The Pig and I

The Piggy and I developed this recipe specifically to go into ukha, a Russian fish soup. It's also really good in other things, but we mostly use it for soup, unless I'm frying something that needs both cabbage and leeks. This recipe is very easy to make, requiring only 3 ingredients, but it does need a bit of special equipment. If you don't have a muddler, use either a wine bottle, flat-ended rolling pin, or potato masher. In most of my fermented foods, I use swing-top fermenting jars (I use a mix of Fido, le Parfair, and Kilner, but I've got some odd IKEA jars and other such as well). I mostly use these because they obviate the need for multiple items per Mason jar you'll ferment in, such as weights, fermenting pipes, airlocks, and so forth, but it's also much simpler when you know there's no need to check your ferments to see if they're doing okay. If the seal is good, they're doing okay. Plus, I get to use my Mason jars for other things, like...

I realized the other day that it's been a very long time since my last post. My life has changed in a lot of ways, one of which is that I've returned to foraging. Since my interests currently lie primarily in foraged foods and ales, my focus will be on that for the foreseeable future. One favorite foraged food for us is black nightshade . Although commonly perceived as poisonous, this is a food plant if you're treating it properly. The leaves can be cooked and eaten (young ones raw as well), but the primary value to my 5 year old, Piggy, is the berries. Filled with seeds and sugary sweet, they're a lovely treat. I recently dug up some S. americanum plants and transplanted to our container garden, but most of the berries I cooked today came from a plant nearly as tall as me that I noticed while foraging for dock seeds. That bush was huge . And also weighed down with ripe fruits, so I took a lot of fruit. I left about 1/4 of the fruit for the birds, focusing only on fr...

I made this the other day for breakfast, because there was a quarter cabbage sitting in the fridge looking like it needed to be eaten, a bit of jarred garlic in the fridge when I wanted the jar to go away, and because I still have half a jar of those olives that I sincerely do need to eat up. Plus, I sometimes eat like a toddler. Anyway, this was delicious, I enjoyed it, and I will be making it again this weekend. Scale the quantities directly to feed more than 1 person with this recipe. Hope you enjoy! 1 tablespoon butter 1/4 cabbage, core removed, then cut up (I like slivers, but you could do cubes or whatever) 1 minced garlic clove (jarred is fine) salt and pepper to taste pinch nigella or caraway seeds 1/4 cup chicken broth 1 tablespoon lemon juice (can use zest instead; can use bottled juice) 3 jalapeno-stuffed olives, chopped (optional; you might want hot sauce if not, though; I rinsed mine because they're old) Melt butter in pan. Add cabbage, salt, and pepper. Fry until t...

Granola is always awesome, but it's very expensive to buy at the store. Making it at home is inexpensive and just takes a few minutes of active prep time, plus 80 minutes in the oven. For the blueberries, I buy fresh blueberries in massive quantities when they're in season and deeply discounted, then dry them. Typically I do this until I've got about a gallon dried total. If you don't have a dehydrator, you can either oven or sun dry them (If you've opted for sun drying, freeze them for 72 hours after they're finished to kill any possible insect eggs that may have been laid anyway and then store in the pantry). If you want some clumps, squeeze the mixture well once you've put it in the half sheet pan. Otherwise, it will be more like loose cereal. 4 cups rolled oats 1/4 cup each: wheat germ, wheat bran, flax seeds 1 1/2 teaspoons salt 1 cup sliced almonds 1 cup dried blueberries 1/2 cup each: vegetable oil, maple syrup  1/4 cup honey Preheat ove...

This is a two-in-one meal, as you can make the sauce and eat the remainder of it with pasta (or as sauce for pizza; you can also freeze the leftover sauce for a future meal). In general, I am not a huge fan of meatloaf. Mostly because people tend to put the onions in raw, and the flavor of ground meat and onions that cooked together icks me out. Ross, however, has been asking me for the last few weeks to make him a meatloaf. Specifically, a meatloaf topped with puttanesca sauce in lieu of the more typical ketchup or tomato sauce topping. I stalled on this, because I had some trouble figuring out how I would make this so it wouldn't seem gross to me. I needn't have worried, though: Ross ate almost the entire thing in two sittings. As it's summer here, I try to make all oven items early in the morning or later at night so it doesn't overheat out house. I made this last night for him, and we were intended to have it tonight for dinner. As soon as it came out of the oven,...

I had purchased a pound of fresh dates recently, and we ate on them a bit before realizing we all like them just a bit riper. In interest of not having them go to waste,  I decided to go on ahead and make a rice pudding. Dates are naturally high in sugar, and although these were less sweet than I prefer, I only added just a touch of sugar to compensate for that. Additionally, I made for dinner something I was fairly certain the Piggy wasn't going to enjoy, so this functioned as her dinner and our dessert, as rice is amongst her favorite foods no matter how it's prepared. Hope you enjoy! 1/2 stick butter 12 ounces fresh dates, pitted and chopped (I just cut these in quarters lengthwise, then cut them in half width-wise) 2 tablespoons vanilla sugar juice of 1 small lemon (probably 2 tablespoons) 1 cup rice 1 cup milk 1/2 cup cream Melt butter in a saucepan over medium-low heat, then add dates, sugar, and lemon juice. Cover and let cook 20-30 minutes, or until dates are...

And, the last of the blackberry jams. Hope you enjoy! 2 pounds blackberries 2 cups sugar 2 tablespoons lemon juice 1/2 vanilla bean, split and scraped 1/2 teaspoon black peppercorns Place peppercorns in a tea strainer or similar. Combine all ingredients in a large pot and macerate 1-2 hours. Bring to a boil and let boil for 5 minutes before removing peppercorns and vanilla pod (save the pod, rinsing it well, to toss in a jug of bourbon or to put in sugar for vanilla sugar). Finish boiling until it reaches the gel-point, then water bath process for 15 minutes. Makes 4 half-pints.