GardenFork – Eclectic DIY

  • My visit to the Waffle House

    I have never been to a Waffle House , until now. I love waffles, see our how to make waffles video here, and have even done waffle recipe home made baking powder experiments here. But I had never been to a Waffle House.

    I love the name, and while on the road in the midwest, we needed breakfast, so I used my super-computer / smartphone to find one.

     

    The waffles are not like those giant thick waffles that are ubiquitous at diners, the belgian style waffle; these waffles were thinner, which I like. The menu offers you an order of 1 or 2. I had one, but I saw lots of people have 2. They were good, but not wow. I wasn’t expecting wow, though. This wasn’t an artisanal local food waffle made from scratch, its a chain restaurant waffle.

    Waffle House Waffles

    What was really good were the eggs. So many times scrambled eggs, be they at a local diner or chain, are awful. Not sure how one can not cook scramble eggs badly, but many do.

    Each egg order at the Waffle House are cooked individually in small cast iron pans with cheese. The eggs puff up nicely, I’m betting the cheese adds moisture to the eggs much like adding a small bit of milk to scrambled eggs does.

    Scrambled Eggs with Cheese

     

    Very nice people behind the couter, it takes a certain kind of patience to deal with the public, and these people had that. I think you should treat everyone equally, especially people in the food service world – they are, after all, touching the food you’re going to eat. And I see people who treat food service people with what ranges from impoliteness to down right rudeness, which I have zero tolerance for. Karma is boomerang, you know.

    Coffee was a bottomless cup, AND when we were leaving, we were offered a to-go cup of coffee for free. Interesting.

    What is your best waffle experience? Is there a special waffle restaurant in your town? Do you make waffles at home, if so, what is the secret to good waffles? Please tell us below:

  • More on Fishing and the Great Outdoors GF Radio

    Mike finishes up his how to fish for largemouth bass talk, ice fishing is just getting started, and there is still time to go out on a river and go fishing. Mike talks more about what kind of fishing lures for when, and why you shouldn’t put your tackle box in the back of your truck.

    We tell you why you should wear blaze orange clothing when hiking in the woods in the fall. We then move on to viewer voicemail, and answer a question about why are there cracks in a listener’s new drywall taped corners.

     

    photo by jeltovski

  • Tiny House Directory free from Tiny House Blog

    GardenFork became a fan of the Tiny House Blog on Facebook today, and at the same time signed up for their email newsletter.

    get this free directory

    As a bonus, when you sign up for their email newsletter, you get a neat downloadable PDF, the Tiny House Directory, an indexed list of websites, blogs, architects, builders, and kits of all sorts of tiny houses. Tiny houses include boats, yurts, wagons, trailers, tipis, straw bale houses, log cabins, prefabs. Neat.
    I like that a bunch of links have been indexed and are all there on a few pages, so you don’t have to use a search engine to find stuff; Tiny House Blog has done all the work for you.

    Andrew Odom, author of the Tiny rEvolution blog and a contributor to Tiny House Blog, got me interested in the Tiny House movement. He has a new post on hanging windows in your tiny house.

    Not all of us will be living in tiny houses, but even if you are not downsizing, you can get great ideas of how to live with less stuff, and lessen your impact on the earth with the info on the Tiny House Blog and Tiny rEvolution.

    You can sign up for our email newsletter right here:


    How are you downsizing? Are you moving to a tiny house? Let us know below:

  • Beaver Lodge Canoe Trip

    Yesterday after the giant storm of 20 inches at the end of October was really a great day it was super puffy clouds out there blue sky about 50° and I said hey let’s take out the canoe. So we put the canoe in the Ford F150 and drove down to one of our local ponds.

    Were we went canoeing isn’t really a pond, though it’s called a pond, not sure why, it’s 145 acres. This area was originally a little beaver pond, the beavers had dammed up a small creek, and it became a very large marshy area. The state came in and made the dam into a spilway and created this really great lake perfect for canoeing. There are a lot of tree stumps and dead trees in the lake and this keeps powerboats out.

