the podcast!

I am giddy to announce the first episode of the FROM SCRATCH CLUB PODCAST! Eek! What?! Woot woot! We've had this little secret project in the works for awhile now and today, on Leap Day, we are proud to release Episode 01: New Beginnings.

Head over to this post to listen to our very first episode and to get the link to our new podcast blog. We are waiting for approval from iTunes and once we have that, you'll be able to subscribe to the podcast right in iTunes and sync it to your iPod!

Update: The podcast is on iTunes! Check it out here.

Happy listening :)

drink vermont

We are on a mission. A mission to visit as many of the fine Vermont breweries as we can. We've already hit quite a few, but now we have our Vermont Brewery Challenge Passports, ready to be stamped at brewing establishments throughout the Green Mountain State. Last week we both had a day off so we decided to tool around Southern VT, making stops in Bennington and Brattleboro to visit the Madison Brewing Company and McNeill's Brewery, respectively.
 

Fun! Delicious! We also got to stop in at Bennington Potters, so it was an awesome day. At Madison's, I tried the Buck's Honey Wheat- "An American Wheat Beer brewed with real Vermont honey,"- and Chris ordered the Crowtown Pale Ale- "Dry hopped with a load of Cascade hops grown in the Pacific Northwest. Amber-Copper in color with a pleasant malt flavor." At McNeill's, I tried the Champ Ale: "A West Coast style pale ale that is somewhat citrusy with notes of concord grapes both in the flavor and the nose. Made from a blend of British and domestic malts, it has a light red or pale rose color and very high drinkability." Chris opted for the Professor Brewhead's Brown Ale at McNeill's: "This beer goes back to the American style. A full brown color, it is made from domestic and German malt, with some spicy citrus notes and a touch of chocolate."

We snacked all along the way and grabbed a wood-fired pizza and coffees before heading back. By this point the gray, gloomy weather had already turned to pouring rain and then to an incredibly unpleasant snow/freezing rain mix. So that was a fun drive home on the winding VT roads. Once safely home, I put on my pjs and promptly started catching up on the few episodes I'd missed of Downton Abbey. Like the rest of the world, I'm completely obsessed. 

water kefir: another fizzy, fermented drink

Make room for one more jar of mystery blobs and a few more bottles of fizzing, fermented-but-sweet beverages to the fridge: I've now started making my own water kefir. I received water kefir grains (which aren't really grains, but another form of SCOBY or symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast) from a food swap and was so pumped for another new-to-me, weird kitchen experiment. The grains are a strange, gelatinous substance, but I think they are less gross than a kombucha scoby.

I researched a gazillion methods for brewing water kefir, and then I cobbled them all together on my frist batch to make one bad-tasting beverage. I let it ferment for way too long, put way too many different fruits in it and basically ended up with a vinegary, raisin-y flat drink. I poured it down the drain and started anew, this time making simplicity the theme.

In a quart-sized mason jar, I added 1/4 cup organic white sugar and filled the jar up almost to the top with cool, filtered water. Every water kefir recipe is different-- some swear that you absolutely should not use chlorinated tap water, some argue that using carbon-filtered water (like from a Brita) depletes the minerals and renders the water less-than-satisfactory. Maybe just leave a bowl of tap water out for a bit to aerate out the chlorine. I don't know. I used filtered water from our new Bobble jug. With the lid on, I shook the jar around until the sugar was dissolved. Then I plopped in my water kefir grains, secured a coffee filter on the top with a rubber band and tucked it away in a semi-dark spot on a shelf.

Two days later, I had a finished batch of plain water kefir. Technically, it was ready to drink but I don't care much for the plain water kefir. I strained out the kefir grains with a fine mesh strainer and put them in the fridge in a sugar water solution to keep them alive. I could have just immediately started a new batch, but I was skeptical about how this one would turn out so I put the whole process on hold. In the future, I'll be taking the grains out of the finished batch and immediately starting a new batch, so that I'll have a continuous supply. Over time, the grains will multiply so you can give some to a friend or bring them to a swap!

