Wild Concord Grapes

For those of you who live near Boston, you might know the Minuteman Bike Trail!  A old train track converted into a bike trail that extends from Alewife Station in Cambridge to Arlington to Lexington to Bedford.  Not only is it a beautiful path to bike along in the fall, but it has some wild Concord grapes still growing along it's borders.  Keep an eye out for them in the fall next time you are biking.  

James and I found a particularly prolific vine in the fall of 2010, took a kitchen stool out there, and balanced precariously on it to reach some of the higher, untouched grapes.  These dark, purple grapes are incredibly flavorful.  Very different than what you get in the store.  

 We collected a good amount, washed them, and decided to make grape jelly.  You can use this same method to make grape juice, too.  Here's James squishing the grapes in a pot over low heat with a little bit of watered added.  Grapes are tough to squish because they are so slippery.  Though not as challenging as someone is making it appear... eh-hem!

Here they are all squished.  Thank you, James, for that laborious and time-intensive task!  After the camera clicked, it took him maybe 5-10 minutes to finish squishing the grapes.  You want to break as many of them open as possible.  

Here we are straining the skins, seeds, and pulp from the juice.  Let the juice drip out of the pulp for a good hour.  Or squish it out as James is doing below.  Squishing the juice out speeds up the process, but it also might make a cloudy jelly.  Both will have the same lovely grape-y flavor.  It's just a matter of personal preference. 

Here's the jelly recipe we used.  Pretty simple.  You don't need to add pectin if you have some green grapes in the mix.  By boiling the grapes down, you're releasing some of the natural pectins in the grape seeds and skins.  

Grape Jelly

For every 2 parts grape, use 1/2 - 1 parts sugar.  Add some lemon juice for flavor (optional)... not required in this recipe to up the acidity.  No pectin required.

Simmer until it begins to look like this as it drips off the spoon:

If canning, pour jelly into sterilized jars, leaving a 1/4-1/2 inch headspace.  Process in a hot water bath canner for 5-10 minutes.

Ta-daah!  Grape jelly.  

This recipe is based off recommendations from The National Center for Home Food Preservation.  Check out their other recipes and ideas.

A Balcony Garden

Growing way up high, where the birds and the swallowtails fly, is a garden that continues to make me smile.  This is the balcony garden in the summer of 2010.    You can see the peach tree and the hanging tomato planters.

Here's one of it's harvests: basil, collards, cucumber, chard, nasturtium leaves and flowers, and a lovely assortment of tomatoes.  Tomatoes became the definite leader in terms of weight.  

Popcorn Off the Cob

Try popping popcorn directly from the cob.  Check out this video of us doing it for the first time.  

Popcorn corn is a specific type of corn.  You should check and see if the corn you buy is "for popping".  Popping corn needs to "cure" for a bit.  So if you buy your popcorn in the fall, try it out, and it doesn't work, don't despair!   The dry months in winter are perfect for "curing" popcorn corn.  We used them as decorations as seen in the video.

To pop a popcorn cob, put the cob in a paper bag and roll the end shut.  Microwave for 3-4 minutes or on the popcorn setting on your microwave.  Pretty easy.  The bag holds in the heat and makes the kernels more likely to get to the temperature they need to pop.

Enjoy!

Seed Bombs

Valentine's Day?  Your true love's birthday?  What can be more romantic than a seed bomb!?  Ok, let me explain what they are.  

Seeds bombs are essentially clay or compost (compost from our good pets in the corner of our kitchen that are all named Sydney) and wild flower seeds that I collected last fall mixed together.  Our pets = composting worms in our vermicompost bin as we are not allowed to have any fuzzy four-legged ones in our current third floor apartment.  

You can toss these seed balls on to a barren lot or square that has been trodden on or neglected, and the idea is that they will grow and be beautiful flower explosions.  Particularly true if you bombard such a neglected surface right before a long spring rain. The wildflowers I chose are ones that produce lots of seeds (sunflowers!), can survive heat and drought (tea roses) or are just lovely and easy to propagate (bachelor’s buttons, morning glory, blue flax, daylilies etc…). The compost was rolled in leftover cocoa shells (a great mulch that absorbs water) so they really do smell like chocolate.  

We'll see what comes up in the spring!  

We're Going To Get Bees!

