fermented cucumbers and jalapeños

You know that team building game that people sometimes play where you have to choose what two foods you would want to live on for the rest of your life if you were stranded on a deserted island??  Well...one of my two foods has always been pickles.  I mean, really, if you're stranded on an island what better food to have with you!  They are shelf stable, they are a vegetable, and they are always delicious.  Yum.  My mouth waters every time I think about those sour crispy delectables.   

For the past few summers I've made a couple batches of traditional vinegar dill pickles--and I love them and wouldn't go without them.  But last year I also tried my hand at fermented dill pickles.  It was an experiment--as I've found all fermenting to be.  It's not an exact science the way that hot water or pressure canning is.  With canning you have to have just the right amount of food in the jars, the jars have to be closed just right, the temperature and/or pressure has to be just right, and you have to do it for just the right amount of time, but with fermenting it's totally different.  Your jar of cucumbers can be half full, you can have several different sizes of jars with different types of lids, you can ferment something for a week, two, five, twelve.  Every ferment is different and each one is a bit of an experiment with far too many variables to make it scientific---it's awesome!  Those are my favorite kinds of experiments.  It's like when you make a really delicious meal and your husband says, "Wow! This is amazing!  Can you make this more often?"  And you respond with, "Um...this exact thing?? Probably not.  I made it up."  That's kind of how fermenting works, at least for me.  

Another thing about fermented pickles is that they taste a bit different from their vinegary counterparts.  They are more sour and they are kind of bubbly.  They can make your face pucker and they can be incredibly addicting...but I do think they are a bit of an acquired taste.  If you've never made or really eaten homemade vinegar pickles, then tasting your first fermented pickle may be quite a shocker.  They are very different from the jars of pickles that line the grocery store isles.  However, if you are a homemade pickle lover, then I encourage you to try fermenting a batch.  The best part is that you can start with a little pint jar and if they don't turn out or you hate them, you can compost those babies without it being a big deal at all.  

The basics of fermenting cucumbers include packing pickling cucumbers (I get my mine at the farmers market) into a jar with pickling spices, garlic, and fresh dill, and then filling the jar with a brine of salt water.  You then tightly cover them and leave them in a warm place for a bit.  If your kitchen is warm (mine was in the 70's and 80's this week), then it may take just 5-7 days for the pickles to be ready.  If it's on the cooler side (consistently below 75) then it may take a few weeks for them to finish.  Once they have changed from bright cucumber green to dull pickle green and the liquid is bubbly and cloudy, then they are ready to taste.  When you bite into them, they should look pickled all the way through.  If they are still bright green in the middle--they are not done, or if they taste really salty they are not done.  When they get to the sour level of your liking and they are pickled all the way through---they are done!!  Hooray!  Then you can wipe down the jars (in case they've dripped a bit in the fermenting process) and move them into the refrigerator where they'll keep for 6 months to a year.  So easy and so good!

Also, adding traditional fermented foods to your diet can be so good for you!  Unfiltered and unpasteurized fermented foods are full probiotics that help to build a healthy gut flora.  Stop buying those expensive probiotic supplements and start eating fermented pickles and you'll be set!! I wrote a bit more about this in a post last summer, if you're wanting to find out more.  

If you are looking for a recipe to get you started with fermenting cucumbers, this Nourished Kitchen recipe looks like a good one.  The one I used this time around is from The New Midwestern Table by Amy Thielen.  It's a fabulous cookbook that includes so many great updated traditional midwestern recipes, which is great if you want to cook using local and season ingredients.  I fall more in love with that cookbook each time I use it.  

For my fermented jalapeños, I just added some garlic and used the same salt water brine that I used for the cucumbers.  They take a bit longer to ferment (you can see the changing green colors in the picture above; once they are all the duller green color, I'll start checking them), but I find that fermenting them is a great way to preserve the handfuls of jalapeños that come in from our garden as I can ferment them as soon as I have a pint jar full.  

How about you??  Have you tried your hand at fermenting??  If so, what are some of your favorite things to ferment?  

garden notes :: 7.28.15

The heat of summer is definitely here!!!  The tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and tomatillo are loving it, while the beans and cucumbers are tolerating it and wishing that I'd water them just a bit more frequently...sigh...I'm just wishing it would rain a bit more frequently...that would make everyone happier!  

We've started eating our sunsugar cherry tomatoes and they are mouthwateringly delicious! And many of our other tomato plants are starting to have ripening fruit on them as well!  We have a couple beefsteak and main crop tomato plants that have huge tomatoes on them!  I'm sooooooo excited to slice into those babies and put them on a BLT or just eat them on their own with a little salt.  Yum.  

Remember in my last garden update I said I was a bit worried that my tomatillo needed a mate in order to produce fruit....well, thankfully, that doesn't seem to be the case!  It's branches (which are huge!) are now filling with little tomatillo pods that will hopefully hold little tomatillos inside of them very soon!  Hooray!!

We have an eggplant, folks!  I'm so very excited to pick it...It may only last out there for another day or two.  I've also heard that they are better when they are on the younger side (which is good, since I'm still developing a love for eating eggplant...but they are so pretty and fun, aren't they?!?!)

The peppers are doing well!  I just picked a pint of jalapeños yesterday to ferment with a bit of garlic (which, I've found, is a great way for us to preserve their sporadic bounty!)  Dan has also been enjoying them fresh with his breakfast eggs.  We should have a green pepper or two in the next week and the sweet little lunch box peppers are looking good--now they just have to start turning into their beautiful shades of yellow, orange, and red! 

