Composting Along

You may have already seen my post from a number of weeks ago about starting a compost pile with "a little help from a James-y". (That is what he says when he wants to help.  "Mummy, do you need a little help from a James-y?"  In a sing-song voice.  I love it.)  Well, it's still going and I think it is composting for sure, albeit rather slowly.  It is a large pile though, and I think I had been leaving it between turnings a little too long, and watering a little too infrequently.  But I am learning how to compost properly, as a result of this super fun initiative started up by Deanna of Little House in the Suburbs, called a "Compost-Along".  It is a bit like a knit-along, where a bunch of people do the same pattern and check in with each other's progress, but in this case, we're building compost piles and progressing through the decomposition process.  Sounds exciting?  Well, it is to me!

So week by week, we check in to Deanna's blog where she writes up instructions for where we should be in the process and tips to help us along.  I have a feeling I'll have a lot more success doing it this way, and I have a feeling I really need it.  To illustrate, follow me as I work through this week's composting homework.  She shared how to build your compost pile, but mine is already built.  So I went outside to turn it and moisten the material (if needed, I figured that with all that miserable welcome rain that we had over the weekend, it would be drenched):

Heading out to the compost pile, so I bring my trusty kitchen composter to empty, while I am thinking of it.

Ewwwww.  Well, as you can see, we've been eating a lot of fruit. :)

A riveting action shot of me sticking the pitchfork into the pile and attempting to turn it.  Not as easy as it looks.  And how is it possible that the grass clippings are entirely dry?!!

OK, so I am pretty much convinced that plant clippings from the middle of the pile (where it is dark and supposedly warm, if not hot) are still actually photosynthesizing.  What?  I even dug out a few forget-me-nots that had flowers of a quality that I could have given them to somebody!

Wondering if this pile is a little too big.  I wondered about taking a photo with a frame of reference, but I didn't know what to use and didn't want to drag James out of bed.

Attempting to soak the life out of (or into, as it were) this ridiculous Sahara of a compost pile.

I wasn't sure that a gentle shower was as effective as it could be so I decided to bring out the big guns.

Are you a veteran composter?  Can you help me?  Or are you a newbie like me, have already started a pile (or could collect the necessary materials this week) and feeling like joining in, even if a little late?  Composting together is fun!  This is why they invented the internet.  Stay tuned for a fascinating look next week at the microbial action in my backyard.

Planting My Plot at Helping Hands

Yesterday was our big kick-off, advertised for fun, snacks, games and gardening at 3 pm.  All week the weather forecast for Saturday had a high of about 18 and sunny.  Then, two days before the big day, the weather was 18, sunny, with cloudy periods.  The night before, cloudy, with a slight chance of showers in the afternoon.  Yesterday morning, I got up, and the forecast was still iffy on the showers, probably scattered and light, but the forecast for New Brunswick and Nova Scotia was rain all around and I knew we wouldn't be that lucky to escape it.

Needless to say, it rained and rained and rained all afternoon.  And there was definitely no large, enthusiastic crowd at Helping Hands for our big opening day.  But a few of us hardy souls showed up and made the most of it!  (One even made an extremely brief appearance with her family to drop off fresh-from-the-oven banana chocolate chip muffins.  Thanks Andrea!)  I used the opportunity to plant the rest of my family's plot.  Friday night, after a day of small child stubbornness and blessed but tiring parenting, I got about 45 glorious minutes of planting to start my plot, all by myself, in the evening calm.  I got 32 square feet of 100 square feet planted with spinach, swiss chard, carrots, broccoli, parsley, dill, and summer savoury.  For the kick-off I went back and did almost the rest of it--I forgot the pea seeds, and I am waiting to root a few basil cuttings rather than growing them from seed.

The photos are pretty terrible, because it was pouring rain and I was soaked, muddy, cold, hungry, and in a rush.  I promise I'll post some artfully-taken ones as things develop through the season, but I'm so excited to have my long-awaited vegetable garden that I am posting them anyway!

I'll start with my planting plan (which I have almost perfectly stuck to):

The whole, obsessively planned and drawn, planting plan.

