Scoby-dooby-doo

The Mucky Boots Farm Fermentation Factory is proud to announce the birth of its very first kombucha scoby. Have a closer look at that beautiful baby...

The two scobies I started almost two weeks ago have been quietly fermenting in Kim's music room, the only consistently heated room in the house. You might remember I was a little worried about whether either would work, since I mistakenly bought raw kombucha that had been adulterated with other things: ginger juice in one case, and spirulina in the other. The ginger juice scoby is developing v..e..r..y....s..l..o..w..l..y but the green one grew lickety split. The white rubbery layer on top is the scoby and it's very strange to handle. Kind of creepy.

I was worried enough that neither scoby would grow that I ordered one online, from a source in Ontario, and it arrived today, double bagged along with about a cup of the fermented kombucha it grew from.

So today I started brewing my first batches of kombucha, using the purchased scoby and my home-grown one.

To brew kombucha, start with about four litres of strong brewed tea, sweetened with a cup of sugar. The sources I have read don't hesitate to use regular white table sugar, since it's eaten by the friendly bacteria during the fermentation process. The sweetened tea is cooled to room temperature, and then the scoby is gently added, along with at least half a cup of the already fermented kombucha it came from. I put one batch in a ceramic water crock and the other in one of my fermenting crocks. The top of each crock is covered with a clean towel to let oxygen in and keep bugs out, and the crocks are put back into the warm music room to ferment for about a week.

I tasted a bit of the fermented spirulina kombucha before it got added to kick-start the newly started batch, and it was delicious: zingy and tart. I can't wait for a whole lip-smacking glass!

The Great Divide

There's a new sight as you walk the road from the house to the back half of the property: double gates, attached to a fence that stretches from one side of our property to the other. Gates and a fence that mark the beginning of a new, peaceful entente between Miriam the Gardener and The Flock of Destroyer Chickens.

You might remember that way back in December Kim and I began construction on this fence. At that time I optimistically expected it would take a week or two to finish. I should know better by now - none of our construction projects, with the exception of the time we jacked up the chicken coop, ever goes according to schedule. Life intervenes: bad weather that makes it punishment to work outside, colds that lay us up for a while, other jobs with higher priority. Sometimes it's frustrating that it seems to take so long to get things done, but other times it's perfectly lovely to opt for a morning snuggled up reading a book instead. Balance, it's all about balance.

In any event, the last gates got hung this week. They were a bit of a challenge for Kim to build - they needed to be so big that she was worried they would eventually sag. One trip to the hardware store was all it took - it turns out they sell anti-sag kits just for that purpose. Which further convinces me, if I needed further convincing, that most problems in the world can be solved by a knowledgable hardware store employee.

So now the property is properly divided. There is a smaller gate at one end of the meandering fence line, and the larger double gates at the other.

Half of the property for me, half for the chickens. Sounds good to me.

That's why they call 'em snowdrops

Monday, 6:00 p.m. Kim comes in from putting the chickens to bed after a beautiful sunny day that saw us working outside in our shirtsleeves.

Monday, 6:30 p.m. We leave the house for our choir/orchestra rehearsal only to find an inch of wet snow on the ground and more falling so thickly we have trouble seeing the road as we drive.

I think it was those fleeting thoughts I had as I edged the raspberry beds that afternoon, that maybe, just maybe, spring had finally arrived. I should know better than to tempt the Weather Goddess that way.

This morning the sun is shining again and the snow is melting as fast as it came. That's spring in the Cowichan Valley for you.

Fermentation Factory

We are definitely back in the land of the living here at Mucky Boots, after about ten days' worth of coughing and wheezing and feeling miserable. Kim ended up with pneumonia, and my asthmatic lungs were crackling so loudly my doctor didn't know what to call it, but today we are both feeling human again.

Maybe because of that emphatic reminder of how awful it is to be sick, or maybe because my cold-deadened taste buds needed reawakening, I woke yesterday morning convinced that there was nothing more important on my to-do list than gearing up production again in the Mucky Boots Fermentation Factory.

The health benefits of fermented foods are well known. By introducing probiotics into the digestive system they not only help us get the full nutritional benefits of the food we eat, they can help the immune system and play a role in fighting chronic diseases, among other things. Plus they taste great.

