five acres in florida

score! we have chantrelles growing quite happily under the oak right next to the house. i found a little patch of 5 or 6 golden lovelies which i brought in to identify, and my suspicions were correct :). i have never eaten chantrelles and i will need a recipe to know what to do with them, but anything i get wild makes me happy (especially in my own yard).

yesterday i picked a whole bag full of wild grapes from the neighbor's front fence, and today i mixed them with some of our june harvest of blackberries to make wine. only about 3/4 gallon, but with a few more episodes of picking i could theoretically make a decent-sized batch of the stuff. last time we made blackberry wine we used a "fancy" recipe, complete with special yeast and clarifiers and plenty of high-tech equipment, but it turned out not unlike mouthwash in terms of alcohol content--though tasty enough, if you could stand the burn--so this time i'm doing the hillbilly sugar+yeast version. it's also ready a lot quicker that way; 6 weeks instead of 6-12 months. i'll be ready for this one just about when the little mister is arriving... maybe we can have it as our celebration wine on his birth day :)

i used the weed-eater for the first time today, and i must admit it wasn't really very fun. the vibration was intensely unpleasant, it was heavy, and apparently the freaking string was busted b/c i wasn't really making a lot of progress... but matt cleaned up after my attempt and at least i can say i tried. i also discovered a flower on my morning glory vine (planted to grow up the hand rails to the front door), which delights me! i have recently been training them up the sides, as they are now long enough to really get up there and make a show. matt has done a great job cleaning up the back yard from all the leftover debris of the old trailer... he was actually shoveling little handfuls of broken glass and crap into a trash can today.

(train of thought interrupted, blog over. but i'm sure i'll pick it up later!)

it just occurred to me that one might freeze yogurt for later eating. duh!

we have so much milk piling up that i need ways to use it--i make yogurt with it, and from that yogurt cheese (which is SO SO UNBELIEVABLY GOOD), but one can only eat so much yogurt before it goes bad. plus i need to be able to blend in fruits and honey for rowan or she's not into it... so, frugal idea:

- reuse those blasted plastic baby food containers i saved from all the WIC baby food by filling them with small batches of blended fruity homemade raw milk yogurt
- freeze them! apparently the cultures go dormant in the freezer but are reinvigorated upon thawing/eating when heated to decent temperatures.

voila, no more buying $$ yobaby whole milk yogurt cups. and no wasted packaging.

something most of us never encounter except in kid's rhymes has entered my life for the long-term: whey. it's kinda stinky, gross greenish-yellow watery liquid, but somehow this stuff is also really great. i'm experimenting with the many uses for it and since i expect it to be a resident in my fridge as i continue to play with dairy, i decided to be its friend. as a result of a failed yogurt-making trial yesterday (i cooked it WAY too long b/c i left the crockpot on when it was supposed to be off...), i have a pint of cheese whey hanging around at the moment.

last night i dumped some in a bowl with steel cut oats and cranberries to soak for this morning's breakfast, and when i woke up i added more whey and some of the draining yogurt-cheese whey, a spoonful of sugar, and cooked it for about 10 minutes. that was the best oatmeal i've ever eaten; i am SO excited to have a fermented, homemade, uber-healthy breakfast that i actually want to eat again! can't wait until rowan is over her picky-about-new-things phase so i can feed it to her too. (right now she will only eat eggs, cooked apples, or date-coconut rolls for breakfast. sigh.) i did manage to sneak some into her eggs in place of milk for scrambling though; that made me happy. i swear it added nice flavor, too.


ever-growing list of uses for whey:
1) soaking grains
2) baking ANYTHING
3) cooking, in place of milk or water
4) smoothies - though i am skeptical on this one
5) gjetost/mysost - boiled down to a thick goo, it makes some kind of norwegian cheese...
6) caramelized w/ sugar into syrup
7) soapmaking, in place of water
8) ricotta
9) marinating meat, with seasonings - apparently the enzymes tenderize and help seal the flavors
10) fermenting veggies and/or pickling
11) (yogurt whey) making fizzy drinks - add some lemon juice, sugar, and soda water

update 8/29: how about yogurt whey? it's a bit more tart, and with the good bacteria arguably more healthy. i say go for it in any of the recipes above... it's worth a try! the problem i'm having with my whey is that it competes with buttermilk--which i also have in abundance--in too many cases and i never know which one i'd rather use. *sigh*