Another Whey to Go

 
Haven't blogged anything here for a while - so it's high time for a new post. Thought it would be fun to make cheese again, which I haven't done since this. I wanted to make a hard cheese, but the rennet I had is long out of date, so I chucked it and decided to make simple farm cheese, (basically mozzarella) and ricotta instead. Both mozzarella and ricotta are very easy to make, you only need basic kitchen equipment, and honestly, they taste really good, compared to the shop-bought stuff.

Our local family-run farm provided the milk, on tap in a large plastic barrel. I used my enamel milk container to transport it. I love the traditional look of this - bought it online years ago - it's ideal.

 

Having brought the milk up to boil in a large saucepan, I let it cool a little and then added a little apple vinegar until the milk curdled. It drained in a linen tea-towel, for want of a muslin cloth, overnight. This morning, I added salt to taste.  This was breakfast; soft farm cheese with a drizzle of olive oil and black olives. 

Next for the ricotta. The liquid from the mozzarella goes back into the saucepan, heated up to simmering, and then gets a squirt of lemon juice. It curdles again instantly. Let it sit for 6 minutes to cool down and then strain through a cloth. The whey can be drunk cold. It's good for your health and can be used in multiple ways. 

Cowberry Jam

Not far from where I live, there are some quiet pine woods where the ground is covered with sphagnum moss, bilberry bushes and lichen. The moss is so deep and thick that if you put a blanket over the top of it, it would make for an extremely comfortable night's sleep. Out of this moss in many widespread areas, grows a thick ground cover of cowberry bushes.  These are called Lingonberries in Scandinavia and mountain cranberries in North America.  They are well-known in Austria, but perhaps not so well known in England or even where I live, in Germany. The cowberry is a low-growing shrub which loves the shade of the pine canopy.  It is an evergreen shrub with small waxy bright green leaves and bell-shaped pinkish white flowers which develop into shiny bright red berries. It has two flowering periods at the beginning and end of summer, and can often be seen with both flowers and berries growing simultaneously.

Ray Mears ('Wild Food') p.269, says that cowberries (vaccinium vitis-idaea) contain benzoic and oxalic acid, which make them mildly toxic when eaten to excess, (but so would anything when eaten to excess). They're rich in Vitamin C and the benzoic acid is anti-microbial. They have many health benefits. They've been an important food for the peoples of Northern Europe Asia and America for thousands of years. They can be added to cakes, used to make spirits, fruit leathers, as well as jams.

Well, we went out a in the middle of October and again today, and picked enough to make two or three 250g jars of jam. The great things about them is that you don't need to add any pectin.

I used:

• Half a kilo of cowberries/lingonberries
• 100 millilitre of water
• 400 grams sugar

• 

I put clean, wet glass jars into the oven at 100C° to sterilise them. Then I put the berries and sugar into a large saucepan with 100ml of water, brought it all gently to the boil and let it boil for 40 minutes, stirring every now and then. The resulting jam was as you see below. It's really good with quark on toast. Put a few berries on top of your muesli with a bit of yoghurt  - delicious.

Goodbye to SFG

After a very enjoyable 5 years with a garden where I was able to try out Square Foot Gardening, I have moved. I only have the possibility to garden in pots now, but it's all I need. So, goodbye to all that, and goodbye to this blog... at least for a while. Who knows what may one day develop?

Grand October SFG Clear-Out.

I've had so much work over the last 18 months, plus other commitments which have put SFGardening right at the back of my mind, but the poor patch has been screaming for attention since July, when I last did anything worth while there, and two very kind friends came over and helped me bring it back into shape. We had a wonderful day working together, the weather was fabulous, and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.
I've removed all the grids and washing line which formed SF squares in the beds. The wooden grids were rotten anyway, and if I add new humus, compost and vermiculite next spring (I still have a couple of bags of horse manure waiting to be used) it will be easier to do without the grids there. I'll use fresh washing line which will look cleaner and nicer anyway.
I'll buy another couple of packs of plastic bed edging to replace the 4x4 which is really falling apart (where I had the squashes growing a couple of years ago). The great thing about this bed edging is that it also has holes in the upper surfaces exactly where the grids have to be positioned. The edging comes with pegs which can be inserted in case you want to add another layer on top, thereby heightening the raised bed. These pegs will act perfectly to wind the washing line around, creating a new 16 square grid.
This might be the last time I write about the garden this year...we'll see.

