Fleur-de-Comments

After a year of hemming and hawing, Fleur-de-Blog moved from Blogger to WordPress with the hope that it will be more reader-friendly. Kathleen, who is the brains, organizational skills, and computer behind Spring Creek Homesteading, did it for me in ONE hour. A full year ago, I came home from the San Francisco Writers Conference with the move in mind. It took me 11 months to act, and Kathleen, a single hour to do the computer magic.

I installed a recipe index, but there’s still a lot of “polishing” to be done. If you call up some of the archived newsletters, you get an intro of computer gobbledygook, which I will eventually eliminate. Please bear with me. And, the little bank of smiling faces on the right is gone. I’m not sure if people have to join or I have to do something to invite them. It’s a work in progress.

In the meantime, please use the comment section. That’s for you! And, I’d like to get a dialogue going. There is a dialogue going—people send me emails directly, but those interesting comments aren’t shared with the rest of you unless they are written in the comment block.

So, this time, I hijacked an email from Val with comments on lacto-fermentation, so that all of you can learn from her experience:

“I love fermenting vegetables.  I do cabbage the traditional way—using only Celtic sea salt.  For all other vegetables, I use 1-cup water, ¼-c. whey, and about 2 Tbsp Celtic sea salt. With the whey, it takes only three days until it is ready. I don’t ever use anything to keep the vegetables submerged. A few might float and might get white mold. Just remove them. That white mold is harmless.  Also, I cover the jars tightly. I’ve found that if I leave them a bit loose, then everything spoils.  I then store the jars in one bedroom that is rarely heated.

“One important point to make about the water used for this method—if it’s city water, filter it to rid it of fluoride and chlorine. Fluoride is bad and chlorine will kill all the good bacteria.

“Who taught the class?

“My only problem is that sometimes, after it’s all gotten nice and sour, it will go back to being salty—very salty. I don’t know what makes this.”

In answer to Val, my instructors were two PSU plant science graduate students named Scott and Matt. They mentioned NOT to use iodized salt and to use distilled or filtered water if any water is necessary. (I just forgot to write those details.) One of the instructors, I think it was Scott, said he actually has eaten the white mold that Val mentioned just to make sure it was harmless—but then he’s a crazy grad student, what do you expect? He is still alive, though. I hope this helps any of you potential sauerkraut makers.

My colorful confetti kraut is now all purple (the red cabbage is a powerful ingredient) and bubbling away in my bedroom closet. No sightings of mold, but I each time I open the lid to check on it, the fragrance of fermentation wafts through the room and down the hallway.

Fasta Ravioli Update: We had another Master Gardener meeting on Valentine’s night, so our three-course dinner was postponed to Friday. I made a butter, garlic and sage sauce for the red heart-shaped cheese ravioli. My mom and I had the appetizers with a glass of Prosecco.

For the squid-ink striped ravioli stuffed with lobster and crabmeat, I heated some lemon-infused olive oil with lemon zest, poured it on the dinner plates, and then served the ravioli on top, dressed with a sprinkling of parmesan cheese. (We only used a half-pound of the ravioli, saving the rest for another night.) I served that with No-Shrink-Needed Broccoli Salad. Dessert (chocolate gnocchi) was postponed indefinitely; as my mother frequently says, we were “stuffed to the gills.”

Quick note about cooking ravioli: Fasta Bob boils his ravioli and then removes them with a slotted spatula when they float to the top. Then, he adds more frozen ravioli with out having to boil more water. I tried this and noticed the water from the “heart” ravioli turned pink, but slid the squid ink striped ravioli in anyway. No harm done, the “pink” didn’t transfer.

And now, let’s see if we can get this WordPress comment section cooking! Richard sent an email this week. He’s been invited to dinner at an Italian student’s apartment. Each guest was asked to bring a dish representative of his home country that many of the other international students probably haven’t tasted.  What would you bring and why? Laurie Lynch

Fleur-de-RollingAlong

 Have dough. Will travel. Groundhog Cookie dough, that is.