I've had some spectacular successes fermenting food (sauerkraut and deli pickles) and some spectacular failures (broken glass in the sauerkraut, and a batch of unintentional sauerkraut wine). Sure, the fermentation disasters bummed me out, but yesterday when I woke up craving the sour bite of home-brewed sauerkraut, I realized those unhappy memories had faded into oblivion and I was ready to try again.

Just a few hours and a lot of chopping later, the kitchen counter looked less like a place to make toast and tea, and more like the site of a science experiment, with three different fermentation projects on the go. A big crock of sauerkraut, of course. But also, for the first time, a smaller batch of kimchi, that potent mix of fermented vegetables my Korean students used to obsess over.

To make kimchi, add a few chopped carrots and radishes to a chopped head of Napa cabbage. (I also added some locally harvested kelp.) Cover with brine, weigh down with a plate and leave it overnight. The next day drain the vegetables, saving the brine. Make a paste of chopped onions and garlic, grated ginger, and some fresh or dried hot peppers (I did this in my food processor), add it to the drained cabbage mixture, and then tamp it all down in a jar or crock. Weigh down the top with a plate or jar and add as much of the reserved brine as needed to make sure the vegetables are all submerged. Cover with a clean cloth to keep the bugs out but let the bacteria in. Taste it every day until you're happy with the flavour - this could take as little as a week in warm weather - and then store it in the fridge.

The third project now fermenting away on the counter is kombucha - a fizzy, slightly-sweet-slightly-tart fermented tea that many people drink as a detoxifier. I can buy it in 16 ounce bottles at my local health food stores, but at $3.95 a pop, that adds up. With a "mother" (an established kombucha culture sometimes called a scoby) it's apparently as easy as pie to brew up a couple of gallons of the stuff in 10-12 days, for only the cost of a few tea bags and a little bit of sugar to feed the bacteria.

The hard part is finding a scoby in the first place. If you're lucky enough to know a fermentation master with their own scoby, bring them a batch of home baking and they will probably give you a daughter scoby from the next batch of kombucha they make.

I'm not so lucky. I'm not sure I even know anyone who knows what kombucha is. Enter one of my favourite new blogs, Food Renegade, where Kristin gives instructions for growing a scoby using a purchased bottle of raw, organic kombucha. Unfortunately I failed to read the instructions carefully enough, and came home with kombucha adulterated with other ingredients: ginger juice in the case of one bottle, and spirulina in the other. I decided to give it a go anyway - the worst that happens is the loss of two perfectly good bottles of a tasty, refreshing drink.

One of the issues with fermenting here at Mucky Boots is how cool our house is. This isn't a problem for many things - in fact, some people believe a slower, cooler ferment results in a more flavourful outcome. But the recommended temperature for growing a kombucha scoby is 25 - 30 degrees Celsius. Our kitchen is 15 degrees on a good day. So I brought in an unused heat mat from the greenhouse and put the kombucha jars on top. This could just end up cooking the whole mixture instead of helping it ferment, so between this and the adulterated kombucha I started with, I don't have high hopes for this experiment. But I already have Plan B in my back pocket: purchasing a scoby online (which convinces me all over again that you can find anything on the internet...)

And so here they are: two jars of kombucha and one of kimchi, all lined up on the counter.

Don't they look like the Three Wise Men from a school nativity play?

Turning green

If you opened this post thinking you were going to read about how lovely spring is on Vancouver Island, and how shoots are coming up in the garden and buds are coming out on the trees, you're going to be disappointed. Yes, some of that is happening, but what's really turning green is all the statuary in the garden: anything stationary in these parts is sporting a slick coating of slimy green.

Including Kim and I. We're still sick, and have hardly moved from the couch or the bed for the last week. Yes, we have seen the doctor, and yes, we are taking care of ourselves and each other.

But if you, too, are feeling under the weather, I have some advice for you. If you're wheezing and coughing and otherwise dealing with a respiratory condition, it's probably not a good idea to watch the movie Contagion.

What were we thinking?!

Looking on the bright side

Dark Side:

• Kim and I are sick. Cough, cough.
• It's raining. No, it's pouring.

