After a simple and sweet pre-Christmas celebration in Omaha with my family, my sister needed to hit the road back to Tulsa before the weather turned nasty. She refused sweets, Christmas cookies, tea, and all things edible until I offered her homemade yogurt that we had brought from Michigan. After a brief pause, she agreed. She would take the yogurt to have when back at home. The norm for this sister of mine is to not hold on to anything. Once it’s been given to her, she will re-gift practically anything she has received, so I didn’t hold my breath. The next week my sister called, saddened because there was no more yogurt in the jar for the next weeks breakfast but a teeny teaspoon.

“Do not fear!”, I said. “It is oh so simple to make!” I was overjoyed when she decided she actually wanted to learn how to make the yogurt at home. Pleased as a pup in my bed- not that my pup is in my bed, cuddling warm like a heating pad next to my thigh… never. There really aren’t too many things I can talk endlessly about, but yogurt is one of them and if Rebekah is converted to homemade yogurt, I am a happy sister.

Here it is folks, my re-entry to blogging about this passion we call food… or eating… or subsistence… Yogurt.

We have access to a gallon of local raw milk a week, and with this gallon we typically make yogurt, paneer, and use the cream for our coffee. We easily go through a half gallon of yogurt a week and never dread making the next batch. It’s just about the easiest domestic feat any half-hearted kitchen procrastinator can broach, and on that note, it’s pretty much fool-proof… not to make you feel nervous or anything. I swear, you can do this.

Start with a half gallon of your favorite, preferably local, milk. We applaud the wholeness of milk so haven’t tried anything with less fat- let us know how it works if you try something low fat. But consider yourself heartily encouraged to embrace the breadth of whole milk. Take that milk and heat it to 180 degrees. A simple candy thermometer helps in this instance, but you basically want to heat the milk to JUST ABOUT boiling without actually letting it boil.

Take the milk off of the heat, then let it cool to 110 degrees, to where you could just keep your finger tip in the milk without it being intolerable. To this, add 1 tablespoon of yogurt (living culture) to the milk and stir it all around. You don’t want too much culture, so restrain rather than heap. With too much culture, the bacteria strains will fight to all grow and gain strength, but will have to work too hard to fight each other, thus not gaining a whole lot of thick yogurt making ground. Nothing excessive here.

The next and final step is to maintain a consistently warm temperature for your yogurt to become yogurt. The ideal temperature will be to maintain 110 degrees. We’ve tried multiple ways, including leaving the oven light on, using a dehydrator, and using an insulated cooler filled with warm water. The cooler is by far the most consistent. We use the hottest tap water we can, then fill the cooler until our container with milk is immersed. The yogurt then sits unjostled for at least six hours (but we’ve left ours for much longer) to work its magical creamy goodness.

Once you start making yogurt, you can keep your culture going indefinitely. We’ve had to start over a few times due to travel or helpful family members throwing out that last bit of hanging around yogurt. We typically start over with Stonyfield Organic Yogurt, or Brown Cow Cream Top yogurt. Both are delicious. As yogurt ages it also starts to be a bit tangier. The tangier your culture, the tangier the yogurt. We consider aged culture a bit of an art. Be sure that when you choose your first starter yogurt culture you are choosing one with the essential bacterial strains, basically as many listed probiotics as you can find. Stonyfield lists these as their exclusive blend of six cultures: S. THERMOPHILUS, L. BULGARICUS, L. ACIDOPHILUS, BIFIDUS, L. CASEI, AND L. RHAMNOSUS.

Good luck! You’ll never turn back.

