Scamperings

Last week I was surprised and delighted to see a mockingbird beating the absolute tar out of what I think was a Manduca caterpillar. I don't bear any ill-will towards Manduca, mind you; it was just so unexpected. I didn't know anything ate those! The bird must have plucked it out of someone's home garden on that block.

I was also able to locate the nest -- very loud cheeping in a nearby tree. :-)

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A neighbor was giving out some ham from Walden Local Meats, a Massachusetts meat-share program with good standards. (So this is from pasture-raised pigs.) It's "uncured ham", which apparently actually means "cured, but with less gross ingredients". I accepted, and now we have to figure out what to do with it. Ham has not been much a part of my life. It's too fatty for me to enjoy directly on a sandwich, but I fried up some thin slices and I guess that's basically the same thing as bacon. Amazingly tasty. The fat mostly comes out into the skillet, so we can fry up other stuff in that instead of using olive oil.

These days I also make "tempeh cutlets" pretty often -- slice two packages of it thin, then marinate in 2 Tbsp soy sauce, 1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar, and 20 drops liquid smoke until absorbed. Pan fry in copious olive and toasted sesame oil. Pretty incredible in sandwiches, especially with burger/hot dog condiments and sometimes cheese.

I made some last night and fried up the first couple in the pork fat. And you know, I think they actually weren't as good as the ones fried up on the other oils! That was a bit of a surprise.

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Such drought here. A lot of trees have brown leaf margins. Many lawns are covered in brown grass, which I guess is good, considering; that means people aren't watering them. There are watering advisories in effect but this isn't a drought-prone area, so I don't know how well-publicized they are.

Two rain barrels continue to be sufficient, but I'm also starting to measure how much water is coming out of the dehumidifier. It looks like 1-2 gallons per day, which is honestly a huge amount. Again, a terribly energy-inefficient way to collect water, and it wouldn't be enough for hygiene, but that's enough to keep a couple of people in probably-OK-quality drinking water in an emergency where you have electricity but not water. I don't think it's actually enough for my garden by itself, but it's supplementing rainfall enough that I haven't had to use tap water.

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The hopniss poked a tendril out of the pot the other day and just sort of sat there for a few days, but when I wasn't looking it shot a good 10-15 cm up. Maybe because I gave the pot a good soak. I'm looking forward to sitting with the plant and learning its shape and how it moves. Right now I wouldn't be able to tell hopniss from wisteria foliage, so I can't be sure whether I saw one in the wild or not a couple weeks ago. A little embarrassing.

I've been thinking about how one would grow starchy root plants in a no-dig manner. Carrots and beets can be pretty much pulled straight up, maybe requiring the soil to be loosened a bit first. Potatoes can be done totally no-dig by piling up mulch around them as they grow, so the base soil layer remains undisturbed; the tubers form in the soft mulch, not the firm soil. But sunchokes and hopniss probably don't work that way? My best thought is that you might be able to pull up the plants in the fall and bring some of the tubers up for harvest, and leave the rest int he ground for next year. It's still going to be disruptive, but not as disruptive to the soil structure as traditional digging.

I fell into a nice eating habit late this winter that has kept me quite satisfied while also reducing food prep time.

In the evening, I combine 100 g of millet with 100 g of lentils (that's a half cup of each) and let it soak in 2 cups of water in a small pot overnight. In the morning I bring it (still covered) to a light boil and then reduce to a simmer; when the water is all gone after about 20 minutes (no steam coming out) I turn off the fire and take off the lid. Once it has cooled a little, it's ready to use without getting mushy; by noon I put away any leftovers. (This recipe usually lasts me two days, and it's very roughly half of what I eat.)

By itself, it's an unpleasantly bland combination, but it's *fantastic* for mix-ins. Some bowls I've made recently have used:

- Brine from a jar of kalamata olives and celery leaves
- Lacto-fermented green tomatoes (rinsed), toasted sesame oil, pepitas, ponzu sauce
- Olive oil, pecans, sunflower seeds, pepitas, pecorino romano, capers, salt, and chopped wild greens
- Tekka and olive oil
- Umeboshi paste and arugula
- Caramelized butternut squash, salt, and olive oil
- Curtido, sauerkraut, or some other fermented vegetable and whatever else I feel like throwing in

I just improvise based on what's at hand and voila, a meal is ready in just a couple minutes. A++, would recommend. Only complaint is that it's easy to burn the pot, so... set a timer. :-)

Today I cooked with fresh shiitake mushrooms for the first time (and I've only used dried ones once before, I think.) I roasted them with sweet potatoes, olive oil, red wine, salt, black pepper, and thyme, then blended it all fairly smooth. Pretty nice! The mushroom is mostly a background flavor, where it belongs. :-P

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This weekend I also took the fatty bits from some goat loin chop that elusiveat cooked, chopped them up fine, and boiled them with water. Once it was cool, I took off the fat layer, reheated it, and strained out the chunks. Then I prepped a wick (taken from a candle dismantled for other purposes) and the metal wick tether from a used up tealight, poured in the tallow, and let it set. I made a candle!

(The stored energy of the tallow is offset by the energy that went into rendering the fat, but this was an experiment, and if we had been making stock with the leftovers, that energy would have been "free". We have some beef tallow from a while back that we acquired that way.)

The candle sputters a bit, so I guess I didn't separate out the water as well as I could have. I might set it on the stove next time I bake something to remelt it. Maybe I can get some of the water to separate out at the bottom.

[public post]

I grew some milk thistles this year for no good reason other than that they're edible, pretty, easy to grow, and might attract butterflies. (Those seem like good reasons, except you have to balance that against "ow ow ow ow" and having to track the seedhead development to catch it before the seeds drop. I think it's still a net positive, though.)

I thinned out the crop several times, and most recently the plants I pulled had finally developed sizable spines, at least 1/4 inch. I wasn't sure I wanted those in my omelette, so I skillet-fried a test batch in olive oil, with salt. Unsurprisingly, they tasted like kale chips: Oil, salt, green, and the Maillard reaction (or perhaps caramelization, I really have no idea.)

There was a minor problem in that the spines were reduced in effectiveness, but not totally, such that I continued cooking and eating the whole plant in spite of periodic jabs in the mouth, because oil and salt are delicious.

I don't think I'd cook this for guests, except as part of $POSSIBLE_PLANNED_EVENT, and I'm not quite sure I'd even do it again for myself, but it was a nice proof of concept.

ETA: It's also possible to cook just the stems and the lower parts of the leaf ribs, which taste something like asparagus. You don't *have* to have a high pain tolerance to enjoy eating thistle. It just helps.