sunday before the harvest

We harvested our 1st non-misshapen shiitake mushrooms earlier this week.  THEY WERE DELICIOUS.  Andy noted that they seemed to have a slightly creamy quality to them.  I noted that the wonderful thing about growing mushrooms at home in a box is that there’s no dirt on the gills.

Here’s a photo essay of the mushrooms we harvested on sunday and then on monday.  It’s amazing how quickly the 2nd batch of mushrooms grew once the 1st set of mushrooms were out of the way!

On sunday we harvested the 2 mushrooms growing on the inside of this line of mushrooms.  We chose those 2 largely because, as you can see, the 2nd mushroom is trying to take over everything.  We were vaguely afraid we’d wake up monday morning to a giant mushroom trying to push its way into the bedroom.  At one point the mushroom seemed to double in size over the course of one day.  It was amazing.  It was also delicious.

Sunday: before harvesting.

Sunday: beautiful, dirt-free gills.

Sunday: comparison shot to show how huge the mutant mushroom was.

Sunday: another comparison shot.

Monday: the remaining 2 mushrooms swelled to fill the gaps where their neighbors had been.

Monday: So big in just 24 hours!!

As i read more about about gardening and growing food at home, i became increasingly interested in acquiring a kit for growing mushrooms.  Both Andy and i love mushrooms and, depending upon the variety, they can be dead easy to grow at home.

Surprisingly, i had to trick him into trying it.  Why he initially resisted i do not to this day quite understand.

I accomplished this trick by taking him to a “Mushroom May-nia” day put on by the Puget Sound Mycological Society at our local natural history museum in may of 2008.  Not only did the mushroom day include talks and exhibits about mushrooms, but we also got to each make a kit for growing oyster mushrooms — perhaps the easiest mushrooms to grow at home.

This is often the trick with Andy — make it free and right in front of him.  Heh.

Well, those 1st kits of ours never did produce any oyster mushrooms, but by then we were hooked on the idea.  I bought a book.  Ordered a catalog.  Plotted.

In the spring of 2009, Cascadia Mushrooms appeared at our farmers marker.  Ah HA!  I pounced at the opportunity and we came home with an oyster mushroom kit.  This time it worked extremely well and we were able to get several delicious harvests before the extreme hot weather in late july pretty much killed the kit.

For the entire rest of 2009 i checked the farmers market every week in the hope that Cascadia would return.  Finally, in december, there they were again.  No oyster kits this time, tho’ that was fine — now we wanted to try shiitakes.

misshapen shiitake

I’ve been faithfully spritzing our shiitake kit for almost a month now.  About a week ago i started to see little white buds, which was very exciting.  Except they’ve remained at the “little white buds” stage ever since, which has gotten increasingly disappointing.  I want mushrooms and i want them now!

Tonight, because the mushroom block tilts slightly forward, i decided to actually lift the block to make sure i was spritzing it evenly all over.  But the block resisted a little when i tilted it backward.  I looked at the bottom — and there was 1 lone shiitake growing thru’ the rack the mushroom block rests on.  A gentle tug and the shiitake came loose.

The poor thing was basically growing flat on top of its own stem, which is a little difficult to discern from this picture.  You can clearly see, however, the indentation on the cap from where it was starting to grow into the rack the mushroom block was resting on.

I expect it will be no less delicious for being a warped little mushroom.  And i certainly look forward to some of its little friends bursting into fungal flower over the next few weeks.

mushroom growing box

growing. Both the oyster and shiitake mushrooms require a humidity chamber which allows some light to reach the mushrooms.  It’s a myth that all mushrooms need darkness to grow.  They should certainly not be in direct sunlight, but they likewise don’t require complete darkness.  They do require a slightly humid environment.  I’ve found that the most successful box is actually a plastic Rubbermaid/Sterlite storage container with a rack of some sort (currently i’m “borrowing” one of the cooling racks from my baking supplies) in the bottom to keep the mushroom kit from sitting in water.  I spritz the kit once a day and keep the box’s lid closed.

buying.