ADDENDUM! ATTENTION ALL! MAKING YOGURT WITH RAW MILK AND KEEPING IT RAW IS ACTUALLY NOT PROBLEMATIC IN THE LEAST! While I hope raw milk will be not only readily available but also not used in propaganda measures by our government, I know that currently it is a fair sized feat to obtain unpasteurized milk. If for some reason you have though, by all means make yogurt and make it raw! Heating it only to 110 degrees keeps the raw enzymes alive and bustling. And all of our guts that we expose to these modernized food elements can use some good living enzymes. Really make no changes other than only heating the milk to 110 degrees, not all the way up to 180, and you will have a super, sour, perfectly creamy yogurt with all the goods those mama cows intended. If your milk isn’t raw, you’ll get more consistent results with heating to 180, plus remove most harmful pathogens that exist in the pasteurized milk.  Yum! It’s delicious.

Home cured, home made, home cooked corned beef.

Check it out, people. It takes days to cure before cooking. And it is that time of year. It’s a good sign that it’s finally corned beef and stout season. Longer days are already here and warmer days supposedly are slipping around the corner. I also love the theory behind this roast, soaking the meat in a brine solution with stout beer and pickling spices, the house filling with complicated smells as it cooks. Yet it’s so easy to put the whole thing together on the stove and forget about it- welcome to my week. Ahh… forget about it.

The recipe, from epicurious.com:
Homemade Irish Corned Beef and Vegetables

The biggest food hurdle I wanted to launch myself across this summer was the making of jam. And it was a bit intimidating. But with Josh’s help, and some assistance from his aunt and parents, we did well enough to enter three different jams into the Downtown Home and Garden’s jam competition. There were sixty some entries, and with great dismay I have to admit that none of our jams placed. The winner of the competition was a spicy little rendition called The Deer Ate Everything but the Hot Peppers Jam. Admittedly, it was delicious. The recipe will be below. The three that we entered were 1) Zen Michigan Peach Cardamom, 2)Homegrown Sour Cherry with Leopold’s Blackberry Liqueur, and 3) Empress Plum with Indonesian Vanilla Bean. Besides these jams we also made an apricot chutney, a plum jam from the remaining pulp of our plum wine, and a three berry with cherry and rose water jam.

I’ve never thought of myself as a jam eater. I love some buttered toast, drippy in almost erotic flavors, feeling like you’re engaging in a secret something you wouldn’t dare share. Jam, however, has found a place on our shelves with its sweet and sour flavors, the full and good ingredients competing for their ideal place on our plate. The sour cherry jam is probably my favorite, partially because it seems to find itself spread in its bumpy way across the grid of my waffles or falling in streaks down the sides of scooped vanilla ice cream. But I look forward to attempting a spice filled coffeecake sandwiching the peach cardamom jam, and the empress plum swept onto a pumpkin cheesecake.

There’s a balance with jam in terms of cooking time and the gelling of the fruit. You don’t want to have jam that tastes overcooked and too sweet, but you also don’t want your jam to be too runny. Some fruit contains enough naturally occurring pectin that adding more is not necessary. Our plum jam gelled beautifully and spreads in a perfect purple pool of flavor. The cherry might have benefited from bought commercial pectin, but also was really interesting in its flavor complexity.

I suppose in most parts of the world these recipes come a little late, but perhaps there are some hot peppers still lingering in corners of refrigerator drawers. Here are a couple of recipes.

The Deer Ate Everything But the Hot Peppers Jelly
8 Sweet green peppers
4 jalapeno peppers
1 1/2 cup vinegar
1 1/2 cup cider
1/2 tsp salt
5 c. sugar
1 pkg powdered pectin
green food coloring

Wash peppers, remove stems and seeds. Cut into 1/2 inch squares. Puree half of the peppers and 1/2 cup of vinegar in food processor. Puree remaining peppers and vinegar. Pour all into a large bowl and add cider. Cover and refrigerate overnight.

Measure 4 cups into a sauce pot. Stir salt and pectin into juice. Bring to a rolling boil over high heat, stirring constantly. Add sugar and return to a rolling boil. Boil hard for 1 minute. Remove from heat and add a few drops of green food coloring.

Pour into hot, sterilized jars, leaving 1/2 inch headspace. Adjust caps. Process for 5 minutes in hot water bath.