Bright Side:

• It's not snowing.

The rain overnight and through the morning has left the path by the pond flooded, and the chickens are wet and miserable, huddling in the coop or underneath the overhang, trying to keep dry.

But in the greenhouse my little seedlings are warm and dry, thanks to my trusty heat mats, and now they're well lit, too, thanks to my new acquisition: a grow light!

Grow lights are pretty expensive to buy, so I've resisted the temptation until now. February is the month for starting onion seedlings in these parts, but the sun isn't getting high enough in the sky yet to adequately light the greenhouse for the minimum six hours per day. So I decided to bite the bullet, and bought one light to see if it would make a difference.

Kim mounted it to scrap piece of cedar and then hung it on chains so I can adjust the height as the seedlings grow. And that's exactly what they're doing - my leek, shallot, and red, yellow and green onion seedlings are noticeably happier, and the hardy greens I seeded this week (mizuna and pac choi) came up in two days. And I'm happier, too: this grow light, pricey though it was, has made me feel like a grown-up gardener.

In contrast, the other thing that is making me smile in the greenhouse today cost all of $1.95. It's a cap that turns a soda bottle (or in our case, a spring water bottle) into a watering can, gentle enough for the most fragile of plants.

Seedlings need to stay moist, which means daily watering when they're on heat mats. Most gardening manuals suggest misting them, because anything much more forceful than that can break or dislodge a tender new shoot. But have you ever tried misting 8 or 10 trays of pots and soil blocks? It's a good way to invoke carpal tunnel syndrome. So the last time I was in the garden supply store I looked at fancy watering cans with special heads designed to shower tender plants like the most gentle of rain showers. The problem? The price tag: over $40. So I gave up that idea, went to the checkout to pay for the package of cream-coloured nasturtium seeds I hadn't been able to resist, and there in a bucket by the cash register were these caps. I bought two.

They work like a charm. If you just hold the bottle upside down the shower of water is so soft you can hardly feel it, and if you need a more substantial stream all you need to do is squeeze the bottle a little.

A product that works better and costs less. Definitely something for the bright side.

Tarnish

It may seem a strange thing for a gardener to say, but I've always had a thing for decay. Don't get me wrong - lush green growth busting out with life is wonderful, too - but there's something about the colours and textures of something worn by life into a more subtle kind of beauty that has always had a great appeal for me.

Take this old washing machine under the trees near the house, for example. In the summer it looks like this.

As a backdrop to the colourful spill of nasturtiums it has its charms. But in the grey light of another rainy day, in its end-of-winter emptiness, it really comes into its own, with all the understated beauty of tarnish and lichen and rust.

Maybe I'm just feeling a little tarnished myself, and hoping to find the beauty in that.

Almost spring

Today it felt like spring. I know it's not really spring, and there are likely to be many more rainy, grey days and maybe even some snow. But for today I can imagine that there is nothing but balmy days and sunshine ahead.

There were the usual signs that winter is on its way out. Snowdrops and aconite are busting out all over...

...and when I cleaned up last year's sedum (aren't the dead flower heads gorgeous?)...

...there were lovely new buds waiting to be uncovered.

Here's another sign that spring is on its way: for the next few weeks the pond is in the fleeting state between covered with ice and snow, and filled with emerging grasses and water plants, which means there are newly visible treasures just waiting to be discovered.

Look closer: can you see? This is the secret gathering place for Frankie's balls that go bouncing off into the water.

In the greenhouse the first leek seedlings are making an appearance...

...and Kim has installed this year's new and improved shelves: cedar, and they smell heavenly.

All of us enjoyed the sunshine today - the chickens...

...and the guitar-playing frog.

But here's the most definitive sign that spring is near: the appearance of Miss Comfort Queen herself, finally emerging from her winter-long hibernation near the wood stove.

Happy Almost-Spring, everyone.

Quiet

Our power went out this morning, which came as a real surprise. We live in the country, with all the power lines strung from pole to pole rather than being buried safely underground, so we often lose the power in the winter, what with wind storms, freezing rain, or the occasional dump of wet snow.

