Archive for the ‘Experiments’ Category

7 Sep

Hippie Finally gets her Sh*t Together and Does Something

Posted by rakhi in Experiments, Making, Building, and Crafting, Stuff, The Conversion, Upcycling. Tagged: , , , , , .

Lazy rain barrel.

A year-and-a-half ago I bought this beautiful wine barrel on Craigslist, with the idea of making a rain barrel out of it. To be clear, I have tons of interest in making things that are useful to me. The problem is, however, that I have much less interest in ruining cool things because I have tons of interest in making things that are useful to me. And so, the wine barrel sat at the side of our house for six seasons without so much of a glance.

Action shot! Go rain barrel! Woohooooo!

The lack of rain this year finally broke me down, and two hardware store trips later, I have a pretty little rain barrel that I don’t even think I ruined. And, I kid you not, it took no more than fifteen minutes to do it, and $15 (besides for the cost of the wine barrel, which was much more expensive). And that doesn’t even account for the contact high I was rewarded with when the deeply-oaked whiskey fumes escaped holes I drilled.  My tools:

A hand-drill. A drill bit. A faucet. A plug (for the barrel hole).

I’ll be putting a screen over the top to stop the mosquitoes from mak’in babies in it, but for now I’m just pooped from finally having done something. Whew.

28 Aug

Lazy Hippie: Food that Preserves Itself

Posted by rakhi in Cooking, Baking & Making, Experiments, Food. Tagged: , , , , .

Dried mustard seed just harvested from the garden.

I just found out that you can cut up vegetables, throw them in a jar full of water and some salt, wait a few days, and they will have preserved themselves. This seems like magic to me. I can’t believe that this is actually the state of the world, and I have just learned about it.  And, not only do these veggies magically preserve themselves, but afterwards they will be brimming with healthy bacteria and, in some respects, the veggies will be more nutritious than the raw vegetable itself.

Mustard seed, grape leaves, salt, and dill in the pickling jar.

I’ve always loved fresh sauerkraut, and have been making my own for a little while now, but I had no idea that this process could be extended to, well, everything. Guacamole, hot sauce, blueberry soda, salsa, vinegar, pickled carrots, grape leaves, and, of course, pickles. The University of MN Extension has a page on safely making fermented pickles and sauerkraut, which, in my opinion, is a little on the overly-cautious side because their recipes ask that you, after fermenting the pickles, kill the ferment by putting it in a hot water bath to avoid spoilage. I’m more of the “smell it cautiously and eat it ravenously” mentality.

I put grape leaves in my jar, because I read that the tannins can help keep the vegetables crispy, and since I have a grape plant in my backyard, it seemed like an easy thing to try. Not to mention the possibility of making my own stuffed grape leaves from the link above!

Green beans, cucumber, and a hot pepper with the mustard seed, grape leaves, dill, and salt.

A Saint Paul Beer Fest tasting glass holding the veggies under the brine.

A lot of the recipes require the addition of whey or kefir to the brine, but I found that this is just to stack the cards in your favor with a “starter” bacteria. By eliminating the whey, you’re allowing the natural bacteria on the vegetables themselves to run the show. The addition of salt, and keeping the vegetable mass under the brine (away from oxygen) allows the “good” bacteria to happily procreate like bunnies without competition from the bad bacteria.

It’s the time of the season where crazy garden harvests begin, and in this moment, having this discovery, it appears that canning does not have to be the impending nightmare that it is. Time to go crock-shopping!

My current “wild ferments.” Lemons, beans, cucumbers. The middle jar is the furthest along, you can tell by the cloudy brine and the washed out color. I’ve been tasting it along the way, and and once it hits the level of tangy-ness I love, I’ll refrigerate it and eat it at my own pace.

 

7 Aug

Hippie’s Been Had: Sunberries

Posted by rakhi in Experiments, Food, Plant Identification. Tagged: , , , , .

I’d like to think that This Hippie was not born yesterday. I do a lot of obsessive research about plants, food, and gardening to make sure that I understand what’s going on. But then things like this happen to invite speculation that, perhaps, I am just a chump. In fairness, I tend to have the same compulsions that many edible gardeners have – to find new exciting plants to grow and new delicious food to eat. And so, last spring when I was in one of my favorite shops, Eggplant Urban Farm Supply, perusing the seeds, and ran into this mystery seed pack labeled “Sunberry” I immediately became intrigued and bought a pack for planting this year. And plant I did.

Cultivated sunberry plants in my front-yard edible garden.