Recipe from 'Jerusalem' by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi.

Chicken with Caramelized Onion and Cardamom Rice. p.184

This was really easy and dead delicious.

Choc-Crunch Cake – (men LOVE this)

This was originally a Woman and Home recipe – I cut it out of the magazine sometime between the years 1994-1995.

I’ve added two pictures to show a couple of variations that you can make.

For the cake:

340 g plain chocolate

2 tablespoons golden syrup (if in Germany and you don’t have any, use Zuckerrübensirop – just as good – otherwise, Agave syrup or even honey would do)

140g butter

170g cornflakes (or crunchy nut if you like, but that’s more calories)

For the filling:

280ml double or whipping cream

230g strawberries, washed, hulled and sliced

Blueberries, or any other fruit, bananas, apricots kiwi, whatever you like

To complete:

Icing sugar for dusting

110g strawberries and/or other fruit for decoration (optional)

I put a piece of greaseproof paper on a cake stand/plate and stick an adjustable gateau form (Tortenring) on top. If you don’t have such a form, line a cake tin (24cm) with greaseproof paper, so that the resulting cake can be easily lifted out.

1.       Put the chocolate, syrup and butter in a saucepan and melt on a low heat. Stir frequently. Remove pan from heat when everything is melted. (Or warm up in the microwave in a plastic bowl on the lowest setting for about 3-4 minutes).

2.       Tip the cornflakes into a large bowl. Pour the chocolate mixture on top. Mix until thoroughly combined.

3.       Pour the mixture into the cake or gateau form and spread evenly. Leave in a cool/cold place for 1-1,5 hours. Once chilled, removed from tin. Dust with a bit of icing sugar.

4.       Whip the cream until thick. Spread on the cake, or mix with some of the (sliced) strawberries … basically decorate as you like. I poured a bit of melted chocolate-butter-syrup over the top of the whole thing at the end, this time.  There are lots of decorative variations you can do with this –make it either in two smaller layers and stick a cream/strawberry layer in between, or do it in one, and mound all the cream etc., on top. I find the latter easier to cut, but it’ll probably break up anyway, so  if you mind if your relatives complain if their piece of cake breaks up when you put it on their plate, make something else. ;)  Another alternative would be to make small, individual amounts in muffin cases and decorate with cream and fruit.

Pesach: What to do with Lovage

We had a frost last night, which resulted in my lovage plant, which had grown to about a metre in height over the last four weeks, partially collapsing. It's an impressively fast growing herb, but apart from throwing the odd frond into a bowl of soup, I hadn't really come up with much of a use for it, except to look at as a centre piece for the SFG. So, knowing that in a few weeks' time the stems would become somewhat stringy, I decided to cut all the collapsed fronds off and make them into pesto. So here it is. A large trug full of lovage, some olive oil, three cloves of garlic, salt and pepper and a generous slosh of pomegranate syrup, which mitigates the rather sour lovage flavour, and there you are. It's amazing how little it concentrates down to. We're having lamb and couscous today, and I think this will go rather well with it, like Pesach bitter herbs. I expect in another few weeks I'll be able to do the same thing again.

December Square Foot Garden

December Square Foot Garden

 

 

All the garden has been cleared up and weeded. Old growth has been cut away. So far we haven't had any snow, and it's still fairly mild. We only have 8°C today. There's a bit of chard left (Bright Lights) a few herbs plus the winter-hard shrubs.