But just this week I emptied the jugs of drinking water on the counter that had been sitting there since the last wind storm, thinking we'd got off easily this winter: one very brief power outage, and we weren't even home when it happened. Somehow, semi-subconsciously, I thought the power failure season was done.

According to BC Hydro the reason for this outage was a tree down across a power line. I'm wondering if it wasn't BC Hydro itself that was responsible: they've been replacing a number of the power poles in the neighbourhood, and at the same time taking down a whole bunch of the trees that would be most likely to take out a line if they fell. Maybe a tree fell in a different direction than planned, or the crew lost control of a big branch as it came down.

In any case, we spent the morning in the dark. Kim went off to do some errands, so I was on my own - just me, my day's plans thrown awry because they all required electricity, looking for things to do in the murky half-light of a cloudy morning. I found a few jobs I could do (really exciting things like filing), but mostly what I discovered was the quiet.

No radio in the background. No hum of the fridge or whoosh of the dishwasher. No click of fingers on a computer keyboard. No phone ringing. Just deep, heavy, calming quiet. As I sorted through bills and bank statements I became aware of the sound of my own breathing and I was amazed at how noteworthy that was. My breath travels around with me every day - why don't I notice its sound more often? Then Frankie came into the room in search of a comfortable spot to snooze, and the sound of his snoring joined my breath in a companionable, peaceful counterpoint.

How did my life get so noisy? Noise was something I took for granted in my old life, but in my new, improved Mucky Boots life I thought I had a different kind of balance. But somehow the background chatter and hum has snuck up and overtaken the quiet again, so that the sound of my own breath comes as a surprise.

And maybe it's more than just noise. Maybe all that background electromagnetic radiation from computers and clock radios and wireless modems and cordless phones creates an inaudible sort of racket that I don't notice until the power goes out and everything goes dark. Which might help explain how simple and peaceful and calm things felt around here this morning.

I'm beginning to cast a new eye on the main breaker switch on our fuse box. Maybe some homemade power outages are in order.

Sleepover

We love having visitors at Mucky Boots, especially ones who bring their own toothbrush. Because we live an hour away from our friends in Victoria, and because that hour's drive involves the notorious Malahat Highway, our guests often feel they need to leave early in to make it back over the Malahat before it gets too dark (at least that's the reason they give us...) So a visit that's also a sleepover is lots of fun because nobody's watching the clock, or watching how many glasses of wine they've had - we're all just enjoying ourselves and each other's company.

Our friend Donna has come for a visit today, and aren't we tickled pink! For all kinds of reasons: Donna is a wonderful friend, has a laugh that fills the room and a heart that's even bigger, and she is a superb musician who always remembers to bring her viola. So this is what I got to listen to as I puttered in the kitchen making supper.

Lucky me!

We have a lovely guest room just for these occasions, with the world's second most comfortable bed, a lovely view of the garden, beautiful paintings on the wall. Fluffy towels in the bathroom.

Doesn't it make you want to come to stay?

And the winners are...

...Rae from Blissful in the Boonies and Ann from Shim Farm. [You can thank the random number generator at www.random.org!]

Please send me an email at mstanford@shaw.ca with your mailing addresses, and the soap will be on its way to you lickety-split.

I wish there was enough soap for me to send some to everyone. I guess I better get making some more...

300

This is my 300th post. How did that happen?

I started blogging in October 2009, about 8 months after Kim and I moved here to Mucky Boots, and about 3 months after we quit our teaching jobs. I began writing for my family, to share with them my excitement about this adventure. But somehow, somewhere along the way, other people began to find their way here and I became part of a bigger community. We are gardeners, and chefs, and teachers. We are artists and musicians. Some of us are activists on a small or large stage, some of us work to make safe and loving homes for our families. We grow tomatoes and flowers, knit sweaters and mittens, build garden beds and communities. We come from many places and lead different kinds of lives, but we are linked by our shared excitement over the ritual of starting seeds in the spring, and our satisfaction in finding a way to use scrap lumber to build a functional gate, and our pride at the taste of food raised or grown by our own hands. By our awe at the beauty of the world around us, and the rhythms and gifts of nature.