So there's a little overlap here, but you can get the gist of it.  I left out the cilantro, mostly because I accidentally planted summer savoury seeds in the cilantro holes, then felt absolutely fine with it because I don't like cilantro anyway.  Also, my much-loved San Marzano seedlings ended up not doing so well, so I left them out.  Sniff.

A blurry shot of red peppers, eggplant (hugged by marigolds), and bush pickle cucumber.

From left to right: Roma, Beefsteak, Lemon Boy, and Better Boy.  I SO hope these do well!  I know I could do better than tomato cages but they were 60 cents each and easy to install in the rain.  We'll see how it goes, and I'll modify next year likely.

Difficult to decipher photo of butternut squash, pumpkin, and sugar baby watermelon planted around teepee trellises.  Again, this is my first time growing squash/melon vertically, and we'll see what happens.  I used 8' 2"x2" pieces of untreated wood, lashed together at the top by zip ties, and buried between about 1- 1 1/2 feet.

Corn.

My darling, pride-of-my-summer community garden bed.

 One highlight: the Journal Pioneer showed up with a camera to document us, covered in mud and soaked to the bone, but happy, planting pumpkins, raking, and digging in the bed.  I think he even got my Jamers in the photo.  Keep your eyes peeled this week for our photo!

Shared with Homestead Barn Hop #65

Homemade, Crunchy, Sweet Granola

There are loads of granola recipes out there and I would like to try all of them!  For now, this granola works great and as it is a bit on the sweet side, makes a great partner to the plain yogurt that I have just learned to make.

My mom's friend Vicki gave me this recipe, which I changed a little bit from the original.  She and her husband enjoy even just snacking on this granola and they make a big batch before their yearly trip to Florida to eat along the way.  We like mixing it with yogurt and fruit, and I like that it is less fattening and a lot less expensive than what you buy at the grocery store, but very easy and quick to make and is my #1 go-to recipe when I want to bake with James.  He loves making granola!  Or "Granolan", as he used to call it, since his best friend's name is Nolan.

Homemade Granola


2 cups rolled oats
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed (not so healthy but oh, I love brown sugar!)
3 tbsp vegetable oil
1/4 cup orange juice
3 tbsp pure maple syrup
1 generous tsp vanilla
1/2 cup chopped nuts (I have been using walnuts)

Preheat the oven to 300 F.  Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil and spray with vegetable oil spray.

Combine oats, flour, sugar, oil, orange juice, syrup, vanilla, and nuts in a mixing bowl.  Spread evenly on prepared baking sheet and bake for 35 minutes, tossing once to prevent burning.  After the 35 minutes are up, turn off the oven but leave the granola inside for about another half hour to make it even crunchier.  Remove from oven, break up the big chunks into littler bits, allow to cool, and then store in an airtight container.

This granola will keep up to one month, if it lasts that long!

The original recipe included 1 tsp of cinnamon and 1/2 tsp ground ginger.  I don't use the spices because although I like them, I like my granola to have a more simple flavour.  Feel free to spice things up though!  Additionally, when your granola is ready to be stored, you can mix in dried fruit (I love dried cherries!).

I love that little helping hand.

Sweet baking boy.

Mmmm... breakfast goodness.

I Made My Own Yogurt This Week

I realize that there are people out there who make their own yogurt (and cheese, and sauerkraut, etc.) without even giving it a second thought.  But to a newbie like me, successfully making yogurt is one of the most exciting things to happen to me lately!  I used instructions for making yogurt in a crockpot, because it sounded like the easiest and least involved way of doing it, and because I don't really use a crockpot all that often; it seemed to help justify it taking up space in my diminutive kitchen.  In the recipe I used, she sweetens at the beginning to end up with sweet, vanilla yogurt.  I wanted to master plain yogurt first, and since I knew I'd end up with quite a bit, I thought that it would be good to make plain and just sweeten it myself later.  That way I'd know just how much I liked, and I could use the plain yogurt for making savoury dishes.

It is so easy that you really should all do it.  All you need is a little patience, and a lot of time.  I know I never really want to buy pre-made yogurt again!  This is so simple, and with so few ingredients, that it seems like the very best way to get that fix of probiotic goodness into your belly.

