LET'S FERMENT!
Add text
  • Blog
  • Kraut, Kefir, Kombucha, & Klasses
  • Recipes
  • Events
  • Contact Me

Learning to Bend

7/24/2014

0 Comments

 
Does anyone else feel like they are dragging their husbands along on the natural living path? It is funny that I even feel this way because when we met he was the natural one. It was my husband who introduced me to aloe, natural deodorants, going to the chiropractor, and so much more. Yet over the years the roles have reversed. He fully supports most of it but it is the food where we bump heads. This really shouldn't shock me because when we met he NEVER cooked. Him and his son had a routine of Burger King for breakfast, fast food or school food for lunch, and usually an Italian or Chinese restaurant for supper. My stomach hurts just thinking about all of that!

A few years back when I discovered the Weston A. Price Foundation and the cookbook Nourishing Traditions I thought our meals would be easier since after a decade of being a vegetarian I decided to go back to meat. Interestingly our food fights have gotten worse. The more I push, the harder he resists. One example would be bread. As I was building my sourdough bread skills I stopped buying bread, I wanted everyone off of store bought bread. What does he do? Starts bringing home his own bread from Kwik Trip!

The other night I made a fritatta for dinner and he happened to be out of his gas station bread so I toasted up some spelt sourdough for everyone to enjoy. Well, they all did except for my husband. It was then that I realized that maybe I need to move a little slower for him. It is probably asking a bit too much for a 56 year old man to switch from his soft chemical bread to a more dense, very sour loaf. I would be making huge progress if I can make a loaf of bread that he prefers over store bought. So, I made the decision to bend a bit and buy yeast. GASP!!! Well, my bending has been met with him bending. He really likes the bread and this is huge! This microwave meal man is hard to please, I can probably count on one hand the things that I make that he likes. I feel like I have made a huge breakthrough in the fact that now his morning egg sandwich that is made with a pastured egg and raw cheese will now be on a much healthier bread. Yes, you read that correctly...I make him an egg sandwich every morning. We now live right next to the feed mill that he manages and when the kids and I get up I make him an egg sandwich and one of the kids walks it over to him. I would call him spoiled but I'll keep my mouth shut since this has kept him from stopping at McDonald's for breakfast. Now, I just need to work on what he eats for lunch...

I went back to this King Arthur recipe that I used to use as I was just venturing into sourdough bread.

Ingredients:
  • 1 cup "fed" sourdough starter
  • 1 1/2 cups lukewarm water
  • 2 teaspoons instant yeast
  • 1 tablespoon sugar(I use turbinado)
  • 2 1/2 teaspoons salt
  • 2 1/2 cups whole wheat
  • 2 1/2 cups spelt
Mix all of the ingredients together and knead until it is smooth. Place dough in a well greased bowl that allows for the dough to double in size and cover with a damp cloth. Allow the dough to rise until it has doubled in size, about 2 hours. Once it has doubled, punch it down and divide into two loaves. Shape loaves and put each loaf into a well greased bread pan. Cover with damp cloth and allow the loaves to double again, about an hour.

Heat oven to 425°F. Once heated rub the top of each loaf with water and cut two slits into each loaf about 1/4 inch deep. 

Bake for 25-30 minutes. I checked mine with a digital thermometer at 25 minutes and the internal temperature was only 68°C, by 30 minutes the internal temp was 94°C. 

You may need to allow them to cool quite a bit before they will pop out of the pan. Once I was able to pull them out I let them cool completely before cutting.


Picture
0 Comments

Summer

7/16/2014

0 Comments

 
If there is one thing that this past winter has taught me, it is to enjoy the warmth. After six years of WI winters I still find it difficult to deal with and this one was the worst! I swore that after all of our below zero days that I would not complain about the heat. I have pretty much stuck to that except for maybe one complaint that my stuff was fermenting too quickly in our non air conditioned kitchen.

