The Mead is Bottled

Merry Christmas and Cheers! Our wassail this year is our homemade honey wine.

If you recall, we started our process with some already-fermented honey, plus a ginger bug that I had made. (You can read that blog post here.) Our ratio was three cups honey to three quarts water, plus another cup of ginger bug.

The gallon jar of mead sat around for a good three weeks, not doing much of anything. I stirred it frequently, but it wasn't moving as quickly as we would have liked. So a few days before Thanksgiving, Tom pitched in some wine yeast, and decanted it into a carboy with an airlock. The mead really started bubbling after that. We tasted it on Thanksgiving, and it was extremely sweet - the specific gravity reading was around 1.045. We wanted it to be quite a bit drier, so it sat for another month on the floor of the kitchen (about 60-65 degrees). Tom and I tasted it yesterday and thought it was perfect, and the gravity was down to 1.01. Not bone dry, but certainly not sweet. So we bottled it! We'll take it to our Christmas dinner celebrations.

It's an odd drink. I'm not much of an alcohol drinker, so I'm perhaps not the best judge, but mead messes with your mind a little. You totally smell and taste the honey, but it's wine, dry and with a kick, not sweet. Your experience doesn't meet your expectations. Maybe I just need to drink more of it!

I did a little research about mead. Mead predates both wine and beer. Early brewers started to use fruit, hops, and spices to enhance the flavor, and eventually this drink evolved into both wine (grape mead) and beer (hoppy mead). A wonderful history can be found at the Skyriver Brewing website.

This was a fun project, I recommend giving it a try yourself!

Oranges

Today I scored a bucket full of organic oranges from yet another generous neighbor. How fortunate am I? My neighbor warned me that these oranges are never terribly sweet. Needing to see for myself,  I peeled one and ate it. No, it's not like candy, but it has a wonderful orange fragrance and flavor that I quite enjoyed! With the addition of a little sugar, any recipe with these will be delicious.

on the tree

harvest

I think I'll make an orange and honey sorbet, and maybe some chocolate orange biscotti. Those sound like good Christmas Eve desserts, don't they? Do you crave citrus this time of year, like I do?

Speaking of Christmas, that's generally what's going on around here - preparations for and celebrations around the holiday. We've had a night caroling with friends, a day watching Adam perform at the Conservatory, fun excursions to find stocking stuffers, and plenty of baking time in the kitchen. We've had such a glut of eggs that I've been making egg-centric dishes; mini frittatas for the caroling party, a sponge cake today. Thank you, chickens!

I have two very attractive things to show you. One is our new 'rain barrel.'

note the corner of a sand bag to the right

We noticed a breach in the gutter in this corner, which caused waterfalls, which caused our garage to flood last week. So our very elegant solution was a plastic trash barrel (and some sand bags). Listen, I really love it, despite the way it looks. I love that I can just dip my watering can in and get it filled up, rather than having to attach a hose to some wonky valve near the bottom and then haul the hose around, bent over. And I can keep the ever-drippy hose nozzle inside to catch the drips, too. Not that I'm having to use rain barrel water; we've been getting some regular rain, thank goodness!

The other very attractive thing; the legs of the bee hive.

ew

We still have an ant problem. We've had enough rain that I can't keep up with the need for diatomaceous earth. (That stuff is expensive!) So I've tried every other trick I could find. I sprayed the legs with vinegar. The ants crawled right through it. Then I tried cornmeal. Ants crawled right through it. Then I tried cinnamon. You guessed it, ants crawled right through it. Lastly I added coffee grounds. All together now: the ants crawl right through it. What a mess. I'm about ready to use borax.

The garden is creeping along, with some things doing better than others. The garlic and shallots are acting like it's summer. The greens are coming along great, as are the peas. I have incremental growth on the brassicas, and no growth at all on the potatoes. (It's looking like winter potatoes are a bust, but maybe come February they'll surprise me.)

The narcissus continue to bloom early.

Onward to the holiday. I hope wherever you are, you're enjoying some time off, some homemade treats, and lots of time with loved ones!

Check out the nearly-empty canning shelf. We did a great job making many of our gifts this year!

Preserved Lemons

I picked another three dozen lemons from my generous neighbor's tree.

They're perfectly ripe. Meyer lemons are thinner-skinned then regular lemons, and have a slightly different taste and scent, a bit sweeter. I juiced a bunch - roughly a dozen makes a pint of juice for the freezer. But I wanted to try a new project, preserving them in salt.

I don't make Moroccan food very often - in fact I'm struggling to think of a Moroccan dish I've made in the last year and none come to mind. Moroccan dishes are usually where you find preserved lemons. However, we do have a roast chicken every month or so, and I always want lemons for the cavity. As you know, I hate buying anything out of season, especially if I can preserve it in season. So I thought, do folks use preserved lemons in roasted chicken? And sure enough, when googled, a dozen recipes pop up.

I did a lot of research on this a few months back when I was thinking of Christmas gifts, so I just needed to refresh my memory. Most recipes call for cutting the lemon into quarters, leaving the stem end together so the lemon ends up like a sort of opened flower. However one of my favorite websites, NW Edible, had a recipe that called for quartering them completely. I followed Erica's guide for these, and so far I'm really pleased.