So, dear readers, to celebrate 300 posts and to thank you for sharing this adventure with me, I want to imagine a garden party here at Mucky Boots, with friends and family come from far and wide to visit - dressed in their favourite pair of boots.

Post a comment telling me about the boots you would wear to the celebration. These could be real or imagined: the red cowboy boots you had as a child, the hip waders you've always dreamed of, the steel-toed boots you use for work, or maybe the rubber boots that see you safely through the muckier parts of your life. In exchange, I'll draw two names from all the comments, and the winners will receive a selection of Mucky Boots All-Vegetable Handmade Soaps.

Whether or not you leave a comment, I want you to know how grateful I am that you take the time to visit. You not only share your kindness and wisdom and experience with me through your comments and your own blogs, you give me a reason to think more deeply about my days. My heartfelt thanks to you all.

Photo from here.

Soap

I have been waiting to write this post since August, when the whole project got started. The problem was, these were Christmas presents I was making, and my family and friends read this blog. So I had to wait, and now, finally, all the Christmas presents have been delivered and received - all except the package for my friends Jean and Jim, who are just going to have to act surprised when I finally see them on Saturday.

Soap, I'm talking soap! Yes, I now can grow vegetables, bake a loaf of bread and make soap.

I knew I wanted to make all-vegetable soap - there's something not so appealing to me about washing my body with animal fat. So I started with instructions from the Down to Earth blog and made my first batch with olive oil, organic coconut oil, rice bran oil and lye - simple, basic soap. And it was easy! So easy and so satisfying that more batches followed quickly, one with just olive and coconut oils, and then one where I started experimenting with adding essential oils. Soon the dining room table was covered with curing bars of soap and my sweetheart was starting to politely wonder about a possible new addiction.

She may have had a point, because even after all the Christmas presents were distributed, we're still left with what is probably a lifetime supply. But I'm not complaining. And I'm already itching for an excuse to start up all over again.

The basic procedure for cold processed soap is to mix lye and water, which then becomes very hot and gives off fumes. While you're waiting for it to cool down you gently heat the oils you want to use on the stove. When the cooling lye reaches the temperature of the heating oils (about 100 degrees) they are combined, then mixed until they reach "trace", which means it's about the consistency of pudding. Then any botanical ingredients or essential oils are added, the soap is poured into a mold, swaddled in towels and left to cool for 24 hours. Then it's removed from the mold, cut into bars and left to cure on a rack for about 6 weeks.

I think I made about ten batches in all, which hardly makes me an expert. But here are a few tips for you, in case you'd like to give it a try yourself.

Tip #1: Don't fool yourself that you're only going to make one batch. Take the time to source out bulk supplies, otherwise you'll end up spending more money than you need to.

Tip #2: Be sensible but don't be afraid. Some soap-making instructions I read would have had me dress up in hazmat gear because the lye is so caustic. I took reasonable precautions, like mixing the water and lye outside because of the fumes, covering countertops with old towels and making sure the animals were not underfoot, and I had no problems.

Tip #3: You don't need separate equipment for soap-making. Again, some instructions I read directed me to have pots, bowls, spoons and mixers devoted solely to soap making. I don't think this is necessary, provided you wash everything thoroughly when you're done. My only exception was the candy thermometer I used, which was constructed in such a way that I couldn't clean out the nicks and crannies as well as I would have liked. So it won't get used for regular cooking anymore.

Tip #4: Invest in a hand blender. It can take a lot of painful mixing to reach trace, if you're doing it by hand. With a hand blender the whole process is not only easier, it's much quicker. I used an old plastic hand blender that had been deformed by being immersed in hot soups. Otherwise, I would have looked for a used one at a thrift store or garage sale.

Tip #5: Don't spend money on molds unless you're thinking of going into commercial production. I spent some time on soap making supply websites, and it would have been really easy to rack up a big bill buying molds. But things you have around the house will work just as well. I used empty milk cartons for a few batches, silicon muffin tins for another, and then I picked up some 2-inch high drawer organizer trays at the dollar store that I used for the rest. Whatever you use has to be stiff enough to keep its shape when you pour in the soap, leak proof, and able to withstand fairly high temperatures.

