Drying Persimmons

Yesterday we went to Santa Cruz and as part of the  www.fruitcruz.org, there were about 40 people who came to pick persimmons from some Santa Cruz local's trees and learn the art of Japanese hoshigaki. Now I have two strings of persimmons drying in the kitchen thanks to Steve Schnaar who explained how to peel persimmons and hang them up with string. We learned some tips to prevent the fruit molding, a common issue,  one was to stay away from ripe persimmons, and use slightly green ones if possible. The other great tip was  to use a fan for part of the day to keep the air moving around the persimmons. When you cut the persimmons, try to keep a T shaped stem so it's easly to hang the fruit.

Solar drying tomatoes

Continuing on the theme of removing water for preserving foods. Why not use the energy of the sun? Yesterday, late in the day, I started drying tomatoes, cut in half with a bit of olive oil and salt,  in the Solar Oven, Today, I"m continuing the process. Even early in the day, you can get quite high temperatures by adjusting the oven to capture the sun. For dehydrating, you leave the glass door, slightly open so that condensation doesn't happen. The oven comes with some racks that you can use with parchment paper, I may give that a try later today.  You can do three racks at one time. My plan is to pack these tomatoes in oil and store in the refrigerator.

Vegetables preserved in oil

This lovely jar of semi-dehydrated vegetables in oil was inspired by the 3 days we spent at The Apple Farm in Philo, Ca. We had a lovely time, but one of the highlights was a Food Preserving class taught by Karen. She talked about several different techniques including, cheese and butter making, jam and pickle making and even making bread crumbs. All of these techniques all have one thing in common - the removal of water.   

The jar of zucchini, eggplant and peppers packed in oil  was done following the principles from the book, My Calabria by Rosetta Costantino, after being semi dehydrated by a combination of salting for 4 hours to remove water and several hours in the dehydrator (she air dries), and cooking in vinegar (to reduce the pH), followed by another drying, they are packed in oil and stored in the refrigerator.  I made a few batches of zucchini last year and enjoyed them for several months, taking care to cover with oil and return to the refrigerator for storage. This year is the first time I"m trying eggplant and a few peppers.  The peppers and eggplant were grown in our garden. Unfortunately, our zucchini plants haven't started producing yet, so those were purchased from the local farmer's market.

Broody chickens

Well, hee it is the middle of May and i'm just getting back to blogging. Today I wanna talk about broodiness. No, not the walking around with a storm cloud over your head type of broodiness.

I am talking about a broody hen. Basically, from time to time, a hen will become overwhelmed with the need to sit on a clutch of eggs and hatch them and raise chicks. It has happened twice in a very short period of time with blacky, our black cochin.

How do you break a hen of broodiness? There are several schools of thought on this one. One method is to dunk the hen in cool water, the idea being to cool down their body heat. Another thought is to suspend the hen in a wire cage without a floor above the ground, or put her into a cage with a rooster for  at least a week. The idea is to make her uncomfortable, and breaking her concentration from the nestbox. We both think these methods are a little cruel.

What we ended up doing is isolating her from the other hens in a separate part of the coop so that she couldn't see or reach the nestbox, while allowing her to see the other hens. After a few days, she was cured. Unfortunately in a few weeks, she was back in isolation. She seems to be cured again, hopefully we'll see if it holds for a while this time.

Until next time, Head Chicken Wrangler

 Peace

I really need to write more about my culinary adventures if for nobody else but myself! Today I made a batch of chickpea miso in a pickl-it jar. I learned about these very nice fermenting vessels when I took a Dosa and Chutney class from Lisa's Counter Culture . I've never made miso before, but I found the koji on sale at a local Asian grocery store and before I knew it, it was in my basket.  From what I've read, miso is usually made in crocks, which are super expensive. These pickl-it jars are somewhat less costly than the crocks, so it makes sense to use one because miso takes a year to ferment. Here are the instructions I used.