Greenstorm's Journal

Did a canner batch of "beef stew" (healthy canning) with half a bottle of jerk seasoning instead of the recommended spices, slightly less potatoes and carrots than recommended, and no onions. Used a little salt, and better than bouillon instead of stock. 2.5kg pork (plus 1kg onion and potato) make a full canner.

Did a second canner batch of "pot roast in a jar" (healthy canning) using my gooseberry wine instead of the recommended white wine, and using one bay leaf per 500ml jar (these are the bayleaves Josh brought me from my mom's tree). I used only one onion for 4kg of pork, and put in 2tbsp of onion powder and 2tbsp of onion powder for the batch, and that's it for alterations. I like the proportions on this one.

Definitely like raw pack better than the "boil first" ones for ease of use.

Edited to add: "pot roast in a jar" was a little too salty, I'll want to eat those jars over mashed potatoes or noodles and reduce the salt for next time.

I'm part of a group on fb (Indri's vanilla bean group) that does co-op direct buys of vanilla beans in addition to its retail store -- it's extremely fair trade consumption and gets me a luxury good affordably. They're putting out a cookbook, so I'm doing some recipe testing for them.

On my list:
x The Coffee Cake (it's topped with toasted oats, which is nice)
x Panna cotta (this one needed a little more gelatin)
x Egg pie (it's a custard pie with flour as a binder, definitely not a delicate custard so it seems like a pretty robust recipe)
o Custard pie (another iteration, I'm curious to compare them)
o Filipino butter mochi (this is in the oven now, I'm interested)
o Emergency milkshake (milk, cream, vanilla, and ice, sounds great)
o Microwave caramel corn
o Vanilla bean instant pot rice pudding
o Creme brulee
o Semolina pudding

It's more than I can eat (needs to be done in two weeks) but it's a fun project. I also submitted my shockingly good vanilla lemonade (seriously, just add a teaspoon of vanilla to a tall glass of lemonade) and I hope it gets in there.

Very interested to see how some of these turn out. I've never heard of oven-baked mochi before!

Edited to add: the butter mochi is truly delicious and much easier to make than the rolled mochi I'm used to. Plus it's gluten free. Hm.

There were two recipes I tried this weekend, one was a pulled pork and the other...

...I'm not good at food being just nourishment. It's an expression of a place whether you want it to be or not. It roots into the land in particular ways whether you want it to or not. And the more I learn, the more I understand it as an expression of culture(s) in so very many ways.

So good food, for me, is an expression of the good place and the good culture(s) that it's from. It's a physical link to a space that's sometimes conceptual, as when I receive this food from another person or from a grocery store, and that is also physical. The food grew somewhere. There was soil involved, and water, and sunshine somewhere along the way. In almost every instance there was machinery and exchange. When I grow food myself eating is a physical link to the memories of planting, of harvesting, of storing; those harvests are often linked to memories of planting in years previous.

And, of course, food is rooted in memories not just of the ingredients but of the assemblage. I remember making jam from blackberries as a kid and putting paraffin wax over the jars to seal it. I remember experimenting with fried greens and what I later learned to be chapatis in the orchard in the Okanagan. I remember making pancakes in the middle of the night many years ago, as I remember standing in front of a stove next to Angus for hours and cooking with him on his birthday to feed all the people who came through the door.

Growing ingredients in partnership with the land, taking them and cooking them in partnership with lived traditions and inspired pieces of knowledge: that is play. It's a joy to do alone, and it's a joy to do with someone who is also playing.

I read a lot of cooking stuff on and off: flavours and recipes people have created, techniques people do. I watch them play, and it inspires me to play myself.

This is how I came to make spruce-tip syrup the other day, and then when I had too few spruce tips to make a full batch of syrup I tried putting chopped spruce tips and rhubarb together with an equal weight of sugar and with a little water. I simmered them quite awhile, immersion blended them, and simmered them again. It made a... sauce.

My favourite candies are usually sour ones, but I also like complexity. And this sauce I made is basically the best candy. Spruce tips lend it a floral/citrus complexity, not quite like roses or sweet lemons but not quite unlike. The rhubarb comes in and grounds it in sour but between the cooking and the sugar it's a full sour flavour with no sharp edge.

This is definitely one of my favourite things I've made. I have some jars of it; spruce tip season is basically over so maybe I don't get to make more this year.

It's neat to create something lovely like this, and I love the serendipity that leads to the discovery of lovely flavours.

Not everything in my life is perfect, of course, but this is pretty neat.

Today I'm putting up some duck eggs as century eggs. They'll be put into a ratio of 1 litre water, 40g lye, and 60g salt. They should be in there from 3-4 weeks, then into a vac sealed bag.

I'll also be putting up some goose eggs similarly but haven't got a container for them yet.

I'm using 1- to 2- day old eggs, no older.

The duck eggs are clean and washed, the goose eggs are less consistently clean and are also washed.

Edited from the future: goose eggs didn't get done, try duck eggs 10 days next time.