In general, we've been eating Activia vanilla-flavoured yogurt, which costs $3.99 for 650 grams.  To make my yogurt a few days ago, I used a two-litre carton of milk ($3.49) and some of a 500 mL container of PC brand organic plain yogurt with active bacterial cultures (usually $3.99, but I got it on a great sale for $1.29!  Woohoo!).  I only needed a 1/2 cup of the yogurt, so the rest was eaten by me or went into a yummy recipe of raspberry yogurt muffins.  I ended up with 1.25 L of yogurt, about twice the amount of the Activia container, for $3.81, so saved quite a lot of money.

The necessities.

*Note that I used organic yogurt, but not organic milk.  This is because for the astronomical price of organic milk, you don't get any real, substantial difference in the quality of what you are purchasing.   In Canada, quality controls are so high on milk that there are no traces of antibiotics or any hormones in conventionally produced milk at all.  See this post for a great, quick summary of why non-organic milk is just as good for you.  Also, I think ADL is a super company that I want to support (and considering it is literally right around the corner from my house, you can't get much more local) and I know a number of dairy farmers on PEI who are all awesome people that I would like to support as well.

So as I take you through my yogurt making process, I'm going to give you the time details that I used this time, because it took me a long time to make this and this is something you might want to consider when you decide which day of the week you'd like to give yogurt-making a try.

7:00 am


Put your 2L carton of milk in the crock pot, cover, turn it on low, and leave for two and a half hours.  I used 2% milk to get a creamy but not full-fat version.  I thought it was a compromise between not wanting to get chubby myself, but wanting to feed the kids a hearty yogurt to help them (especially Susannah) put on weight. Apparently you can use whatever milk you like, including skim.

Did you really need this photo?  Probably not, but it adds colour to the post. :)

Another unnecessary but illustrative photo of my hot crockpot, filled with milk, and turned on to the low setting!

9:30 am


Your milk should be good and hot now.  Turn off the slow cooker, unplug it, and leave it without opening for another two and a half hours.

12:00 pm


Come back, take about a cup of milk out of the crockpot and whisk in 1/2 cup of plain, organic yogurt.  Make sure that it has active bacterial cultures in it!  That's what you need to do the work for you of converting your milk into more yogurt.  Stir that milk-yogurt combo back into the milk in the crockpot (make sure it is cool enough so you don't kill the bacteria, it should be between 100 F and 115 F or so, or so that you can comfortably keep the tip of a very clean finger in the hot milk without discomfort).  Once it is all mixed together, put the lid back on the crockpot and wrap a thick towel (I used two) around the whole thing, tucking it in as much as you can to keep the whole shebang as warm as you possibly can.  Leave it like this (no peeking!) for 8+ hours.

9:30 pm


I left mine a little longer than 8 hours, because I had a very important function to attend--our weekly ladies coffee date at Samuel's on Friday evening.  So when I got home, I unwrapped and opened my crockpot to find:

Success!

Yogurt!!

So at this point, you can package it up however you desire as is and stick it in the fridge, or strain it to make it thicker.  I decided to strain mine.

I lined two colanders (one big and one little) with coffee filters, put them over bowls, spooned the yogurt into them, and put them in the fridge for a couple of hours (not too long or it will turn into yogurt cheese, which I have read is lovely but not what you want in your smoothie or on your granola).  

Craig and I watched a (mind-numbing) movie while I waited for this to strain.  When it was done, I came upstairs and...

12:30 am

Took the colanders out of the fridge, scooped and scraped the yogurt out of the filters into clean Mason jars, poured the whey (don't throw it out!) into additional clean mason jars, and ended up with this:

Thick, creamy white yogurt on the right, whey on the left.

Whey can be used for all sorts of things, and I hope to try a bunch of them out and post about it in the future.  I'm planning on using this batch to enrich smoothies and make them probiotic, to substitute for buttermilk in baking, such as pancakes and biscuits, etc., and to substitute for water in bread, which I have heard has great results.

The yogurt, on the other hand:

I tried it on top of homemade granola, sweetened with some honey and a drop of vanilla, and topped with raspberries.  It was really good.  The yogurt itself was pretty tangy, which may be because I left it longer while out with friends.  I never eat plain yogurt, always sweetened and flavoured, so I think it might take getting used to.  But if you sweeten with honey and vanilla, you won't notice any difference except that it is fresher, thicker, and yummier.  And, you'll know exactly what went into it.  I don't think I'll go back to purchased yogurt.  This is less expensive, healthier, fresher, full of probiotic goodness, and very satisfying.