For extra flavor and bubbles, I poured the kefir into a glass bottle with an airtight lid (same as what I store my kombucha in; see top photo) and added about a cup of organic cranberry-blueberry juice to it. I let it sit on the counter another day for its second fermentation. Even without the grains, there are a bunch of probiotics and weird things that will continue to ferment and feed off the sugars in the fruit juice, producing a really nice amount of carbonation. At this point you could also add dried or fresh fruit to it instead of fruit juice. Et voila! Cranberry-blueberry water kefir. Fizzy, sweet & a bit less weird-tasting than kombucha. Move it to the fridge, where it will continue to carbonate in its airtight bottle.

Don't think that I've given up the kombucha though! There's a gallon-sized jar sitting on the floor right next to our stereo speakers, days away from finishing its first fermentation. In fact, there are jars and bottles of things tucked away throughout the apartment filled with fermenting, preserved, aging or otherwise strange contents. It reminds me of visiting my friend Vanessa and finding a sprouted avocado seed in her pantry or a cabinet full of ripening cherry tomatoes. Or of the stashes of homemade extract and pickled things and dehydrated citrus in Christina's cute townhome. I love it. Although, in cases such as these, the importance of labeling and dating cannot be overstated. How many times have I stared at an unmarked jar and, having considered it for hours or even days, admitted that I had no idea what it contained or when it got there? Many times, friends, many times.

This is probably an oversimplified version of the water kefir process, but so many other good folks have written extensively about it so I'll let them do most of the talking. The main points you should know:

1. Water kefir is a dairy-free, lacto-fermented beverage filled with lots of probiotics and healthy yeast & bacteria. 
2. It tastes good. I promise! Especially after a second fermentation, water kefir is a slightly sweet, bubbly little drink. Think of it as a probiotic-filled natural soda.
3. You will need to get your hands on some water kefir grains. You can buy them online (at places like Cultures for Health), find them at a local food swap or ask your kefir-making friends for their extras. If you're local and can wait a little while, I will eventually have extras laying around if I keep brewing away.
4. You can start a continuous cycle of kefir-making so that there is always a bottle about to be ready. When you need a break, just suspend your grains in a sugar water solution and store in the fridge. It should be safe in there for at least a few months. Finished water kefir will keep for, maybe a few weeks in the fridge? The longer fermented beverages sit, the less sweet they become so keep that in mind.

Water Kefir Reources 

• A super-helpful video tutorial and water kefir info, plus a killer FAQ (via Cultures for Health) 
• A Quick Tutorial (via Nourished Kitchen) 
• Water Kefir- The Yeasty Bacterial Elixir of Life (via Crunchy Betty)
• Water kefir as a soda substitute ! (via Nourishing Days)
• A water kefir recipe that uses citrus & dried fruit on the 1st fermentation  (via Homesprout)
• Directions for ginger-flavored water kefir (via Towards Sustainability)

Have I convinced any of you to get into the home lacto-fermentation brewing scene yet? I had a few emails for more instructions about the kombucha, and if you have any questions please feel free to leave a comment or shoot me an email. There are a ton of resources out there are water kefir, so get out there and experiment.

sunday soup, the women's bean project

We've been loving the combination of fresh bread from our Community Supported Bakery with our classic Sunday Soups. Every Sunday, we go to the store, pick up our specialty loaf and then come home to see what we can make from all of it. Sometimes we make soup. Sometimes we don't. Sometimes we make a phone call to order Indian food. You know how it is.

This was a particularly lovely soup, made from a ten bean mix from the Women's Bean Project. The Women's Bean Project is a Colorado-based nonprofit that helps women break the cycle of poverty by teaching job readiness and employment skills in gourmet food production and handmade jewelry manufacturing. The program provides immediate income, support services, job training and a source of newfound confidence and independence to disenfranchised and disempowered women. One of Chris' colleagues gave us a package of Toni's Ten Bean Soup mix for Christmas. We paired it with the toasted almond, green peppercorn & black pepper loaf we got from the bakery.

