pretty pleased with them.  For an hour's mucking around on a balmy day, a few snips here and there with hand pruners, and not a clue as to how to go about making a wreath, I'd say they turned out fair enough.  Maybe it's just that I get a kick out of making something from nothing, out of finding a use where other people only see garbage or something to be gotten rid of.  It tickles me every single time I manage to pull something like this off.

If I'd had more grapevines, or longer grapevines, I could have made more wreaths or bulked these two out a bit.  Many pruned vines were too short to be useful.  The vines were clearly starting to dry out a bit; if I'd worked with them a few weeks ago I think they would have been more flexible.  Still, the vines and especially the curlicue tendrils were surprisingly resilient.  Given my total ignorance of the proper way to construct a grapevine wreath, it was a very forgiving medium to work with.  Next year I'll encourage my husband to make the cut pieces as long as possible, and then see what can be done with them when they're freshly cut.

Not sure what I'll do with these yet.  The nice thing is that if I decide I don't have any use for them, they can either be gifted away, or composted!  Okay, now I'm heading back outside.

P.S. to those who entered the homesteading books giveaway, I haven't heard back from one winner.  So stay tuned.  If I don't hear from her by tomorrow evening, I'll draw another number.  You still might win!  And if you entered but didn't check to see if you won, well check it out.

Salvaging the Overwintered Leeks

Last year I didn't start my own seeds of my favorite leek, the Bleu de Solaize. It's my favorite because it is incredibly winter hardy. I've left it in the ground over winter in previous years, and harvested it during a January thaw, when the air temperature warms but the ground is still frozen. Sometimes those midwinter harvests involve pitchforking out a frozen block of soil, letting it sit in the sun for several hours, then coming back to extract the leeks. But I couldn't get Bleu de Solaize starts last year, so I went with whatever leek starts were available at my local nursery. I don't even remember the variety.

So when late fall started turning into winter, and many leeks were too small to be worth harvesting, I didn't have a whole lot of hope for them. I harvested up until the ground froze, starting with the biggest ones first.  The rest were left to winter's untender mercies.  But as winter began to loosen its grip on the garden, I cast another evaluating glance over the bedraggled leeks.  Some of them certainly were looking large enough to salvage.  And with volunteer help around, it seemed like a good food preservation chore to tackle.  Besides, that part of the garden is has a date with 25 crowns of purple asparagus in not too many weeks.

My expectations were rather modest.  Our volunteer and I loosened the soil with a pitchfork and set about "field dressing" the leeks.  We shook off as much of the soil as easily came loose, cut off the roots, stripped off the dirty and damaged outermost layers, and trimmed away most of the greens. There were more beautifully preserved leeks, and larger amounts of leek below the soil surface than I had imagined.  There was surprising little damage from frost, even though we found bits of ice held in the layers of the upper green parts of the plants. Leeks are tough plants. I was amazed to find that the harvest just about filled my garden hod.  It seems that Bleu de Solaize isn't the only leek that overwinters for us with zero protection.


The harvest tally came to over five (!) pounds (2.3 kg) of trimmed leeks. Only a small number were too damaged to harvest.  It was very satisfying to remove so much food from the row, and have it all cleaned up well ahead of the asparagus crowns' arrival.  We rinsed the leeks in two changes of water outside, to spare the plumbing in our old farmhouse.  Leeks have many virtues, but their hygiene leaves much to be desired.  Because of the way they grow up through the soil, they catch a prodigious amount of dirt in their layers.  That people are known to put up with the trouble of cleaning such a plant should tell you something about the wonders it can do in the kitchen, though not perhaps the detail that these wonders are particularly on display where soups and potatoes are concerned.

After the outdoor work was done, there was still a good deal of indoor processing left to do.  Trimming, assiduous rinsing, chopping, butter melting, cooking and cooling.  The end result was a dozen discrete piles of sauteed leeks arranged on sheet pans lined with baking parchment.  Once the individual clumps of leeks were frozen solid, I bagged them up.  This way I can grab a usefully sized portion of partially cooked leeks out of the freezer whenever needed, rather than having to thaw a huge block of them all at once.

Preserving this many leeks was another task which would have been tedious in the extreme to do all by myself.  Having volunteer help made the work lighter, and I had the pleasure of teaching someone about a previously unfamiliar vegetable.  Another win with the WWOOF.

I've already got quite a few Bleu de Solaize baby leek sprouts started indoors.  And I can't seem to resist planting more of them.  I'm hoping we'll have enough to harvest starting in late summer, and still leave plenty for harvest well into this time next year.

A Heroic Commitment to Leftover Consumption

These lovelies complemented my fried egg breakfast yesterday.  Potato pancakes made from the last of the Thanksgiving leftovers.  What's in them?  Leftover mashed potatoes (which had been made with milk, cream, and sauteed leeks), two sliced up scallions, a few twists of ground garlic (from our sliced, dehydrated garlic, placed in a peppermill), and a few tablespoons of flour to help the pancakes hold their shape better.  Knead all ingredients together with the hands, form the patties, pan-fry them gently in oil over medium heat, a few minutes each side, blot on pages torn from an old phone book.  Thank goodness the leftover ordeal is over, huh?  Yeah, life's tough.

Sow's Ear, Silk Purse: Oatmeal-Raspberry Pancakes

These days, many of our meals seem to have stories behind them.

We've had red raspberry canes producing for the last two years.  Problem is, the berries have no sweetness to them at all.  My husband found them utterly insipid, while I thought they had flavor, just no sugars.  We were going to give them this one more year to see if their first year's production, last year, was just off because they were young or because 2009 was such an atrocious gardening year.  If things didn't improve, they were for the chop, to be replaced by something that earned its space in the sun on our modest lot.  Nothing much changed this year, except for them producing more heavily.

