Weekend Recap

Just a quick recap of the weekend:
Got my seeds from Territorial on Friday! I ordered leeks, several different kinds of onions, french radishes, cucumbers, pole beans, and broccoli. I'll be starting some of these in the greenhouse soon and some will be going directly into the raised beds. I also got some PVC clips that I'm hoping will work better than the Velcro for the raised bed grow houses. To complete the order, I bought a salad spinner (finally). I've been wanting one for a while, but was always surprised at how expensive they were. This one wasn't too bad and is collapsible- a bonus when you have a small house.

On Saturday, it was back to Cara's house for more soap making! It's been about six weeks since we did our first two batches and we wanted to try some other recipes. We made more lavender soap as well as oatmeal/ eucalyptus and rosemary/ honey castile soap. Here's Cara pouring the Lavender batch into the mold.


And here is the castile soap cooking away. Castile is olive-oil based and ends up a nice, organic brown color when cooled into bars.

Now that the bars we made six weeks ago are cured, I got some pretty hand-made paper from Cost Plus and wrapped them in neat little packages, ready to give away as gifts.

Sunday I made more butter and remembered to take some pictures of the process this time.
First, I start off with regular heavy whipping cream...

After about 10 minutes, the hard peaks start to break down and start to turn yellow in color.

It then starts to turn grainy...

...and finally separates in to butter and buttermilk.

You let the butter drain, then massage it together while squeezing out as much buttermilk as you can.

Then, add whatever seasonings you want. This time, I added dill and lemon zest for an extra kick.

Ta Da!

I've Done It!

I finally made a half-way decent sourdough loaf! One that kind of looks like the loaves I see in the grocery store! And I owe all the credit to my new Romertopf! I got it for my 30th Birthday and it worked perfectly! You soak the clay pot in warm water for 10-15 minutes...

Then let the loaves rise in a warm oven...

Brush the loaves with cold water, score, and bake! Here is the loaf that I made in a conventional sandwich loaf pan:

And here is the Romertopf loaf! Golden with a glossy, chewy crust. Yum. The steam from the Romertopf creates a cooking environment much like that of a professional steam-injected bakery oven. I had resigned myself to the fact that without a professional oven, I'd never get results that even came close to a professional loaf, but I was WRONG!! Thankfully...
Now, I just have to improve my crumb and make the loaf less dense in texture. I will continue my mission to make a truly great Sourdough loaf!

Another first for me this week was BUTTER! As in I made my own. It's so ridiculously easy, I can't think why more people don't do it. Literally, the recipe goes like this:
Buy heavy whipping cream. Pour cream into electric mixer. Whip the cream until it turns into butter. Drain buttermilk. Enjoy.
Now, I won't say that making your own butter is cheaper than buying it, but I will say that it's a heck of a lot of fun and it tastes great! Not to mention that the satisfaction of making your own is enough to offset the cost of the cream. It's totally worth it. Matt and I decided to make compound butter with herbs from the garden.
Here's the buttermilk. It's not sour like the cultured stuff in the grocery store. It's actually very mild and is less sweet than even 2%. Perfectly acceptable to drink with cookies. Or save it and make buttermilk biscuits. Or pancakes. Or custard. Get the picture? It's good stuff.

Here is the amount of butter made from three pints of heavy whipping cream- approx. one pound!

After I massaged most of the buttermilk out of it, we mixed in about two teaspoons of sea salt as well as rosemary, sage, and thyme from the garden.


Here's the compound butter on wax paper ready to be rolled.
Ta Da! All finished. These rolls will last at least 6 months in the freezer and up to a month in the fridge (if you don't eat it all first). It's great on bread, steaks, fish, chicken, the list goes on and on. You can also make sweet compound butter with pecans and brown sugar that's great on biscuits or scones.

The whole process took about 20 minutes from start to finish. What freedom! I'll never have to buy butter again!

A Very Quiet New Year

Compared to the weeks before it, the New Year weekend was very quiet. Thank Goodness. After a trip to LA, then to Beavercreek, I was ready for some at-home R&R. Matt and I spent a restful, yet productive three days at home. I did some end of the year garden pruning and trimming while Matt cleaned out the chicken coop. I took down the tree (which always makes me kind of sad) and carefully packed away my ornaments. We finished the first season of Heros which Matt got from his grandmother and I read Cleaved, given to me by Val.
I also managed to finish knitting Matt's socks which I had started at Jan's house over Christmas. Mom sent me some Fireworks (since his favorite color is black), which I knitted double to make some very thick, sturdy socks.

These are the second pair I've ever made. Ever. I'm afraid one of Matt's legs will be an inch warmer than the other. Sigh...

I was really sweating it by the time I started to decrease for the second toe. There was about three hours there where I was convinced I didn't have enough yarn, yet I continued. This was how much I had left from the two balls:

I was blessed by the yarn gods.
After that project was finished, I moved to the kitchen for another. Val sent me four silicon tart pans for my birthday, which totally got me craving mincemeat tarts. I had meant to make some to take to Jan's for Christmas, but the Lemon Meringue pie used up all my kitchen stamina that day. So, last night I made a double batch of dough and used up all the odds and ends of jam in the fridge as well as most of the jar of mincemeat I'd bought.
Rolling out the dough and fitting them into the pans:

These are plum and strawberry tarts made with my own jam.

