Squash Wine Recipe

• 5 lbs ripe Hubbard squash flesh, grated
• 2 lbs Demerara (or Turbnado) sugar (light brown sugar is a poor substitute)
• 11-oz can of Welch's 100% White Grape Juice frozen concentrate
• zest and juice of 3 Valencia oranges
• zest and juice of 1 lemon
• 1 tsp finely diced ginger root
• 3 3-inch sticks cinnamon
• 6-8 whole cloves
• 1/4 tsp powdered grape tannin
• 6 1/2 pts water
• 1 tsp yeast nutrient
• Champagne wine yeast

Put water on stove to boil. Cut and remove seeds from squash. Peel and grate squash and place in nylon straining bag with zest, cinnamon, ginger and cloves. Tie closed and set in primary. Remove water from heat and stir sugar and Welch's concentrate into water until sugar is dissolved and pour over nylon bag. Cover and set aside to cool. When cooled to room temperature, add citrus juice, tannin and yeast nutrient. Stir and add yeast in a starter solution. Re-cover and stir daily, punching down the bag each time, until specific gravity drops to 1.010 or below.

Remove and drip drain bag (do not squeeze). Discard bag contents. Transfer to secondary, add one finely crushed and dissolved Campden tablet, stir gently and fit airlock. Rack every two months for six months. Stabilize with one finely crushed and dissolved Campden tablet and 1/2 teaspoon potassium sorbate and let sit 10 days -- 30 days if you sweeten it -- then rack into bottles. Cellar two years at least before drinking. [Jack Keller's own recipe] Makes one gallon.

From Jack Keller's Wine Blog

Locavores

     This property in US Hwy 19 has finally been sold to a retail business called Rural King. Yay, jobs for the unemployed, and a convenient source of animal feed. I'm so excited about what kind of goods they are going to offer.
     Again, a fortuitous business deal. Hernando County has recently legalized backyard chickens and Rural King will, no doubt, be the only chicken supply store on the West Side.
     On a completely other side note, I have accidentally run into two chatty young men in the last few months who are interested in opening their own local food restaurants. One was a transplant from New Jersey (surprise surprise) that I met at a local council meeting and another was a chatty young (maybe 20) waiter at a local restaurant. Both are interested in my rabbits. The Yank plans on getting his veggies from Dade City and his meats from a farm in Brooksville. The waiter is still in the planning stages, which is cool.
    Barbecue rabbit with orange sauce...local foods...

Simple Cooking at Home

"Each woman should feel herself to be a hostess to her family. This is the grand climax of a procession of achievements. A woman who is a good planner, a wise purchaser, an excellent cook and a gracious hostess to her family is truly a MASTER HOME BUILDER."
-Meta Given, The Modern Family Cook Book, 1942.

     Our world has changed a great deal since Ms. Givens wrote that anti-feminist statement in the 1940s. Since then we've seen the rise of our great economy. Oil, plastics, refrigeration, transportation, and feminism leading to a changing workforce have modified our way of life. Many a young and old person no longer have the skills or desire to cook at home.
     I think the best reason for cooking at all is so that you can control exactly what goes in to your own food. In the world of peanut, gluten, and iodine allergies this is important, but also from the chemical and preservative perspective as well. You can actively control how much sodium, fat, and oil goes in the meals. You can actively exclude high fructose corn syrup, maltodextrin, MSG, sorbitol/xylitol, and other irritants. You can choose between organic or genetically modified, a choice somewhat lacking in most restaurants. Local versus imported. Food colored or irradiated. Fresh or canned or frozen.
     My mother likes to cook at home to save money, but she also likes all of her recipes to be easy to make, so she tends to have a handful of raw ingredients and some pre-made ingredients in her recipes. Pancakes from mixes. Pies from canned, pre-sugared filling. Corned beef and cabbage made with canned meat. Store-bought ice cream.
     I don't necessarily disagree with her philosophy in that it works for her and she likes doing things that way. It looks to me to be a generational issue, as lots of young women returned to the workforce they wanted to have their boxed cake batter and eat it too. I just think its a bit of a consumerist mindset, or lack of mindset, to think we need to have pancake batter to make pancakes is just silly. (Make babies and go shopping!)
     It has been proven the nutritional content of every food declines with time and processing, except in the special case of fermenting. Freezing, canning, cooking, storing, dehydrating; all suffer some loss of quality over fresh.
     The solution of the perpetual question of what are we to eat is simple. It's all about pairing foods to create a balance, then sprinkle a little bit of your preferences on top. Eat a variety of foods every day, it doesnt have to be expensive if you're careful.
     Beans pair with grains, whole are more beneficial than processed.
     Meat pairs with vegetables.
     Dairy pair with grains.
     Fruit in moderation.
     It is almost always cheaper to buy unprocessed simple ingredients, like sugar and flour, in bulk.