Don't forget to keep a little yogurt to make your next batch!

Homemade Thousand Island Dressing

We haven't been eating very many fresh greens lately and I have been craving a salad.  My husband's favourite salad dressing is Thousand Island, and we didn't have any (well, technically we do actually have a bottle in the fridge that I have not yet removed although it expired months ago--we don't eat a lot of salads when it isn't barbecue season).  I really wanted to have a salad tonight with supper, so I looked up homemade thousand island style dressings online, and combined a few to make this.  It's super easy and it tastes just as good (if not better, with a bit more oomph!) than the bottled variety.

Some day maybe I'll really make it from scratch with homemade mayo and ketchup but for now, I'll do it the easy way, with the Hellmann's and Heinz varieties.  The great thing about this dressing is I can pretty much guarantee you have everything you need in your house right now!


Thousand Island Dressing


1/2 cup mayonnaise
2 tbsp ketchup
1 tbsp white vinegar
2 tsp sugar
2 tsp sweet pickle relish
1 tsp finely minced onion (I used Epicure 3 Onion Dip Mix to make it even easier)
2 shakes of Worcestershire sauce
a couple shakes of salt
some freshly ground black pepper

Whisk together in a bowl until smooth and creamy and spoon over a fresh salad, in this case, romaine lettuce, diced red onion, grated carrot, and walnut.  Yum.  I love pantry staples turned into something easy and yummy!

This post is shared with Homestead Barn Hop #59 at The Prairie Homestead.

The Most Basic Compost Pile in History

I'm new to this homesteading stuff, and I don't have a big budget to spend on things like fancy composters.  That doesn't mean that I don't want a nice, free source of compost for our garden though.  So I decided to start my own compost pile.  And it took me about an hour.  That is because I had to first rake up the piles of material that would make it up.  So really, it took more like ten minutes.

I first cleared out an area in the bottom corner of my yard, which is surrounded by shrubs, is the furthest common point from any of the surrounding houses, and is sort of ugly anyhow.  I'm just going to warn you now that I would not be graciously given any photography awards for these photos.  They are pretty blurry, bland, and in general poorly lit.  But they illustrate what I did, so bear with me!

The bare corner in our yard about to be transformed into a marvel of aerobic decomposition.

So I had this awesome idea (and I thought myself quite brilliant) that I would put the sticks at the bottom for three reasons: (1) they would take longer to break down, so I wanted them closer to the ground where my little decomp soldiers are hanging out, (2) they would prop up the compost pile and aerate it from underneath, and (3) they would help with drainage because this is a rather damp corner in the spring.  After checking a few websites online that dealt with an actual pile and not some fancy rotating drum, I came across one that said "lay your twigs down first to help with drainage and aerate the pile".  So I felt quite validated and confident in my compost decision making.

The bottom of the pile.

A wiling young helper carrying sticks never hurts the success of your compost pile, either.

So then I started taking the old leaves and little twigs that accumulated in our yard over the winter (I swear we did a good job raking last year and had loads of bags for fall clean-up!), and putting them on the pile.  Two things that made this easier and faster:  I had done most of the raking on March 22nd when it was 25 degrees (what?!?) and we were thriving in the sun, and I used our brand-new-to-us wheelbarrow that my mother-in-law generously gave me and her wonderful brother drove up to Summerside to deliver (he also brought in our waste cart).

Not quite finished yet, but it was geting late and I didn't know if the camera would work when I finished.

Here is my "finished" compost pile; I now have a very tidy backyard and a wonderful start to composting excitement.

So I am aware that everything that I put in my pile today is "brown" material, and I need to layer it with "green" material.  I just wanted to clean up our yard and get the pile started.  Before I came in, I watered it to dampen the material.

Side note: is anyone else worried about how dry it is this spring?  The clouds of dust coming up as I was raking this stuff were crazy!!