    This lake is our favorite lake to go canoeing and the water shallow, is really clear, it’s really quiet and there’s almost never anyone else out on this lake where there.

    parking the canoe to investigate the brook

     

    We were on the far end of the lake and we heard this babbling stream that I had not heard before so we canoed over to the shore, which is full of brambles and Mountain Laurel and wild blueberries, and we hiked through the brush and found this really cool little brook. I think is called a vernal stream, it was really quite active because was all the snow melt from the 20 inches of snow we had in October. While checking out the broad we run across fresh signs of beavers harvesting trees and took some pictures. Beavers have front incisors that are constantly growing so they need to constantly eat wood.

    There are a few beaver lodges in the lake and we always the check them out, and you never see the beavers, they  can hear us coming, we’re pretty clunky with the canoe, banging the paddles against the side of the canoe. We came across one of the beaver lodges right in the middle of the lake and another that is against the shore of the lake.

    I thought it interesting that beavers will actually build a beaver lodge on the side of the lake rather than the middle of it.

    We learned a bunch about beavers on Wikipedia. What I thought was the really cool is that the preferred food for beavers in the summer are water lilies, and this lakeis full of water lilies, so there you go, the perfect place for beavers.

    Canoeing is a great outdoor activity that doesn’t really cost that much money you can get a inexpensive used canoe, a few life preservers and you’re set to go.

    Where do you guys like to go canoeing your area?

  • Baking Powder Recipe – How to make it

    Rick and I talked on GF Radio about his ‘ah ha’ moments working with baking powder, and Rick wrote a post about how baking powder works on his Rick’s Column for GF. I added to the conversation that I had learned about how baking powder works, and why it needs to be fresh, from my friend Charlie, who helped me make this Southern Biscuit Recipe video for GF TV.

    Charlie explained to me that baking powder needs to be fresh, and that the can of baking powder the average person has in the cabinet is probably stale. So Charlie made me a convert to making my own baking powder with this recipe:

    1 part baking soda to 2 parts cream of tartar

    The beauty of this is a lot of recipes call for 1 tablespoon of baking powder, so to make it fresh, just mix together 1 teaspoon of baking soda and 2 teaspoons of cream of tartar. Its best to buy cream of tartar online, Penzy’s Spice has it.

    To show just what a difference fresh baking powder makes, check out these blueberry pancakes. I made these using the fresh baking powder recipe and the pancake batter had yogurt in it, which makes baking powder go into overdrive, because of its acid content.

    pancakes made with fresh baking powder recipe
    check out the rise from using fresh baking powder for these pancakes

    Do you mix baking powder fresh? are there other kitchen products that we should be making fresh instead of buying them in a box or container? Let us know below:

  • Podcasts Worth Hearing: Negotiations

    haggling
    haggling price

    The first haggler to mention a price loses, right? Wrong. The first person who proposes a price sets the tone & expectations of the entire bargaining session. Even if it’s just for self defense, I highly recommend Slate’s Negotiation Academy, a series of 10-minute podcasts, one per week, on the art of negotiation. Session 3 just published. http://slate.me/vanUPk

  • How To Repair a Rice Cooker – GF Radio

    A Broken Rice cooker, and how to fix it & how baking powder works are the main topics of this GF Radio show, but of course we veer into other subjects as well. We’ve posted the Rice Cooker Repair ,What is Baking Powder and Free Leaf Compost articles that started this topic for Rick, and we started a new category here called Rick’s Column. Rick talks about how a rice cooker works and how he fixed his rice cooker. You can buy inline fuses at Radio Shack, bring the old one with you, or search online.

    Eric made a how-to video about making leaf compost, and here is a neat GardenFork.TV video about how to make a simple compost bin out of a few easily available materials. Rick plans on working the leaf compost into his vermiculture system, aka worm composting system.

    BTW, to make baking powder, use 1 part baking soda to 2 parts cream of tartar. You can buy Cream of Tartar online instead of paying a fortune for a small amount at the store.

    For those of you interested in working at GardenFork, here is the link to our internships page. We need a hand, and if you’d like to get some great experience, check out our internship page and see what its all about.

    photo by Besela

     

     

  • Free Leaf Compost, Thank You Neighbors – Rick’s Column

    Tomorrow’s trash day and metal scavengers are already circling the neighborhood, but I’ve found GOLD! Gold, I tell ya’. My neighbors do all the work of sweeping and bagging these leaves for the trash guys. I just roll around the neighborhood picking up free compost material.