It about killed me that we had raspberries going to waste.  I didn't particularly enjoy eating them, it's true.  And we didn't really have enough at any one time to merit breaking out the canning equipment.  Finally I decided to harvest them and just turn them into a simple raspberry sauce.  The sample I put in my husband's mouth floored him.  He couldn't believe it was from our red raspberries.  The black raspberries that came ripe back in June have won his heart, but the red raspberries have disappointed him mightily.  Heck, honey, all you gotta do is add sugar. Given the unbelievable deliciousness of the raspberry sauce, it seemed like the obvious thing to do was to reproduce the raspberry-oatmeal pancakes from a favorite little breakfast place I used to frequent back when I used to frequent breakfast places.  My husband says that I have an infallible memory for food, such that I can remember meals in detail years, even decades later.  In fact, I can sometimes even recall what he ate, when it differs from what I ate.  Let's just say that favored breakfasts indulged in repeatedly don't lose their spot in my memory banks.

My version of oatmeal pancakes called for buttermilk, prepared oatmeal, and some oat flour to mix with all purpose.  Let me tell you - these require neither butter nor maple syrup at the table; they're that good.  I don't have a little ketchup bottle to drizzle out the sauce all pretty-like.  But a rustically ugly-charming splooge of spooned-out raspberry sauce over dusted powdered sugar has its own style.  I wouldn't really call this a harvest meal, since only the raspberries and the eggs are from our own production.  I'll just call it awesome instead.  My recommendation is to make up both the sauce and the pancake batter the night before you want pancakes.  It's a decadent thing to wake up in the morning and have these waiting for you in the fridge.



Oatmeal-Raspberry Pancakes

For the raspberry sauce:
1 1/2 cups fresh raspberries
3/4 cup sugar (or less, to your taste)

For the pancakes:
1 cup rolled oats, ground into 3/4 cup oat flour
1 cup all purpose flour
2 tbsp. sugar
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
3 tbsp. unsalted butter, melted (plus extra for the pan)
1 1/4 cups buttermilk
1 cup cooked oatmeal, cooled
2 large eggs

Powdered sugar for dusting (optional)

Make the sauce: Rinse the raspberries and drain them, allowing a little water to cling to them.  Place them in a small saucepan and add the sugar to them.  Place the pan over medium-low heat. Mash the berries and sugar together with a potato masher or a fork, just until the sugar is blended with the mashed fruit.  Heat gently for about ten minutes, until no granules of sugar are visible when you look at a thin layer of sauce on a spoon.  Cool the sauce.  It will thicken slightly.  It can keep for 1 week in the refrigerator.

Prep the pancakes: Mix the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. In a smaller bowl, whisk the butter, buttermilk, cooked oatmeal and eggs together until thoroughly combined. Gently fold the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients. Do not overmix.  Allow some lumps of medium size to remain.  Let the batter rest for at least 15 minutes.  For best results, cover the batter and chill it overnight.  Thin it with additional buttermilk or milk, one tablespoon at a time, if it has thickened up too much while resting.

Heat a cast-iron skillet or heavy pan over medium heat for a few minutes, then turn down to medium-low. Brush the pan generously with melted butter using a pastry brush or paper towel. Quickly pour in about 1/3 cup of batter, to make a pancake about 5" in diameter.  (If the batter does not spread well, thin with additional buttermilk.)  Cook 2 or 3 such pancakes at a time. Once bubbles begin to form all over the top of the pancake, flip the pancake and cook until the bottom is dark golden-brown, about 5 minutes total. Re-apply the butter to the pan before cooking the next batch. Continue cooking until all the batter is used. Makes about 12 medium pancakes

Pancakes can be kept warm in a very low oven (175 F/80 C) if you wish to serve everyone at the same time.  Arrange each serving on a plate, dust it with powdered sugar, and drizzle the raspberry sauce over the pancakes.  Serve warm.  Eat.  Die happy.

Harvest Meal: Rabbit Stew

Our garden rabbit made a nice stew.  We used a few homemade ingredients to prepare it, though only one of them (other than the rabbit) came from the garden.

Riffing on a recipe from the The River Cottage Meat Book, I started by browning some of my homemade smoked lardo in olive oil, and put that in a slow cooker.  Then the jointed rabbit was browned on all sides in the leftover fat, and added to the slow cooker. Next, fat slices of onion were browned in the fat and put in the slow cooker.  To all that were added big chunks of peeled carrot, fennel, some bay leaves, kosher salt, white pepper, a bit of honey, thyme from our garden, and two bottles of my husband's hard cider (from our own apples) that had been aging in our cellar for two years.  I added just enough water to cover the ingredients.  The rabbit that frisked and nibbled in our garden around 8 am was in our cook pot before 9:30 am.  The cats got the liver and kidneys.

Since it was so hot on Sunday, I got an extension cord and put the slow cooker on the porch.  Because of my concerns about tularemia, I let the stew cook on low heat for a good portion of the day.  I don't know that this disease is even a concern in my area, and there were no spots on the liver, but it didn't seem problematic to cook the meat thoroughly.  (We also wore latex gloves - a recommended precaution - when butchering the rabbit.)

When the stew was cooked, I strained off the liquid, reduced it in a skillet, finished it with some cream, and added the meat and veg back in to warm again.  The reduced sauce brought everything together nicely.  If we'd had potatoes, I would have served it with mashed spuds.  Instead we had it over pasta (parboiled, of course - handy on such a hot day) with a salad of spinach, fennel, and marinated strawberries.  The meaty stew went surprisingly far as a topping for pasta.  I think the quantity of vegetables in the stew could easily have been doubled and it wouldn't have felt skimpy on the meat.  We found it quite good.