Basically all you do is quarter a bunch of lemons and put them in a big bowl. As you put each lemon in, sprinkle it with two tablespoons of Kosher salt. When they're all in, toss 'em around.

Then stuff them into a jar (or jars).

Let them sit for an hour to get soft, then press them down into the jar so they form a tight pack and release some juice. Then juice another few lemons and add to the jar until the salted lemons are nearly covered with juice.

You'll let these sit on the counter top (a cool place, easy in winter when lemons are ripe) for a week, giving them a good shake every day. After that, you store 'em in the fridge for up to a year.

The week on the counter means you're basically fermenting these guys, so you might get a sort of whitish 'bloom' in the jar. Apparently this is harmless.

Every time I ferment something on the counter, I think of ancient times, and how people used to do this regularly as a part of their food preservation. It's a skill that's generally lost today, though I know that you can take classes in home fermentation everywhere in the Bay Area, so it's coming back in to fashion. I've put Sandor Katz's book "The Art of Fermentation" on my Christmas wish list, so I can learn even more. We've fermented pickles, peppers, and ginger, as well as milk, but we've yet to try cabbage or the hundreds of other fruits and veg that can be fermented.

Anyway, here's what the lemons look like in the morning light today. They'll get glossier as the week goes on.

It's raining lightly again today, which is gorgeous. I'm determined not to let grey skies depress me this year, because it means that we're getting much-needed moisture. I tend to get a little 'S.A.D.' every winter (Seasonal Affective Disorder). I find several ways to combat it: I try to appreciate what the season brings, try to find projects to distract me from early dark, try to get outside as much as possible, and walk a lot. Since Joe is injured, the walking isn't happening as much, and I just don't feel good about going out without him. But I might have to just put on my boots and go for a muddy hike and try not to think about him at home, longing for a romp in the open space.

One of the things the season brings is pretty mushrooms. I found several of these beauties while mucking about in the compost yesterday.

And I've already seen several stinkhorns in the vegetable beds. It's mushroom time again!

Ants in the Hive

I swear, if our bees make it through this winter, it'll be a miracle. First wax moths, then varroa, now an infestation of ants.

Today I've been outside working. We've had wet weather recently, so no chance to get outside and do some weeding and general clean-up. Today it's a sunny, chilly day, and we expect more rain tomorrow, so I knew I needed to get outside and take care of some things.

On one of my passes through the back garden, I stopped and watched the hive for a moment. I do this quite frequently. I just want to keep an eye on the amount of activity, and while it's greatly diminished this time of year, if I stood there for five minutes on a sunny day and saw nothing, I'd be worried. Today I noticed little things crawling, and in alarm, I lifted the lid. Ants everywhere.

So Tom and I immediately got out the smoker, the diatomaceous earth, the light bee brush, and the hive tool. I hate to open the hive when it's cold, but I had to see what was going on (and it is over 50 degrees today, so not horribly cold). We separated the bars and saw ants pretty much everywhere. I didn't get any good pictures, but here's a terribly out-of-focus one on the ants in the uncapped honey.

This pissed me off. We killed as many as we could, rubbed out the line of ants going up the hive leg, and went a little nuts with the diatomaceous earth. This is really all we can do.

Ants are opportunists, just like most of nature - you can't blame them for wanting an easy meal. And our bee colony is so diminished in numbers at the moment, they just don't have enough manpower (actually, that would be womanpower) to fight the battle. They're barely hanging on as it is.

Like I said, it'll be a miracle if our bees survive the winter.

We've had a few problems with animals here at Poppy Corners lately. Joe the dog has got a spinal injury, some sort of compressed disc in his neck. He's been in a great deal of pain and has required several trips to the vet. He's on muscle relaxers and steroids, and he's getting better. But he's not allowed to go on walks, so he's antsy and we're antsy too. It's been scary but I'm hoping that he'll heal. He's firmly middle-aged, which, as I know well, doesn't help matters.

A much less serious problem is Tasha the cat and her growing collection of dreadlocks. She's a very crepuscular creature, climbing the fences at dawn and dusk to meow forlornly. At what, we don't know. I'm not sure where she goes exactly, though we can certainly hear her. She comes home with terrible mats in her fur, which I then find and cut out. She's looking quite holey.

There's lots of stuff growing in the garden: Peas, kohlrabi, all kinds of greens and lettuces, broccoli, cabbage, fava beans, garlic, shallots, turnips, beets, carrots, cauliflower, and brussels sprouts. The growth is just incremental, which is difficult for an impatient person like me. In the heat and bounty of summer, things germinate and grow so quickly, and one gets used to that. Winter is a different story. Everything creeps along. But as long as it's forward motion, I'm happy. The squirrels keep digging in my beds which is annoying and slows the process down further.

Only 10 more days till the solstice! These short days are hard for me and for the garden. But the sun is still shining right now, so I'd better get back out there!

Nature's First Green

You remember that poem, by Robert Frost?

"Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay."

Well, in my winter garden, Nature's first green is actually purple.

Asian Braising Greens

Kale, Russian "Wild Garden Frills"

Asian Baby Leaf mix

Manzanita