• Cascadia Mushrooms is the only supplier i’ve purchased from so far, largely because they come to my local farmers market (and, like Andy, if you put it right in front of me and make it impossibly easy, i am way more inclined to do something).  They only sell kits for oyster and shiitake mushrooms.  I’ve been extremely pleased with the crops we’ve gotten from each kit we’ve tried.  The vendor is himself very friendly and easy to approach with questions and for advice.
• Field & Forest Products was the 1st mushroom kit supplier recommended to me, and they look to be an especially good source if you’re interested in mushrooms other than oyster or shiitake or if you’re interested in larger-scale mushroom production beyond just a single counter-top kit.  I want to try some TP mushrooms!

book. The book that was recommended by the Puget Sound Mycological Society way back at the event that hooked us on mushroom growing is The Mushroom Cultivator (Stamets, Paul.  Olympia: Agarikon Press, 1983.).  It is packed with information useful for both large- and small-scale mushroom growing.

starting the emmer

1)  emmer sprouts. I started some emmer sprouts on sunday.  I soaked them for 12 hours, then drained them and set them on the bar.  I kept mine in a quart-sized canning jar with a bit of nylon rubberband-ed to the top to make draining easier.  Tuesday i rinsed and drained them.  Wednesday i did the same.  Thursday i did the same, but my reference books said that emmer sprouts are tastiest after only 2-3 days of sprouting so we were able to sample them that night.

And they were pretty tasty!  I’ve always liked sprouts anyway — i remember being jealous of the kid in elementary school who always seemed to have alfalfa sprouts in his lunches.  These were much different from alfalfa sprouts since it’s mostly just the swollen seeds with only a little bit of sprouting going on.

emmer sprouts on day #3

Surprisingly, the flavor was really reminiscent of something, tho’ i couldn’t quite put my finger on what.  It was Andy who pinpointed the taste — cucumbers!  How odd!!  But enjoyable nonetheless.

Andy noted that these will be tasty sprinkled on fresh veggie salads.  I’m looking forward to putting them in sandwiches.  I’ve also been meaning to get into making cold salads — i think the sprouts will be good for that, too.

I’m also interested in this:

I’ve continued to experiment with sprouting gluten grains and turning them into bread. We’ve now enjoyed bread baked from these sprouted grains: spelt, kamut and hard white wheat. None of these have caused any gluten-intolerance symptoms in those of my family who are gluten-sensitive.

We know a few people who have problems with gluten and we’d like to learn to bake bread for them.

But also, y’know?  These sprouts are just tasty to snack on, too.  :)

2)  daikon pickles. Last night i started another batch of daikon pickles.  I love the oshinko served at our local sushi restaurant, so i decided to try making some pickles myself.  I bought a tsukemono crock at Shiga’s back at the end of summer because daikon were in season and super fresh at the Japanese vegetable stand at the farmers market.  The woman at Shiga’s gave me this quick recipe, which is how she makes her pickles:

• peel & slice the daikon
• sprinkle the daikon slices with salt
• pack the salted daikon into the crock
• weight the daikon with a (clean!) rock
• taste test the daikon every few days until they reach the level of pickling you want

tsukemono crock & sliced daikon

The 1st thing i learned was to be careful of oversalting the daikon.  My 1st batch was okay, but definitely salty.

The 2nd thing i learned was to prepare the daikon the day you bring it home from the market.  On my 2nd try, i accidentally forgot about the daikon for about a week, at which point it had dried out in the fridge.  The pickling process for the daikon is the same as for sauerkraut — that is, the salt leeches out the vegetable’s own juices which then turns into the brine that pickles the veggies.  My 2nd batch of pickles molded before it ever had a chance to pickle.

Yesterday i bought a daikon (from Uwajimaya, since sadly the Japanese vegetable stall at the market is gone for the season) and immediately prepared it for pickles.  The daikon was remarkably fresh and juicy.  This morning the juices in the pot are about 3/4 of the way up to the top of the daikon already.

There’s so much daikon in there (i almost didn’t have room for the stones to weight it down!) i’ll probably do a taste test every day just to see how the pickling progresses.

This afternoon up here in our 4th-floor farm has been:

1)  sprouting. I bought Fresh Food from Small Spaces (Ruppenthal, R.J.  White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2008.) back in may.  We live in an apartment that, fortunately, has at least enough space for me to indulge my passion for growing things (herbs and fruit trees on the deck, mushrooms in the kitchen) — this book is an excellent addition to my library because it has great advice on how to cram even more growing things into our home.  (My only complaint about this book is that there’s no index.  What the…??)  The 1st, and perhaps easiest, thing i’m going to try from this book is sprouting.  So i spent the afternoon scouring the sprouting chapter in Fresh Food from Small Spaces, skimming Sprouters Handbook (Cairney, Edward.  Argyll, Scotland: Argyll Publishing, 2009.) (which i picked up at Essential Trading in Bristol on our trip back in october), and googling around the internet.

