Fruit Kimchi

I love Sandor Katz's Wild Fermentation. I returned it to the library today but yesterday I tried the recipe for fruit kimchi. I didn't have any pineapple, grapes, pears or plums, but I used what I had on hand . . . results pending! (I did try some unfermented and it was very good.) I used two apples, a peach, a nectarine, 4 prunes and some raisins. I left out the cilantro, used bottled lemon juice and jarred garlic, and powdered ginger and chili. I also used cayenne instead of jalapenos, and the result was very spicy. Meanwhile I am trying to card and spin alpaca, reading library books, dreaming about next spring's container garden, and trying new food experiments. And one little tomato is starting to ripen! I know the plant will die before the flowers can become tomatoes, but I wonder what would happen if I took it inside? Also I am down to three radish plants, but the sweetpotatoes are doing well. If I get a harvest, what should I make out of them? Oven fries, fermented soda maybe?

Crabapple Sauce and a Braided Rug

Yesterday I accomplished two things: Making a jar of crabapple sauce/butter, whatever it is called, and finishing a braided rug. It was easy to braid the rug once I figured out to overlap the rag strips instead of sewing them together. It ended up about the size of a mini trampoline. That was from a big garbage bag of rag strips. The crabapple sauce involved picking the crabapples, chopping off the stems and flower ends, cooking them, adding more water and mashing them in through a colander to remove the seeds and fibrous bits (mind you, this was learned partly through trial and error and got a lot more dishes dirty than necessary), adding cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and honey, and boiling it down. Maybe next time I will figure out how to take pictures of all the steps. Meanwhile, the tomato plant is making two tiny tomatoes and a few flowers, while a few radishes came up in the planters. And I had a weird dream about rabbits half the size of gerbils, and the other week I dreamed about pigs the size of guinea pigs. Weird!

All things fun and interesting

Well . . . I finished my shawl on Sunday! I have a picture of it up there. I still haven't decided whether to keep it or give it away . . . guess I'll just keep offering it to people until I find a taker. And since that baby flying squirrel we rescued was so adorable, we now have two pet gerbils, Merry and Pipin! They are both boys, luckily.
Unfortunately, we ran out of Klonopin and I was feeling funny until today when we finally could get more. Klonopin withdrawal is not fun! But I feel better now and am so enjoying our brand-new pets. Obsessing about what to plant and where to find affordable seeds. Home Depot should have some. Crabapples are almost ripe. Thinking about purchasing the carding combs AFTER I run out of wool, which seems sensible enough. I want to get a late crop of spinach and radishes. Oh, the tomato plant is now blossoming. Frost, PLEASE wait to come until I get some tomatoes! Just a few?

How things are going (and growing) . . .

Well, it is almost September and my tomato plant (yes, singular) is finally producing three beautiful yellow flowers. Knowing the weather around here, I might get a few tomatoes before it gets too cold. This one I actually started from seed . . . outside. That's why it isn't making tomatoes yet, because I planted it outside in late June. But I've never had any luck with starting seeds indoors. Trust me, I tried.
Other things in my garden: chammomille container, sweet potato hanging bucket, and purslane planters. I cheated with the purslane and just transplanted some wild weeds of it into containers with potting soil. Hard to believe they are a succulent, considering how plump and juicy they get with lots of water. I will probably only get enough chammomille for a few cups of tea, but it will be extra special because I grew it myself. The picture up top is how much dried chammomille I have so far.
As for other things, well, good news. I don't actually have schizophrenia. Just anxiety and depression. This is such good news! Glory to God! Nowhere near as disabling! We all hope I can go off the Geodon, me included of course! And I am working on the purple section of a handspun orange, red and purple knitted shawl. I dyed the yarn with Kool-Aid, and the orange came out a bit orangey-brown, since the wool was gray to start out with. There are a couple mistakes, so maybe I can keep the shawl if I can't find anyone to give it to. And the local apartment complex crabapples are getting ripe, so maybe my sister and I can go PICKING tomorrow!

Eating gluten again

So I was convinced that eating a piece of regular bread would send me into a drunken, neurological funk. So I was apparently wrong.
It started with an ordinary supper of sausage and biscuits. Mine were gluten-free, and I think they were made of coconut oil, not lard. At any rate, they were too dry and starchy. I looked at the ordinary biscuits made with wheat flour and lard and said "Mom, you know what? I'm tempted to just ditch the whole gluten-free thing." She said we had plenty of things in the house for me to try. I was scared. I mulled things over in my head, and finally picked up a regular biscuit and took a bite. The taste was strange. It was like I could taste the baking powder, but it did have that gluten texture. I forced myself not to spit it out. I took another bite. I decided I didn't care for it, but I would see if I got sick. Did I? Nope. The next morning I had a regular biscuit for breakfast and didn't get sick. So now I am happily eating gluten again.
As I write this, I am staying awake for ANOTHER sleep-deprived EEG. Hey, it's all in the name of getting a diagnosis, right? I did see the neurologist. And finally I am hopeful that maybe someday the doctors WILL find out what is wrong with me.

Poor radishes . . .

Well, I flubbed it again. Ok, lesson learned. Refusing to thin your radishes because you are selfish will get you ZERO radishes! If you are me, repeat that until it starts to sink in.
My radishes were not developing properly, the leaves would have been edible if they weren't so bug-eaten, and the two radishes that looked like they were starting to bolt had roots that were both underdeveloped and woody at the same time! I had to pull them all up and throw them away. Maybe next year I will try again with radishes. But for now, I am sick of them. Plants I still have: sweet potato (the leaves are bug-eaten but it keeps making new leaves and is pretty and viny in a 5-gallon bucket hanging from a plant hanger) and chammomille (lots of green, no flowers yet, but it's not even July so there is still plenty of time for that to happen) and a secret.
Do you want to know what the secret is? Okay, I will tell you. I have a tomato seedling outside (two, actually). I have never had any success with starting seeds inside, but these tomatoes are doing better outside in the summer than any of my indoor stuff ever did! I hope the growing season is long enough for the plant to mature, but if not I will try again next year!

Mint Soda Experiment

A few days ago (and I was playing with the idea in my head long before) I decided to make a lacto-fermented mint tea drink. No kefir, no kombucha, just tweaked the classic ginger ale recipe (the one on Instructables using honey instead of sugar) to omit the ginger and replace the water with mint tea. And the whey came from raw milk, curdled with lemon juice and strained. (By the way, the "cheese" from this process tastes like lemon-flavored yogurt. Good with fruit.) And I brewed in in a mason jar. Now I'll be honest with you - It isn't fizzy. But it is nice and tart. Oh, another thing. You can kinda taste the salt. But the ginger ale has that too, and I LOVE it. If you can't get raw milk, strain commercial yogurt with live cultures. The way you strain it is: put a coffee filter inside a strainer and put it in a bowl. Pour the yogurt or curdled milk through the coffee filter and leave it in the fridge for a few hours or overnight. You get "cheese"in the filter and whey in the bowl.
Now I am wondering how this would taste with chammomille tea. Or if I could make it fizzy by using something a little more "live" than just raw milk. Well, I have a yogurt experiment sitting in the sun outside. And in a few months my ginger should be ready to harvest, so I can make ginger ale. Good stuff. Love ta hear about your cooking experiments!