    Mulch, then re-bag with the mower, and 6 bags of leaves make one nice compost pile (older woody stuff in bottom, a few limbs stuck through sideways for ventilation).
    Cage is an end length of rabbit fencing and 3 old stakes. Should have some nice leaf mold by Spring.

  • Baking Powder, How It Works – Rick’s Column

    Corn bread was pancake flat yesterday, which got me to studying the recipe and the ingredients. Then I realized I’d never understood baking powder. What is it? what does it do?

    BP acts like yeast, releasing CO2 to make gas bubbles so the batter will be fluffy. Yeast do it by eating sugars and then farting CO2. BP does it by chemical reaction.

    It’s like those baking soda rockets we made when I was a kid. Fill the rocket with acid (vinegar) wrap a little ball of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) in a piece of Kleenex to delay the chemical reaction, and stuff the ball of baking soda into the rocket with the vinegar and ram the plug home…and stand back. Eventually the CO2 would propel the rocket off the launch pad, usually landing on a roof somewhere.

    Important safety lesson, do not stand over a charged rocket and look down with your remaining eye.

    Baking Powder is comprised of a base (usually baking soda–sodium bicarbonate) and an acid (usually Cream of Tartar–potassium hydrogen tartrate, an acid salt) in powder form, which prevents reaction. There is usually a filler, too, like corn starch or potato starch, both to add volume when measuring out and to buffer and slow the reaction. Dry, these items will not react. But any liquid activates the baking powder and causes it to off gas CO2.

    Here’s the lesson of where I went wrong:

    Lesson 1: I put the liquids into the bowl first and then added the dry ingredients. This allowed the BP to cook off before I mixed the batter and trapped the gasses. If BP had been the last item added, I might have gotten away with this, but when it’s among the first to get soaked, I was sunk. (This is the reason you’re told on the box to mix the dry ingredients first–I failed to follow simple directions).

    Lesson 2: I probably made the loss of CO2 all a lot worse by over mixing (again, this caution is on the box, so I failed to follow simple directions). BP, unlike yeast, releases a set amount of gas per reaction. If you mix the batter too much, you release all the gas from the batter and it goes flat. With yeast, they keep digesting sugars and farting CO2 until they die, which is why you can work a yeast batter loner.

    We use baking powder instead of yeast because we like biscuits in 20 mins vs 2 hours with yeast. (this also is why they sell “Yeast Rolls” and “Dinner Rolls” side by side. I never thought that there was a difference.)

    Lesson 3: there are double activation or double acting baking powders available. These act like single action baking powders when you get them wet, but also have a second reaction that is heat activated by baking, which give you a second chance.

    Lesson 4: honey (as well as buttermilk) is slightly acid. So I should have cut back on the baking powder and substituted baking soda because I used 1/4 cup honey instead of sugar in the recipe.

    Double acting baking powders have the same first acid, Cream of Tartar, but add another acid that is temperature activated as well, giving the pastry a second rise…or in my case, a second chance.

    Eric writes about baking powder, pancakes, and the baking powder recipe here.

    photo by EmmiP

  • Rice Cooker Repair – Rick’s Column

    Our $10 Wal-Mart B&D rice cooker stopped working last night. I just opened it up and, using a multimeter, found an inline fuse blown.

    I clipped the fuse off and reconnected the wire. I can’t imagine any real harm, since the circuit is gfi protected anyway. Am I missing something? Running a test batch of rice now to see how it turns out.

    BTW: if you’ve always wondered about those center spring mechanisms, they’re pretty simple…and interesting. The center plunger is not charged with electricity (unlike a lot of toasters, which are actually engaging electromagnets when you put the plunger down–hence the futility of slamming the plunger down, it not a mechanical catch of some sort). Inside, the rice cooker there’s a magnet on an arm connected to the front mechanical operating slide, a bit like a toaster–up is warm, down is cook. The weight of the water and rice in the pan hold the plunger down and the magnet sticks to the underside, closing the high heat or cook circuit.