Michael Pollan - The Omnivore's Next Dilemma

Michael Pollan about Sustainable Agriculture

      Michael Pollan is one of the foremost speakers about the national food situation currently facing us. His non-threatening persona and charming eloquence make him a popular choice. Most importantly, he advocates many of the same ideals that I advocate, the least of which are that people need to get back to producing healthful food and eating locally.
     This video is an exerpt from a larger one that he made as a follow-up to his book and documentary, an Omnivore's Dilemma and the Botany of Desire. This interview piece specifically describes Joel Salatin's Polyface Farms, a sustainable protein production operation in Virginia. Please comment, criticize.

Slow Coffee

How to brew coffee without a coffeemaker
     It should be noted that I have a drip coffee maker and a diffuser, but I still prefer this method because it's so easy. And it uses no electricity. It creates very little mess. There's no heat or steam warming up my kitchen either.
     Simply take an old jar with a lid and add your coffee to it as you prefer. I usually use about four teaspoons for this size jelly jar. Then fill the jar all the way to the top with regular water from your tap or filter. Put the lid on securely, then give your mix a few shakes. Put the jar in the back of the fridge and ignore for two or more days. I usually leave it in for three or four.
     Then when you are ready to drink, grab a cheap coffee filter, filter basket, or heck even a piece of good cheesecloth will probably work. Place your filter into a food-grade funnel, place the drain of the funnel into a carafe or your cup. Shake the mix again, then pour into your filter/funnel contraption. The idea is to get all the grounds and coffee out of your jar and into your filter, then your cup. Take your filter and grounds outside and feed the plants with it.
     I would be cautious not to leave your coffee mix for too long in the refrigerator. Any chlorine in your municipal tapwater should inhibit some bacterial growth, in theory anyway. Coffee has natural oils and compounds which can and do go bad over time, and I'm sure it would be a displeasing ferment. I don't let ours sit back there more than a week, not that it would ever last that long around here.

Jelly Jar Sauerkraut

     There is a glut of literature available about the benefits of fermented food, the real truth is that ferments are something that every chef should know but does not thanks to commercially packaged crap at the grocery store. Sauerkraut from the grocery store is NOT tasty. It is a bit salty and sour, which makes it good for a hotdog, maybe. But the kraut from the gas station and the kraut from the store are missing the valuable probiotics that you get from making it yourself.

     The first time I tried to ferment sauerkraut I used a repurposed old crock pot from a slow cooker. I had the crock loaded with yummy cabbage and plastic bagss of water to weigh down the cabbage. Salted, I put the lid of the crockpot back on and put it in a corner of the kitchen to ferment. Big Mistake. Not realizing the jar needed to be mostly airtight to keep out the tiny black flies that occasionally come in the back door, I lifted off the bags a week later to find tiny fly larvae all over the edges of the cabbage. I was so disgusted I threw the entire crock into the trash!
     Attempt number two: I decided to try a much smaller vessel this time, a jelly jar. I pureed the cabbage in the blender with some water and added about three teaspoons of sea salt, which is far more than is recommended but hey, this is the south, I want to inhibit most of those microorganisms, right? I put a coffee filter under the lid and put the lid loosely on the jar (thinking the flies should have trouble with that setup) and put it on my counter. Three weeks later, skimmed off the pinkish kraut from the top and it smells delicious.       Success.

University of Alaska Saurkraut Guide