Sorry I haven’t posted in a while… I’ve been very busy with trying to get caught back up after the heat wave, putting food up, and deciding what to do with my life.
You might guess from the title that I’ve chosen at least one component of the “life” thing. I’m writing a book. It’ll be my first. You can probably imagine what the topic is. So, if you’re a high-powered literary agent or publisher who follows the Urban Hayseed, I will consider speaking with you if you’re super nice about it.
Harvest is a daily thing now. We have little piles, boxes, and baskets of veggies all over the house. The squashy things are crazy. I actually delayed a bit too long on the bush beans and ended up with nearly unusable beans. Gotta stay on it, heat or no.
In the kitchen, I’ve been thoroughly investigating fermented pickles. If you’ve made pickles, you’ve probably made the vinegar type. That is, you provide the sourness by using a whole bunch of vinegar and process them right away. With fermented pickles, you add your stuff, a bit of salt, and maybe a touch of vinegar, and then you let the whole thing follow nature’s course to develop the sourness with naturally present bacteria. Same idea as sourdough or lambic ales from Belgium.
The upside is that the taste is much more interesting than the vinegar pickles. The downside is that it fires your worst fears of a horrible botulism death because you touched something with your dirty gardener fingers.
The reality is that you have to try pretty hard to get botulism, and most other contaminants will just make your pickles nasty. Worst case is likely to be some extra time in the bathroom, and even that seems like it’d take some effort to achieve.
We’re all so paranoid about our food that it seems that we’re crippling our immune systems and precluding any ingestion of the little beasties that our body actually uses to keep us healthy.
Regardless, my kraut is so good that it’d make you consider eating it even if the chances were 50-50 that you’d spend the next week in the pot. OK, maybe not 50-50. It’s quite good, though.
No pictures today. I’ll try to get back on the horse tomorrow.
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That’s what you call a tease.
Got a working title for us? Non-fiction, no? C’mon man! Think of that guy who does (did?) all those movie promos.. How might he light a fire for the book (so to speak)?
I await further advance press.
Glad you’re back. I missed my bees-n-flowers-stuff fix.
I do have a working title, actually. Still, I’d rather get a little further on the thing before I do too much advance press. I’m trying to line up some notable interviews at the moment. That should be interesting.
Kate from NH, thank you very much. I’ll see if I can find anymore bees-n-flowers-stuff out there.