Summertime, she rolled right in…

…sweetly and gently, with a few days of high 70s and clear skies. The only thing to do, really, was to celebrate with our first fire pit meal of the season. While the kids ran around and C got the fire started, I whipped up an all-ages frothy cool beverage to enjoy, and it was too damn good not to share. Even if you’re not brewing your own kombucha at home, you should probably try this, anyway, with a store-bought ginger or plain kombucha.

Ingredients:

-1 quart kombucha (first ferment, or a gingered second ferment, or store-bought plain or ginger)
-2 cups frozen strawberries
-1/4 cup lemon juice
-1/2 cup maple syrup

A lot depends on the sweetness of your strawberries (and even your kombucha). You may want to adjust the lemon juice and maple syrup amounts. I’m only guessing, anyway, since I just glugged them both in.

So, whirr it all around in the high-powered blending instrument of your choice and enjoy the effervescent sweet-tartness! A sprig of chocolate mint makes just about everything better, in case you were wondering about the green stuff in my glass.

We roasted whatever we could put on a stick, including dessert. For a while, I avoided s’mores entirely as I don’t know of any marshmallows available that are made without corn syrup, but since discovering the world of making my own maple marshmallows, I wouldn’t want to go back, anyway. They take only about 15 minutes to make, and as long as you have a candy thermometer, it’s easy-peasy.

The first recipe I tried, a few years back, made for a mess when roasting, but I had my first go-round with this recipe from The Urban Poser, and not only is the ingredient ratio spot-on, but even without letting them sit to dry out, as suggested, my mallows were perfect roasters, even just hours after cooking up the goo, behaving almost exactly like the Kraft marshmallows I grew up with.

Only maple syrup, gelatin (we use the same grass-fed gelatin as suggested in the recipe), water, and vanilla. Simple and perfect.

Until you add cinnamon to the marshmallow goo before it sets. Then, you go beyond perfection and achieve marshmallow Nirvana.

Some wildlife wanted to get in on the action, including fireflies galore, and a visiting snapping turtle. An evening bursting with growth and life and early summer magic. At least I was able to enjoy it before the most cruel and unusual head cold from Hell knocked me on my ass for 36 hours. I was the one pampered on Father’s Day. Oh, well. Regularly scheduled programming back tomorrow!

 

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First Ferment

After a preservation hiatus through the coldest months, it was time to get our ferment on for the first time this calendar year. My mother-in-law sends us a box of Meyer lemons from her tree every Winter, and with the deeply bitter cold we’ve been experiencing, and their 3000+ miles of travel, I was amazed they arrived so perfectly sound.

Meyers are a treat, all mellow sweetness coupled with a reduced acidic bite. They are my favorite for just about everything but lemonade (I like it puckery-tart!), but we chose to use 2/3 of the sunshiny bounty for Moroccan Preserved Lemons. I like to make at least one quart of preserved lemons each year, two if we’re blessed with another shipment. A little goes a long way towards making a simple meal pretty spectacular, so we often make one jar last through the year using it in stews, roast chicken and rice-based dishes.

The past few years, I’ve made it somewhat complicated, trying out different spice combinations and fermentation windows. While these versions have been lovely, I felt ready, this time around, to get back to the simplest recipe for fermenting just about anything: main ingredient + salt.

I used this nourished kitchen recipe for my ratios, and now the golden darlings play out their alchemical miracle of salt into gold in the dark of a pantry cabinet. btw, I could fit 8 lemons in a quart jar, which left me four for this:

…because we have duck eggs again. We used this recipe, which calls for blending up a whole lemon, rind and all, along with the juice. You’re welcome.

This evening I’ll be working on my shop move back over to Big Cartel. There will be an announcement and a promo coupon, so stay tuned for that in the next couple of days.

And don’t forget the Snowball event at Wildwood Farm was postponed to THIS Sunday, March 23rd (so, you know, ignore the date on the flyer). There’s still time to get registered and join us for an 80s extravaganza!