Tip #6: Whatever you use for a mold, grease it well! Enough said.

Tip #7: If you start looking on the internet for recipes using essential oils to add a scent to your soap, you won't believe how much you're supposed to use, but it's true. I think it must be because the high heat that is generated by the saponification process breaks down the essential oil so it becomes far less potent.

Tip #8: Cover the exposed surface of freshly made soap with plastic. I learned this when my first batch developed a thin layer of white powder on the exposed surface. It's called "ash" and it doesn't affect the performance of the soap, just the look. You can shave it off with a vegetable peeler, or try to prevent it by using plastic.

Tip #9: Get started early. Soap needs at least 6 weeks of curing time, during which the saponification process continues and the soap hardens. If you try to use your soap too early it will not only not last as long, it could still be caustic.

Tip #10: Save the scrap ends and bits and pieces. I have a baggie full, and plan to use the grated soap in this hand scrub, to keep me looking presentable through the gardening season.

I'm trying really hard not to get too carried away, but now I'm really curious about making my own lye from wood ash, instead of buying it in pellets at the hardware store. After all, that's what Laura would do...

Winter

We have been having a strange winter (although I hesitate to use that word since none of the winters we have had here at Mucky Boots have fit the usual pattern): more sun than usual, and colder than usual. And almost no snow, which I attributed to the fact Kim and I finally got snow tires for our car.

And then, this week - snow!

It came in a few acts: four inches of soft, beautiful powder one day (unlike our usual sodden, heavy, wet snow) another eight or so two days later, then a brief flirtation with freezing rain that laid down a slick coating on top of it all. And now it's dissolving in a steady rain that is making a muddy, sloppy mess out of everything.

The best part of the week was the lifting from my shoulders of the huge weight of worry (and before you worry, please remember that worrying about anything and everything is a specialty of mine) when I realized what an enormous difference our new snow tires make. That horrible hill we need to drive up in order to get to the main road that has been the scene of more than one slow-motion icy ballet as we struggled up only to slide back down again? Hah! No problem: I drove straight up easy as pie. The drifts in the driveway that would have had us digging and pushing and swearing and pushing again? No problem: I just drove right through them.

And then there was the joy of watching Frankie in the snow. This may be his twelfth winter, but any sign of senior doggy dignity gets lost the instant his paws touch snow. It almost makes me wish for more snow.

Almost.

Fourth year blues

Last week should have been a happy week, sort of like Christmas come again. Last week the catalogues from three seed companies arrived in the mail. This should have launched an orgy of reading and planning next year's garden, the equivalent of my seven-year-old self poring over the Sears Christmas catalogue, reading every description of every toy, wondering how I would ever choose only one or two. But it didn't.

I flipped through the catalogues, I put sticky notes on a few pages, I made a note or two in my garden book, but my heart wasn't in it. Onions? Oh, I'll just stick with the usual Red Wing and Copra varieties. Tomatoes? I'll just plant what I planted last year. Peas? Same old, same old.

This will be the fourth time I plan a vegetable garden. I should get weeks of planning pleasure out of those catalogues. But what I got instead was The Fourth Year Blues. What was wrong with me? How could I still have been so excited last year, and this year be in the doldrums?

Last year I planned my garden just after reading Carol Deppe's book The Resilient Gardener, and was excited about winter squash, and getting protein from the garden, and improving potato yields. I was going to try growing broccoli, Brussels sprouts, quinoa and garbanzo beans for the first time. My garden was going to be my laboratory, full of interesting experiments. This year? Not so much.

Maybe it's just that the whole business of growing food, something that was so new and exciting, so life changing, has simply become more routine, more regular, more a part of the daily background. Maybe it's that my wish to tighten our gardening budget has left me feeling too constrained. Or maybe my natural tendency to organize and routinize has left no room for play.

In any case, I decided what I needed was an injection of whimsy. Something whose appeal has nothing to do with food values, or self-sufficiency, or anything practical at all. Yes, I would continue to grow the reliable standbys that have seen me through the first three years. But I would flip once more through the catalogues looking for something that would inspire me with its quirkiness, its beauty, its impracticality.