    When enough water boils away, the spring pushes the plunger up, which lifts the pan and breaks contact with the magnet breaking the high heat connection. There’s a separate permanent circuit always connected for “warm” with it’s own little heating element. You have to unplug the whole thing to turn the warming circuit off.

    —-
    the system just “popped” open, turning off the high heat coil. Looks fine, but you always wonder…at least I do. OTOH, a rice cooker isn’t like a crockpot. We’d never leave it running all day. Any ideas? At $10 am I being penny wise and pound foolish?

  • Harvest Honey with a Bee Escape – GF Video

    Here’s how we use a bee escape to harvest honey. When you harvest honey from your beehive, you need to get the bees out of the honey super ( the box of frames that has honey it it, usually the topmost super ). You can do this several ways; commercial beekeepers remove the bees from the honey super with a blast of air, you can use a fume board, which you put on top of the honey super to drive the bees out of that super, or you can use a bee escape. Watch our video  how to harvest honey using a fume board here

    A bee escape is basically a one way door that you slide in between the honey super and the top brood super. You leave it there for a day or two, and when you take off the honey super, it will be empty of bees. Watch our video here on how to remove bees from a honey super using a bee escape

    I have found that leaving the bee escape on the beehive for 2 days is better than overnight. You will always have some bees still in the honey super, but that is a lot easier than removing a lot of bees from the honey super. Some hives will start to draw comb if you leave it in too long.

    It isn’t shown here, but in newer versions of this, I added a 5/8″ upper entrance hole to the escape to take the place of the entrance on the inner cover, which we have covered in tape.

    Here is the double three way bee escape I made. I based it on several on the internet. The hardest part is cutting the angle cuts of  each piece of wood. the cut are either 30 degrees or 60 degrees, depending on how you set up your saw. The gaps between the sides of the triangle are at least 3/8′ wide. I used regular window screen to cover this. The outer pieces of wood are 12.5″ long, the inner pieces are 7.75″ long.

    more beekeeping videos insert

    Bee Escape

    Questions or comments? Let us know below, we’ll answer to the best of our ability. thx.

  • Homemade Garlic Planting Tool Makes Planting Seed Go Faster

    This homemade garlic planting tool helps if you are planting more than a few rows of garlic. Planting a few rows of garlic in your home garden is pretty straightforward. To plant garlic for a market grower is a bigger deal. I was asked by a neighbor who sells garlic to help him plant seed garlic before the coming snow storm. The storm dumped 20″ of snow on this field a few hours after we finished planting garlic. Watch our How To Plant & Grow Garlic video here.

    While we were planting garlic I took photos to show you all how a market farmer plants garlic. This garlic field is not large enough for heavy equipment, so while the garlic is planted by hand, this homemade garlic planting tool might help small farmers reading this.

    All the seed garlic bulbs are broken apart by hand, I don’t know of a mechanical method to do this, though I’m sure a machine exists for large scale garlic growers.

    garlic planting tool
    Seed garlic broken up by hand

    First of all, the field is tilled with a small disc several times to turn over all the weeds and cover crops, then the rows of garlic are staked out with string. Each row is 5 plants wide, then there is a 24″ wide space between rows. This space should be the width of your rototiller, so you can till under weeds that grow on the walking paths between the rows of garlic.

    disc rig gets the garlic field ready

    The holes the seed garlic is placed in are made by this homemade garlic planter rig built by the farmer. It has 5 metal tips on it, with two pieces of wood jutting out perpendicular for proper spacing between rows. Two people move the garlic seed hole maker along the row. When pressing the rig into the soil to make the holes, each person places a foot on the rig to make the holes. The rig is rocked back and forth to firm up the walls of the holes.

    garlic planting tool
    Metal Tips on Garlic Planter, note row spacers sticking out side of rig, just above hole making tips
    garlic planting tool
    Garlic Planting Tool In Action

     

    garlic planting tool
    holes made by garlic planter rig

    The seed garlic is put in each hole by hand – be sure to use knee pads – you’re on your knees a long time in this process.

    garlic planting tool

    The rows are then raked over, the soil filling up each hole.

