The Urban Farmer's Almanac

A couple weeks ago, Hannah found an egg in the bag of cedar shavings that we keep on the back porch for the rabbit’s cage. We kind of laughed about it and thought it was a good thing she found it in a timely manner. Since then, we’ve found a couple more in there, and today we caught the chicken in the act. Apparently when I let them out to roam in the yard, she much prefers the bag of bedding to the normal nesting box for egg-laying. Maybe it’s a message that I should clean it out more often, or that she prefers the wood shavings to straw. (Though last summer we did find a couple eggs laid on the straw bale in the shed, so I think it might just be fun to have a change of scenery every once in awhile.)

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We planted beets right before our big family vacation last June, and they straggled and struggled along all summer. I never got around to using them in the fall, and actively began ignoring them come winter. They survived some significant week-long freezes, and a couple good snows to boot.

I finally decided to pull them up and see if there was anything worth saving, and it turns out that beets are pretty darn tough in the ground. We cooked up a batch of golden beets for a salad a few weeks ago, and today I pulled out the fancy candy-cane striped Chioggos to roast for Robbie’s 3rd birthday party. After paring off the gnarly skin from the tops, they look as good as new.

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I know in some circles I’m the last train to leave this station, but I recently ran into the blog Orangette. Fabulous photos, the perfect tone with the writing. (Which is why it’s super well-known, and she’s written an even more awesome book that I read half of last night, and why I’m kind of beating a dead horse here.) But to the point… I ran into a recipe for overnight yeasted waffles. A couple posts back I wasn’t necessarily blown away by the cheese I made… it was as it should be, at least, but nothing beyond that. Not so with these waffles. They were unlike anything I’ve ever had; in a normal waffle maker (not a Belgian one) they crisp up and almost entirely and dissolve in your mouth. And the kids cleaned their plates at breakfast, which has not been a pattern of late.

They may not be for everyone – Alicia prefers a cakier waffle and thought these were more like a croissant than a waffle, but said they were good (in that way that meant “good for you to make for you and the kids when I am not at home”). And I am thinking that they would be good with sourdough starter instead of regular yeast (Zack, can I have some more? I killed the last batch.) But seriously, try these, you won’t regret it.

Marion Cunningham's Raised Waffles via Orangette with blueberry syrup from last summer.

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Turns out maybe that little portable greenhouse I started some seeds in was maybe a little too portable. We’ll see what can be salvaged. Hannah was morose about the situation: “I guess I’ll have to plant my chives again.”

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My mom wanted to make cheese for her birthday, but the day of the party she took ill so everything was called off. That didn’t change the fact that I still had 2 gallons of milk in the refrigerator (one of which was fancy raw milk from Vashon, which seemed like it might go bad at any moment, since I bought it with bright orange $2.00 off stickers on each half-gallon. Which still meant it was $5.99 / half gallon by the way. Yikes.)

Anyway, I got to the task a couple days later, and followed the instructions from this website. It all went relatively smoothly (despite the fact that yes, that is a thermometer for people, not cheese, normally), and it took close to 3 hours start-to-finish. I was pretty impressed with the final product, arrived at through a combination of kneading curds and microwaving them for short bursts. The finished ball of cheese bears an uncanny resemblance to pizza dough.

However, it is only partially satisfying when you basically make something that tastes like what it’s supposed to taste like… I wasn’t expecting transcendent cheese, but for all the effort it too, it should be something special. It tasted good, and it’s going to make awesome pizza, but I don’t see putting this project into the weekly rotation.

I ended up cutting it up in chunks and putting in a container with some of the leftover whey to keep it fresh. I’m not sure if you’re supposed to do that, but it seemed to make sense.

The bonus was that you could boil the leftover whey at the end (which looked like about 90% of the volume I started with) and strain that to make a small quantity of ricotta. And I mean small… maybe a 1/2 cup. But something’s better than nothing.

Some postscript notes:

1. It turned out that storing the cheese in the whey was a bad idea; it just got soggy. I’m not sure what the difference between that and the little balls of mozzarella they sell in the store packed in liquid, but I think it may have to do with the fact that it was cut up, rather than formed into a ball.

2. The preferred method of storage after the initial soggy cheese debacle was to wrap them in a slightly damp rag and store them in a ziplock bag. They stayed at a nice consistency that way until I got around to making some tasty enchiladas.

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