First 2013 entry - Spring's here at last - first time I've been able to get out into the garden.

 Well, at long last, Spring has arrived in Bavaria, Germany, as it has done for the last few years, with a vengeance - we've had temperatures up in the 70s and 80s this week - and nature is doing its best to make up for lost time, it seems. Winter seemed SO long this year and everyone is relieved to feel the sun on our backs. So I have taken advantage of the fact that I've had a bit of free time on my hands, and have re-weather-proofed the raised beds, put down fresh bark chippings in between (after laying new weed cloth along the back of the sfg area - the weeds came through a bit last year) , my herbs, spring salads and kohlrabi are coming up, and for a change this year, I've put a few flowers in the mix as we'll be away some of the summer and I won't be able to harvest things as much. It feels wonderful to have got everything ready at last.



The whole area from the south, taken this afternoon. The lovage is coming up very quickly in the middle.





From the top right: thyme, rosemary, oregano and chives, various bedding plants - to make a splash of clour, oak leaf lettuce, red kohlrabi and on the bottom left, stevia, which wintered in our living room, was cut back recently, and which I hope will do well in its corner there.





Cat mint, lettuces, kohlrabi and winter portulak.



Various lettuces, rocket (bottom left hand corner - winter hardy) and dill, sown under the obelisk.



Two blue lupins (right) and in the old sandpit, various bedding planst (campanula persicifolia, coreopsis grandiflora) cat mint, lettuces and rocket.



From the west.



Very exciting - this isn't a sfg, but my asparagus is coming up after I planted the plants last year. I'll be able to harvest one spear from each plant this year, and next year I will be able to harvest normally.

Green Tomato Chutney

This has been the most wonderful success story for me this year. I bought some date tomatoes from our local farm shop in May and liked the taste so much that I decided to try to grow some myself, from seed. So I dried five seeds from one tomato, planted them in potting soil in an old yoghurt pot and once they were strong enough, planted them outside on the terrace where they could get as much sun as possible.

 These are the same plants about 6 weeks later. I wasn't sure if the bees would do their job this year - in the last two years we had very few tomatoes because the bees were so few and so there was very little pollination. So to help them along I brushed the stamens of the flowers with a fine paintbrush. Whether it was I or the bees or a combination - I don't know...

But whatever, it seemed to do the trick and from that point onwards we had tomatoes galore.

I took advantage of a week off work because of a bad cold, and when I was feeling well enough again, I put the vegetable garden to bed for the winter, harvested the last butternut squash (they tasted marvellous, by the way), cleared away the dead plants - we had our first frost at the beginning of last week, and in readiness for snow, which would arrive today, I brought in three of the tomato plants which still had fruit on them, and have put them in a vacant bedroom (sorry Hannah - only while you're away!) to ripen up the last fruits.

As you can see, after two days inside, one is already beginning to turn red.  With the other unripe green tomatoes, I have made green tomato chutney.

 

Made with dates, sultanas, onions and coriander seeds which had been in the cupboard far too long, instead of mustard seeds, because I hadn't any. I have to say that it tastes fabulous.

Canadian Authorities Want to Destroy this Garden

Just another example of ridiculous, draconian, small-mindedness. When we're all being told we should eat more healthily, here's a wonderful example of a couple who actually use the resources they own; their own land, to do so, only to be told that it's forbidden.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2177717/Couple-Michel-Beauchamp-Josee-Landry-petition-stop-council-ripping-illegal-vegetable-garden.html


http://youtu.be/aFuCdnT9WsU


The Beauchamps' blog:
http://www.lepotagerurbain.com/

Please sign their petition!
http://www.lepotagerurbain.com/p/petition-potager-cour-avant.html

God's Gardening Method!

http://vimeo.com/28055108

Just a bit more of my spring garden project... These are parsley, rosemary, basil, chives, sage, something that tastes of garlic but I can't remember its name (it's not wild garlic - it looks like a silvery grass) lemon thyme and lemon verbena on my kitchen window sill. They brighten up our terrace, which frankly, needs it.  