After taking a look-see at these plants, I noticed that they looked suspiciously like a weed growing in my boulevard:

Boulevard (“Wild”) Sunberry Plant. Please notice that it is much more mature than the plants that I cultivated.

And wouldn’t you know it. They are the same damn plant. Although not indicated on the “Sunberry” seed pack, I found out from this book that “Sunberry” is merely a name given to the plant Black Nightshade to distract from its relation to Deadly Nightshade, which is highly poisonous. And black nightshade is a ubiquitous weed that grows prolifically in the Midwest including, for example, the uncultivated section of my boulevard. It’s related to many of the most delicious cultivated garden vegetables: tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and potatoes.

The sepal of the deadly nightshade berry extends beyond the fruit. So, for the Love of God, don’t eat it. attribution.

After making sure the Boulevard plant (white flowers; bug-eaten leaves; berry clusters; sepal is smaller than the berry) was not deadly nightshade (purple flowers; generally uneaten leaves; single berries; sepal is bigger than the berry; smells of death), I tasted this unexpected treat, and promptly pulled out two of the three plants taking up space in my community garden plot. In flavor it’s very similar to ground cherry, which I don’t get very excited about – at least when compared to tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant. And, since it’s in the same family as those other vegetables, it’s competing for the same nutrients as the tomato plants sitting next to it.  I did keep one plant because maybe it will make a unique salsa or something. We’ll see. The one remaining black nightshade plant in my plot is, by far, outperforming all of my tomato, pepper and eggplant plants. So at the very least it is sucking up nutrients which will make lovely compost for a future garden bed.

2 Jul

Weed Identification and Use: Burdock

Posted by rakhi in A Happy Accident, Experiments, Plant Identification. Tagged: , , , , .

A few days ago I was perusing the vegetation at Mississippi Market and I ran into this:

Burdock Root

Which immediately made me picture this weed in my boulevard:

Burdock plant – commonly mistaken for rhubarb if not further inspected.

The Mississippi Market display, above, combined with my uncanny deductive abilities led me to believe that the roots of burdock can be eaten. So, naturally, I’ve done some research and found that not only is burdock the plant that led to the invention of Velcro, but it has a long history of being eaten throughout the world, and is currently still popular in Asia (if you’ve ever seen “gobo” on your sushi, menu, that would be it!).

Burdock is a type of thistle and, as such, is related to the artichoke. Because it’s a biennial plant, the first year it builds up the root system and the second year it produces flowers and seed. It looks like the ideal time to harvest the roots is at the end of the first year, when the plant has built up the root system, although some say you can harvest the roots from when the plant is 2-4 months old to right before the flower stalks appear the second year.  Prepared the root by scouring the dirt off the outside (not peeling, because this greatly reduces the nutritional value) and cooking it however you want: stir-fry, boil, roast, deep-fry. Some recommend par-boiling first to help with tenderness and reduce bitterness.

The immature flower stalks can be pealed and eaten raw or cooked, which apparently tastes like artichoke. I think that’s what I’ll be doing with this plant since it’s in its second year – and, yes, it has taken me that long to research it. Bite me.

Burdock has also been used medicinally for centuries for tons of hippie-stuff  like supporting liver function to cleanse the blood, and it has largely overlapping medicinal value with curly dock, which I wrote about here.

Anyone out there have experience eating or using burdock? Tell me about it!

27 Jun

Sholom Community Garden Update

Posted by rakhi in Experiments, Gardening. Tagged: , , , , , , , .

I’m finally done preparing the beds in my Sholom Community Garden plot, which makes me want to cry tears of joy.  A couple weird things I’m trying include artichoke, celery, and uchiki kuri.

I’m loving watching all the different gardens come along. There are so many ways to make a garden grow!

14 Jun

Weed Identification: Curled Dock

Posted by rakhi in Experiments, Gardening, Weeds. Tagged: , .

Curled dock leaves and flowers

I’ve been trying to identify this weed in my lawn for over a year – although I use the term “weed” to mean that I didn’t plant it. Last year the plant was much, much smaller, and looked a lot like my baby maximilian sunflower plant that I have in the backyard. Given my reluctance to destroy mystery plants, I let it live and today, dear readers, I finally found a weed identification tool from our neighbors to the East (some of whom may, given the current political climate, flee and become our neighbors to the North :) ).

I really like the green flowers, and it looks like later in the summer the seed heads will turn red. In Minnesota, curled dock is on the noxious weed list. Which is particularly interesting to me because they’re apparently edible and nutritious and related to sorrel and buckwheat. I’m thinking the plant seems a bit mature to eat the leaves, so I might give the seeds a go after a little more research.