    I bet there are a few planting rigs farmers have made to automate this process more, my friend likes it this way, and his garlic field is not huge.

    garlic planting tool
    Raking soil over seed garlic
    garlic planting tool
    raking soil over seed

    Do you have some tips for planting garlic? or better ways to plant garlic? Let us know below:

  • Steve Jobs and I : GF Radio

    John Federico and Eric talk about Steve Jobs and his impact on their lives, and his impact on the world and business. Eric talks about a Fresh Air Interview with Steve Jobs’ biographer, here is a link to that.

    A quote from Steve Jobs sums up a lot of what Eric and John talk about in this GF Radio

    “You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.” from Wikiquotes

    John and Eric then talk about how to make an iTunes audio podcast, and what tools they use to make their podcasts.

    photo by Nacu

  • How To Grow Garlic, It’s Not Rocket Science – GF Video

    Watch our video on how to grow garlic, then go out and plant your garlic! There are a few keys things that we go over below.

    Wondering how to grow garlic?

    Its not rocket science, as even Eric can grow garlic. Its is easy to do, garlic does not have many diseases or pests, and its pretty low maintenance. Our how to plant garlic video steps you through the process.

    Couple of key things to keep in mind:

    • For most northern climates, you plant garlic in the fall
    • Order seed garlic as early as you can, most garlic growers sell out.
    • I don’t mulch my garlic bed, you can if you want.
    • The garlic may start to grow in the fall, that’s ok.
    • And learn how to harvest and how to cook garlic scapes in this video here.

    You can buy seed garlic, which is basically the largest bulbs of a particular strain of garlic from Filaree Farm, you can also find them at your local farmers market. Buy the largest, healthiest bulbs the farmer has.

    Garlic is broken down into a few varieties, Rocambole, Purple Strip, Porcelain, Artichoke, Silverskin, and a bunch more. We plant hardneck garlic here in New England, softneck Italian style garlic does not do well here.

    Maybe one of your neighbors already grows garlic and you can get a few heads of garlic from them to plant. I’ve heard stories of families who have brought garlic over from Russia or Poland, and keep the variety going in the backyard. Getting garlic from the local farmers market means those particular bulbs will grow well in your area, maybe ask the farmer, I’m willing to bet they’ll talk all you want about growing garlic.

    How To Grow Garlic, Start With Soil Prep:

    First of all, you can grow garlic in regular garden soil, nothing special needs to be done. Plant in the fall, before frost, when the leaves are starting to drop off the trees, rather than the spring. Break apart the cloves a day early, if possible, and let them dry a bit. The flat end of the clove goes into the bottom of the hole. Space the garlic about 6″ apart in rows 12″ apart.

    It is possible to plant garlic in the spring, but the yield will be much lower. I have never done it.

    Mulching your garlic is a personal think. I don’t think its necessary, and i’m all about simple.

    The garlic may sprout before winter, this is OK. Just leave it alone. The grow tip will wilt in the snow, and then the plant will start to grow again in the spring.

    In late winter, this same growth and wilting from cold weather may happen again, its OK. The weather will warm and the garlic will kick in soon enough. Let the plants grow, however harvest the scapes in early summer, and then harvest the garlic plants when the stalks start to go brown at the base.

    What have been your experiences with growing and cooking with garlic? Let us know below, be great to hear from people!

    How To Plant Garlic

    freshly harvested garlic

  • Largemouth Bass how to fish for them by Mike GF Radio

    How to fish for bass, bass behavior, and how to catch largemouth bass are the topic of Gardenfork Radio. Mike is a former tournament bass fisherman, and tells us how to find bass in a lake, and largemouth bass behavior throughout the year. Mike gives bass fishing tips and goes into largemouth bass behavior.

