Ratatouille!

No, not the movie. Though that was fun, wasn't it?

My daughter Hanna made mega batches of ratatouille last fall and froze them in ziploc bags. Her method (in winter) is to let a package thaw a bit, empty it into a casserole dish, add a couple of sausages (Mennonite farmer is good, or Italian), and put it in the oven for half an hour.

Here's the basic ingredient list:

Olive oil
Onion
Zucchini/Eggplant
Red/Yellow Peppers
Garlic
Tomatoes
Salt & Pepper
Red Pepper Flakes

Cook for about 20 minutes until nice and saucey. Cool, then freeze.

So I saute the vegetables in my wok in as much olive oil as it needs. The ratio of tomatoes to *other* that I've been doing is about half. I don't have any peppers in the garden (and am not overly fond of them cooked, anyway!) but I do have both zucchini and eggplant. I don't have red pepper flakes at the moment so added a couple shots of tobasco sauce.

Here's what it looks like while cooking down:

Honey!

This morning our beekeeping mentor, Lew, stopped by to visit 'his' bees. (The guy that never wears a bee suit!)



He says they're doing really well! He put his finger into one of the combs and let some liquid honey drip onto my finger. Oh. My. Word! Have you ever had honey THAT fresh? Delightful. Warm from the sun, gentle sweetness. Oh, wow. I can hardly wait to extract some of it and start using our very own honey!! (Our old honey, purchased from other local beekeepers, will probably land up in new batches of mead, lol!)

Here Jim and Lew are looking over the supers already in place.



Yup. They've been busy little bees!



In fact, they then placed our very last supers in place. This means we either need to buy more supers...or extract honey in the next week or so in order to reuse the ones we have. Yay!

Chamomile Tea

As I posted up the photo of the chamomile, it occurred to me to wonder what part of the plant is used for tea. A quick search proved that it's the blossoms! Well, we have lots of those.



So...I went out and snipped them off and will allow them to dry. I think in this weather they don't need to be in the dehydrator! This is pretty much all of the flowers here, so it's not a lot. Still, it's enough to try out and see if I want to grow more German Chamomile next year. It's a self-seeding annual but I don't think I left enough to self-seed!



The info says it has to be German chamomile, that the common roadside chamomile is virtually scent-free, and the Roman chamomile (which is a perennial) isn't the right kind for tea either.

Wikipedia provided this photo and the idea to mix the dry chamomile blossoms with cinnamon and dried apple bits. Might have to try that!

Garden Mayhem

It occurs to me that we haven't talked garden for a few weeks. Everything's growing really well. Except, of course, the things that aren't such as my green pole beans, which didn't germinate, I replanted, and still didn't germinate. Had poor carrot germination also.

No ripe tomatoes yet at our house.



The pumpkin plant thinks that not only should it produce giant pumpkins, the plant itself should be giant.



I've had several pickings of raspberries.



The dill and the chamomile are new best friends.



We're regularly eating beets/beet tops, swiss chard, and lettuce. We've begun stealing baby potatoes from under the plants. We've eaten one fennel and the other one needs picking. The kohlrabi-from-seed is doing well. Must thin the rutabagas soon. A few bush bean plants are doing well, but I don't know that they'll supply even one meal at a time. :(

The bees are happy and making honey, and we added another set of supers one evening last week. The current estimate (two hives) is about 120 pounds of honey.

We're finally getting typical hot July weather, which means Jim is out cutting hay. We're about two weeks behind on that because there hasn't been a rain-free window long enough in the forecast until now. The local farmers' market is in full swing (too bad they don't seem to have anything not in my garden--except ripe tomatoes!) and our friends' cherry trees are bowed under from the weight. Bad year for cherries because they've split from all the rain. But for someone willing to put them straight in the freezer or dehydrator, it's not so bad. The orchards that depend on shipping out are suffering.

That's about where things are in our 'scratch' world!

Rhubarb Melomel (Mead) -- Part 3

Today we racked both the amarone wine and the rhubarb mead. For the amarone, which is a kit wine, we followed the directions. For the mead, we made up our own :)

The mead's specific gravity today was .998. .004 down from the first racking. Apparently this is good. (The amarone was also .004 down.)