And here's what I found: pink popcorn and brilliant red corn poppies. One is for play, for a silly pink colour and a bowlful of fluffy kernels. And one is for beauty of a natural and random sort, the kind that springs up when seeds are simply scattered, rather than being planted one by one at a prescribed depth in rows of orderly pots in a temperature-controlled greenhouse according to a predetermined timeline.

That's what I'm going to grow this year: play and random beauty. I'm looking forward to the harvest.

Image from here.

Big

I have come across a lot of blog posts about big eggs. The simple fact that chickens lay eggs is miraculous enough, but when a hen lays a really big one, it's post-worthy for even an experienced chicken farmer.

I did it myself, back in the early days. But lately I've considered myself a bit too worldly, a tad too experienced, a smidge too cosmopolitan and sophisticated to get all excited about a big egg.

Until today. Until this really, really, really big egg.

Large eggs should weigh at least 56 grams, extra-large at least 64, and jumbo at least 70. This egg weighed 96 grams.

Here's the proof.

Holy smokes, that's a big egg.

Leftover

I feel a little silly about this post, because I know many of you are experts at making good use of the food that comes into your home. But this isn't something I've been especially good at. Things changed a bit when we moved to Mucky Boots and started growing our own vegetables: my mindset started to shift from "What's the recipe, go buy the ingredients" to "What's ready in the garden and how can I make use of it." But the fridge was still a place where leftovers found their own way to the back corners and died a slow, smelly death.

I am determined that this year, that's going to change. Part of it is trying to make better use of every food dollar. But the bigger part is out of respect for the food itself and the people who produced it, and out of recognition for how lucky we are to have it when so many in the world don't have enough. No, I'm not about to start packaging up my unwanted kale to send to the starving children in Africa. But I think I can do better with what we have.

Please forgive me if this all sounds like Leftovers 101 - but that's where I am: at the beginning. And the first challenge of the year was what to do with all the remains of our Christmas dinner. There were a lot of them, since Kim and I were on our own this year. Some things were obvious: we did a couple of days of reheated encore dinners, I made a batch of stock with the carcass of the turkey, and then a great turkey and vegetable soup. But there was still an awful lot of turkey, potatoes, gravy, squash and cranberry sauce left when New Year's rolled around.

Let me try to contain my glee as I tell you what I did.

Inspiration #1: Turkey croquettes. I took the last 4 cups of turkey meat, the last 2 cups of mashed potatoes and the last cup or so of gravy and whizzed them in the food processor until I got a pretty smooth mix. I added some green onions and a bit more seasoning, then formed it into croquettes and did a rice flour/beaten egg/smashed cornflake coating. 30 minutes or so in the oven and they were done, and didn't they go nicely with the leftover cranberry sauce! The best part is that I now have about 2 dozen of them in the freezer, for quick and easy dinners in the future.

Inspiration #2: Squash muffins. I have a killer gluten-free pumpkin muffin recipe that I make regularly, in a double batch so half can go in the freezer. So it occurred to me to replace the pumpkin puree with the leftover acorn squash, mashed into oblivion. I was worried about the seasonings: the maple syrup and cinnamon I had flavoured the squash with for Christmas dinner would go nicely in muffins, but I wasn't so sure about the thyme. But I tried it anyway, added a bit of streusel topping to compensate, and they were fabulous. More distinguishable from the pumpkin version than I had anticipated - a bit denser, sweeter, more squashy. Yum.

Like I said, Leftovers 101. But with the exception of about half-a-cup of cranberry sauce still lurking in the fridge, every bit of our Christmas dinner has been used.

Just call me Suzy Homemaker.

Back to normal

Our heartfelt thanks for your comments and emails about William. Most of you have never met us, or William, or been to Mucky Boots - it is an amazing thing to me that such caring and support can come across the ether.

We are feeling more peaceful about William's death, with just the occasional stumble to make us pause: vacuuming up the last of Williams' hair from the carpet, washing and putting away his water bowl, opening the back door and not realizing we were expecting to see him until we are surprised when he's not there. Petunia was out of sorts for a few days, but she knows how to demand a snuggle when she needs one. Mostly she, like us, is spending the bulk of these rainy, cold days in front of the wood stove. We are finding our way back to normal.