I was pleased to note that I had nary a moral pang about killing and eating this rabbit.  I know it ate well, since it was eating from my garden on a regular basis.  I also know I gave it plenty of chances to go away.  The rabbits around us are utterly brazen.  They laugh at the fencing I've used to protect the garden in past years.  They are nonchalant about being shooed or chased away.  They barely stay six feet ahead of me when I try to run them out of the yard.  I can see this working out as a viable alternative to the hassle and effort of raising rabbits for meat.  Instead, we can just shoot the wild ones, and protect our garden in the process.  There is, after all, neither a limit nor a season to rabbits, though I expect they'd be best in the fall.  My husband knows my rule - we don't kill it unless we're prepared to dress it, butcher it and eat it.  (I might make an exception for crows though; they're giving me a very hard time with my popcorn plants this year.)

I don't have to figure that there are more rabbits where this one came from.  I know it for a fact.  Which is good, because it means we'll probably be able to try out the awesome sounding grilled rabbit that Wendy mentioned in the comment section of the previous post.  Other cookbooks I own list a few other rabbit recipes I'd like to try out, including curried rabbit and a ragu of rabbit over pappardelle.  Maybe wild rabbit will become a fixture of our dinner table.  There's an indescribable satisfaction in eating a varmint that tried (to an extent successfully) to eat my garden. May this be the first of many.

A Sudden Glut of Eggs

What do you do when your farmer friend asks if she can park her car in your driveway for three weeks while she visits family faraway? You say yes. What about when she also asks for a ride from your place to the bus station? You say, "of course." And when she drops off eight dozen eggs along with the car because her husband forgot to give them away at work that day? If you're like me, you have a minor panic attack.

Eight dozen eggs! When she set the box down at the edge of my driveway, I asked what was in it. I thought she said, "a dozen eggs." An extra dozen eggs is no big deal. But lo, and behold, upon returning from the bus station, I found eight fully loaded egg cartons; not one. I was really glad it was winter and that the root cellar was cold, because finding that much fridge space would have been the first problem. Did I mention that our own four laying hens have been performing quite well themselves? It's not like there was an egg shortage here in the first place.

So...eggs. Eggs and...potatoes. Eggs and....guanciale. Eggs and...dried figs? Pumpkin? Beans? What am I supposed to do with all these eggs? I know, I know. I'll freeze some. I'll let some "age" so I can make deviled eggs. I'll make and freeze a few quiche. And I'll give some away. But still. That's a lot of eggs.

What's your favorite way to eat an egg? What's your best suggestion for dressing up eggs for a lunch or dinner?

Using It Up: Deviled Bones

We had a prime rib roast with Yorkshire pudding for Christmas dinner, rounded out with carrots from the cold frame and parsnips dug from our garden. Roast beef is a once-per-year extravagance for us. For the past three years, our roast has come from local farmers who raise their beef cattle on pasture. The roasts have all been superb, and a much appreciated change from our normal diet that is contains the occasional roast chicken, or perhaps a little ground pork or ground beef now and then. Roast beef is special indeed for us.

As we ate our way through the delicious leftovers, we looked forward to the ritual of the deviled bones. Even the bones of a prime rib are to be treasured - the wrap up to the traditions in our holiday season. To think of discarding them seems sacrilegious! I like to serve these deviled bones with a green salad to balance out the carnivorous mess that takes center stage on the plate. Eating deviled bones is an extremely primal process of gnawing off the meat clinging to the bones. You can dress it up with wine and a cloth napkin, but this isn't a meal for any but the most intimate company. I feel the regression of a few hundred thousand years when eating this meal. Growling is optional. There's no doubt at all in my mind that human teeth were selected at least partly for tearing meat from bones.

Here's a quick sketch of a recipe for deviled prime rib bones. Take a tablespoon of salted butter for every bone you have, usually it will be three or four. Melt this butter and add 1 teaspoon of dried mustard, plus one teaspoon of cayenne or a milder ground chile pepper. I like to use chile molido. Alternatively, you can substitute two teaspoons of any curry powder you like for the mustard and chile. Add about 1 teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce and freshly ground black pepper to taste. Stir these ingredients together. Brush the butter mixture over the bones with a pastry brush, coating all sides very well. Dredge the bones in a shallow dish of salted bread crumbs. Place the bones on a baking sheet, resting so that their meaty sides are upward (curving upwards in the center and resting on their two ends) and broil them for about 7 minutes. Turn the bones over (two ends will point upwards) and continue broiling for about 5 minutes. Credit for the general idea of this recipe goes to Jennifer McLagan and her book, Bones: Recipes, History, and Lore.

The bones look impressive on a plate, even though there's very little meat there. Fortunately, the flavor of meat so close to the bone is exceptional. And it takes long enough to eat deviled bones that you will be satisfied by the time you're done with a bone or two and a salad.

When we had gnawed to our heart's content, and our faces and fingers were coated with delicious grease, and the salad had put a civilized facade on our carnivorous glee, I still couldn't bear to throw the bones away. Having slathered them in strong spices, and on account of their meagre quantity, I didn't think they'd be worth making into stock. But I saved them for the hens, thinking about how cold it's been lately, with temperatures not even getting up near freezing. I wouldn't do this with poultry bones, but with a difference in species as profound as chickens and cows, I don't worry about any possible disease transmission.

The girls went absolutely bonkers over the first bone I tossed into their enclosure. With their sharp little beaks, they stripped down whatever tiny shreds of meat we'd left behind. I had intended to save the bones to dole out to them. But there was such a ruckus over that first one that I tossed in the remaining two just to avoid flying feathers. When the ground thaws those bones will be buried in three separate spots in the garden, where they'll slowly leach nutrients into the soil.

In this way, I feel satisfied with having not only gotten full value out of our expensive purchase, but in also respecting the animal that died that we might eat it. We will waste none of it, because someone gave a damn about this food. And because food is precious.

