Homemade "soda"

This week was the week of fermenting things on my kitchen counter.

All week, there sat my sauerkraut, the ginger "bug", and sourdough starter.  I've had yogurt going every couple of days, and experimented with a few other things.

Today I finally was able to tap into some homemade "soda".  It just sort of vaguely resembles soda, honestly... it tastes more like Tang, I think.  Whatever it is, the kids decided they like it a LOT.  And I do, too.  Very refreshing.

It's supposed to be probiotic, and is surely better for you than normal juice, and certainly better for you than pop.  It's naturally (lightly) carbonated using- I don't know, yeast or something captured from the air.  Magic fairies that fly in the window and add sparkle juice in the night, for all I know.  I got all my information from the internet, you are welcome to do your own search and research and believe what sounds fun to you.

So, here's how I actually made it:

Start with a glass jar of some sort- cleaned out pasta sauce jar, mason jar, doesn't matter.

-Fill it 3/4 of the way up with non-chlorinated water (preferably filtered, and I think my softened water was a bad idea)

-Add a couple table spoons of ginger.  Fresh, chopped ginger with the skin on will work best, but I use ground, dried ginger and it worked... barely.

- Add a bit of sugar.  about the same amount as the ginger.  It needs to be real sugar, not a sugar substitute.  And a bit of molasses for the iron content would help a lot, too.

put a cloth or paper towl or coffee filter over the jar, and secure it with a rubber band.

Every day, a couple times a day, or as often as you think of it, stir this mixture.  Once or twice a day you want to feed it a bit more ginger and a bit more sugar.

There are yeast that live on the ginger (and in the air), and they eat the sugar.  JUST like making a sour dough starter from scratch using only bread and water.  After a couple days, you'll notice it fizz after you stir it.  After 4 days to a week, depending on your house's variables, you'll hear it fizz BEFORE you stir it- that's when it's ready to be used.  Mix up some soda, or stick it in the fridge with a lid on.  Before you use it you'll want to bring it to room temp and feed it again.

To make the pop:

you can use anything sweet to make this.  sweetened tea, juice, a sweetened herbal concoction.

In a CLEAN CLEAN CLEAN plastic container with a lid (glass can, and probably will, break) combine:

-about half a gallon of your flavor- juice, sweet tea, what have you. (NOT HOT.  warmer than body temperature kills yeast)

- about a quarter cup of your ginger bug starter.

-maybe some extra sugar, if you like sweet things.

- half a gallon or so water

-maybe some salt.  I put salt in mine to make a slower ferment since it's so hot outside (and thus, inside), and I like the taste of it that way.

The yeast from your starter will eat up the sugar in your flavorer,  The longer it sits, the less sweet it will be.  Watch out, let it sit too long and it might turn alcoholic.  Or your bottle might explode.  We started drinking ours when the carbonation had built up to the point that I couldn't squeeze the bottle anymore.  it's still sitting there building up more fizz... I'll refrigerate it tomorrow to slow the carbonation down.

The internet cautions me to take it slow with this drink, because it's supposed to be probiotic, and any time you start probiotics you should do it slowly.  I don't know about that, but today I put a little of it in the bottom of my travel mug and filled it the rest of the way with water and it tasted just about perfect, so that's how I'll drink it most of the time- as if it's a concentrate.

enjoy!  Go ahead just do it... it's a fun experiment for the kids, at the cost of some ginger and a bottle of juice.  Then, taste a tiny bit and you'll find out you actually created something tasty too!

slow food

I really have missed being a slow cook.

The size of my kitchen does not matter to me.  I did enjoy the forced minimalism in my camper kitchen.  I found out how little I really need in my kitchen, and it was freeing to have just want I wanted at my fingertips.

But it's hard to create the controlled environment I need for some projects, without a house.  And besides that, most kitchen work I do is messy and smelly and takes sitting undisturbed for too long.  It just didn't work well for our particular situation.

So, the first thing I did when I moved in was to try to create a sourdough.  That flopped- I think because of the softened water.  I'll try again with bottled water next week.  I am right now experimenting with sauerkraut.  I tried fermented carrots, but that didn't work too well... For several reasons, I suspect.  I've also made yogurt, which I was so excited about.

The best part is getting back into soaking grains.  This had to be put on hold in the camper because of water use.  It takes a lot of water to properly soak and rinse any grain, and I just couldn't fill up the grey tank with dirty rice water, so we just didn't eat much rice or quinoa.  It doesn't use so much water to soak flour, but I wasn't making bread or anything with flour on the road- we took a cup of sugar and two cups of flour with us, and nearly of all of it was still there when we moved into this house.  Instead, we bought 3 loaves of bread a week.  Two sourdough, and one either cheap sandwich bread or a multigrain.

