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!

What I Learned from Earth Hour

Did you turn off your lights last night? Without much planning or fanfare, we decided to participate in Earth Hour. We started a little early, around 8 pm. We were both tired from working in the yard, and content after a dinner of homemade pizza. I had some good escapist fiction that beckoned. Fortunately, we happen to have two oil lamps. So we took one apiece and settled in for a good read.

I have to say that as happy as I am that we could get around our house and function with non-electrical light, oil lamps aren't things you really want to read by, unless you've got a lot of them. Normally we use these things as supplemental light on the table when we want to have a celebratory meal. I did find that we could get more light by really cranking up the wicks. But that just meant we were consuming both wicks and oil at a faster rate. My eyes did adjust to the dim light, but I still think the eyestrain from reading wouldn't be a great idea over the long run. And I can't imagine my life without a good deal of reading.

Some of the blogs I read that deal with preparing for life after peak oil, or the next great depression, or political collapse strongly suggest turning off the electricity at the junction box for a weekend or a week, just to see how well you can function without it, and to see in what areas you'd like to be better prepared or equipped. I've never done this. But having just turned off the lights for an hour and a half last night, I can see that some sort of light other than oil lamps would sure be nice, if it came to that. Perhaps solar lanterns, or some hand-cranked battery powered lighting. Reading by oil lamps would probably ruin my eyesight sooner rather than later. It took less than an hour with the lights turned off to learn this.

Solar lanterns on the wish list. What did you learn during Earth Hour?

Tree Slaughter

"And among these, I hold trees dear. Long in the growing, swift shall they be in the felling, and unless they pay toll with fruit upon the bough little mourned in their passing." - J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion

We cut down three perfectly sound trees on our little property in the last few days. It made me sad, although it is necessary to make room for the fruit trees we have ordered, and which will no doubt be arriving soon by mail. This is in addition to the large black cherry tree felled late last year, along with an old white lilac and a large snowball bush. Who would have suspected that 2/3 of an acre could hold so many trees and still have room for other full grown trees, a house, detached garage, and a very sizable garden?

Cutting the white pine, a blue spruce and a fir of some sort made me feel a little guilty. It reminded me of the quote above, from Tolkien. Yavanna, a queen of the Valar, has created the plants and trees of Arda, Tolkien's mythical world. She foresees, when her husband creates the dwarves, that her creations will be killed to fuel the industry of metalsmiths. To balance the scales she asks that the Ents be created, tree shepherds, half men and half trees, who will speak on behalf of the trees, and protect the forests from wanton destruction.

Yes, I was conscious of killing a living thing yesterday and today. Something gentle and silent that had done me no harm. Still, we can't eat evergreen trees, and our priority this year is to get fruit trees and berries (elder, black raspberry, and blueberry) in place. Oh, yes, and asparagus beds too, just as soon as we can get to them. We're working on getting closer and closer to feeding ourselves from our little residential lot. With only 2/3 of an acre, sadly, there isn't much room for non-edibles.

My penance will be to tend with care the cherry and pear trees we plant in their places.

I'll be back with cheerier news pretty soon. It is, after all, springtime.

Clemencello Report

I know I'm way overdue on following up my experiment with homemade liqueur. What can I say? Spring is here and the days are just getting away from me with all sorts of out door chores and the planting schedule. I have good intentions, but only so many hours in the day.

Anyway, on to the clemencello results. I started this experiment back in early January. It turned out pretty well.

As you can see from this picture, by the time all the peels were in the alcohol, there was significant color leaching going on with the earliest added peels. The ones on the bottom look like lemon peels compared to those on top. Over time, the alcohol leached much of the color from the peels, so they all looked that pale.

On the 11th of February I removed the peels and added about one cup of sugar syrup to the 12 ounces of flavored liqueur. I had not followed any specific syrup recipe when I prepared it, but I came up with a syrup rather on the thick side. I wanted to make sure I did not dilute the alcohol enough to let it freeze if it were chilled in the freezer. By using a concentrated syrup, I avoided adding too much water in the process of sweetening it, and the sugar itself would help lower the freezing point of the mixture. So I had to judge by taste how much syrup to mix into the liqueur. When the bitterness from the peels was no longer dominant, I deemed it sufficient. I didn't add enough syrup so that the bitterness completely disappeared. I expected that the flavors would adjust over time. Of course when you make your own liqueur, you can sweeten it however much you prefer.