P.S. I failed to snap a picture this year, so that's a picture from the aftermath of 2008's feast.

It works!

I picked several pumpkins about 5 weeks ago which weren't fully ripe, leaving several inches of the vine attached to the stem. Somewhere on these intertubes I'd read that partially ripe pumpkins can be finished off inside on a sunny windowsill this way. So I thought I'd give that a try. I'm happy to report that all but the smallest and greenest of those pumpkins now look fully ripe. We don't have great southern exposure from any window in our house; too many large shade trees that screen the light, even with bare branches. So the pumpkins ripened very slowly. But they did ripen. These underripe pumpkins I was able to salvage just about doubled our total pumpkin harvest.

Just thought some of you might like to know this trick for next year. Now to move the ripe pumpkins to the coolest room in the house. They like to be stored around 50 degrees F (10 C).

First Foray Into Home Curing: Guanciale

Let me tell you why it pays to know your farmer. That farmer friend I've mentioned a few times? The one who raises her animals on pasture, including our Thanksgiving turkey, and who occasionally throws some bones my way for free? She called me up on the Friday before Thanksgiving to ask if I wanted some random pork bits. Seems a few of her customers that bought whole or half hogs didn't want some of the less choice cuts, even though they had paid for the entire animal. So I was being offered pork jowls, organs, and possibly some other trimmings or offal as well. Of course I thought of Hank, and of course I said I was interested. My policy is not to turn down free handouts unless what's being offered would really present problems. Free pasture-raised local pork does not present any problems. The need for a little research, yes; problems, no.

We got to the butcher's shop on Sunday morning. It wasn't clear exactly what bits were unclaimed, and it was clear that the butcher would put whatever he was permitted to keep into scrapple or headcheese, and render down any fat into lard. Not being a paying customer, I didn't want to seem too acquisitive. I left with two pork jowls, a liver, heart and a tongue.

We're headed into the perfect time of year for curing meat - the dry, cold months of winter. And I've long wanted to try making my own guanciale (say: gwan CHA lay) - cured pork jowls prized in southern Italy and eaten like bacon. It's the authentic ingredient in several traditional pasta sauces, including spaghetti alla carbonara, for which I've always substituted American bacon. Traditional carbonara only has a handful of ingredients: eggs, garlic, cured pork, black pepper, noodles, and a good aged grating cheese. We produce our own eggs and garlic. I can get a surprisingly good grating cheese locally made from pasture-raised raw milk. Being able to source locally and then cure pork jowls into guanciale, and therefore to prepare a truly local carbonara or Amatriciana would be nothing to sneeze at. So starting about ten days ago I embarked on my first home curing project.

I cannot tell you how thrilled I was to trim out a pair of hog jowls, scatter a mixture of salt, sugar, black pepper, other spices and some herbs from our garden over them, weight it all down in a bowl, and stash them in the fridge. I felt like the cat that ate the canary, with a free pork experiment in the fridge. It almost didn't matter how it turned out. Almost. As the meat sat in the salt-sugar mixture over the past week, it released a fair amount of liquid which I poured off from time to time. I added some more of the curing mix and turned the jowls over each time I did this. After just over a week I took the meat out of the bowl. It had a noticeably stiffer feeling than when I first salted it. I reapplied the curing mix wherever the meat seemed to need it, and hung it up in our refrigerator to begin the drying process. I managed the hanging by cutting up a wooden dowel into two pieces to fit in the shelf supports inside the fridge, and then piercing the jowls with two metal skewers which rest across the dowels. I've got a plate underneath to catch any drips as the drying process begins.

Fortunately, my husband is away on a business trip, so it's only me rummaging through the fridge this week. I plan to find a place to finish the curing process in our garage after he gets back. That will allow the outdoor temperatures to settle a little more fully into true winter, and let me monitor the beginning of the drying stage quite carefully. If there's any risk of spoilage, it would be right now, when the meat is out of its brine but still pretty moist. So starting the drying process in the refrigerator seems like a good compromise. All told, the guanciale will probably dry down for 4-6 weeks.

The organ meats were a little more challenging to deal with. I have not been a fan of organ meats over the years. The whole idea of eating a chunk of flesh designed either to clean the blood or produce urine somehow lacks a certain appeal. But I'm trying hard to cure myself of food prejudices, and this is certainly an opportunity to put my resolve to the test. I like haggis, so I'm trying to work my way into things from that angle. Hank recommended an Umbrian sausage called mazzafegati, and a dish of pounded pork heart schnitzel with spaetzle. Those Germans, Italians, and Spaniards, good pork eaters that they've been over the centuries - they're the ones who would know how to eat everything but the squeal. Both of Hank's suggestions sounded good to me, but I didn't have time to deal with making them in the days leading up to Thanksgiving. So all the organs got thrown in the freezer. When I get hold of some pork fat and regular pork to bulk out the liver, I'll take a stab at that mazzafegati. And yes, I'll keep you posted on such efforts, as well as how the guanciale progresses.

Wish me luck in my new food preservation endeavor!

August Frugal Action Item - Repair It!

I was already late with this month's challenge. Then we got hit with late blight on our potatoes, and then our tomatoes, just as the garden was about to start producing in earnest. To top everything off, I gave myself a nasty cut on one index finger, which makes typing pretty difficult. So...a belated an abbreviated Action Item this month. My apologies.

Finding ideas that nearly everyone can put in to practice is tough; I want both renters and homeowners, young folks just starting out on their own and older adults to be able to use these Action Items. So this month I'm going to focus on the famous dictum: "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without."