These are three different tomato plants which I bought at the organic food store yesterday. One's called an 'Oxenherz' - 'Ox Heart' - presumably because of its red, heart-shaped fruit, one is a small cocktail tomato (at the front) and the other is an ordinary red one. We're not going away this summer, so I thought I'd risk it and try growing tomatoes on the terrace again. God willing, we'll have more sun  than we had last year.

 Mixed lettuces in one of my 2x4s, with one square of winter portulak and another of spinach. So far, (thank you Lord) the slugs and snails have kept off it. I heard recently though, that old coffee grounds keep slugs at bay, so I'm going to try this out. 

 Because of the ravaging the deer gave my sweet peas last year, I thought I'd try sowing the seeds in window boxes on the terrace. It's far more sheltered than outside in the garden, being roofed with undulating plastic sheets, and I was able to sow the seeds in plastic trays inside in March, planting them out in April. I really hope we'll have a wonderful tangle of colour and scent here in the summer evenings.

Three butternut squash saplings. I sowed these out

a couple of weeks ago. Only one germinated of

those I originally sowed, so I tried another three and two have got going. As soon as the Eis Heiligen are over (May 10-15) I'll plant them out. It would be wonderful to have the trellis which I made last year come into its own this year at last.

Sowing Seeds and SFG Update

 I finally made it outside this morning and have done some work in the Square Foot Garden. :)

After winter finally took its welcome leave, I cleared up the SFG beds, was delighted to find that my rocket had survived again, and collected three large sacks of horse manure from a local riding stables, one of which I have worked into the soil. I also worked in some compost.

I have also managed to dig over what has been, for the last two years, my potato bed. I dunged it, and after ordering 25 green asparagus rhyzomes, I planted them out in the middle of April (some were a but mouldy because I left them in the plastic bag they were packed in a bit too long - but most were ok) and I now have two rows of wonderful asparagus shoots sticking up.

I've sown 'Blaues Wunder' flax seeds from Bantam (guaranteed GM free) between the two asparagus rows, which will not only look pretty in a while, but which will also be good for the soil and asparagus. The soil here is very sandy, but this is ideal for asparagus, and so far the shoots look fine. The great thing about asparagus is that it doesn't only taste wonderful, but after planting it out, it basically looks after itself for years. I can't harvest it until next year at the earliest, so it'll be great just to let it grow, give it the occasional dunging and have the joyful anticipation of years of scrumptious green asparagus spears every May-June. Bees love sunflowers, apparently, so I've transplanted some bird-sown sunflowers which were sprouting on our terrace and sown some organic sunflower seeds in the middle row where the flax seeds are, between the asparagus rows. I'm really looking forward to seeing how the whole bed looks in a few months' time. Hopefully, spectacular and an eye-catcher for the whole garden.

I have planted spinach seeds, which are now sprouting well too. A square patch of sandy soil next to my 3x3 SFG bed is now planted out with GM free sweet corn seeds which I also got from Bantam. I bought them at my local EBL organic food shop.

Sugar snap peas, or Mangetout have gone into five squares of my 3x3 and in three squares I've also sown more Blaues Wunder flax seeds. Three Spring Cabbage seeds have been sown in three 4x4 squares as well. In the square patch on the right of this next picture, I have sown 15 sweet corn kernels - and really hope that they'll take well to the soil.

I was thrilled to discover some common morels growing in the bed of apple mint behind the beds in the left hand picture which I have dried and can add to any dish that needs mushrooms. That was a blessing. They only appear for a short time in spring, and then only after rain. Apparently they are highly sought after and not easy to grow commercially. I put a couple into a beef and Guiness stew at the beginning of April. Delicious.