The bush beans have slowed with the heat, but the pole beans are beginning to flower and fill out!  Within a week or two I think they'll start to produce!!  August...every thing is always ready in August, isn't it?!

One thing that I was able to harvest from the garden this week was our first crop of garlic!  It was a very small crop, just 5 heads, but they look healthy and smell lovely! They are now curing in the garage for a bit.  I think this fall I may have to find many more little corners of the garden to tuck garlic bulbs into.  They are so easy to grow!!!

Another thing in the garden that I've been very pleased with has been the creeping thyme that grows between our stepping stones.  I planted wooly thyme last year, but it didn't seem to do much, but this year it has taken off!  It's now beginning to fill the spaces between the stepping stones!  This year I added a bit of lemon thyme to the mix and it is also doing really well!  I think this fall I'll be able to divide some of it and hopefully by next summer it will start to really fill out the walkway---making a lush green carpet without weeds!!!  Hooray!!!

How about you?? How does your garden grow??

garden notes :: 7.10.15

The garden is thriving!!!  Such a wonderful thing to come home two after two weeks away during our prime growing season!  The tomatoes grew a couple feet while we were away and all needed a bit more staking.  They also all have green fruit on them and I'm hoping our cherry and grape tomatoes will start to ripen in the next couple weeks! The tomatillo is also looking hearty!  However, someone told me recently that you need two plants in order to produce fruit...and I just have one...so if anyone has had a successful experience with just growing one tomatillo, I'd love to hear about it!  Our eggplant is also flowering and growing, which makes me rather excited!  I'm not even sure how much I like eggplant, but growing something purple is just plain exciting. 

We have lots of little jalapeños, baby green peppers, and sweet lunch box peppers hanging from those pepper branches!  There is nothing quite like a homegrown pepper...so watery and crisp...yum!

The beans are doing well!  The bush beans got a bit pulverized by Monday's storms, but I should have a few beans ready to be eaten in the next day or two.  The pole beans are also starting to climb.  While we were away, though, they all decided to climb on some of the same strings, so I need to try to spread them out over the next few weeks so that I don't end up with overly crowded and not-very-productive pole beans.  Silly beans...

We have three hardy and happy cucumber mounds and I'm so very happy!  As I've mentioned before, I have not had much luck with cucumbers in the past, but I feel my luck changing this year as I watch these little guys flower and flower.  Hopefully we'll start to see fruit in the next week!

How are your gardens growing in this warm summer heat??

garden notes :: 6.23.15

I love how much the garden can change in just two weeks, especially in the month of June!  We've had perfect garden weather with days and nights of long steady rain, followed by days of hot sunshine and humidity.  Everything is thriving, especially the tomatoes, peppers, and tomatillo.  This past week I staked and tied the tomatoes and started a trellis for the pole beans.  The garlic has also been doing well and just last night I trimmed off the scapes and we grilled them with some asparagus for dinner.  They were pretty good!  The oregano and rhubarb are also enjoying this summer in the garden.  I'm excited for next year when the real rhubarb picking can begin!  (After transplanting/dividing rhubarb, you shouldn't really harvest much of anything until the third year.)  As for my garden flowers, I now have a few other things blooming!!  I love the continuous blooms that have been happening this year on that side of the garden.  The constant color is perfectly wonderful.  

We're headed out of town for a few weeks and I must say that it is hard to leave my growing garden and growing chickens!  However, I know they'll be in good hands and by the time we come home, we may have bush beans ready for picking and definitely tons of greens and herbs on our hands! 

How about you, friends, what's happening in your gardens these days??

free-range...for a few minutes

As I've mentioned before, this summer we are doing things a bit differently with the chickens when it comes to their time free-ranging in the yard.  In a perfect urban homesteading world, our chickens could freely wander around our yard and gardens at their leisure, enjoying grass, bugs, sunshine, and shade whenever their little hearts so desired. However, we do not live in a perfect urban homesteading world.  Rather, at our urban homestead, the chickens eat my carrot tops, trample and scratch up the rhubarb and hostas, kick mulch everywhere, poop on our deck, pathway, yard, pretty much everywhere, and eat my kale.  No, it is definitely not a perfect world over here.  So, this year, we're doing things differently and it means a lot less grass-time for these ladies of ours.  I read a book on my long Texas road trip a few weeks back called Free-Range Chicken Gardens and it gave me a lot more confidence in our decision to give the ladies a more controlled environment.  The reason for this is that in order to have a successful free-range chicken garden, your yard and gardens need to be ready to house chickens!  The plants need to be chicken resistant and the plants need to be arranged in a way that allows the hardier plants to protect and shelter the more vulnerable ones.  There are also times when it's necessary to protect tender seedlings or ripening fruits and veggies from curious chickens.  All of these things confirmed our decision to keep our chickens out of the yard and gardens for a bit.  With our landscaping only being a few years old, a lot of our perennials are young and in need of protecting until their roots grow deep and their stems and branches strong.  And with our relatively short vegetable garden season, it's important to keep the ladies out of there during pivotal points of the season, such as when tender seedlings are sprouting or when tomatoes are ripening.  So, for this year, our chickens are getting to free-range for a just a few minutes at a time, and under very supervised conditions.  So far, it seems to be working well and everyone seems to be happy!  (The cat has also been enjoying his free-range moments!)

My hope is that in the years to come, free-range time will become easier and easier, especially in the middle of the summer when the plants are thriving and strong.  Until then, our limited "free-ranging" is working just fine.