Too many goods are not thoroughly worn out and used up when they are discarded in our overdeveloped world. A rip, dent, nick, or break is good enough reason to throw something away and buy a new one. Now, I'm no expert when it comes to things with gears and circuits, and I recognize that I'm lucky to have a mate who is pretty good with such complicated devices. Not everyone is so skilled or so lucky. But even with my lack of technical expertise, there are plenty of things that I can repair if something breaks or goes wrong. This month I'm going to review a few basic supplies and some techniques.

Basic supplies for repairing common household goods include the following:

set of screwdrivers
set of wrenches
drill
baling wire
epoxy, wood glue, other glues
needle and thread

You'd be surprised how many things can be fixed with this small set of tools.

The screwdrivers and wrenches should be obvious. Often all that is needed to return something to working condition is to tighten a screw that has come loose. Those who are more ambitious in fixing things need screwdrivers to open up appliances and poke around to see what's amiss.

The drill and baling wire are surprisingly close to the needle and thread. I've repaired quite a few plastic items, or prevented cracks in them from progressing to the point where the item becomes unusable by "suturing" the item up with a drill and small gauge wire. It's a sort of stitching technique. We salvaged a wheelbarrow with a cracked rim at the nose of the barrow, and I've managed to keep my ancient plastic vegetable steamer in service with the same technique. (The rubber coating is entirely optional.) Once you learn this simple trick, you'll probably find uses for it in one thing after another. It's especially useful to keep cracks from growing in plastic items. With the right drill bit, it can be used for ceramic items too, if need be.

Speaking of ceramic, a variety of glues will come in very handy for all sorts of breaks and chips. True, broken ceramic items are hard to disguise and it won't be much use trying to repair a serving bowl that has shattered in several pieces. But if the item doesn't need much strength, or if the break is just a chip, a good glue job will extend the utility life of the item. And at the least, a beloved item with no further utility can be displayed if it's pretty enough. Ceramics broken beyond repair can also be accumulated for mosaic projects if you happen to be the crafty sort. Many things can enjoy a second life through crafts.

I'm really in no position to lecture anyone on the art of sewing. I can hand sew simple repairs if the rips are caught in time. My husband is far more diligent about sewing up his leather work gloves and pants. Those he's repaired repeatedly he calls his "frankenpants" or his "frankengloves." Still, a needle and thread are essential basic repair tools to have in any home. And it takes no particular talent to use them well enough for effectiveness; aesthetic considerations are another matter.

What repair techniques and tools are most used in your home?


New to these Frugal Action Items? More here:

January: Compact Fluorescent Bulbs & Hot Water Pipe Insulation
February: Kitchen Competence
March: Rein In Entertainment Spending
April: Go Paper-less
May: Solar Dryer
June: Increase the Deductible on Your Auto Insurance
July: Stay Cool Without Touching that Thermostat
September: Insulate
October: Preventative Health Care
November: Frugal Holiday Wish List
December: Plan Next Year's Garden

Using Up the Zucchini Glut

It's always the same with zucchini plants: they give, and give, and give until we just can't take it anymore. This year I planted two of them, which is one more than any family of less than ten people needs, thinking that I would donate the harvest from one of them to the local foodbank. But the June rains did in one of the plants, so I'm only dealing with a normal garden glut of zucchini. As usual, I'm racking my brain to figure out what to do with all this bounty, other than the usual tales of leaving the vegetables on neighbors' doorsteps in the dead of night, or disposing of them in parking lots via any parked car I can find with an open window.

I realize this topic is probably a wee bit late for many of you. But here in the northeastern section of the US, incredibly heavy spring rains have pushed back a lot of crops by about three weeks. I'm just now getting that familiar overwhelmed sensation with my garden. So here's a roundup of ideas I've found and used to cope with zucchini overload.

101cookbooks.com has an excellent special zucchini bread which I made a few batches of both this year and last. They freeze well. This really is special - not your granny's zucchini bread. She calls for curry powder or other even more assertive seasonings in her recipe, but I favor a hefty dose of cardamom, a little cinnamon, and the merest whiff of cumin in mine. In fact it's a pretty forgiving recipe. Even if you think you don't like zucchini bread, I'd urge you to give this one a fair shake.

Chocolate zucchini cake is good too. It took me a while to try this one, but I became an instant fan when I did. The zucchini was almost undetectable in this super moist cake, and I was using one of the gargantuan zucchinis that got away from me. Had I used the properly sized little ones I don't think even I would have noticed any trace of the vegetable.

Another blogger posted about partially dehydrating fat zucchini slices and then caramelizing them in a saute pan. Without getting rid of a good portion of the water, it would be pretty hard to caramelize zucchini. I haven't tried this one yet, but check out the post - they look fabulous. I think I'd try layering them with some mozzarella, or grilled eggplant, or both.

Julie posted about zucchini slice, which is a crustless quiche-y, souffle-y sort of preparation. Very easy to make, but I found I needed to use five eggs to one cup of flour. If you don't have any of the self-rising flour called for in her recipe, substitute 1 cup of all purpose flour along with 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder and a 1/2 teaspoon of salt. I also added some kernels cut from a grilled ear of corn. Very tasty, suitable for any meal of the day, and you can use up a good deal of zucchini with this recipe! As Julie suggests, if you're going to bake one of these, you might as well bake two, maximizing the use of the oven during the hot part of the year, while stashing a meal for later on in your freezer.

I once had a recipe for zucchini-lemon muffins. I suspect it was a version of the flexible muffin recipe from the Tightwad Gazette. After cutting down on the sugar from the basic recipe, I added grated and squeezed zucchini, lemon juice and a little zest, plus walnuts. These made a great breakfast muffin that I often sent on the road with my husband when he traveled a lot for work. It saved him a little money, and though it may not have been the healthiest breakfast in the world, he would consistently eat them rather than resorting to even less healthy choices, while also saving him time in the morning. You could make these with whole wheat flour if you're quite health conscious. If you try these, remember that you can use more zucchini than it would seem at first glance, especially if you're vigorous about wringing lots of liquid from the zukes.

