Taking a Crack at Lacto-Fermented Ketchup

Back in February I sampled an astounding fermented ketchup at the PASA conference.  Although I was told by the woman who made it that she was willing to share the recipe, she never came through.  So I've been left to my own devices to experiment as I see fit.  The only thing I know for sure about that mind-blowing ketchup was that it contained smoked chili peppers.  That's probably half the reason I loved it so much.  Smoked foods are some of my favorites.

So, I'm going to play around with lacto-fermented ketchup. After all, I'm pretty DIY oriented, and professional culinary training ought to qualify me to perfect my own ketchup recipe.  Actually, recipe development is exciting enough that I'm sort of glad I wasn't given a recipe. Below are a double handful of variables I came up with after reading a few different recipes online and asking what sounded good to me.  Perhaps some of you would like to run your own experiments concurrently, and share the results either on your own blogs or in the comments section here.  Of course, in developing this recipe, we'll be relying on our own infallible but entirely subjective taste buds to produce something we like.  You might prefer something else.  So experimenting for yourself would be the best option for everyone.

Lacto-fermented ketchup - recipe development variables

tomato - roasted? simmered/reduced? concassé?
minced onion vs. scallion vs. shallot
ratio of tomato to onion?
tomato paste - yes/no?
smoked chili pepper - ancho vs. chipotle vs. others
cumin vs. allspice vs. both
white pepper vs. black pepper
molasses vs. maple syrup vs. no sweetener added
fish sauce - yes/no?
garlic - yes/no, roasted vs. raw, how much?
vinegar - balsamic, cider, none?
salt - how much?

Given these multiple variables, I estimate that I'll make upwards of 28 different batches of ketchup to find what we like best, just within these parameters.  Obviously, they'll be small batches.  The one constant in this recipe testing process will be the use of yogurt "juice" from live culture yogurt for the inoculant.  That's the liquid that shows up when you take a scoop of yogurt out of the container, leaving a little well.  The best I can do there is organic store bought yogurt.  I may eventually be able to track down a supply of local raw whey from a goat dairy.  If so, I may try working with that instead.

The basic method for the recipe is to combine all ingredients and let them sit in a covered jar at room temperature for a few days, then refrigerate.  I can't really be sure, but I suspect that the ketchup I had in February had been happily fermenting away since late summer.  Lacto-fermentation is an active and evolving process.  So it's possible that the depth of flavor I found in that sample was a product of aging, like you'd see in fine cheese.  It may be that my recipe testing will fail to produce anything remotely like what I tasted, unless I allow my ketchup to hang out for several months.  All I can do is run my trials and see what combinations appeal most to us, and then see what the aging process contributes.

I've started with this process well ahead of our own tomato harvest, so that when the absolute best tomatoes are available, I'll have a pretty good idea of what I want to do with them.  Of course, this means buying local hothouse tomatoes.  These are not great tomatoes, by any stretch of the imagination.  I don't usually bother buying any sort of fresh tomatoes, at any time of year.  But in the interest of developing this recipe, and maximizing the value of my own crop this summer, I'll make that sacrifice. As proper tomato season approaches, the quality of tomatoes available should only improve.  So I'll have to remind myself that some of the quality that develops in the ketchup batches is due to better tomatoes rather than my own skill.

The first batch is to test the method of preparing the tomatoes themselves, while holding all other ingredients constant.  I expect the ways of dealing with the tomatoes will have slight effects on taste and texture.  Concaséed tomatoes are certainly the simplest, lowest-energy, and closest to raw of the three methods I'm trialing.  So I'd prefer it if that one produced the best flavor.  Sampling the batches in the pre-fermented state showed that even very mediocre tomatoes can taste pretty good after all the other ingredients are added.  Now the lacto-bacillus get to work their magic.

Will keep you posted.  In the meantime, if you have a favored ketchup recipe, especially if it's lacto-fermented, please share!

Update:  Got the original recipe from the source.

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?

Just the Aftermath

We don't entertain as often as we would like to. Probably because it involves cleaning the house, and my credentials in that department are really nothing to brag about. But it was obligatory to prepare spaghetti alla carbonara with the guanciale I made from those freebie hog jowls. And I couldn't do that without inviting the farming couple who donated them. If you're going to clean the house for one couple, I figured, why not invite a few? So two other gardening couples were included as well, including Kelly and Meg of Future House Farm.

Spaghetti alla carbonara waits for no man; you serve it the instant it's ready. So we didn't pause for a picture - we ate. And then the rest of the evening was so filled with gardening, farming, and food talk that we never got out the camera. We talked about local producers of pastured meats and dairy, how to transplant blueberry bushes, the best way to control mint's exuberant growth in a container, organic certification and its value - or lack of value - for small-scale farmers selling to a local market, the abomination of eggs from battery hens, wwoofing, the nitrogen content of human urine and its use for gardeners, the current scarcity of real butchering skills, coq au vin and the flavor merits of roosters or old laying hens, the advantages of vermicomposting over regular composting for those in very small spaces, various local vendors of premises-made ice cream, raw milk ice cream, various cane berries and how to tell when blueberries and wineberries are truly ripe, the necessity of bird netting when growing blueberries, how much we'd pay for our meal if it were served to us in a restaurant, Oprah Winfrey having Michael Pollan on her show, and all the phone calls our farming friends are suddenly getting about their pastured eggs and meat. My kind of conversation.