Curled dock flowers

12 Jun

Hippie Cannot look away from this Zinnia

Posted by rakhi in Experiments, Pretty non-edibles. Tagged: , , .

20120611-221621.jpg

I went to the St. Paul Farmers Market this past weekend and ran into a gorgeous zinnia that I can’t seem to stop gazing into. I’m not really “into” the pretty, non-edible, annual types, but this flower could change me forever. :)

11 Jun

Agricultural Economy Collapses; Hippie Lets out a Maniacal Laugh

Posted by rakhi in Experiments, Gardening, Weeds. Tagged: , , , , .

I have trouble pulling weeds out of my lawn. The problem is that I feel the need to identify and learn about the plant before I pull it because, otherwise, who knows what glorious being I am killing off. It could be amazing! I could be losing out! And last year, my fears came to fruition when I pulled out a rogue peony plant, gifted to me by none other than St. Paul Free Compost Site. While I tried to save the peony, it has not made an appearance this year. Lesson learned.

One weed that grows like…well…a weed…in my garden beds is this little fella:

It took no time to identify as lambs quarters at all, because UMN Extension has this Weed Seedling Photo Collection that showed me exactly what it looks like. They looked so hardy and veggie-like that my first thought was that they were some of my seeds sprouting up.  Little did I know that humans have a long history of eating that stuff.  Not only the leaves have been eaten, but also its seeds are used like a grain and it is a pseudo-cereal like quinoa.  This website talks about eating lambs quarters.

It definitely became time to rid my perennial bed of the little invaders, so I figured that instead of composting them, I would eat them. And so, my dear readers, I did.

I cut them at ground level so as not to disturb the soil, washed them, pulled off the leaves, and sauteed them in olive oil with lemon juice, garlic, and olive oil. Although I read that they would taste exactly like spinach, I didn’t believe it, but sure enough. It tasted like spinach. It also made a great side dish to grilled trout and french bread.

I struggle with this. Here I am, annoyed with my leafy greens for being slower than I would like, bolting too quickly, and not getting big enough, and this ridiculously healthy “weed” is coming up all around me. For free, and for no work at all. All food should be this easy.

Lambs quarters with garlic, olive oil, lemon juice, and salt.

Preparing the lambs quarters.

30 May

Inadvertent Oyster Mushrooms

Posted by rakhi in A Happy Accident, Experiments. Tagged: , , , .

I grew a couple of rounds of oyster mushrooms from my oyster mushroom kit, and even harvested some spores from the Second-Round Mushrooms to try to inoculate my own substrate (which may or may not be a fail, I’m not yet willing to admit defeat). The mushrooms that were growing were drying out a bit, so I put a plastic bag around the kit to retain some of the moisture. I then proceeded to ignore the kit in preparation for, and through, my trip to Bolivia, mainly just assuming that the mushrooming had run it’s course. Imagine my gluttonous delight when I’m neatening up my shelving around the mushroom kit and find this:

I think the only thing tastier than oyster mushrooms are surprise oyster mushrooms.

18 Apr

Refined Technique of “Doing Nothing” Proves Ineffectual

Posted by rakhi in Experiments, Fruit. Tagged: , , , .

Before. Notice the full blossom coverage.

After. Notice the 4-5 blossoms left. Blossoms that may not have made it through Sunday and Monday nights.

After some more espalier-ing

After a crazy March, where the high was 80°F and soil temperature got to 56°F, my impulse pear tree hit the ground running a good month or two early. So when news hit last week that a hard frost was going to hit St. Paul, I had to make a decision. And my decision, dear friends, was to do nothing.

I was tired, and lied to myself about how my yard will somehow stay a pleasant temperature for my lovely pear tree, even though many of my gardening-savvy West Seventh Neighbors had covered their own fruit trees to protect them. Conspicuously covered their own fruit trees as if they were sending me a signal. That I should do something. But at the time the signal seemed a bit too cryptic for me, and my love for homegrown, delectable pears was overshadowed by my unending laziness.

And so this year I will suffer dreaded store-bought pears because I have only a few blooms left, that were most likely eaten by the cold weather on Sunday and Monday nights.

In other news, as you can probably tell from the pictures, last year I started to espalier the pear tree, and I am a big fan. The tree fits perfectly in the corner of my tiny backyard with branches running along the fence and the garage. Yesterday I finished espaliering the crap out of it. Now if it would just bear some damn fruit we’d be going places.

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