Here are the finished tarts! 33 in all and delicious!

Next time, I plan to roll the dough even thinner, since they took much longer to cook fully than the recipe said. Also, the strawberry jam was too wet- it made the dough underneath soggy. I've already promised an encore perfomance for Mom when she comes up next week.
Hello 2012!

Impromtu California Trip and Christmas!

Hello, hello everyone! I hope we all had a wonderful Holiday Season! This happens every year- I mean to blog real-time and the pics just don't make it to the blog until January. Oh well, better late than never!
I had to make an unexpected quick family trip to California before Christmas, but before I left, I got to make soap for the first time with a friend of mine.
Behold: my first homemade soap!

Here is the cold-processed lavender soap, stamped with the image of a thistle.

Here is the Oatmeal Honey Castile soap stamped with a dragon! I got the stamps off the internet (what can't you find on the internet) and had fun whacking each bar with the rubber mallet. Both these soaps need to cure for about six weeks, so they should be ready by January 27th. Next year, I plan on making soap around early November so it will be ready to use by Christmas.

Then, it was off to LA! The reason for the trip was, unfortunately, the sudden passing of my grandmother Dori (Delores). There was no memorial or funeral, instead we had a swinging Christmas party and a great White Elephant gift exchange. Nana was always up for a good party and we laughed as a family while flipping through picture books. It was a great way to honor her memory.
The bright side of the trip included getting to spend time with Mom on her birthday. Steven and I got her an asian-styled teapot and warmer, which she can use for herbal tea before bed and Dad bought her an incredible succulent wreath. After presents, we went to see Sherlock Holmes 2 with Pete and Val, then had a wonderful dinner at the Crab Pot in Long Beach. It definitely felt like I had stolen time with my family and it was great!
While there, Mom had me work on a project- starching some tatted ornaments. Mom had been at some crafts fair with Ms. Audrey and there was an ancient craftswoman there selling these for only $3 each!--and none of them were selling. Spinning, knitting, and weaving have enjoyed a re-emergence lately and have become quite in vogue thanks in part to the new green/ sustainable movement, but (heart-breakingly), fewer and fewer people have (re)learned to tat and the skill is quickly disappearing. Apparently, the woman who made these ornaments is practically blind and knots these patterns from memory. The fact that these tiny pieces of handmade art were going unappreciated was unacceptable to Mom and she bought them all. After some internet research, we bought some extra-strength spray starch, saturated them and pinned them to dry on wax paper-covered cardboard.

It really only took a couple of hours to pin them all and by the next morning, they were dry and ready to hang on the little rosemary tree Mom had bought.


Once I returned home, I added the ornaments to my own tree. They were SO worth the time and effort.



I got back home just in time for the Christmas Holiday. Matt and I filled the chicken feeder to bursting and headed up to Beavercreek for a few days. Matt was a true champion since he took the 3am lamb checks and let Jan have two nights of uninterrupted sleep. My a fluke of timing, nothing happened lamb-wise while we were there, but we enjoyed watching the lambs that had already arrived.


Matt and I were in charge of Christmas dessert and opted for a lemon-meringue pie. Lemon is a popular favorite (it's so rare to find a dessert that everyone likes) and I had brought back several huge pink lemons from my trip to LA. Combined with the fact that after five days of no collecting, I was also drowning in eggs, it was a no-brainer. Matt and I followed a recipe out of Cooking Illustrated and managed to make this beauty:

It. Was. Good.

Matt and I also took up "Farmopoly", which is a farm-inspired Monopoly game, and played with Jan and Neil on Christmas night.

Jan totally mopped the floor with all of us- check out her Pile-o-Money!

We also opened gifts that night and Jan made Matt a complete chef's outfit! Now he doesn't need to wear one of my "loin-cloth" aprons when he's grilling. :-)

Here's Chef Matt breaking in his new outfit- homemade hamburgers and champagne was our New Years Meal!

It's Christmas Once Again

This Christmas year, it's all about learning new skills. Nicole's cousin teaches wreath-making classes and we both signed up (for $5 including materials, how could I say no?) We got set up in her garage and after some brief tutoring, I went to town!
I chose fir and cedar branches for my wreath, then added some gold accents and ribbon I got at Michael's (on sale, of course). I never knew how easy it was to make wreaths! I'll never have to purchase another one again! I've got lots of ideas for a dried herb wreath or maybe on made with succulents! I shall start potting shoots off my succulents now that I know how easy it is...

Voila! Here it is hanging brightly from my back door. I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. I'm also pleased about learning something new for only 5 bucks!

Last weekend, Matt and I went over to my friends' farm where they grow Christmas trees. We picked a Grand Fir out of this lot:

Matt and Richard loading it into the truck...

For me, the Christmas season really starts when I decorate the tree. I dig out all my Christmas movies, including some classics from my childhood and sing along while stringing lights and hanging ornaments. It's a yearly tradition that gets me in the Christmas spirit. Between the cold, frosty weather we've been having lately, making my own wreath, the Silverton Tree Lighting ceremony, everyone putting up their Christmas lights, and the manger-esque feeling of the chicken coop at night, I'm starting to get excited about the holiday season!