I have rediscovered how much I love long kitchen chores.  I just love putting the beans and rice and flour to soak the night before, and waking up to deal with all of it properly in the morning, while the kids eat breakfast.  there's just something... I don't know, comfortable, about the way I make chili, starting 2 days in advance with dried beans, instead of 30 minutes before we eat by dumping all the cans together and swishing in a few spices.  I like long processes better.

So, one by one, I'm replacing all the prepackaged food with made from scratch.  We've had no hamburger helper type stuff for 2 months now (that stuff really makes me sick, I couldn't eat half our meals on the road).  I've now successfully replaced store bought bread.  This summer I'll slowly replenish our supply of frozen fruits and vegetables so that we are eating stuff I processed myself next year.  I'd like to make my own peanut butter, but I am not sure it's possible with only a blender.  Tomorrow I will make my own oat flour and possibly quinoa flour for a mulitgrain bread I have in mind.  This week will be full of other soaked flour foods- I'll make my own pancakes and waffles and muffins, then freeze them.  Next week I'll tackle the pasta problem (I do really want bow ties, maybe I can make them by hand.).

After that, I'll go after the canned goods we buy every week- which is really only beats and baked beans, nothing too complicated I should think.  How awesome would it be to have a year's supply of homemade baked beans stocked up in the garage?  I just love the idea.

So, if anyone is interested in making some weird hippy food with me soon, let me know, I'll be happy to have someone to talk to while I cook!

Hey I'm back!

Sorry, I had to take a forced hiatus for a while because my computer was having technical difficulties.  The tablet is good for facebook, but not for anything that requires actual grammar and typing and stuff.  Ugh.

Anyway, so, we have moved into a house!  It's a pretty big house, too, twice as big as our old one.  And yes, we do know what to do with all that space.  Cartwheels!  Tag!  Hide and Seek!  The favorite game is called "Where's mommy, we haven't seen her for a whole minute, something must have happened, FREAK OUT TIME!".  Yes.  That game is awesome.

The yard is also big, so Nick recently purchased a riding lawnmower from down the street (full of gas, even, so when you take that into account it was almost free.).   We're both pretty excited about that.  Maybe I'll even learn how to operate the thing and mow the lawn myself once in a while. Although, the part I liked about mowing before kids was the exercise, so in reality... probably not.  But I promise to give it some real, actual thought.

So, how does all this space affect my minimalist attitude?  Glad you asked!  It's making me want to get rid of more stuff.  Seriously, I'm surprised there are still so many boxes in the garage. We haven't missed too much of that stuff out there.  A couple days ago we went through and found all the kitchen boxes and sorted through and decided what to keep and what to toss... there's a fairly big box of stuff we don't want anymore.  And more stuff I suspect will find it's way into a future garage sale as we realize we don't need it as much as we thought.  There are lots of areas I need to pair down still, of things that came into the house- too many books I don't want, and bathroom stuff.  But for the most part, I think we're going to stick with the plan- if we need something, we'll go find it in a box and bring it in.  If we don't want to spend that much effort to find it, it probably isn't that important and will get thrown away or sold in the spring.

The camper is the next big thing to deal with.  We want to sell it, and the truck, and get a new vehicle with good mileage.  Probably a van, because I do love being able to cart around other people's kids (and that's actually hard to do in this truck).  It would be great if we could sell both together... but, we'll see... that sounds a little difficult.

So, up next... I have moved right on into my hobby of putting up food, baking like a crazy person.  I went and got a whole lot of strawberries and froze them this week, and I can't wait till the next thing to freeze.  Seems like that's blueberries, right?  Late July?  Strawberries will be in season for a while longer, so I might maybe get some more to put away.  What I froze won't last very long, I think.  I did not make any jam this time... I think I will go a year without strawberry jam.  I'll go with some other, more exotic flavors instead.

we went to the garden center today and picked out our plants and herbs, and Nick bought chicken wire and some seeds.  So, that will keep me pretty busy, too.  Which is good because I was definitely getting bored! (And Sara says:  "I know!  you are being SARCASM."  yes.  yes I am.)

That's what I've been up to.  This blog will likely switch gears and become more like homesteading wannabe/ homeschool/ hippy blog.  I'm pretty excited about that!  :-)