You probably don't need tips on how to squeeze more meals out of your zucchini plant, but I'm going there anyway. Cut off some of the male flowers and use them as vegetables in their own right. I hear down in Mexico they make soups out of the flowers. Italians like to batter fry the blossoms. Cleaning and stuffing the flowers is a bit of a chore, but I usually manage it once per season. After making sure there are no lurking critters inside - I once brought a bee inside the house that had slept overnight in a blossom that had closed at sundown - fill the blossom with a mixture of breadcrumbs, cheese, herbs, or even a little grated zucchini. Then dip them in beaten egg, seasoned flour, shake off the excess, and pan fry them. If getting the stuffing into the blossom cavity is too laborious after the first attempt, just batter fry the cleaned blossoms. This makes a lovely appetizer. I also like sliced squash blossoms on pizza. It brightens up the pie.

If all your zucchini management efforts are overwhelmed by the abundance of the plant, and if your neighbors have taken to guarding their doorsteps, you can always, as a last resort, grate and freeze zucchini for later use. So here's a tip. The day after you freeze it, pull it back out of the freezer and let it thaw. Pour off all the water that comes out of the vegetable and freeze it again. All that water was going to come out anyway when you were ready to use it. By getting rid of it now, you free up a lot of freezer space, allowing you to store more of it.

And remember, when it all gets to be just too much, your local food bank or soup kitchen would probably be thrilled to have your excess zucchini.

DIY Chicken Plucker

I know my track record is not great when it comes to delivering promised posts on certain topics. I'm trying to make amends this week. So today it's a post on the homemade chicken plucker that I used to help process my three layers last week.

The idea came from someone named RedneckPete, who posted about this invention, calling it the $6 chicken plucker. You can see a video of this plucker in action here. (Don't click either link if you're squeamish about such things.) I came across this last year, when I first anticipated slaughtering my older laying hens in late fall. I can't remember exactly what the materials cost me when I went shopping for this project, but it was more than $6. I'm sure it was less than $20 however. I bought a PVC endcap, a short length of small diameter all-thread, a package of six rubber bungee cords, and a few bolts and washers. I already had the Makita drill.


The way it works is that the S-hooks are removed from the bungee cords and the cords trimmed to leave about 3" of material attached to each end. Then holes are made evenly around the PVC endcap to take the rubber "fingers" from the bungee cords. The wide ends where the S-hooks attached anchor the rubber inside the endcap. The all-thread passes through a hole drilled at the top of the endcap and offers purchase and a good grip for the electric drill. The business ends of the fingers whirl around and strip the feathers from a scalded carcass before evisceration.


I found that this worked reasonably well during my first processing experience. I still had to pluck some feathers by hand. If I'd had another pair of hands to help, it might have been better. As it was, I had to duct tape the drill to a sawhorse and depress the trigger with one hand while I manipulated the chicken carcass with the other. The largest feathers on the wings easily resisted the homemade chicken plucker, as did the finest pin feathers. Most of the others came right out.

For the very small amount of slaughtering I'm likely to do from year to year, this simple plucker will suffice. If I had ambitions for raising my own broilers in larger numbers, I might consider the Whizbang plucker, which is far more complicated and expensive to build, but can handle three chickens at a time. Harvey Ussery wrote about building one of these, and he seemed quite pleased with the performance. The drill chicken plucker is obviously a quick and dirty contraption compared to the Whizbang. But since the low end estimates for building a Whizbang come in at $600 or so, I'll stick with the <$20 model for now.

Stop Food Waste - Salad Scrambles

The lettuce is up and it's salad season again. Salad is a cornerstone meal for healthy eating, and one of the most obvious ways to include raw foods in your diet. But leftover salad presents some home economy challenges, especially if that salad is already dressed. I've heard that some people like to make green smoothies out of leftover salad. Personally I've found a different strategy works for me.

I make salad scrambles the next morning. There are few ingredients that might go into a salad which would be totally out of place in an omelet. Tomatoes, peppers, herbs, onions, cheese, croutons - not to mention spinach and other greens - all these harmonize well with beaten eggs. I especially enjoy leftover Caesar salad in scrambles, or any salad that has goat cheese in it.

True, if you favor sweet dressings, or if you like to add fresh or dried fruits to your green salads, it might be a weird flavor combination. But in general this strategy works well because it's usually the earliest opportunity to use up leftover salads. That means that if the greens have been dressed, the vinegar doesn't have an extra eight hours to continue breaking down their cell structure, and turning them icky. It also helps if you dress your salad very lightly (a healthy and frugal practice anyway) and then store the leftover salad in the coldest (i.e. lowest) part of your refrigerator.

Making a salad scramble is simple. Beat however many eggs you want to use, adding salt and pepper or any flavorings you like. Preheat a pan over medium heat and put in a tiny dash of oil if it's needed. If your leftover salad is heavily dressed you probably won't need extra oil. Depending on the type of greens in your salad and how heavy your pouring hand was, it may take a few minutes to wilt the greens and drive off some excess liquid. Romaine lettuce can stand up to a surprising amount of cooking, butterhead not so much. When the greens wilt, increase the heat to medium-high and add the beaten eggs. Push a wooden spoon or soft spatula gently through the eggs every few seconds so that the eggs form soft lumps. When the eggs are just set, you've got a frugal and healthy breakfast. (In case you're wondering, those purple things in the picture above are chive flowers - part of last night's salad. They're quite oniony when raw, but mellowed a bit in the scramble.)