It saddens me that July is half way over but so far this has been a fabulous, lazy summer. We have been busy working on our new home but have managed to fit in a few trips, foraging for food, a new hobby of geocaching, lots of trips to the farmer's market, and many days at the park.
Picture
A great day in Rhinelander, we learned what a Hodag is.
Picture
Our first find at Geocaching!
Picture
The kids went crazy when we found a raspberry bush on a nature walk.
Picture
Getting outside as much as we can to soak up the sun!
0 Comments

You Can't Take PA Out of the Girl...

7/2/2014

2 Comments

 
Picture
I was born and raised in central PA and man does it have it's claws in me and in ways that I never even realized. First of all, let's just say it was an eye opener when my husband (who is from WI, where we now live) and I moved out of the area to northern Virginia. My first New Year's Day celebration in our new town was held at my sister in laws house. I could not believe that we were not being served pork and sauerkraut! How else were we going to ensure good luck for the new year!?!? If you have no idea what I am talking about...it's a Pennsylvania Dutch tradition that when growing up I really never thought to ask about, we just ate it. Casey, from Good. Food. Stories. writes about it on her site. 


"The formerly green cabbage of the sauerkraut and the abundant fat of the pig symbolize riches and prosperity for the coming year, the pig doing double duty to stand for progress as a forward-rooting and forward-thinking animal (its four hooves all point toward the front).Slavic superstition also dictates that you should eat the long, skinny threads of sauerkraut to give you a long life—smart thinking when you consider the probiotics and other wonderfully healthy byproducts of the fermented cabbage."

Think that's strange...wait until you here this. After the shock of New Year's Day I went on with adjusting to life in VA and enjoying the many things DC has to offer. Then September rolled around...September 29th. It was a day like any other day...that was the problem. Why wasn't anyone eating goose? See in PA in Mifflin County on September 29th we celebrate Goose Day. Many restaurants in the area will be focusing on one thing...goose. I called my dad to tell him that people in VA had never heard of Goose Day! Sadly, living in a bubble had caused me to think that this day was a national day...it makes sense, we all celebrate Groundhogs Day (another thing that started in PA). He broke the news to me that this is pretty much just something we do in our small county. WOW! What next? Santa and the Easter Bunny don't exist?

Seriously, I'm not making this stuff up! You can read about Goose Day here. 

Well, tonight was another...I made one of our favorite meals for dinner, one that I remember eating as a child. Chicken and Waffles. It is a delicious meal, for me I make sourdough waffles, they are topped with leftover roasted chicken that has been heated in homemade gravy. After our meal I stopped by the farmer's market to chat with my friend and I mentioned what we had for dinner. She gave me an odd look and asked what that was. I told her and she replied, "Ok, I never would have thought of that pairing." I came home and asked my WI husband if this was another one of my weird PA things to which he said "yes". So of course I had to get on my phone and check this out. It was actually this evening that I fell in love with Good. Food. Stories. as I love learning about foods that made my childhood and the story behind them. She is from Pittsburgh and she gets the PA thing, so of course she had a post about Amish style chicken and waffles!

I think it is so much fun to learn about the food from your roots and the story of how it came to be. It must be the German in me...this interest came after I discovered how much I LOVE sauerkraut. 

While we are on the subject of Pennsylvanian food, may I just tell all of you that what you call pot pie really is not pot pie. Pot pie is a soupy, fatty, meaty meal that is not shoved neatly into a crust. Just the thought of chicken pot pie takes me back to my parents in the kitchen and my dad tossing homemade noodles into the mix. I'm going to call my mom soon and see if she can remember the recipe she used to make (I will certainly share if she can) but until then I might give this one a try. It sounds pretty close to what I used to enjoy.

2 Comments
    Picture
    View my profile on LinkedIn

    Author

    Hi, my name is Thomasa and I have a serious passion for fermentation! I have also discovered that I am also equally enthusiastic about sharing the benefits of making these living foods with others.

    Archives

    March 2015
    October 2014
    September 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014

    RSS Feed

    Home

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
Photos used under Creative Commons from timsackton, jmd41280