It was a kick to have such a local meal in January. We ate our own eggs and garlic, plus the home cured guanciale in the carbonara, incredibly awesome fresh salad greens from a local farm, a shallot from the same farm in the vinaigrette, and lemon balm from our own backyard to finish out the meal with a simple herbal tissane. I've prepared carbonara any number of times with American style bacon, which is the best most of us can usually do with that recipe. Guanciale, which is the authentic ingredient, adds a distinctively different taste to this dish. It was sweeter than bacon, and meatier, yet it didn't dominate the other ingredients to the degree that bacon does. This is counter-intuitive to me, since the guanciale is drier and much more concentrated than bacon. I honestly think I prefer the guanciale version. I also used (my version of) Kathy Harrison's "instant" fruit crisp topping for our dessert. (Note to self: make another batch of that soon.) The peaches and blackberries in the crisp were admittedly frozen and store bought, but at least organic, as was the vanilla ice cream.

I ate too much. I don't think I was entirely alone in this. That table was grazed. In a way that would delight the heart of any cook. It's been a while since I overindulged like that. I just couldn't help myself. I may have to skip a couple meals today, just to give my system a rest. But it was a great time.

That picture up there? All that was left of a batch of carbonara made with two full pounds of dried spaghetti, snapped during clean up.

It Just Doesn't Occur To Me

Anyone who reads this blog regularly will know that I'm pretty focused on food. I subscribe to cooking blogs and newsletters, and I have opinions on the prominent recipe sites around the intertubes. So I was a bit taken aback when I got the most recent America's Test Kitchen e-newsletter, which featured a link in the content summary for lemonade. I clicked it and was taken to an article outlining the results of a taste test among store-bought lemonades.

I had to pause to digest that for a moment. See, I had expected that the article would describe ways to optimize homemade lemonade, or perhaps ways to jazz up regular old (slices of ginger, flower petals, or maybe some blueberries). Store-bought lemonade. Frozen lemonade even, in some cases. And all of them came in packaging of one form or another. It just wouldn't occur to me to buy lemonade. After all, there are three ingredients in the stuff: lemon juice, sugar, and water. None of these are difficult to come by if you're already in the grocery store. Isn't it just as easy to grab some lemons as to grab a heavy container of frozen concentrate? The lemons, after all, won't melt on the way home. Lemons will give you zest for baking, as well as juice for drinking. After that you can use a wrung out lemon half to clean mineral scale off the shower walls, or remove tenacious bathtub stains with the help of cream of tartar. And after that you can throw it on your acid-loving plants in the garden. What's left after drinking store-bought lemonade? Packaging. Landfill. Plastic that's going to kill a sea turtle or an albatross chick somewhere. Recycling if you're lucky and conscientious.

I just don't get it. How did we as a society get to the point where people are too helpless or "too busy" to make lemonade? Is it any faster or easier to mix up lemonade from frozen concentrate than it is to juice a few lemons? Why is there a market for prepared lemonade? With about 27 grams of sugar to the 8 ounce glass, this stuff is an occasional treat, or it should be. Can we not find the time and summon the skill to prepare one of the simplest of summertime indulgences? Does taste count for nothing?

The taste testers, incidentally, found five out of the eight store-bought lemonades pretty well undrinkable, including the lone organic brand. How do those odds sound to you?

Okay, rant over, folks. Thanks for your indulgence.

First Harvest & Early Pizza

On Saturday I gathered my first few leaves of arugula sylvetta from some plants that had overwintered in the garden. Last year my first harvest came in April, and it was from some incredibly hardy overwintered Tuscan kale that put out a few small new leaves before going to seed. As usual, the chives are up an' at 'em early as well. I decided that pizza night would put this tiny harvest to best use.

In the interest of my resolution to keep better harvest records this year, I duly weighed that harvest. My baking scale of course couldn't handle such trivial quantities, so I had to get out the tiny metric scale. I'd harvested a whopping 5 grams each of arugula and chives. I felt pretty silly about this. But there it is, nonetheless, on my side bar: my first harvest tally of the year.

We added other things from our garden to the thin crust pizzas we made. Each one had a different combination of last year's smoked cherry tomatoes, pesto made from our homegrown purple basil and garlic, the freshly harvested arugula and chives, cheese, and some of the local pastured bacon I bartered for recently. The pesto and the smoked cherry tomatoes had both been frozen. I like to make these tiny pizzas because they cook in about four minutes on a baking stone, and we can try lots of different toppings. Except for the chives, this one pretty much has it all:


It's best to add the arugula when the pizza comes out of the oven, and just let wilt a bit. Some of the cherry tomatoes were still juicy enough to squirt warm tomato juice on our faces when we bit into them. Ooops! Is that too much like food porn for a family blog?

I'm looking forward to when more of our harvest ingredients are from this year. Have any of you northern folks managed to have a harvest meal yet? Do tell!

Harvest Meal: Colcannon

A lot of our harvest meals are simply the product of using up what we've got, and trying to be a little creative with them. But we also find ourselves falling back on very old, simple recipes that hail from various traditional cuisines. Our dinner last night was one such occasion.

Colcannon is a mixture of mashed potatoes and usually cabbage, or sometimes kale. You see that? Colcannon, and kale. Does that remind you of anything? Kohlrabi? Cole slaw? Cauliflower? Collard greens? It's an old root word for cabbage. Kale is a member of the cabbage family, along with all the rest. Kohl is a surname in Germany. Mr. and Mrs. Cabbage over there. Colcannon comes from the Irish Gaelic, and there's a very similar dish in Wales with a very similar name (cawl cennin) in Welsh. Okay, I'm done playing with the words now. Here endeth the etymology lesson. On to the recipe.