Eight: 52 and Things

the 52 project.
Portraits of my main squeeze(s) every week.

Winter Break: It was quiet, and full even though we didn’t go anywhere vacation-ish. Work and play happened, like any other week, but it was a little richer with friends and warm drinks. A nod to the joys of Winter, yes, but feeling in the end like a readiness to say goodbye. We’re still in it; just a thing we have to admit to ourselves. The position of the sun makes 12 degrees feel somehow more tolerable than even just a few weeks ago, and brightly glittering snow is so much more hopeful than dull, grey snow under an overcast sky, so I think we’ll manage.

I’m deep in scheming and dreaming up a trip out West in April to visit family and teach some workshops. Places I’ll hit this go ’round: Portland, OR, the SF Bay Area, and Denver, CO. I’ve got the latter location covered for a venue, but am still contemplating the other two. A new spinning workshop, and the tried-and-true nuno felt class are on the table. More information will be available soon, but if you have any requests, ideas, venues to suggest or offer, do let me know! All is still in the planning stage.

In other news: granola. I’ve posted about what I like to call Culture Crunch before, and I totally forgot about how I used to sprout sesame seeds to add to the mixture. Next time! This time, I went back to the original recipe that inspired my fermented granola experimentation and played with some of the post-fermentation wet ingredients. To the honey mixture, which I increased a tad, I added a generous scoop of peanut butter, probably about 3/4 cup for a doubled recipe, and a few heaping tablespoons of raw cacao powder. As soon as it comes out of the dehydrator, I’ll add soaked and dried sunflower and pumpkin seeds, toasted coconut, and raisins. A little taste-testing reveals that this is a subtle flavoring, not too sweet, which means it will be perfection once the raisins are added. I wasn’t going for cloying, just comforting. Win!

Percolating

Ideas! Plans! Wine!
Not presented in that order!

Here it is, and here it will be for the next three months before bottling. So, don’t hold your breath for the next Dandelion Wine report.

And here are the things I have planned for the summer:

The Yarnival
…not to vend or teach at, just to enjoy and elbow-rub.

Twist: Festival de la Fibre…to TEACH! My new photography workshop geared towards shooting better photos for your online sales or portfolio. I’m really excited about this one and will also be working on an online version of the class to be released in July.

And here is the thing happening very soon: Trunk Show at Madison Wool in Madison, CT on Sunday, June 2nd from 11am-2pm. Come celebrate Dayna’s 2nd anniversary with MadWool and bring your spinning wheel! I’ll have lots of new dyed fibers for sale and handspun yarn and wearables, too!

And then there’s the right now, right this second stuff: the shop has been updated with new handspun yarn, hand dyed yarn, and art rolags. I want you to enjoy 20% off everything in the shop, including fiber and yarn clubs! Use the code: LONGWEEKEND to receive your discount at check out. Yeah!

And since I seem to be working somewhat backwards in time in my announcements, I was over at Luminous Traces the other day. Embracing lilacs.

That was all very business-like, but long overdue. The ideas, I’ll let percolate a little while longer because I’ve shared enough Monkey biz for one day.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend. If you need me, I’ll be in the garden prepping (but not planting). Frost warning tonight…aaaaaaahhh, New England. At least we avoided the potential snow in last night’s forecast.

Petal Play

Then came the day on which I picked ALL THE DANDELIONS. It only happens once a year, if that, because it’s quite a tedium, de-petaling the darlings. Usually, I just make biscuits or some such, but this year I got a bee in my wool hat (still wicked cold ’round here for bonnets), and decided to make a batch of dandelion wine.

I’ll send you here for the recipe, as I’m following it to the letter. I trust Sandor Katz with all my soul, and I’m not going to experiment with my first batch. I’m in the stirring-it-whenever-I-think-of-it-for-the-next-three-days stage of the proceedings. It’s an awful lot of work plucking a gallon’s worth of petals and I admit I was a little shy of the mark, and it seems a big to-do for just one gallon of finished product, but there is loveliness potential in a year’s time and the joy is in the process (especially for me, since I don’t metabolize alcohol very well and won’t be partaking, anyway).