Oh yes, and bang on schedule, like a little miracle, the Golden Oriole is fluting away here for the first time since last summer. It is such a thrill to hear this beautiful bird, which sounds so tropical, in the oak woods around our house. It is really incredible to think that it migrates all the way from Central or Southern Africa and India and arrives here to breed every year, on the same day, 3rd May. Absolutely amazing.

Gripe

I haven't written for a while, partly because I've had so much work to do, and partly because I've been really put off by the new blog layout which has been forced on us. It was perfectly alright before and I liked it that way. Why do people always think they have to change everything all the time? I have enough to do without having to take extra time to get used to a new format, however good it might look. I also don't like the fact that it was forced on everyone by default.

What in the World are they Spraying?

Apicoectomy - natural mouth washes

Not a very nice topic - but I've just had one of these unpleasant operations, and now have a throbbing mouth and stitches. The alternative would have been worse pain, and probably losing a tooth at least, eventually.
Did you know that camomile tea is a brilliant and mild wash for wounds? I used to use an ointment called 'Bonjela' for the occasional mouth ulcer when I was a child, (you can still get it in the UK) but when I came to live in Germany, I couldn't buy it, so I began to use camomile tea instead. It's just as effective.  So I'm drinking camomile tea for the wound in my gum now.

Another good wash is salt water. It's wonderfully disinfecting. When I had my ears pierced at 18, I used salt water to dab on the wounds in my ear lobes. They healed up in no time. I also use salt water with a dash of lemon juice for a sore throat in the early stages. It tastes weird, but gargling with this every 10 minutes or so really helps.

 Thanks to  that wonderful blog, 'Down to Earth', which I seriously think is one of the best simple living blogs I have ever read so far, I have been inspired to pull myself together and finish making my sloe gin. I've had a lot of language teaching work in the last three months, which has put a lot of things on hold, but due to some root canal treatment which has meant I've had to cancel teaching for the rest of the week, I have some time on my hands. So having finished preparing all my next immediate lessons this morning, I decided to hit the gin. (In the non-addictive manner, of course. I'm
on penicillin, after all ;))

It's a very simple matter of decanting the gin through a sieve through a funnel into pretty bottles. It has been sitting still for three weeks since I stopped turning the bottle and its contents upside down and right side up for two months, every day. Write and stick nice labels on the bottles (thanks to Lakeland Plastics for those) and hey presto!

Sloe Gin

Went for a walk with a friend this morning to pick some of the last sloes left on the whitethorn bushes bordering the woods at the back of our home. There were just enough to make a whole bottle of sloe gin, for which you need:

1 bottle of gin,

175g sloes

125g sugar

Wash and prick the sloes all over with a fork or something similar. Decant the gin into a convenient jug. Fill the bottle with the sloes and sugar (a funnel is helpful for the sugar) and then pour as much of the gin back into its bottle again as will fill it. Screw on the lid tightly. If there is gin left over, use a screw-top glass jar for any remaining sloes, more sugar and the left-over gin. Screw the lid on well, and turn bottle and jar upside down one day and right side up the next for the next two months. Then once the sugar is all dissolved and the alcohol has taken on a deep red colour, strain the contents through a clean cloth into a bowl, and pour into a jug. Clean the gin bottle of any residue, and pour the sloe gin back into its bottle - or into other clean bottles. Nice idea for presents.

I have managed to weed and dig over the potato bed

 - have dug up all the potatoes, which are really scrumptious,  

 and have cleared the sweet peas out. I've also sowed lambs' lettuce in four of the squares under the mini-greenhouses. The lambs' lettuce which I sowed three weeks ago is just beginning to show in the greenhouses and I'm really glad I sowed it there because 

these are the tracks of deer left behind on what was the sweet pea bed after I weeded it on Tuesday. I'm quite sure they would have nibbled away anything I'd sown before, had it not been under cover.

 Let's hope that the roast venison I've ordered for Channukah will be the guilty culprit.

Everything is TIDY! Yippee!