You don't really need a recipe though. You know how to make mashed potatoes, right? Well you make those and you add butter, salt and pepper, some sauteed members of the onion family, and a hefty amount of either cabbage or kale. If you're feeling a little indulgent, add some parsley or chives, and maybe a little bacon. Typically a cheap but nourishing vegetarian, peasant-type dish, colcannon could even be made vegan if you so desired.

Almost everything I put into our dinner was stuff that needed to go. So I ended up with something that I would call a variation on colcannon, rather than a canonical colcannon. (Maybe not completely done playing.) We've been avoiding the last of the potatoes because they're so small that cleaning them was a bit of a pain. I got one leek out of the garden, and combined it with half an onion that had been sitting in the refrigerator. I still have bags and bags of chopped kale in the freezer, the product of our summer garden. There was also some cream, a little bit of schmaltz, and half a bunch of flat-leaf parsley hanging around in the fridge that needed using up. Oh, and some cheese that didn't do too much for us, so we weren't using it up in a raw form. This all was going in, one way or another.

After my husband had nobly scrubbed each and every tiny potato, I made the mashed spuds. While the potatoes boiled, I sauteed the chopped leek and onion in the schmaltz, seasoning generously with salt and pepper. Then I added the frozen chopped kale and let that thaw and warm up. When that was done, I added the cream that needed using up, a little over a cup, I'd say. I also grated the cheese, which was a simple farmer's cheese, probably about 6 ounces or so. When the potatoes were cooked, I added most of the cheese and a hunk of butter while mashing them up. Then I folded in the leek-kale-cream mixture. All that I put into a casserole dish, topping it with the remaining shredded cheese. I cooked it at 375 F for about half an hour, until the cheese was melted, bubbly and just beginning to darken. After letting it cool, I topped the dish with minced parsley.

I make no claims that this is an authentic version of colcannon. Traditional colcannon certainly would not have included schmaltz or cheese. Irish peasants probably wouldn't have used either of these, nor the typical quantities of dairy fat in modern versions of colcannon. However, they might have used some buttermilk. My dish is clearly in the colcannon neighborhood though. And my method of cooking - using up what we've got that needs using up - fits perfectly with traditional cooking the world over.

When all was said and done, it was delicious. The intense potato aroma coming out of the oven was incredible; a homey, comforting scent on a dark and chilly winter night. It was hard to let the dish cool enough so that we wouldn't burn our mouths. It was especially nice to see that even this long after our harvest, we can still make something so tasty and healthy out of three crops we grew ourselves (leeks, potatoes, kale). It would be a pretty cheap meal, even if we had to buy those ingredients. Best of all, there are plenty of leftovers.

Three guesses what's for breakfast. Yeah, I'm weird that way.

Pumpkin-Sage Penne Pasta

I'm trotting out another harvest meal, close on the heels of my Kale & Barley Soup post of just a few days ago. This one is too good not to share. The idea comes from the traditional pumpkin ravioli of northern Italy, which are sauced lightly with a sage and butter sauce. I had lovely intentions of making pumpkin puree and handmade sheet pasta, and assembling ravioli to eat fresh or freeze. But we all know how far good intentions go.

So I decided to try a variation on the filled pasta and see what I could come up with. Sage is my favorite fresh herb, so different from the musty, fusty dried stuff. And it complements the earthy sweetness of winter squash beautifully, as the Italians pointed out to me. So I fished the absolute last of our sugar pumpkins out of the garage, and set to work.

It took a little tweaking to get the pumpkin to pasta ratio right, and I think it would be okay to use more pumpkin than I've listed in the recipe below. Too little pumpkin is definitely not good. And I first experimented with using Pecorino cheese instead of Reggiano parmesan. Pecorino is a great cheese for many pasta dishes, but it did nothing to help this one. The king of parmesans, Reggiano, brings a lovely deep balance to the light and sweet notes of the squash.

I wish I had developed this recipe earlier. Pumpkin is one of those crops I grew for its storing virtues, and not so much because we love to eat it. I'm not a fan of pumpkin pie, and my husband is rather particular about how he likes to eat pumpkin too. This simple dish pleases both of us, and we would happily eat it on a regular basis. Now that I've discovered a great use for this long-storing vegetable, I feel more confident about growing it again this year. I love the deep yellow-orange color of the pumpkin. It almost looks like the pasta is studded with egg yolks.

If the methodology looks a little complicated to you, I will confess that I'm not a fan of too many different preparation methods or too many dirty pans in the preparation of one dish either. But the steaming is all fairly straightforward, and from there it proceeds like any skillet-prepared pasta sauce. The few flavoring ingredients in this dish are pretty simple, and to come together in a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts, you need to use good stuff: quality parmesan cheese, fresh sage, freshly ground pepper, and real butter and cream. You won't regret it!