For immediate consumption, these are fun:

I tweaked the only dandelion flower cookie recipe I could find so that I could use coconut flour and therefore triple the quantity of eggs. We have an abundance of the latter.

Dandy Cookies

1/2 cup coconut oil
1/2 cup honey
6 eggs
splash vanilla
scant 1/2 cup coconut flour
1 cup rolled oats
1/2 to 3/4 cup dandelion petals

Preheat oven to 375º. If coconut oil is not liquid (it was too cold in our house), melt it with the honey and let cool a bit. Add the eggs and beat them in. Stir in the rest of the ingredients and mix until well blended. Let the mixture sit for a few minutes. The coconut flour will absorb the liquid and thicken the dough. Drop by tablespoons onto a parchment-lined cookie sheet and bake for about 10 minutes. Keep an eye on it because liquid sugars tend to burn quickly. You could also double up your baking sheet to prevent the bottoms from getting too brown.

Protein-packed and gluten-free, yo. Enjoy.

 

SCOBY Snacks

We broke up with kombucha for a little while.

Brews would be forgotten for too long, flavors were added at the wrong time and sad-looking SCOBYs (Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast) and less-than-palatable beverages were the result.

Then, it was all water kefir all the time, but I have a hard time keeping that up during the winter. Tibicos are fantastic for what I like to call a fizzy lifting drink, quite refreshing on a hot summer day, but not something I crave when the chill is on. So we broke up with those, too.

It was somewhat liberating not to have any cultures to babysit (excepting the weekly batch of yogurt, which is very forgiving), but then some friends brought over a bottle of their homebrew cranberry kombucha and it was all over. We came crawling back, begged forgiveness and started over, with a bit more research and a lot more enthusiasm. The results have been super-tasty and we find ourselves with wonderfully healthy, rapidly growing mama mushies.

Inevitably, if you’ve got a happy culture going on, you’ll have some extra to give away, feed to your chickens, or…experiment with.

Enter the SCOBY Snack. If you don’t like gummy bears, don’t make this. It’s basically the most delicious apple-cider flavored gummy chunk you’ll ever put in your mouth. Seriously, I will take SCOBY donations just to make gallons of this stuff.

All you need are your extra SCOBYs and a very simple sugar syrup.

SCOBY Snacks***

Sugar syrup: heat a 50/50 solution of sugar and water until the sugar is dissolved.

Cut your SCOBY up into one-inch chunks. You want about a 1/2-inch-ish thickness for best results. If you have a really thick one, that has been hanging out for a long time trying to become the size of your jar, you’ll need to slice it into rounds and then cut it up.

Layer the chunks into a baking dish or bowl, sprinkling with a little raw sugar as you go.

Pour the sugar syrup over the chunks until they are mostly covered.

Marinate for about 24 hours.

If you have a dehydrator, spread the chunks out on a fruit leather sheet and set to a raw food temp (I used 115 degrees). Dehydrate until you’ve got gummy bear texture. So far, I’m storing my finished snacks in a glass jar at room temperature. I don’t they’ll last more than a day or two.

If you are using an oven, then spread the chunks on a parchment-lined baking sheet and dry at the lowest possible temperature, checking often.

***btw, this recipe may have kombucha “mushroom” as a base, but it’s definitely candy. It’s probably better for you than anything made with corn syrup and who-knows-what, but I don’t think you can get away with calling it a nutritional supplement. 😉

As for our beverage brews, we’ve come a long way since our earlier flavor experiments. Now we add our flavors during a second fermentation and our culture is much happier for it.

The best results have been with fruit that we picked and froze for the winter…peach-ginger is such a welcome, happy taste of summer! For each half-gallon jar of poured-off kombucha, we add about 1 cup of fresh or frozen fruit and a tablespoon or so of minced candied ginger and let it ferment for another few days before straining again and bottling.

Yum.