Tonight i shall start my 1st batch of sprouts — emmer farro from Bluebird Grain Farms!  I’m going to start the grains soaking tonight.  After 12 hours, i’ll drain the grains from the soaking water, rinse and drain them again, then let the jar sit on the kitchen counter.  Looks like i’ll need to rinse/drain them at least once a day.  After 2-3 days we should be able to eat the sprouted grains.  I can’t wait!

2)  horseradish. I love horseradish.  I grew up eating spicy, spicy horseradish in Central Pennsylvania.  Now that i have a deck garden i’ve been growing my horseradish (Armoracia rusticana) in a large container.  I started my plant in 2007.  You should wait a year to harvest anything, but winter 2008-09 was so super snowy and cold here in Seattle that i simply could not be bothered to care about harvesting horseradish, and besides the prepared horseradish available at our local seafood/poultry market is perfectly tasty.

But today!  Today was a sunny, warm, gorgeous day, so we took the opportunity to harvest a small bit of the horseradish root.  Andy scrubbed and peeled it, then carefully shredded it in the food processor — carefully, because ground horseradish is not something you want to get a strong whiff of.  Worse than onions.  Then we packed the pulverized horseradish into a small canning jar, sprinkled in just enough white vinegar to cover the mash, and put it into the fridge.  I’ll try it tomorrow to see what i think.

We followed the instructions in the Encyclopedia of Country Living (Emery, Carla.  Seattle: Sasquatch, 2008.), but Bert’s Gourmet Horseradish has some good information, too.

3)  beets (pickled).  I love beets, but only done in 1 specific way — i actually have a really hard time eating them any other way.  Because i grew up in Central PA, i must have my beets pickled.  Here’s how to do it:

• Boil the beets until they’re soft enough to get the skins off.  Remove the skins!
• Cut the beets into whatever pleases you in a pickle — round slices, bite-sized chunks, long strips.
• {Bonus step!  Prepare fresh garlic/onions to add to the pickles if you like.  We didn’t use these when i was growing up, but i’ve come to love them in my pickled beets now that i’m making the pickles myself.}
• Mix together white vinegar and water in whatever proportion pleases you.  I like 1 part vinegar to 2 parts water, but i know people who prefer either a 1-to-1 ratio or even just straight vinegar — yowza!
• Put the beets (and garlic/onions) into a glass jar and pour the pickling juice over everything — make sure all the veggies are covered!
• Put the jar into the refrigerator for at least a week for best effect.

I eat these pretty quickly because i love them so, but you can easily make up more beets (and garlic/onions) to put into the same pickling juice again.  I wouldn’t keep this more than a few months, tho’, to prevent it from growing nasty shit.

Traditionally, this would be pickled red beet eggs.  To do that just hardboil some eggs and peel off the shells, then add them to the pickling juice with the beets (and garlic/onions).  Wait as long as possible to make sure the pickling has permeated the eggs — you know you’ve achieved perfection if the yolks have turned purple.  But i don’t like egg yolks, so i just make pickled beets these days.

Caution!! Be careful with those beets — they’ll stain everything while you’re working with them.  Wear an apron!

This is going to be our 7th summer in this apartment, and thus it’s also my 7th summer as a gardener.  This time around i’ve decided that i’ve had enough of trying random plants that catch my eye in the store (aphid-infested fuchsia, i’m looking at you).  In fact, i think  that i’ll probably not even attend Seattle Tilth’s Edible Plant Sale this year — it’s just temptation waiting to happen.  I mean, i still haven’t really done anything with the lemon balm i bought last year or the feverfew i bought the year before that.

This year is going to be, to the best of my ability, all about growing things i like.  Things i like to look at (lilacs, tulips) or things i/we like to eat (tomatoes, potatoes, herbs).  Period.  Nothing fancy.

Some time last week, during a rare break in the month-long rain and drizzle we’ve had, i took some time to get out on the balcony and rearrange things so that i have a better idea of what space is available for larger containers — do i truly have the space for experimenting with potatoes, for example.  I also chucked a few plants that had died over the winter and moved all the empty pots into the house for scrubbing.  It was a good purge.

The past few days both the weather and i were feeling excellent (the sun came out and i was over the cold i’d had the weekend before), so i’ve been able to: trim the dead leaves out of the strawberry containers (the alpine strawberries in particular seem to be doing very well), plant the new cherry tree (it has little glossy green buds on it!!), and begin my tomato experiment.