Pumpkin-Sage Penne Pasta

2 lbs. (about 900 g) of fresh sugar pumpkin, which will be trimmed to about 1.5 lbs. (680 g)
5 tbsp. (75 ml or 70 g) butter
a generous bunch of fresh sage
1 tsp. (5 ml) sugar
salt to taste (I used kosher)
freshly ground white pepper
1 cup (about 225 ml) heavy cream
1 1/2 cups (about 350 ml) freshly grated Reggiano parmesan cheese

1 lb. (about 450 g) penne or other shaped pasta
salt for the pasta cooking water

Cut the pumpkin in half and then into quarters. Remove the seeds and pulp. Lay a slice of pumpkin on its side, with the skin facing away from you. Cut the skin off by slicing downward from halfway up the slice of pumpkin. The turn over the slice and cut away the skin remaining on the other half. Repeat this with the other slices. You should have 1½ lbs. of trimmed pumpkin remaining.

Pumpkin slices of two different thicknesses will partially cook in the steamer.

Take two of the pumpkin quarters and cut them into thick slices, about 1½” thick. Cut the other two quarters into thinner slices, about ¾” thick. Put all the slices in a steamer and let them cook for 15 minutes. Let them cool until they can easily be handled.

Two piles of sage. One is gently fried in the brown butter, the second is chopped up just before tossing into the cooked pasta with the finished sauce.

Meanwhile, melt 2 tablespoons (30 ml) of butter in a small skillet over low heat. Clean the sage leaves. Separate them into two equal piles and chop one pile. When the butter is melted, put in the chopped sage leaves and increase the heat to medium low. Fry the sage leaves gently, just until the butter begins to brown. Remove from the heat and set aside. Clean the rest of the leaves and set them aside until just before the pasta is done.

Two piles of steamed pumpkin. The smaller pieces will disintegrate to thicken the sauce. The larger pieces will remain intact to provide some texture contrast to the pasta.

Bring a pot of salted water to boil for the pasta. Meanwhile, melt the remaining 3 tablespoons of butter in a large skillet over low heat. While the butter melts, chop the thinly sliced pumpkin into small pieces. Chop the wider slices into larger cubes. Increase the heat under the skillet to medium high and sauté the pumpkin pieces in the butter, stirring well so that all pieces are coated with butter. Sprinkle the sugar and a generous pinch of kosher salt over the pumpkin. Grind some white pepper over the pumpkin and stir well. Add 2 tablespoons (30 ml) of water to the pumpkin and cover the skillet for 5 minutes.

When the water boils, put the pasta in to cook. Time the rest of the dish according to the pasta cooking time. When the pasta is 8 minutes from being done, heat the pumpkin over medium-high heat, uncovered, for 3 minutes. Add 1 cup of cream and simmer rapidly for 5 minutes. Finely chop the remaining sage. Reserve ¾ cup of the pasta cooking water before draining the pasta.

When the pasta is al dente, drain it and put it in a warmed serving bowl. Add to it the fried sage in brown butter, as well as the pumpkin in cream. Toss well, then add the grated Reggiano cheese and chopped fresh sage. Loosen the sauce or the leftovers with the reserved cooking water as needed. Serve piping hot. Serves 4-6. Leftovers are as good as any leftover pasta ever is.


Other harvest meals:
Saag Paneer
Garden Pizza
Pyttipanna
Peanut Noodles with Garden Vegetables
Egg & Chard Curry
Fusilli with Tuscan Kale in a Creamy Tomato Sauce
Kale & Barley Soup

Harvest Meal: Kale and Barley Soup

As winter wears on it's getting harder to cobble together dishes that I can justly call harvest meals. But I manage it, more or less, sometimes. Here's one example. This is a hearty soup made with our frozen but homegrown Tuscan kale, a few leeks I literally chopped out of the frozen ground during a brief period of above-freezing temperatures, my homemade lamb stock, a little homegrown garlic stored as garlic butter, and purchased ingredients including some pearl barley, carrots, fresh oregano, and local, pastured bacon.

My method for this soup was a little more fussy than I would normally bother with. I steamed the pearl barley because I was in a hurry. I figured I could start it steaming before I did anything else so that the soup would be nearly finished by the time I had all the vegetables chopped and cooked. It worked out pretty well, even if it did involve more things to clean than is normally necessary when making soup.

After the pearl barley was in the steamer, I cut three slices of smoked bacon into small strips and melted a good hunk of garlic butter in the soup pot. When the butter was melted and the garlic was sizzling I added the bacon strips to brown up over medium-high heat. Meanwhile, I cleaned and trimmed the leeks, and finely chopped them, then peeled a few carrots and chopped those as well. When the bacon had begun to crisp up, I added the leeks to saute for a few minutes. When they were well softened, I added a quart of my double-strength lamb stock, an equal amount of water, and a vegan bouillon cube (for extra flavor), and brought the liquid to a low boil. The chopped carrots, a generous amount of our frozen, pre-chopped Tuscan kale, and a few sprigs of fresh oregano were added. I seasoned with bay leaf, salt and pepper and reduced the heat to a steady but low simmer. I let that cook until the carrots were no longer hard and raw, and then added the steamed barley, which was nearly fully cooked. I let it go a few more minutes to finish off the barley. When ready to serve, I fished out the bay leaf and the stems of oregano, which had released their leaves into the soup.

The soup was good the first day, drizzled with a garnish of olive oil. Very hearty, nourishing, and warming. But like many soups, the leftovers have definitely improved in flavor as they sat around for a few days. I especially like the chewy goodness of the barley, and the meaty quality of the soup that comes from very little meat.

What soups are keeping you warm these days?

Local, Raw, and Bartered

This was my breakfast this morning: yogurt and honey. What makes this simple meal so special to me is that both ingredients are local, sustainably produced, raw, and I bartered for them.