In the spring of 2011, we decided to become beekeepers. James and I built "top bar" hives from spare lumber. Here he is making some final measurements.

Then our beekeeping equipment arrived.

We got so excited, we had to try it on. Here we are making dinner with our bee hats.

And dessert, too. With the bee hats. Of course.

At last the big day came. We waited and waited. Our bee shipments got delayed FOUR times before they finally arrived. So excited!!

Now at last we could try on the full gear for real. Below you have two very proud, budding beekeepers!

Blue Oyster Mushroom Harvest

I've decided to post more pictures. Perhaps a picture a day? That may be a tad too ambitious, but it's worth a shot. I have so many great photos of bees and plants and dinners and fun adventurous things I have not yet gotten to post (usually cause they happened so long ago). So here you go. A picture a day. "Day" might begin to mean "every few days." Be warned.

Blue Oyster Mushrooms - pictures from 2010 first mushroom growing experiments.

Aren't they lovely? This is what they look like when just beginning to "fruit". It's an indoor kit that you can put as a centerpiece in the middle of your dining room table! "Or a side table," says James, always practical, "a side table would work fine, too."

We stir fried these "little" guys in some butter, added some onion and salt, and then put them directly onto a pizza. I was so excited. They actually weighed more than I expected. 180-ish grams. Lots of water in those fresh mushrooms.

Winter Projects

The garden continues on! Would you believe it? February 2012, and still trying to reach my goal. Though I did grow over 100 pounds in a 3.5x9 ft space on my balcony -- a 3.5x9ft space on the third floor, mind you, that couldn't be entirely filled with plants and soil (cause you need somewhere to walk to reach all the amazing harvests!). That's nothing to put ones nose up at! And here I am, a little older and a little wiser in the ways of small-space gardening.

I've gotten more technologically savvy with a grow light under our counter space, and have been growing lettuces throughout the winter. We've had a good bit of chard and kale and arugula and lettuces to munch on. That's me with my indoor lettuce greens in the pictures above.

Some work men came and cut down a maple tree near our house. When I saw the piles of logs outside our window where the tree had been I was momentarily sad, cause I really liked that tree, but then I got to thinking. Maple. Isn't that one of the slightly picky shiitake mushroom's favorite wood types? And they are supposedly not too hard to grow AND other mushrooms like it too. Hmmm. The phrases "excellent opportunity" and "we really can't pass this up" started floating through my mind.

The tree-cutting guys didn't have the ability to take all the logs at once, and there was a nice big pile. So one by one... the pile mysteriously got smaller. A log showed up in our living room after New Year's. James came home and said "whoa, how did you get that thing up the stairs!" Sore muscles and aching quad legs muscles are all I have to say about that. I ordered the mushroom plug spawn online from Fungi Perfecti. They had a sale for a whole kit and you got 3 hardwood mushrooms types: oyster, shiitake, and reishi (a medicinal immune-system-boosting tea mushroom). I would also get wax, a rubber mallet, and a drill bit with a stopper to drill the holes for the plugs to the right depth. It was $45. My hobby budget would be spent, but hey. Research and development is very important.

As I type, we currently have 6 log segments in our house. Yeah, ok, they are a bit large. Some of them. And yes, some of them are located in our bedroom. But really, I think they look rather classy.

To date, I inoculated the logs using all three varieties and are storing them in tubs around the house (bedroom and office included). James is skeptical, so these woody, "little" guys might move on to my office space sometime in the near future.

But yes, it's an adventure. The following are the smaller subset of the log family in our house. They are getting inoculated with oyster mushroom plug spawn.

One of our "dainty little ones" getting a warm bath soak before getting inoculated.

Me hammering away with my shiny rubber mallet. I'm hammering shiitage plug spawn into the holes in these pictures.

Painting the holes over with wax. This is a food grade soy wax. Helps keep in moisture.

Wow, aren't they beautiful! "Maybe they don't permanently occupy the dining room table," says my practical husband. They are beautiful, but yes, I am sure he's right. Mushrooms aren't used to being the center of attention normally.

I was so proud. Here's some other of our classy logs hanging out around the house. Lovely, aren't they?

Did you see the small black splotches below? That means this one is inoculating very well!! So exciting.
And here's one of our bigger mushroom centerpieces.

Mushrooms really are amazing organisms.