Have you been making Sunday Soups? Do you have a recipe I should try out? I have a small stack of great soup cookbooks to work through, including Anna Thomas' Love Soup , which I absolutely adore.

happy valentine's day

Happy Valentine's Day from your favorite colonial, revolutionary couple: John & Abigail Adams. Aren't they splendid? I scored these from the Habitat ReStore a month or so ago; at first, I wasn't sure that this was John Adams at all but perhaps a wily George Washington. A bit of online research of the artist confirmed that I had indeed picked up the right gentleman and that I now owned a hilarious set of portraits of one of history's most romantic, practical & brave couples.

Spread the love, today, folks. Spread it around.

cooking rice

It's a rice and beans kind of week. Last night we had a whole mix of beans with sautéed corn, brown rice & a salsa verde-greek yogurt sauce. I've been prepping for a big, all-weekend event with work so we've been keeping dinners quick and simple. We cook a lot of rice 'round these parts. Consequently, I have burned a lot of pots of rice 'round these parts. Especially with the longer cooking time of brown rice, it is absurdly easy to wander off and completely forget about what is on the stove, even if you were ultra vigilant for the first 30 minutes. So when my mom served roasted root vegetables with a pot of brown rice that she made in her new rice cooker, I was blown away. For some reason I thought that rice cookers didn't work as well for brown rice, but I'm totally wrong. You don't even have to time it, the cooker just shuts off when your rice is ready and will even keep it warm for you until you are ready to eat. I was blown away. The rice cooker probably won't be making any appearances in our tiny kitchen, due to the utter lack of counters, but you can bet that it will pop up as soon as we are cooking in a normal-sized space.

Do you have a rice cooker? I've heard from many people that it's really the only way to make rice. Have you made brown rice in it? What about other grains? Is it totally worth it? Speaking of appliances that are totally worth it, stop in at FSC for my {What's New In My Kitchen Wednesday post}, all about my continuing love affair with Mr. Vitamix, the blender of all blenders. 


Updated July 2012 to include my Vitamix affiliate link for free shipping. Buy your Vitamix through this link and receive free shipping. $25 value. You're welcome. (Note: I joined the affiliate program five months after the FSC post was published, and none of those links in the post are affiliate links.)

comments are back up (& a little beyonce)

The comment form has been a little wacky the past week or so; Blogger has been rolling out a lot of new changes and some of them haven't been compatible with the customizations I've made to my template, so I've been asking The Google and The Twitter for help like crazy. It appears that it is straightened out. Comments are now working on Firefox, IE, Chrome, Safari & the mobile version.

And there's more! I now have threaded comments, so I can reply directly to each of your notes! Much better for tracking conversations on here. Sooooo, thank you to everyone who let me know about the broken comments-- shoot me an email if they still aren't working :) In appreciation of your patience, and in fulfillment of my blogiversary Beyonce requirement, here's a favorite little song & dance from B.



And with that, I bid you adieu. Two of my favorite college buddies are coming up to Albany for an alumni pub crawl and a sleepover! For breakfast tomorrow I'm serving big ol' smoothies and some treats from All Good Bakers, just like last time. Happy Weekend.

win an awesome book

So you know how From Scratch Club is hosting {4 Saturdays, 4 Giveaways}? In which we host a giveaway every single Saturday in January? So generous! FSC has already given away copies of An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace  by Tamar Adler and All About Braising: The Art of Uncomplicated Cooking by Molly Stevens. Do you know what you could win this week? DO YOU?

Any book off of my list of really awesome food memoirs & policy reads. I mean, folks, these are some of my favorite books ever. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle? You know I love it. I even gave it away last summer. Julia Child's My Life in France? Oh, Julia, precious. Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty? I WANT TO WRITE AN ENTIRE BOOK REPORT ON IT.

It's a U-Pick Giveaway. Please, go over there, choose an awesome book and cross your fingers. You could be the lucky winner. And you could also become a highly influential person: the book chosen by the winner will end up as one of our picks for the From Scratch Book Club that is starting up soon!

Click over here to enter.