I bartered for a quart of the raw milk yogurt just a few days ago. The texture of the yogurt when I opened the container was slightly lumpy, and the creamy fat had risen to the top. The taste reminded me of the superb yogurt I'd bought at a farmer's market in Europe. It bears absolutely no resemblance to store-bought yogurt. I stirred up the yogurt until it was smooth again and served myself some.

Now I confess that "local" in this case is a bit of a stretch by my standards. This yogurt comes from a farm almost 80 miles (128 km) away. That's very local by US standards, but incredibly distant by average global standards. I don't know of any closer dairy that raises their cows on grass, sells raw-milk products, and avoids hormones and antibiotics. And I would know, because I'm well connected to the sustainable farming network in my area. For the moment, 80 miles is the best I can do for sustainable cow's milk dairy. I don't do the driving myself either. The yogurt arrived at my house by way of the farmer who uses my home as a customer pick-up site for pre-ordered, grass-fed meats, dairy, and eggs every other week. So the food is delivered to my home, and I can barter my bread for it. And yes, I do feel pretty smug about that, in case you were wondering.

The raw honey is produced much, much closer to home, and I know the beekeeper personally. This is the lightest of her three honeys from last year's harvest. I'm almost out of it, but it sure is good. Just eight miles (13 km) away, she has an apple and pear orchard that she sprays only with baking soda, and she keeps hens along with a few hives of bees. Again, I bartered some homemade baked goods for a jar of this pure, raw honey.

Breakfast was absolutely delicious in its own right. Knowing that the constituent parts were produced completely sustainably, and acquired reasonably sustainably, and that I bartered for them, and that they are really healthy for me only makes this simplest of meals that much more satisfying.

I don't manage to prepare many meals in this fashion. But when I do pull it off, I'm inspired to keep trying more and more to live my life this way.

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

The Limits of Garlic

This year I harvested about 11 pounds of garlic from my backyard garden. After it had cured for a few weeks, we started eating it in the latter part of July. This week I had to finally admit that all the remaining three varieties were reaching the limits of storage. Each time I cut into a bulb, a slender yellow-green shoot was visible in the center, getting ready to bust out of the bulb and sprout. So, with a somewhat sad heart, I decided it was time to process the rest of the bulbs before the sprouting went any further.

I used three different methods to process the garlic. All of them rendered the stinking rose suitable for long term storage. The first method requires some specialized equipment, but the other two do not.


Method the first: I peeled and thinly sliced three heads of garlic, then arranged the slices on a tray of my dehydrator. It took about six hours or so to remove the moisture and render the slices into tough dry garlic chips. These will store at room temperature indefinitely, though they won't last all that long. I'll keep them tightly sealed in clean glass jar in the cupboard, where it'll be fairly dark. In this form, the garlic can be used in soups or stews. If I grind the chips up, I'll have homemade garlic powder, which might be nice on pizza.


The second method was making compound butter. I processed the majority of my remaining garlic in this way. All I had to do was allow butter to soften, and finely mince the garlic. I mixed these two ingredients together until the garlic was evenly blended into the butter. Then I formed the compound butter into little logs, wrapped them up in plastic wrap, and froze them. This will probably prove to be the most versatile form of processed garlic. And it's got more garlic than I would normally use for the amount of butter in there, which means it's highly concentrated. I'll get a lot of garlic for just a little added butter, though I can always add more butter if I want to. There are numerous ways of using this garlic compound butter: on toast, in sauces, on pasta, in mashed potatoes, and as a dollop of decadence on servings of soup. I could even fry my eggs in it. It will keep in the freezer for about three months.

Lastly, I roasted a few heads of garlic when I prepared a whole chicken for dinner. This is a very simple way of processing garlic. I simply removed as many of the papery layers around the bulbs as I could, and then cut off the top of the head so that a portion of each bulb was exposed. Some people add a drizzle of olive oil and a pinch of salt to heads of garlic before roasting. I don't bother, because the roasted garlic tastes great without this extra step. I just wrap each head in a small piece of aluminum foil and toss it in the oven for about an hour. The temperature doesn't matter too much. Anything from 300F to 400F could work, with the total roasting time varying accordingly. Roasted garlic won't keep as easily or as long as the other methods of processing. But on the other hand, it's also the most ready to eat form of the three methods. I find myself spreading a few sticky-sweet cloves on sandwich bread and adding them whole to just about anything I can think of to eat. If I had a great many heads of roasted garlic, I would store some in the freezer, very well wrapped up.


There are other good methods for storing garlic. Pickling is one good method. And some Russians I know swear by a cure-all made from hot chili peppers and raw garlic marinated for several days in vodka. Garlic confit is another cooked form of processing in which many whole cloves are very gently poached in olive oil.

But I have a serious warning now for a garlic storage method which has an enduring and dangerous popularity. Do not store raw garlic in oil, not even in the refrigerator. Like all root vegetables, garlic always has the potential of harboring the botulism bacteria, which is commonly found in most soil types. This is a facultative anaerobic bacteria. What that means is that it can survive in the presence of lots of oxygen, but it really prefers a very low-oxygen environment. When garlic is in the soil, sitting on your shelf, or hanging in a net bag in your basement, it's harmless, because of the high-oxygen environment. The bacteria itself in fact poses no risk to us if we consume small quantities of it. But when you put raw garlic in oil, there is very little oxygen. That means that if there are any botulinum bacteria there, they'll be very happy, and they will begin to create the very powerful and deadly botulism toxin. This toxin cannot be destroyed by cooking, though you may well kill the bacteria that created the toxin. Only a microscopic amount of this toxin is needed to kill a healthy adult. While storing garlic in oil in the refrigerator may slow the bacteria down, it will not kill or completely halt the bacteria. I personally know people who have used this method of storage for years without any ill effects. But they're taking an incredible risk. If they should be unlucky enough to get a case of botulism poisoning, it won't make them sick; it'll probably kill them, and anyone else they serve their stored garlic to.