The tomato experiment is this.  I read somewhere that it’s possible to grow tomatoes simply by tossing a frozen tomato into a prepared hole in the ground, which is a good way to save a variety you like one season and reproduce it the next.  Last year i took a few examples of cherry tomatoes that i found particularly delicious and saved them in the freezer.  Last night i took them out and threw them into pots.  Just as a fun experiment.  If i don’t have any growth in a few weeks i’ll probably buy a few tomato starts from the farmers’s market.

I do want to pick up another plant light for seed-starting.  In addition to the tomato experiment, i have a few other seeds i’d like to play with — mostly from seed packets i’ve found floating around the house and that i’d like to test for viability.  This is actually part of my ongoing apartment-wide cleanup: if the seeds don’t grow, i want to toss the packets and get them out of my house!

My biggest challenge at the moment is soil pH.  Apparently i’ve killed all of my tea tree (Camellia sinensis) starts the past 2 years because i never bothered to check that their soil was acid enough.  Oops.   Now i also have a blueberry bush to plant, so i picked up a pH tester and some peat moss so i can get serious about proper soil pH.  So far i’m not doing something right: the soil/peat mixture that i put together last night is still registering at a beautifully neutral pH of 7.  Friday after work i’m going to try to track down some azalea/rhododendron soil (and possibly sulfur) to work into the mix.

I’m also hoping that this coming weekend i’ll be able to pick up the few remaining herb starts i want — i can’t quite seem to keep bay, oregano, rosemary, sage, or winter savory going over the winter — so that i can get them potted and into place.  Once i have all the basics planted i’ll be able to see if there’s any room left on the balcony for my last 2 experiments: potatoes and Mexican sour gherkins.

homemade sauerkraut
Originally uploaded by wrdnrd.

I’ve been wanting to try making sauerkraut at home for awhile now — ever since picking up a copy of The Encyclopedia of Country Living (by Carla Emery) back in 2001. But Carla’s method required pounds of cabbage and months of waiting while it all fermented. I don’t want 25 pounds of sauerkraut, and besides, i only get 1 head at a time from our CSA farm every other week or so when the stuff is in season.

This past summer, fortunately, i came across Novella Carpenter’s much easier sauerkraut instructional:

Get some nice heads, tight ones. Half the cabbages, then chop into thin strips. Add the cabbage to a large bowl and sprinkle with kosher salt. A TB of salt per cup of cabbage is the rule of thumb. Once sprinkled with salt, pound the cabbage so that it starts to release some water. I use a pestle from a mortar and pestle that my roommate left behind. Add this point you can add caraway or coriander seeds. Once the cabbage strips look a bit wilted, pack them tightly into a large jar. Pack them tightly into the jar using your fist to press down all the cabbage. Weigh down with a bag filled with water or a rock, or as pictured, a glass bottle of water. This isn’t shown, but you should also drape a cheesecloth or piece of fabric to keep out flies and such. After an hour or so, the cabbage should be submerged under its own juices. Let sit 2-3 days on the counter. Taste after a few days and see if you like it, when tastes right, remove the weight, and put the jar in the fridge to enjoy. Happy lacto-fermenting!

Now THAT i can handle!

Last night we were cleaning out the veggie drawers. Hmm, 1 small head of cabbage. Well, not a “nice, tight” head (per Novella’s instructions). Nor an especially fresh head: Carla’s instructions say to start work on sauerkraut within about 24 hours of harvesting the cabbage — and i’m guessing the head of cabbage i found lurking in the bottom of the fridge is about a month old. Well, i pulled off all the damaged and dubious leaves anyway and proceeded onward. I wound up with about 4 cups of shredded cabbage, which was more than enough for my purposes!

I added the salt, pounded the crap out of everything for awhile, then packed it into a 2-cup mason jar. For weight, i filled one of my small spice jars with water (because the spice jar was the only thing i could find that would fit into the mason jar). My cotton veggie bag seemed like a good “don’t feel like cutting off a piece of cheesecloth” solution, so i gumbanded that onto the mouth of the jar.

And now we wait until about wednesday night after my copyediting class. The only thing i’m worried about is the temperature in the house. Carla suggests:

Store at 70-75°F while fermenting. At temperatures between 70 and 75°F, kraut will be fully fermented in 3 to 4 weeks; at 60°F, fermentation may take 5 to 6 weeks. At temperatures lower than 60°F, kraut may not ferment; above 75°, it may become soft. (p.273, 10th edition)

I’m not entirely certain how warm it is in the kitchen right now. Outside temps here in Seattle have only been reaching highs of mid-40s lately, and we don’t turn on the heat in our apartment. I’m betting (the kraut) that it’s not below 60°F in here, tho’.