No photos today, because, well--nothing looks different than last time. We racked the rhubarb mead into a fermenter, then Jim 'degassed' it by agitating it vigorously with an attachment to his drill. Meanwhile I'd mixed 1/2 teaspoon of potassium metabisulphite into 1/2 cup of cool water. We then mixed this thoroughly into the mead, then let it sit 20-30 minutes before re-racking it back into the glass carboy. (We understand the purpose of the PM to be making sure the fermentation is turned off, or complete.)

With fermentation locks in place, both carboys are now out in our mudroom (cooler than under the dining room table where they've been living until now!) with a garbage bag over each to keep them in the dark. And there they shall sit for 2-3 weeks until we do it all again.

Again, the taste tests on both were positive.

First Meal from the Garden :)

We may have been on vacation, but the garden was busy growing (so were the weeds!) and tonight we had our first fresh produce of the season. What was ready first? Well, the salad greens might've been ready, but they didn't come in tonight. Instead, we went for swiss chard and kohlrabi to enjoy with a pork steak.

I usually grow rhubarb chard and plant it from seed. You can also get plain green chard or rainbow chard (in which the stems are yellow, green, orange, or red). It tastes a lot like spinach but doesn't bolt (go to seed) nearly as early in the season. And you can cut it off just above the ground and it will grow a new batch of leaves that will take a couple of weeks or so to be ready to harvest. I cut about 1/6 of my little patch tonight.



As for kohlrabi, it's a member of the cabbage family. I planted four seedlings I bought at the garden center and a bunch more from seed. This one is from a seedling. These don't regrow but are worth the space anyway as they are slightly sweet and crunchy. Sort of like broccoli stems, but a nicer texture.



I trimmed off the kohlrabi leaves off over the compost pile.

Here I've washed the swiss chard and torn out the toughest (thickest) stems. It's a good idea to wash each leaf, turning over and checking the other side also. I once did a poor job of that and served Jim a large cooked slug attached to the back of a chard leaf. Not recommended.



While we waited for the chard and the pork steaks to cook, I peeled the kohlrabi and made it into sticks. We polished it off as an appy :) This is the pottery plate I purchased from Mussels and More on vacation.



Just to show you how much the swiss chard wilts while cooking.



Ah, supper. Serve the chard with a little butter, salt and pepper. Melt-in-your-mouth delicious.

Middle Mountain Mead

While we were on vacation last week, we paid a visit to Middle Mountain Mead on Hornby Island.

It crosses our mind that adding value to the honey our bees (and the additional hives we expect to buy) will produce might be a good idea. In our area there is no shortage of places one can purchase local honey. There may well be room in the market for more; I haven't yet done the research to make an educated decision. But right now we're looking at options, and opening a meadery is one such option.



We called ahead for an appointment because Hornby Island isn't into its summer schedule yet in June, and with two ferries to catch to get there, we didn't want to make the side trip if seeing the meadery wasn't a possibility. We were greeted by this young gentleman, whose name I forgot to get. Bad me.



Their tasting room is charming, and adorned with vast swaths of drying lavender.



The mead display area is simply made to suit the setting.



A large deck off the tasting room offers comfort and a spectacular view.



Our guide willingly showed us around, answered all our questions and encouraged me to take photos. Here he and Jim are discussing the fermentation process.



Then we wandered through their gardens for awhile. These aren't show gardens, but rather bee gardens. The beauty of mead, in my opinion, is that the bees make honey out of your flowers and fruit blossoms, then you can use the fruit itself, added to the honey, to make mead. Seems like a good use of resources to me!



Anyone know what this flower is (below)? See the busy bee? :) (You might need to click on the photo to enlarge it in order to see the bee.)



So the grounds below the meadery/tasting room are filled with ingredients for honey and ingredients for mead.



Here's the view they have to suffer through every day. Ah, bliss...



And, yes, we tucked a few bottles of various flavors into the car for special occasions over the next while. An Olde Mead, Cranberry Lavender Mead, Cyser (apple mead), and Green Tea Elixir.