Okay, on to lighter topics. For kicks, I compared our personal per capita garlic consumption to national statistics. Given that we ate through 10 pounds of garlic in just under 6 months, I make that 10 pounds per person per year in our household. That puts us at more than three times the national average for the US. Of course, we don't come anywhere near Korean levels of garlic consumption, where the average adult reputedly eats through more than a bulb a day. We eat a LOT of it though, both raw and cooked. If it turns out that I live to some extraordinary old age, I'll attribute that longevity to garlic.

I will definitely miss having my own homegrown garlic for the next seven months or so, until next year's crop comes in. And I will deeply resent having to pay for it at the grocery store. I doubt any local grower of garlic will have any to offer at the few farmer's markets that continue to operate through the winter. But I am glad that I made the best use out of this produce and prevented it from going to waste.

Related posts:

Garlic Harvest
The Promise of Garlic
Processed Foods

Gardener's Pride

I am inordinately proud of my Blue Solaize leeks. I grew them from seed early last spring, and dutifully transplanted them into the lowest part of a trench along the side of my garden in early summer. As they grew taller I "blanched" them by filling the trench and then mounding dirt around them as they continued to grow. As a result I have leeks with white parts as much as good twelve inches long. A few of them still stand out in my garden even now. Because so much of their root is buried in the earth, they easily withstand the freezing temperatures we've been having.

I was amazed at the difference when we shopped for ingredients while visiting family for Thanksgiving. Even though I was able to buy organic leeks, the white parts were a measly five inches long, at most. It really struck me then, how well we eat. One of my leeks is the equivalent of two and a half to three store bought leeks. And it doesn't get any fresher than vegetables pulled from the ground or plucked from the vine in our own backyard. Including homegrown vegetables as integral parts of our Christmas feast was a huge thrill for me.

I am reminded more and more frequently of the personal recollections of those who lived through the Great Depression. Many, if not most, of those who lived in rural agricultural communities declared, "We were poor, but we never knew it." Or, "we didn't have any cash, but we always ate well." Since expanding our garden and adhering to my self-imposed $50 monthly grocery challenge over the summer months, we have eaten better than ever. I look at my homegrown leeks and I realize that I would be hard pressed to buy such quality at any price. We eat the highest quality food for the lowest possible price. And I'm consistently astounded at the aesthetic beauty of these leeks, once all the dirt is cleaned off.

All these things make it very easy to find the motivation to plan another garden for next year. Like every gardener, I harbor the conviction that next year's garden will be even better than this year's.

The Promise of Garlic

"Spring keeps her promises, no cold can keep her back."

- Natalie Merchant

I realize I never posted anything about getting our garlic into the ground in mid-October. But the sight of all the little garlic sprouts poking up above the first snow of the season this morning made me smile. For me, it's Spring's promise of good things to come, telling me to keep faith through the dark days of winter. Garlic doesn't mind the cold. Like any self-respecting bulb, it just hunkers down and waits for warm weather to resume where it left off in late fall.


It's far beyond time to get garlic into the ground in any part of the world that I'm familiar with, so I'll make a mental note to describe my garlic planting routine in detail next fall. Meanwhile, here are some more picture of my wintry garden.

A late groundfall apple dusted with snow - hint of color in a stark landscape

Icy patterns on the window of my hayframe

Critter tracks in wan morning sunlight

Pampas grass dusted with snow

Related posts:

Garlic Harvest
The Limits of Garlic

Feed the Hungry

Many of us are keenly aware of how precarious our food supply is right now, at both the personal and national level. People are losing jobs, and food prices are still high. Conventional agriculture relies on petroleum-based fertilizers and pesticides. When the price of oil bounces back up, it will once again be prohibitively expensive to fly and ship food from continent to continent. Way back in 2004, then-Secretary of US Health Tommy Thompson mused, "I, for the life of me, cannot understand why the terrorists have not attacked our food supply, because it is so easy to do." Yikes.

It's scary. Even those of us who grow some of our own food and contribute to food banks often feel there's so very little we can do about food security. Well, there is one thing that is truly easy to do that can help alleviate world hunger. Play a word game on your computer.

Free rice is a minimalist website that offers an ongoing vocabulary test. For every word problem you correctly answer, the website will donate 20 grains of rice to the UN World Food Program. The costs are paid by the sponsors whose ads are remarkably unobtrusive on the gaming page. It costs you nothing but a few minutes of your time to contribute enough grains of rice to help feed a hungry person somewhere in the world. If English vocabulary isn't your strong suit, you can opt for vocabulary testing in another language, or get quizzed on your knowledge of chemistry, art, geography, or math. You may even learn a few things while you're at it.

I don't mean to trivialize hunger. We can't build a world of food security just by playing games on our computers. But it is one little thing we can do, and it's free and educational at the same time. So check out freerice.com and help someone in need, for free.