    Bass:
    Ice-out and spring:
    After ice out, the bass are still very lethargic. They are cold blooded animals. However, as the water temperatures start to rise, they begin to move and feed after a long sleepy winter.
    Places to look in the spring:
    Northern sides of lakes, ponds, and backwaters. The sun is lower in the sky, northern sides of lakes get more direct sun. This is especially true where there are large trees, hills, and other tall obstructions on the south side of the lake.
    Wind. In short, wind from the north is cold. It cools the surface and pushes it south. Wind from the south is warm. It warms the surface and moves it north.
    Shallow water warms faster than deep water. Especially when the bottom is dark.
    Stones. Stones on the shore will pick up heat from the sun and hold it. This is true of sea walls and bridges made of stone as well.
    Late spring / Early Summer:
    When the water gets up to around 57 – 60 degrees, Bass will start their spawn cycle. Some areas will close fishing to allow for the spawn to happen. To sustain a fishery, fish need to have a chance to reproduce.
    Male fish will take up residence in shallow water, typically with a harder bottom, and they will use their body to clear out a circular nest on the bottom. They will become territorial around their nest and will do their best to keep it clean.
    During this time, females will stage in deeper water adjacent to the nesting area. They will join the males in the shallower water, laying their eggs, and then moving back to the deeper water. Males will fertilize the eggs and stay with the nest until the fry are hatched. For a while, the male will aggressively protect the fry and will eventually leave the small fish on their own and recede into deeper water.
    Usually, it’s during the spawn and in the post spawn where fishing will die off some as the fish are not up to chasing food because they are spent from the spawn. Any fish caught during the spawn are usually males and it’s usually a territorial and protective strike, not one for food.
    Summer / Late Summer
    Bass move into their summer patterns after the spawn. The summer pattern really differs from lake to lake, but there are some generalities that you can work with in order to identify the patterns on your lake / pond.
    Oxygen is less soluable in warmer water. Backwaters that are shallow and baked by the summer sun have lower oxygen levels, so fish will avoid them.
    Deeper lakes (20’+ usually) will stratify over the summer. Warmer is water is less dense and it remains at the top, cold water, heavy and oxygen depleted sinks and stays at the bottom. There’s a structure known as the thermocline. It’s where the water changes temperature drastically within a foot or two. On depth finders it will show up as a line. You can feel it when swimming in a lake. The oxygen level below the thermalcline is very low and you should spend your time fishing above that line.
    Bass are averse to bright sunlight. If there is an area of clear water with no cover, it’s best to avoid that area.
    Bass relate to things. The things could be trees in the water, stumps, rocks, underwater dropoffs or other topographical changes, and weed lines.
    Weed lines form because plants require sunlight to live. The depth of a weed line will vary with water clarity. Muddier lakes have shallower weedlines and clearer lakes have deeper weed lines. Some times you can follow them in a boat visually. Usually a depth finder will be needed to identify the line. Once you gain experience, you will be able to do it by feel.
    Bass will feed in the early morning hours and at sundown, when the sun is low in the sky.
    Fish will prefer areas where there are shallow flats near deeper water. They can stay in the deeper water during the day, and easily move up to the shallower flat to feed.
    During the summer, I will work the surface early in the morning. As the sun rises, I will work 3 – 5 feet in depth, and then move out to the deeper weed lines during the hot noon hours.
    Fall
    The sun starts to get lower in the sky, the days are shorter, and the air cools. The water begins to cool as well. Spring patterns begin to re-emerge, but without any of the spawn problems. Fish become aggressive, feeding for the winter.
    Weedy cover begins to die. Where there may have been 100 acres of green underwater vegetation, you now have 50 acres of dead grass, 30 acres of green grass, and 10 acres of bare bottom. The bass will concentrate in the 30 acres of green grass making them easier to find — if you know where the green grass is.
    Then there is the fall turnover, reuining fishing everywhere. The lake that stratified over the summer months changes. The surface water becomes cold and heavy. It sinks to the bottom, pushing warmer “middle water” to the top. Eventually this convective current makes it’s way to the bottom. The lake “turns over”. The thermalcline dissapears and water temperature is uniform, top to bottom. However, all of the crud from the bottom rides the current to the surface.
    The lake becomes cloudy or muddy and the fishing suffers until the turnover is complete and the sediment settles again.
    Fish become more and more lethargic as the water cools. You will find them near warm water and green vegitation.

    photo by Jusben

  • Slow Cookers, iPhones, & Dogs : GF Radio

    Monica and Eric talk about using slow cookers in the fall, and what phone eric should buy, and who is your favorite dog, all on GF Radio this week. Plus zen thoughts about being busy.

    photo by crass

  • Fermentation Sauerkraut How To update

    Inspired by Daniel Gasteiger’s new book Yes, You Can! and Freeze and Dry It too book on canning, freezing and more, we are now fermenting cabbage into sauerkraut.