Anyway, as I collect vegetable scraps and whatnot I'll take them out and layer the compost and sprinkle water on it and turn it and cover it to warm it up and love it in general.  Now this is not the most sophisticated compost pile in the world.  It doesn't have walls, it doesn't have a sleek round body with hatch and turn-crank, it isn't even a barebones structure made with pallets.  But for the moment, it will provide habitat and cover in our backyard, it will eventually decompose, and it provides an out-of-the-way place to store our yard waste (and soon to develop chicken poo!), and I'll be able to use it, some day, to feed my lovely veggie plants.

I like it.  Make your own!

This post is shared with Homestead Barn Hop #59 at The Prairie Homestead.

Another Multigrain Bread to Try

We ran out of bread yesterday and I had to (gasp) buy a loaf.  I actually really mind doing that because I am very rarely pleased with what I bring home.  My parents buy bread at the bakery in Kensington and I really like that bread, but otherwise, I am pretty picky and only like homemade.  However, I had a lot going on and kept putting off the (easy and fast) dough making process, until the point where we ran out. Then this morning, our bought loaf was almost gone.  I didn't really have time to wait the 15 or so hours for a loaf of my no-knead recipe, so I dug out a recipe book and tried a regular "knead and have bread in two-three hours" type of recipe.  Here are the results.

Adapted from Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook 15th edition; Mixed-Grain Bread

Mixed-Grain Bread

1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 packages active dry yeast (4 1/2 tsp)

1 1/2 cups milk
3/4 cup water
1/2 cup cracked wheat (I used Red River Cereal)
1/4 cup cornmeal
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 1/2 tsp (1/2 tablespoon) salt

1 1/2 cups additional whole wheat flour
1/2 cup rolled oats

1 1/2- 2 cups additional all-purpose flour

In a large mixing bowl, combine 1 cup each of whole wheat and white flour with dry yeast, set aside.

In a saucepan, combine milk, water, cracked wheat, cornmeal, brown sugar, oil and salt.  Heat and stir over medium-low heat just until it becomes warm, between 120 and 130 F.  Add this warm milk mixture to the flour mixture, and beat on low speed with an electric hand mixer for 30 seconds, scraping the sides of the bowl.  Then beat on high speed for three minutes.

It's weird for me to use a hand mixer during the bread making process!  Not entirely unpleasant, however.

Using a wooden spoon, stir in the next 1 1/2 cups of whole wheat flour, and the 1/2 cup of rolled oats.  I used quick oats this time.

Then mix as much of the remaining white flour as you can into the dough.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface, and knead in enough of the remaining all-purpose flour to make a moderately stiff dough that is almost smooth and elastic, about 8 minutes of kneading should do.  *I used about a cup of the all purpose flour after mixing in the whole wheat and oatmeal.

Shape the dough into a ball, and place in a lightly greased bowl, turning over to grease the whole surface of the dough.  Cover, and let rise in a warm place until double in size, about one hour.

Dough immediately after kneading.

Dough after an hour sitting in the sunshine on the floor in the dining room.

Punch the dough down, turn onto a lightly floured surface (mine wasn't floured, it didn't stick) and cut into two equally sized pieces.  Cover them (I used plastic wrap that had been over the bowl) and let them rest for ten minutes.

Shape each piece into a loaf and place in greased 8x4x2 inch loaf pans.  Cover again and let rise in a warm place until double in size, about 30 minutes.  While you're waiting, preheat the oven to 375.

Brush tops of loaves with water and sprinkle with additional rolled oats.  I used large flake oats for the top.

Bake for 30-35 minutes until bread sounds hollow when lightly tapped.  Immediately remove bread from pans, and cool your luscious loaves on wire racks.

My loaves. You may notice a slight discrepancy in size and shape--the second one fell victim to a small plastic jar of car-shaped gummy vitamins falling on it during the second rise.  I gave it time to recover, and put it in the oven when the first one came out, but it never quite regained it's proper shape or stature!

A shot of freshly sliced bread. 