I actually whipped up some of these when we were houseguests last Thanksgiving. My husband's aunt made a lovely spinach, feta, and cranberry salad to serve with dinner a night or two before the feast. Our hostess was just going to toss the leftovers, but we assured her we'd eat it for breakfast. The next morning she was all but agog when we made some salad scrambles. It sure seemed to make her stop and think for a moment. Maybe she thought we were freaks. Or maybe she was mentally revisiting a childhood of extreme frugality, growing up on an Indiana farm raised by a survivor of the Great Depression.

So...am I a freak? Do you have clever solutions for using up dressed salad, or other awkward leftovers? Please share in the comments!

Other ways not to waste food:
Tiny Tip: Broccoli Stalks
Sour Milk & Potato Biscuit-Muffins
Chocolate-Zucchini Cake
Tiny Tip: Scallions
Homemade Apple "Cider" Vinegar

Bad Little Fried Things

While my husband is away on business travel, I'm on my own with leftovers and whatever's in the fridge. So I guess it's no great surprise that I had another batch of milk go sour on me this week. I've had a lot of fun in the past, using up sour milk in various ways. Today's concoction might beat them all for cheap and not totally unhealthy decadence though. I'm not sure what to call these treats, but they sure were good.

Here's what I used:

2/3 cup old fashioned rolled oats
1 cup sour milk
1 1/2 cup all purpose flour (plus a little extra for rolling out the dough)
1/2 cup currants
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/4 teaspoon salt
peanut oil for frying
1/3 cup powdered sugar

I combined the rolled oats and sour milk in a small bowl while I mixed the flour, currants, baking soda, cardamom and salt in a mixing bowl. Then I poured the oats and milk into the dry ingredients and stirred until the dough was uniform. This I turned out onto a floured board. I formed the dough into a ball and then rolled it out into a slab just a little under 1/2" thick.

Then I heated about 1/2" of peanut oil in a saucepan. While that heated, I put the powdered sugar in a small paper bag. When the oil was hot, I cut thin strips of the dough with a pasta cutter (a pizza cutter or aknife would have been fine too) and dropped them into the oil, just enough so that the pan wasn't too crowded. After about a minute, I turned the pieces of dough over to brown nicely on the other side.

When both sides were browned, I used chop sticks to pick up the dough and drop them into the bag of powdered sugar. Folding over the top of the bag, I shook the contents so the fried dough was well coated with the sugar. I put them on some pages torn from an old phone book to soak up the grease, but the pages showed almost no trace of oil.

These were very quick and easy to prepare, and absolutely delicious with my morning cuppa. Too bad I'm the only one here to enjoy them. They look a lot more decadent than they really are, since the dough itself contains no sugar. The dough also contains only a trace amount of fat (from the whole milk) before it's fried, so even in that regard it isn't too bad. The currants and oats give these a faint sheen of nutrition too. I'm very partial to cardamom in lightly sweet things. But you may prefer to substitute the more familiar cinnamon.

Anyway, that's where some of my soured milk went this morning!

Tiny Tip: Repurpose Your Credit Card

I thought it would be appropriate to mention this tiny tip this month, since February's Alternative Action Item is to bake bread. And many people out there are getting rid of credit cards or having the accounts close on them. That little piece of plastic may have been the bane of your existence, a temptation as potent as a drug, that has gotten you into a financial mess. It's a good thing to retire a credit card or two. But that doesn't mean the card itself is worthless to you. It need not end up in a landfill.

Instead, you can repurpose that stiff little piece of plastic into a baking tool. Bakers often need something to scrape dough off a wooden work surface, or off the inside of a container. The tool is called, appropriately enough, a dough scraper. Baker's supply catalogs will sell you specially made ones with extra features for $10. But really, all that's needed is a stiff, but somewhat flexible piece of plastic, curved on one side and straight on the other. The ones you can buy are bigger than a credit card, but there's no reason you can't work with a smaller version that fits neatly in your hand. And because you can make as many as you want from old membership cards and credit cards, it's possible to have a very large supply of them for baking day. An ordinary but sharp pair of scissors is all that's needed to make these hacked scrapers.

Using a homemade dough scraper made from retired spending enablers to bake your own bread is a great way to triple up your savings while increasing your self-sufficiency. It's a nice feeling to know that I can be a proficient baker without needing to spend money on specialized equipment. And it's feels good to keep another piece of plastic out of the landfill too.

Got any other tool hacks or repurposing stories you'd like to share?

More tiny tips: More Sunlight in Your Garden, Parboil Your Pasta, Make the Most of Old Man Winter, Broccoli Stalk, Scallions

Experiment: Homemade Liqueur

The term "home economy" has taken on new meaning for me over the last year or so. I've started to look much more carefully at the expenses and the resources of running our household and our mini-homestead. At all times much of my attention is taken up by food issues, and so my attitude towards all the food we purchase or grow has undergone the most significant change. I now reconsider things that I would have discarded or thrown away in the past, without even considering it to be wasteful. Things like chicken skin, broccoli stalks, soured milk, apple pomace, and tiny bits of leftover food. Formerly, I felt no pang of guilt about discarding these things, because I didn't see it as wasteful to do so. Now I see them as valuable resources that I can't in good conscience throw away. I know there are ways to use all of these things to reduce our household budget while improving our lives. And I'm always looking for new ways too.

A case in point. Despite my general insistence on buying local or at least organic, I purchased a crate of clementines for New Year's. I don't eat a lot of fresh fruit in general. I tend not to eat any during the winter or early spring because there's nothing in season in my area. (I do eat dried fruits and a few fruits that I froze over the summer.) But a crate of clementines has become a holiday season tradition. Yes, I know all about the atrocious food miles and the carbon footprint. I rationalize it as a once-per-year holiday indulgence.