    And we are shooting a video on how to make sauerkraut. Above are the two jars we are fermenting for the video. I did one batch with just green cabbage, carrots and caraway seeds, and started a second batch of sauerkraut with a mix of red cabbage and green cabbage. From what i’ve read, it seems best to use an earthenware crock or plastic container; i used two large glass canning jars.

    we are fermenting cabbage into sauekraut and making a how-to video on making sauerkraut

    The fermentation jars are covered with a towel and sitting on the kitchen counter, I check them every day, and watch these bubbles come out from the cabbage. You can see some bubbles in the jar of red cabbage in the above photo.

    I asked on our Facebook Page for suggestions on what ingredients to put into sauerkraut, and got some great responses:

    Thom: I make two types, one with just cabbage,onions and salt and the other a spicy type with cabbage,onion,garlic,carrots,radish or daikon,pepper flakes,fresh ginger,dill and salt.

    Dennis: love making sauerkraut, apple and cumin is a good combo!

    Woodwife: Green Just cabbage and salt.

    Josh:  cabbage salt and sugar to sweeten it up a bit

    Michael:  Juniper berries

    Joe:  I all ready made mine for the year its canned and put up. I canned 12 quarts I use just salt and a little sugar and a few apples.

    Janet: I haven’t made sauerkraut yet, but I plan on it. I listen to your radio show podcasts on Itunes and recently purchased the book “Yes You Can”. I can’t wait for it to come in the mail. Thank you for everything that you do!! It is truly inspirational and entertaining. Keep up the good work!!! 🙂
    Sunday at 6:41pm ·  1 person

    Claudia:  you wanna get Gundelsheim or Midlessa Sauerkraut, put a McIntosh apple (cut up), bay leaves and Juniper berries as well as sugar and a beef boullion cube and let it cook for about an hour, Oh yeah, cut up an onion and put it in there as well
    Sunday at 10:58pm

    Gerald:  We do 3# cabbage to 1 tbsp salt. Pack it down til brine forms (maybe top off) Weigh it down so the cabbage stays under the brine. Cover and wait. Sometimes we add caraway seeds, but plain ol’ kraut is best. This year we used 80# cabbage total.
    Monday at 8:02pm

    Gerald:  I have also used the lacto-fermented brine in your artisan bread to make it sourdoughish.

    Neat, all sorts of ideas here. next batch will have apples in it. I’m curious about canning the sauerkraut afterward, does that reduce its health qualities? Let me know what you think below:

     

     

  • How to Hunt Deer for Food GF Radio

    How to hunt deer for the beginner, what kind of gear you need to hunt deer, where do you hunt deer? Author Jackson Landers., author of The Beginner’s Guide to Hunting Deer for Food (Beginner’s Guide To… (Storey))
      talks with Eric about hunting deer for food.

    “Hunting deer is the most inexpensive, environmentally friendly way to acquire organic, grass-fed meat. Even if you’ve never held a gun before, author Jackson Landers can show you how to supplement your food supply with venison taken near your home. He addresses everything a new hunter needs to know: how to choose the correct rifle and ammunition, how to hunt effectively and safely, and what to do if something goes wrong. He includes chapters on field dressing and butchering after the kill, recipes for using the meat, and a chapter on the politics and psychology of hunting. Whether you hunt to be more self-sufficient, to eat the safest and most nutritious meat possible, to protect the environment, or to save money, this book is the perfect guide.”

    Deer Hunting can be an emotional topic for some of us. My thinking here was to allow you all to get into the head of a hunter who is very grounded. Jackson hunts deer to put meat on the table for his family, teaches deer hunting classes, and has been featured several times in the New York Times, and has been hosted by  Slow Food groups to talk about deer hunting, and how to cook venison.

    photo by matthew hull