Following Up Some Experiments

I like experimenting. It's a good way for me to learn things directly and tangibly. Recently I posted about two experiments, and it's time to follow up with some preliminary results.

The first experiment was my hayframe, a small rudimentary coldframe made out of bales of hay and an old window. I planted arugula sylvetta in the hayframe, much later in the season than I should have done in my area. But arugula is a remarkably hardy plant. (Delicious too.) And I'm happy to report that despite very cold days and nights (daytime highs in the 30s, overnight lows in the high teens F), the arugula has germinated. I'm so tickled by this. We'll see if it can do more than germinate over the frigid months ahead.

Unfortunately, it also appears that the bales of hay have proven irresistible to some small members of the family rodentia. I suspect field mice. The first tip off was my cat crouching expectantly beside the hay bales. The more obvious hint though are the holes dug into the ground in the middle of the hayframe. At least they haven't nibbled the tiny sprouts yet. If I actually get something edible before March I will be ecstatic. I know that eventually the arugula will grow and flourish. I'm just eager to see whether it will produce a true wintertime crop.

The second experiment had to do with making apple cider vinegar from the spent apple pomace collected after our cider pressing. I collected about a gallon of apple pomace, put it in a large glass jar, filled it up with tap water, and then tied some cheese cloth around the mouth of the jar. The reading I've done on this said that the jar should be kept somewhere very dark and reasonably warm, with good air circulation. Unfortunately, we don't have any very dark place with good air circulation in our home that is also warm. So I stuck it in the basement, which hovers around 52 degrees or so. I also read that acetobacillus bacteria can produce vinegar directly, without the need for alcohol produced by yeast.

I can now say with certainty that something is happening in that jar. About three weeks ago there was a very powerful sweet apple scent coming from the jar. Ten days ago the sweetness was fading and a sharper smell was present. After we came back from our Thanksgiving travels, I found evidence of more activity: a ring and small dried puddle of liquid that had apparently overflowed the jar in a moment of bacterial exuberance. (That's my stash of homemade canned tomato sauce in the background of the picture.) The smell is now obviously that of vinegar. I plan to let it keep doing its thing for at least another month. But now that I know this works, I will definitely make more batches of homemade apple cider vinegar next year. I just need to find or buy more large jars.

The most exciting take away lesson here is that I could start a batch of free apple cider vinegar anytime I had a pile of apple trimmings. I don't have to wait on the annual apple pressing for a pile of pomace. So if I make a big apple pie, the cores and peels could be turned into a batch of vinegar with virtually no effort on my part. If you eat one apple a day, I suppose you could freeze the cores until you had a good sized stash and then try this when you're ready. A few caveats only: glass or ceramic jars are recommended. Metal and plastic containers are specifically not recommended. And also, if you ever press your own cider, never use containers or equipment for cider making which has had anything to do with any type of vinegar. You don't want to introduce acetobacillus into your cider. So keep your vinegar equipment and your cider equipment completely separate.

Related post:

Homemade Apple Cider Vinegar Report

Two Gallons of Lamb Stock

What was I thinking? The day before we left for Thanksgiving with the rellies, my farmer friend dropped off some lamb bones she didn't have time to deal with. When she called to ask whether I wanted them, she didn't mention that they were huge, nor that she was talking about 15 pounds or so of bones with plenty of meaty bits on them. But how could I say no? These were lamb bones from her own pastured animals fed an organic diet. I rarely turn down free offers, and this certainly wasn't going to be one of those occasions.

Silly me, I thought it would be a good idea to warm the house up by roasting the bones and making stock out of them the day before we left home. Honestly, there wasn't much choice, since the apple cider had taken up all the free space in the freezer. The bones wouldn't have fit in there to be dealt with later. It was a very cold day, and the soup I incorporated it into for dinner that night did hit the spot. There were so many bones I couldn't easily fit them all in my largest skillet, a massive 15-incher. They were fatty enough that they needed no extra oil. A few peeled carrots formed a bed of sorts for the bones at the bottom of the skillet. I rummaged around in the freezer until I came up with my bag of saved parsley stems. Leek greens salvaged from a few homegrown leeks adorned the bones as well.

The bones produced an intensely meaty smell as they roasted. Unfortunately, only the top ones were getting brown, so after the first hour and a half, I removed the top ones to let the lower ones darken too. When they were cool, I realized that neither were they going to fit into my two largest stock pots. I had to ask my husband to get out the (rarely used) cleaver and the protective eye wear. He swung the cleaver, marrow and bone bits flew everywhere, and some evidence was left on our now properly christened butcher block.

Into the pots went the bones, the deglazed roasted carrots, and deeply charred leek greens. There were so many bones that I only simmered them for about an hour and a half. By that time the flavor was almost too intense. Normally, I would have been a glutton and let it simmer for 3-4 hours, but time was short that day.


Some of the stock went into a harvest meal soup, which I'll post about soon. I had to dilute the stock by about 50% for the flavor not to overwhelm all the other ingredients. The rest of the highly concentrated stock filled up eight (!) quart containers. The diluted lamb stock was all the meat we needed in an otherwise vegetarian soup.

It's nice to feel that we helped thoroughly use up this animal, so that less of it went to waste. I feel it's more respectful of the animal's life to value and use every bit of it. It also pleased my frugal side to wind up with two gallons of double strength lamb stock for a material outlay of about 15 cents. (The organic carrots were store bought in bulk.) This rich ingredient will form the basis of many, many meals for us.

