Note: I wrote this soem time ago, but never posted it. Here it is for your enjoyment.
1. Fermented oatmeal and fried eggs for breakfast
I picked up some steel-cut oats yesterday. It's quite different than the quick/rolled oats I'm used to. It takes 40 minutes (instead of 5) to cook, so it's certainly not as convenient. You can't even leave it - it needs regular stirring.
2. Sourdough bread
It's baking right now. Contains only water, spelt flour, and a pinch of sea salt.
3. Sauerkraut
Picked up a head of organic cabbage yesterday. Fresh cabbage really works better than week-old. (I have a bad habit of buying ingredients and then letting them sit in the fridge for a week.)
4. Ginger soda starter.
Took the sediment from a very good bottle of ginger soda and combined with sugar, fresh organic grated ginger, and water. Not bubbling yet, but I'm hopeful. I keep it in the oven with the light on and the door cracked, to create a warmer environment. (I keep my house at 64deg F, and a lot of stuff grows pretty slowly at that temp.)
5. Kombucha
My last batch of kombucha seems weird - it grew very slowly. At 2 weeks the new babies were very thin. Even at 4 weeks they're not very substantial. But it sure is sour!
6. Failed chicken stock
I had a chicken stock going for two days. Cracked the lid open to get it to reduce faster. It all boiled away, leaving only a scum at the bottom. Damn. At least I was able to get the pot clean.
As you can see, I've been busy!
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7 comments:
I can't go back to rolled oats after tasting steel cut oats. You can make steel cut oats with little work. Put them in a slow cooker, or my method below.
1. Boil water.
2. Add oats.
4. Remove heat.
4. Cover, leave overnight.
5. Heat for a few minutes in the morning.
Keep up the fermenting, I've been looking for real raw milk but have yet to find any in my area.
Sean,
I'll have to try that, thanks for the tip.
Where in the world are you? Have you checked out realmilk.com?
Jay - I'm in Louisiana. It is illegal to sell raw milk here so I'm looking for a herd share. I've looked through all the directories, but not contacted a chapter of the Weston A. Price Foundation. I'll do that this next week. Thanks.
Luckily I can find wild game this time of year. Chili con carne (venison) filled me up tonight.
Wow, what's happened to civilisation when raw milk is illegal to sell? What's next, we'll have to buy our water from a third party?
Jay - I make a chicken/turkey stock once very few weeks. Normally it simmers for ~5 hours. Last night I kept a stock simmering for 12 hours.
But you said 2 DAYS. I'd figure that long of a simmer would kill everything off. Do you know something that I don't?
I have some short ribs sitting in the fridge. Time to make my first beef stock.
Sean,
Everything gets killed off shortly after you first bring it to a boil. Stock is not a live food. So simmering for days doesn't kill anything extra.
It does, however, continue to extract nutrients from the bones. (I suspect that beef takes longer to extract from than, say, fish.)
It also reduces the volume of the water, making the nutrients & flavor denser in the final result.
I'll have to try an extended simmer.
Always having stock around has changed the way I cook and eat. Next I must learn to ferment, or make a sourdough yeast.
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