So it is that I've been enjoying a sweet, juicy gift from Spain each day for the last week and a half. The peels have been niggling at my conscience. What to do with the clementine peels? I save the peels from the few citrus fruits we buy for cocktails in order to use them in scones and biscotti. But clementine peels are so much thinner than lemon, lime or orange peels. I wondered what I might do with them. I've had little luck at candying citrus peels. But I knew I had to at least try to use them in some way. Then one of my relatives mentioned limoncello, reminding me of this Italian lemon liqueur that is made at home all over Italy.

I'm going to give clementine liqueur a go. My husband suggests that we call it clementino, or clemencello. Fortunately, this type of liqueur is simple to make and I have all the ingredients on hand. I had about half a bottle of vodka leftover from making my own vanilla extract. The only other ingredients needed are the citrus peels, sugar, and time.

It's interesting to me that distilling alcohol in your own home will net you an unwelcome and very unfriendly visit from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, while making your own liqueur from legally purchased spirits is just fine and dandy. In any case, I don't drink much alcohol, and don't care for vodka at all. But if I can make my own liqueur from salvaged citrus peels, I may have a homemade gift for some relatives who enjoy alcoholic cordials. Or, I may come to enjoy it myself.

So here's what I'm doing. Since all the pith needs to be removed from the outermost skin of the peel, I've been cutting the peel off the clementines as I eat them. I do this because I like to eat the fruit segment by segment, but my husband just cuts the clementine into sixths and bites the flesh off the peel. Either way, this produces more uniform pieces of peel than I would get if I peeled them by hand. A very sharp knife with thin blade is essential for easy removal of the pith. I use a boning knife, cutting away the pith carefully, a layer at a time. The trick is to remove as much of the pith as possible without cutting through the oily layer called the zest. It takes a little practice.

If you want to try saving zest in this way, start with lemons or oranges, which have much sturdier and thicker peels. The thinner clementine peels are more difficult. I've found that it's easier to remove the pith in this way after the peels have sat around for about 20 minutes. They dry out just a little in that time, and the trimming goes more easily. Don't leave it much longer than that though, a peel that dries out too much is harder to trim. Expect to take several passes in each direction to gradually remove thin layers of pith. Once you have removed as much as you can, the zest strips can be saved for a few months in the freezer. Very handy to have around when you feel like baking scones.

As the clementine peels are prepared day by day, I'm just slicing them up and adding them to a small quantity of vodka (about 12 oz.). After the last peel is added, I'll give the mixture about 4 weeks to do its thing, and then add a sugar syrup. As it happens, I have some hardened sugar leftover from an attempt at making candied lemon and orange peels. I couldn't stand to throw the stuff away. So now I have a use for it. That sugar will be used in making the sugar syrup, which will then be added to the alcohol. After letting that sit for a few more weeks, the liqueur will be ready.

All I need to do now is find a pretty bottle to store the finished liqueur in. If I can find one pretty enough, perhaps I'll give away the clementine liqueur as a gift. Look for an update on my homemade hooch in six weeks or so.

Update: Here's the clemencello report.

Homemade Apple "Cider" Vinegar Report

A few days ago I decanted my first batch of homemade apple "cider" vinegar that I started late last fall from tap water and the leftover apple pomace from our cider pressing. Pomace is just fancy vocabulary for the solid remains of the fruit after the juices have been pressed out and collected. When I say that I made the vinegar, I am of course exaggerating. Actually, I only set the ingredients in place, and let the volunteer acetobacillus microbes do all the real work. I gave the bacteria about seven weeks to do their job.

From a glass jar with a one-gallon capacity I got almost 7 cups of a very light colored, slightly cloudy, and apple-scented vinegar. I probably could have gotten more if I had put less pomace and more water in the jar. But in all likelihood, it would probably have been weaker vinegar too. When I talk about the strength or weakness of the vinegar, I'm referring to the level of acidity. Acetobacillus needs something to live on other than water. In this case it would be the residual sugars remaining in the pomace. (Cores and peels saved from apple for apple pie would work even better, most likely, since they would contain more sugars.) Less pomace to more water would have meant less food for the microbes. When I started this experiment, I filled about 60%-75% of the jar with coarsely ground pomace, and filled the rest with our well water.


While I don't have an incredibly precise measurement of the acidity in our homemade vinegar, I know it's weaker than three different store-bought varieties. The picture above shows the litmus test results for our homemade apple cider vinegar, compared to rice wine vinegar, red wine vinegar, and distilled white vinegar. (My husband's a science geek, which is why we have litmus test strips lying around our house.) I think you can see, even in this picture, that the right-most square on the cider vinegar strip is a little lighter than those for the other three vinegars. Each of the store bought vinegars came in at a clear 2 on the litmus scale, though the red wine vinegar might be just slightly weaker than the rice wine vinegar and the distilled vinegar. Our homemade apple cider vinegar reads as a 3 on the scale, indicating lower acidity.

What difference does the acidity level make? Well, if I wanted to use this vinegar for pickling things, it might become very much an issue. To ensure food safety, one needs a standard level of acidity in the pickling solution. Standard vinegars usually register at 5% acidity, and are diluted according to the pickling recipe. On the other hand, I could easily adjust a vinaigrette recipe to balance the lower acidity of this homemade vinegar. In terms of taste, our homemade vinegar is light and pleasant, with a moderate apple flavor.

The thing about this vinegar is that it's raw and contains live acetobacillus bacteria. That means that there's at least a decent chance that the acid levels will increase gradually, even though the solids have been removed. If I wanted to stop this process, I'd have to cook the vinegar to kill the bacteria. But right now I'm content to let the vinegar do its own thing. I'll test the vinegar again in a few more months. If the acidity level changes, I'll post an update.

We're not eating too many salads right now in the depths of winter. But I look forward to using this homemade food on the early spring salads of the year. Now that I know that we can make this vinegar from the by product of our cider pressing - for almost no additional cost or effort - I'll be making more of it after our next pressing.

Related post:

Following Up Some Experiments