I've also gotten an invitation from my farming friend to make haggis the next time she slaughters some lambs. That will use up the lungs, heart, liver, tongue and stomach of the animal, parts that in the past have been feed to her dogs or gone to waste entirely.

If you're interested in making stock here's a list of tips:

1. always peel your carrots (the skins will otherwise contribute a greenish hue)
2. just about any part of an onion is fair game: trimmings, leek green bits, etc
3. celery leaves and trimmings, and stems from herbs boost flavor (and can be frozen)
   
4. it's fine, in fact preferable, to use bones with a little meat on them
5. poultry, beef, and lamb bones make great stock, pork bones not so much
6. unless there's a good bit of fat on the bones, you may want to oil them lightly before roasting
7. use a wide pan for roasting, with sides at least a few inches high, a large skillet works
8. spread the bones in single layer as well as possible
9. if you've salvage bones from some roasted meat, there's no need to roast them a second time, but bones roasted on their own produce better flavor in the stock
10. roasted organs/giblets add wonderful flavor to stocks, except for the liver, which imparts a slightly muddy flavor
11. the skin and the legs of animals (shanks, feet) add gelatin to the stock.  If you want a gelatinous stock, include them.  If you want a thin stock, don't.
12. roast at high temperature (~400 F, 200 C) for at least 1 hour, depending on size and quantity of bones
    
13. bones should be well browned by the roasting
14. always deglaze the roasting pan with liquid (loosen the stuck on brown bits) and add the liquid to the stock pot
15. never boil the stock vigorously as you prepare it; it should barely simmer
    
16. skim and remove the scum that rises to the top for the first 10 minutes as the stock begins to simmer
17. when finished, strain the stock through a cheese cloth or fine strainer
18. chill and remove the fat if desired
19. if you're in a hurry, ice cubes added to the top of a somewhat cooled pot of stock will congeal the fat for easy removal

Cider Pressing

Well, it was a big weekend. We got our apples pressed, and the laying hens passed on to my real farmer friend, who will keep them for us until spring. She and her family showed up briefly during our apple pressing to pitch in for a bit and press a small batch of their pears into pear cider. We put off the pressing from Saturday to Sunday to avoid the heavy rain on Saturday. Instead we were graced by the first snow flurries of the year as we turned our apples into delicious cider.

Here's a picture of our apples, about 6-7 bushels' worth, loaded into our pickup truck in the morning. (In the back are our four hens, loaded into two cat carriers.)



The apple press we use is around 100 years old and is located in a huge barn, which provides some protection from the wind. My relatives bought the apple press for a song at an auction many years ago.



When we first arrived, I uncovered the apple press and found a mouse nest in the juice box, made up of chunks of fiberglass insulation. Needless to say, the press needed several good scrubbings and a little bleach before it was ready for use. Fortunately, I didn't find any critters in the nest.

After cutting out the worst blemishes, giving the apples a triple rinse, and grinding them by hand with an old-fashioned apple grinder, the fruit was loaded into net bags. The net bags are placed in the hopper of the press, and then we crank down the screw. It takes some effort to turn the screw once it's fairly tight. We use the mechanical advantage of this pole. After ten minutes under heavy pressure, enough juice has left the apples that the screw can be tightened further for a little more extraction.



The juices begin to flow. There's nothing in this world that tastes like fresh apple cider you've just pressed entirely by hand. Freezing preserves the cider, but the taste of this brown nectar is unmatchable.



And here's a picture of our cider yield. Pretty dramatic reduction, huh?



Well, we did get a little more cider than is shown here. We gave some to our friends who helped us with the pressing, and they gave us a little bit of their pear cider. And of course, we had to sample the cider as we were making it, for quality control purposes. We also gave half a gallon to my relatives who let us use their massive old apple press. They told us repeatedly that it was the best apple cider they'd ever had, which is saying a lot, since they had freshly pressed apple cider from their own press last year, and apple cider is fairly common where we live. Really good apple cider is usually made with a combination of different apple types too. We had only the apples from our own tree.

Speaking of our mystery apples from our old, old tree... During our lunch break we took a look at an apple variety book that my relatives had. We now think it's a decent bet that we have either a Winesap or a Stayman-Winesap tree. I lean more towards the Stayman-Winesap on the basis of the color of the flesh, which is greenish-yellow, and on the extremely late harvest of the fruit. Winesaps apparently have more yellowish flesh and a wider range of harvest dates. Both varieties have a squat shape, crisp texture, and dull red skin with tiny white flecks.

Our farming friends hauled away all the bad spots trimmed from the apples for their chickens, and all the pomace (solids left after pressing) for their goats. It's cold enough now that the pomace probably won't ferment on its own, so she can feed it to them over the next few days. I speculated that the goats probably wouldn't object if the pomace did ferment.

Speaking of fermentation, I heard something, possibly a rumor, that I'm going to try out this year. Apparently, one can take the apple pomace and put it in a crock with water just to cover. Cheese cloth should be laid over the rim and tied off and the crock left in a dark area. Supposedly, it'll eventually turn into apple cider vinegar. That wide mouth jar next to the bushel basket in the last picture contains the beginnings of the experiment. I don't know if this will work, but since the ingredients are free I have nothing to lose by trying it. Any wagers? Any actual knowledge? I'm looking forward to seeing how this goes.

Hope you all had a fun weekend.

Note: Results of the apple cider experiment are now posted.