Ferments

Beautiful! Fermenting veggies in Pickl-It jars

Earlier ferments - Bing Cherry Chutney on the left

I'm having a blast learning to ferment foods. I can't take the time to tell you all the reasons why fermented foods are so important in our diet. If you google the subject you'll find tons of articles about it. I will post about the whys eventually. For now, I'm just excited to share pictures of my stuff. It's so pretty ... and tasty. All I'll say for now is that it's a very old traditional process in all cultures around the world. Our modern pickling with vinegar, as well as our modern preservation with canning, is not traditionally old-style - and not as healthy.

From left to right in the top photo is: beet kvass, spicy grated zucchini, dilly green beans, garlic sauerkraut using 1/2 red cabbage (on my second batch), the best fresh salsa (on my second batch), turnips and beets, kimchi (a second batch too and my favorite!). The first's of the above are in the cellar (excepting the salsa which we've consumed) along with a rhubarb chutney. These fruit chutneys are not sweet but savory.

Finished ferments vacuum sealed to go into cold storage

I'll post more details later. We finished off our root/wine cellar better this summer, so that is the "cold storage" where I'm putting these rejarred and vacuum sealed finished ferments. I'll take pictures of the cellar soon and post.

The quart jars to the right in the last picture are cultured dairy I strained for it's whey, then squashed into balls and are covered with virgin olive oil. The balls did not stay intact, but it's preserved and tastes so good added to salads or spread on artisan bread.

Use of all these things is what I also want to post about. It's all fine and fun to dehydrate, freeze, and ferment stuff ... but you've got to use them!

Current Note (10/20/2015): It's 3 years later. What do I still like? Or moreso, what do we find ourselves actually still using and eating?! I find I can only eat so much, and so much variety is overwhelming! Sauerkraut is number 1, and easiest and most liked to eat. I do really like kimchi, but still, not in the habit of eating it. I have very few recipes using the preserved lemons, but they are SO good, and seem to last well, so I don't make much. The fruit ferments we don't really like, excepting the cranberry one I've done other posts on. It keeps really well too. I typically freeze green beans, but as a ferment, the dilly beans are good. And whenever I'm going to do a veggie tray for gatherings, I'll start them with brine and spices, a few days before - I've posted on this too. And last, but not least, I prefer brined cucumber pickles to typical vinegar processed pickles! They keep well too - a little foggy brine as they age hurts nothing and is the norm. A friend has told me I really need to be making my own Apple Cider Vinegar. "So easy," she says. I do use it all the time - especially in my homemade salad dressings, which we eat a lot! We'll see. Our little local natural grocery store we go to regularly is carrying more and more ferments, so I'll occasionally try variety that way. Like I really like a green chile pepper spread on sandwiches . . .

Shared this post at: Monday Mania, Homestead Barn Hop, Delicious Obsessions, Pickle Me Too, Cooking Traditional Foods,

Currants

Freezing Currants

 I've been harvesting currants. I've planted so many currant bushes . . . When they are all as mature as the couple I've been harvesting from . . . they are going to be . . . overwhelming! So far I've mostly been freezing them. Putting them initially on cookie sheets to freeze, then bagging up. We use them with our homemade yogurt ice cream and many mornings with our dairy kefir, yogurt, oatmeal, homemade soaked cold cereal . . . When I do have an abundance I'll be making wine with them too. I'll also dry them.

Currant Pie

This year I made a currant pie. It was too sweet, so next year I'll make more pies and tweak the recipe till just right.

Raspberries in the Freezer

Raspberries frozen first on cookie sheets

My earliest Raspberries to harvest and freeze are wild ones. My earliest perennial bed Monte made for me had dirt brought from our woods and the raspberries sprouted from that dirt. Since they produce well in that spot, I let them exist and am picking them when peonies are blooming.

I thought our wild raspberries were everbearing, but found out "Wrong" when one year I cut them all back in the fall and got no berries the next year. I now have everbearing raspberries which produce later in the summer. So now I have two harvests, or almost a constant supply of raspberries from mid July till frost.

To freeze berries spread them on cookie sheets first and freeze, then bag them up and put back in the freezer, labeled. We mainly eat our frozen fruit for breakfast with homemade yogurt and dairy kefir, soaked and dried cereal or oatmeal.

Emery eating raspberries "Papa" picked for him

I met my son Travis, Sarah, Emery and Scout at the zoo. Monte had picked some raspberries into a small container for me to take to Emery. Emery shared his raspberries from "Papa" with everyone.

Family Time

Travis and Sarah just left. They live 1 1/2-2 hours away in Ft Collins. As a Worship Minister he gets Mondays off and Sarah asked to have Mondays off too. So we usually get together Sunday afternoons over to Monday. Dawson started school today, so we had supper together.

I got a new cookbook, a Webber Grill book. I tried a recipe out of it tonight that was fantastic and want to try everything in it! Monte wanted to try making 'Ices' - out of the Thompson seedless grapes hanging everywhere in our greenhouse, and the ripe red currants we have on bushes in my fenced in veggie/produce garden. In googling grape ice cream I found that most things are made with the purple concord grape. It's probably because the green isn't that appealing of a color.

Monte didn't use all the sweetening syrup I made for the ice cream, and it would have been better had he followed the recipe. So most of us mixed in store bought vanilla. It was good.

A good relaxing day together.

Fruit Soup

Like I said before, when I was dating Monte and he told me about fruit soup, I thought it sounded awful. But now it's my favorite Christmas food and I make a big pot so we have leftovers and plenty for serving at all sorts of get-togethers during the holidays. Here is my fruit soup recipe:

12 oz bag of pitted dried prunes, cut them up
1 1/2 c raisins
1 c cut up dried apricots
(about 2/3 cups each cut up dried apples and pears)
(I usually add cranberries too)
(Now I add dried bing cherries instead of adding 2 cans of sour cherries)
10 cups water
2 cinnamon sticks
6 whole cloves (put in a little mesh basket or cheesecloth)
slices of lemon

Bring this to a boil and simmer for 30 minutes.

Add 6-7 Tbs tapioca to grape juice to soak a bit before adding to the soup. I eventually pour in a whole jug (32 oz) of unsweetened grape juice. This needs to simmer a bit more for the tapioca to cook and thicken.

It's good both warm and cold. I like it room temp. Monte loves to eat it with cream. It's great with ice cream. It's good with aebleskivers and pancakes and rice pudding ...