Suggestions include: Wear gloves while handling jalapeno peppers, make one batch at a time (don’t double), and it’s delicious poured over a brick of cream cheese!

Homegrown Sour Cherry with Leopold’s Blackberry Liqueur & Zen Michigan Peach Cardamom Jams

I adapted these recipes from this blog’s recipes, the cherry jam substituting a local distillery’s blackberry liqueur for the kirsch and cherries grown at home. That local distillery has since moved to Denver and is called Leopold Brothers. Here’s the description of the blackberry liqueur. Their products are phenomenal.

Josh’s mom, dad, and aunt were in town for the beginning of this jam making shenanigan and were the laborers that picked and pitted the cherries. I’m sure it was just what they anticipated doing after a 22 hour drive!

The peaches were all bought at Ann Arbor’s Farmer’s Market when Michigan peaches were in season. Remarkably, Michigan has some of the most amazing fruits in the entire world. I’ve become enamored with Farmer’s Markets. Shop at them as long as they are open, braving the chill and toting your eggs and squash while all the while admiring the frigid farmers manning their stands.

The pricey and delicious Empress Plum with Indonesian Vanilla Beans Jam was adapted from this site:
Tartlette.

And finally, the Apricot Chutney from the book Preserving Summer’s Bounty:
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup coarsely chopped onions
1/2 tsp ground allspice
1 TB chopped raisins
1 TB crushed, minced, peeled ginger
5 c, fresh apricots, pitted and quartered

In a large enamel or stainless steel pot, combine the honey, vinegar, onions, allspice, raisins, and ginger. Simmer for 10 minutes. Add the apricots and simmer for 30 minutes or until thick, stirring occasionally.

To can: Pour into hot, scalded half-pint jars, leaving 1/2 inch headspace. Seal and process for 10 minutes in a boiling-water bath.

It’s crazy how intimidating new things like saving seeds can seem. But perhaps it will be like many other things… once done, simple to repeat.

This year I let all my lettuce bolt (see varieties mentioned in the previous post. Also grown this spring was Italian Lacinato nero Toscana Kale, an heirloom variety). Sadly my hands were full with fermenting and canning projects, so gardening and growing were not on the top of the priority list. Instead we chose to enjoy the colors and shapes in the lettuces, allowing them to grow and flower once they were bitter and no longer edible.

These bolted adolescent lettuces seem to be seeking not only acceptance but a chance for the next generation to survive! I’m finding it difficult to find consistent information on saving lettuce seed. Any suggestions on how to save the seeds from our Butterhead Speckles lettuce?

The description on this Butterhead Speckles lettuce package from Botanical Interests, Inc. is appealing: An heirloom that originated from the Mennonites who brought it with them from Germany and Holland over 200 years ago.

Here’s some info that I’m guessing is pretty accurate,
found on highmowingseeds.com:


Seed Saving Instructions for Lettuce:
Self-pollinated. Lettuce varieties will not cross pollinate with each other even at short distances, but beware of any wild lettuce which can cross with lettuce. Allow plants to “bolt” and eventually flower. Under wet conditions lettuce plants may need to be covered with a rain cover or grown in a greenhouse to prevent fungus from infecting the plant and seed heads. Carefully shake the seedheads into a paper bag to allow the mature seeds to be collected while leaving the immature seeds and flowers to keep growing. Gather every few days until no more seeds remain. Also, you can simply harvest the entire plant when about half of the seeds are mature and allow the rest to mature inside by standing up the plants in a box and on a cloth or tarp. Use an 1/8″ screen to help with cleaning. Lettuce seed can remain viable for 3 years under cool and dry storage conditions

A quote by Sandor Ellix Katz:
“Not everyone can be a farmer. But that’s not the only way to cultivate a connection to the Earth and buck the trend toward global market uniformity and standardization. One small but tangible way to resist the homogenization of culture is to involve yourself in the harnessing and gentle manipulation of wild microbial cultures. Rediscover and reinterpret the vast array of fermentation techniques used by our ancestors. Build your body’s cultural ecology as you engage and honor the life forces all around you.”