I let the mixture sit for a week so that the ingredients could get well acquainted, shaking it up every other day or so. Then I tasted it again, and thought it still needed a little more sweetness. So I added some more of the concentrated sugar syrup. After that I strained the liquid first through a fine metal strainer and then a second time through a coffee filter. This removed a little sediment that had come from the peels.

I didn't have a pretty bottle to store the clemencello in, but I did give some of it away as a present. The gift recipient appreciated it even in the re-used bottle. We also saved a small amount for our own consumption. We've been enjoying it in small sips after dinner now and then. It's nice either at room temperature or chilled. I think in summertime I would mostly drink it well chilled.

There really wasn't much to making this liqueur. Aside from knowing how to remove the pith from citrus peels (illustrated in my earlier post), not much is needed in the way of either effort or expertise. Time does most of the work, and then it's a matter of following one's own taste as far as sweetness goes. I would certainly try this again with any citrus peels that weren't earmarked for baked goods.

Have any of you made your own liqueurs? Share your stories in the comments, please.

Your Turn, Dear Reader

It's time for something a little different here at Living the Frugal Life. Today I'm asking for help and advice from my readers. Just a little while ago, the google reader subscription to this blog passed 150 people. It's not much by many people's standards, but it's certainly a bigger audience than I ever expected this blog would have. It's also a large enough group of readers that I know there are plenty of things I could learn from my readers. I'm more than happy to share what I know and learn by way of my own mistakes. But I'm not above asking you for help either.

So. There's something I'd like your advice on. First, check out this funky house in Texas that features a full house curtain made out of the bottoms of aluminum cans. I want to know how to cut up an aluminum can in a time-and-effort-efficient manner that leaves me with a fairly uniform piece of metal. You see, I've had a small bee in my bonnet about trying to reproduce the house curtain ever since the good folks at Homegrown Evolution posted about the Beer Can House. Check out their post, by the way, because I think they have an even better picture of the curtain than the House's own website. We could sure use a full house curtain for summertime low energy cooling of our house. I'm willing to give it a try and see if it works for us. But I've stalled on an early production problem.

I tried several ways of cutting up aluminum cans to reproduce this feat of creative genius, but I'm not having much luck. I've already tried the box cutter blade in a closed book technique recommended at this site. It works, but it takes a fair bit of time and effort to accomplish. It would be manageable if I only needed to cut two cans. As a technique for cutting up thousands, it's a little too slow.

Another possibility that I've already rejected is filling each can with water, freezing it solid, and then using a saw to cut the can. Again - fine for a few cans, but far too time consuming for the numbers I would need. A hack saw on an empty can would work, I'm sure. But it would leave a very ragged and uneven edge that I'd rather avoid.

And yes, to all you clever canners out there, I have realized that used canning jar lids would be a good substitute. I'm willing to use canning lids as I use them up, but I don't go through all that many in a year. So they can supplement, but not replace the large numbers of aluminum cans needed for a house curtain project.

One of you out there must have a clever idea or some practical experience that I can apply to this problem. Help me out!

March Is a Good Time To...

...buy some long underwear on sale. I know winter's almost over. But this is when clothing sellers are most motivated to clear out their winter inventory. If you live in a cold climate, it's hard to have too much long underwear. Might as well pick some up now while it's cheap. If you know you'll be exchanging holiday gifts this year, you could pick up a set for anyone on your list. Wouldn't it be satisfying to know you got your "holiday" shopping done by March?

We just got our REI dividend and a 20% coupon in the mail. It's not a very big dividend, but some of you might have gotten bigger ones. If you have no better use for it, REI sure has some top quality skivvies. And since people go camping any time of year, REI doesn't tend to have seasonal sales on "foundation layers." So a dividend and coupon is about the best you'll get from REI on long underwear.

In my experience, silk long underwear is very warm, thin, and light, but it's extremely expensive and doesn't wear as well as some synthetic fabrics or wool blends. I don't recommend cotton long underwear unless you live in an area where long underwear is hardly needed. It's very comfortable, but doesn't provide much heat retention, and it doesn't wick moisture well at all. Get a warm fabric that will let you crank the heat down another notch next winter.

Well, that's all I got this dreary Monday. If it weren't rainy, I'd be out mucking about in the garden. Spring can't come soon enough.