Overall, I think this is a nice recipe.  When I first started baking the no-knead recipe, I wasn't sure how I felt about it.  It tasted different, it was denser and heavier, and it seemed almost a little TOO rustic.  But now that I'm used to it, I prefer it.  Now when I bake more "regular" homemade bread, I find it tastes really yeasty and sweet and is super soft.  That might be just the kind of bread you like--my sister tried it and liked it, and my husband (who isn't exactly effusive in praise about most homemade products) said it was really good.  So I do think it is a nice recipe, but I enjoy the other one more.  I find the "bits" in this bread more obvious when you're chewing it, because in the no-knead recipe, they have hours to absorb some of the dough's moisture and become softer.  Maybe you like your bits a bit bittier.  I'm not sure how I feel about it.

However, when I'm short on time and can't wait an entire day (or night) to have bread, I think this is a pretty tasty recipe and it's nice that it makes two loaves, rather than one, even though they are a little smaller than the loaves I'm used to.  If you have a favourite multi-grain whole wheat recipe, please pass it on!  I love trying new bread recipes.

This post is shared with Homestead Barn Hop #57 at Homestead Revival.

Cleaning Up

For the last couple of years, my favourite cleaning product has been a cleaner that my mom makes for me and that we imaginatively call "Green Cleaner". It smells lovely as it has peppermint essential oil in it and works great on pretty well all surfaces. Just lately, I've been spending a little more time on Pinterest and finding all sorts of awesome ideas for do-it-yourself-pretty-much-anything. I'm especially interested, though, in homemade cleaning products and homemade toiletry items. So basically, things that will clean your house or clean your body. If I can make these items with ingredients I already have in my house, so much the better!

I saw this recipe for a homemade cleaner that uses citrus-infused white vinegar. Now, I have battled with the idea of using vinegar as my main cleaning agent for a few years. I know that it is a great cleaner, is easy on the environment, is inexpensive, and if my children got into it, it wouldn't hurt them. However, it doesn't smell nice. At all. I used to use it a lot at work when I worked for an environmental non-profit organization and, when I think of our office in that old train station, the scent of vinegar emanating from wash cloths long past needing to be bleached (!) will forever come to mind. Yuck.

Enter the orange peel! How awesome is it, first of all, that you can make this cleaner in about two seconds after you enjoy a healthy, vitamin C-rich snack? Because I didn't want to peel fruit just for the sake of making a cleaning product, but rather, I wanted to use my scraps for something more, I just made it in 250 mL jars, one at a time. I had three oranges, therefore over the course of a couple of days, I started the preparation for 3 jars of cleaning product. I took a few pictures of the final preparation, and had my three-year-old help me in the process (he's a great do-it-yourselfer!).

This is all you need.  (I'm assuming you have a convenient source of water!)

Don't mind his blue-stained fingers, we were playing with markers right before he helped me with this project!

So here are my three 250 mL jars, after letting them infuse for 2 weeks.  There's a small Fisher Price tractor in the background for good measure.  The boy left it on the counter, and I left it in the picture because it made me smile.

So pour the contents of the jar through a sieve into some sort of container, I used a 4-cup Pyrex glass measuring cup. *Note the strangely waterlogged/spongey/pickled texture of the orange peel.  It reminds me of something out of a bucket of formalin during Comparative Vertebrate Anatomy class at UPEI.

I got about 1 1/4 cups of the orange-infused vinegar from the three jars.

So fill your container roughly 3/4 full with water, then top up with the infused vinegar. (I was lucky that I had the perfect amount to fill the bottle up the rest of the way.)

The final product.

And there we have it!  Orange-infused vinegar cleaning solution.  Now I couldn't post about this on the blog before actually trying it out, right?  So I decided to give it a test, and thought of one of the yuckier substances it would need to clean on our kitchen counter:

Peanut butter.

Now I occasionally eat peanut butter (in fact I did tonight which is why I thought to use it to test out this cleaner!) but I also find it an extremely offensive substance.  It's greasy, it's sticky, and it smells very strongly.  Not something I want on a surface anywhere, let alone the counter.  So I smeared some on (then promptly washed my fingers!) and give it a few squirts.

The cleaner did a great job cleaning it up, no residue, the vinegar cut right through it and left the counter lovely and clean with a fresh-ish scent.

Yes, the scent.  There's no denying that vinegar is the base of this stuff, really, you can't hide vinegar all that well.  But it has a nice, fruity, orangey overtone that makes it a lot more pleasant.  My verdict?  I like it.  

This post is linked to the Homestead Barn Hop #52.