We are drunk on the philter of fermentation. Our house is alive with the scents of pickles.

We invested in some beautiful ceramic crocks. I’d had enough of scavenging the local thrift stores, only to find cracked and leaky vessels that made me feel like I was in a mud wrestling battle with wet dirt caking my ears. Or something like that. But now we have 2, 3, and 5 gallon crocks and two large Ball jars, all with their own living concoctions. The crocks themselves are inspiring. Check them out here. Right now these crocks contain kombucha, pickling green beans, sauerkraut, dill cucumber pickles, and plum wine.

The pickles that we decided to make are sour and salty, the flavors hitting the inside of your cheeks with a pithy punch. These pickles aren’t preserved in vinegar like store bought pickles are generally. They age in a salt brine with multifarious other vegetables and spices. The brine allows for this food to be alive, aiding in our digestion, and helping our systems to fight against sickness and disease. The first pickles we experimented with turned out a bit too salty, and the cucumbers were a bit cumbersome in size. Many of the larger ones ended up being hollow on the inside. No one wants to eat a hollow pickle. But this second batch, they seem to be approving of the current alchemy and process. As they ferment it’s important to taste the evolving product. These smaller cucumbers are starting to turn that shadowy mossy green, and as our jaws chomp them, they satisfactorily crunch.

Here’s a few hints when you pickle those extra cucumbers. Into the crock, add some grape leaves or leaves that have a good amount of tannin in them. The tannin provides what the fermenting foods need for crunch. In addition to the grape leaves, add lots of peeled and punched garlic, fresh dill, and whole peppercorns. The ceramic crock you choose only needs to be big enough for all the ingredients and enough brine to cover them. Once you layer the ingredients and add your cucumbers, just top the whole thing off with brine, cover the food with a plate and weight it down with a water filled jar to keep everything from floating to the top. Brine strength requires a bit of math, but it’s easy. Josh found that diluting 3 tablespoons of salt in one liter of clean, filtered water is perfect for our climate in Michigan right now. He fills a capped one liter bottle (like a Nalgene) half full with water, adds the 3 TB of salt, shakes it to dissolve, and the fills the rest with water. So adjust as you see necessary. Just remember that the brine is what controls the action of microorganisms. So more salt will help slow fermentation in the summer, and probably cut down on mold growth on top of the pickles. Just don’t fear the mold! Expect it, and when you discover it just carefully skim it from the top. Cover the whole thing, though, with a clean cloth to keep debris and bug invaders from feasting on your concoction. Once you are completely in love with the flavor of your pickles you can slow the whole thing down by putting the pickles into the fridge or jarring them with the correct canning techniques. You lose a lot of the health properties of the pickles when you can them under high heat, though.

Josh also put together a batch of bean pickles. He used the same brine recipe above for the cucumber pickles, but used a hot pepper from our garden, zucchini, and green beans. We are using a glass jar instead of a ceramic crock for these, so this is a bit of an experiment.

Do it! Try out these simple pickles that evolve with time and the other invisible creatures that are so beneficial all around us. I think of all the anti-bacterial products we are surrounded by and love the idea of making friends with some of these enemies.

Here’s the pickle recipe I’ve found before.

My husband’s parents and aunt are in town visiting. We just had an extremely productive visit to the farmer’s market with them. Josh and I are brewing up multiple batches of new found discoveries. We have sauerkraut, yogurt, a peach jam and a cherry jam, our brined pickles, and a plum wine all awaiting their next fully fermented lives. Our personal garden is lacking this year, but we are brimming over with crocks and fresh Michigan produce. I’m sure we’ll have some winners and some losers, but I guess that’s what this learning process is all about!