I planned a weekend away, visiting a friend in Philadelphia. The trip to the city coincided with one of my favorite country holidays: Groundhog Day. So, when I packed my overnight case, I filled a quart container with Groundhog Cookie dough and brought along a cookie cutter.

Alas, when I arrived, I found out the house was without a rolling pin. Some cheapskate hint from readings past floated into my mind. “Use a wine bottle,” it echoed. To be sure, there was no shortage of wine bottles…but the cleanliness issue was batting about in my brain. Then I remembered. This spicy molasses cookie dough is full of butter and can be sticky. The recipe suggests rolling the dough between sheets of plastic wrap. Perfect. So was the wine-bottle-turned-rolling-pin and the fragrance of spicy molasses cookies baking in the oven.

Spring Creek Homesteading’s reskilling classes have been the highlight of my return to State College. This past weekend, my mom and I took a class on making sauerkraut and kimchi. The two fellows who taught the class bubbled with enthusiasm for the whole lacto-fermentation process as they shared other homemade fermented goodies, such as sour dough bread and Parmesan cheese, as well as their private stock of sauerkraut and kimchi. The lunchtime tasting was a plus, but the best part of the class was getting our own chopping board, sharpened knife, glass jar, and oodles of vegetables for hands-on training. It is so simple!

Our teachers explained that good bacteria, called lactobacillus, are everywhere. When you submerge chopped vegetables in a brine, the salt kills off the bad bacteria. Then the good bacteria converts lactose and other sugars in the food into lactic acid, and this acidic environment preserves the vegetables, gives them their tangy flavor, and boosts their nutritional value.

My mom and I chopped one green cabbage, one red, a few carrots, an onion, and several cloves of garlic, and placed everything in a large bowl. We added a few grinds of black peppercorn and a pinch of caraway seeds. Then, I just started kneading and squeezing the whole chopped salad. We weighed the mixture—about three pounds–added the appropriate amount of salt for preservation (about 2 Tbsp.), and stuffed everything, including a large amount of ever-present, airborne “good” bacteria, into a large glass jar. I pressed the vegetables into the jar, first with my fists, then a wooded spoon. Soon a good inch of briny liquid covered the mixture.

The only thing left to do was to put a weight on top of the chopped vegetables to hold them under the liquid so they could ferment naturally at home, in peace. Special sauerkraut crocks have plates that fit over the chopped vegetables, sinking them under the brew. Our instructor showed us how to use a piece of plastic held down by a rock, or, as an alternative, suggested filling a plastic zippered bag with water to weigh the vegetable matter down. I decided to re-purpose some flower arrangement glass marbles my mother had at home to keep our vegetables submerged. As we went around the classroom showing off our batches of kraut, each one had its own personality: there was the finely shredded, traditional green cabbage variety; a chunky, carrot filled kraut; and our colorful confetti concoction.

With the lid placed on loosely, so the fermentation gases can escape, our jar of vegetables is brewing away in a closet. In three or four weeks it should be ready for tasting, and when placed in the refrigerator will provide a good pickled salad to promote healthy digestion.

Remember the pink ravioli heart? Well, Fasta and Ravioli Co. came up with a three-course Valentine Dinner Special for home celebrations. I’ll be treating my mother to cheese ravioli appetizers, squid-ink striped lobster ravioli, and, for dessert, ricotta-chocolate gnocchi. I dropped my mom and nephew Leon off at a ballroom dancing class while I scurried home to photograph the Fasta meal. It’s still frozen, but beautiful enough to give you the idea.

Too Local: My mother and I have had a number of Centre County Master Gardener meetings in Room 317 of the Willowbank Buildiing in Bellefonte, the conference room for Centre County Cooperative Extension. I knew the building formerly housed Centre Community Hospital, but the other night I found out that Room 317 was the old delivery room. I was born in that room…but better yet, my mother gave birth in that room FIVE times. Makes sitting through a two-hour meeting seem like a piece of cake! Or a bowl of sauerkraut. Laurie Lynch