Cooking and Baking

Drying mushrooms – sort of

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At our last Costco trip, we picked up large packages of three different types of mushrooms. After using as much fresh mushrooms as we wanted, I planned to dehydrate the rest. I really like the mushroom salt we’d made, but wanted to have mushroom powder, without the salt, to use. The powder is an excellent flavour enhancer.

We had used a dry “gourmet mushroom blend” we’d picked up at Costco to make the salt, but it looks like they don’t carry it anymore. So I decided to just dry our own mushrooms.

I had used a coffee grinder to made the mushroom powder for the salt. The mushroom blend had some very large pieces – large enough that I cut them with scissors before I could put them in the coffee grinder. Even so, some of the thicker, more leathery pieces would jam the blade.

With that in mind, I very deliberately sliced the mushroom pieces quite thin, before laying them out on baking sheets to dry. I had enough button mushrooms to fill one sheet, while the other was filled with shitake and crimini mushrooms. The “warm” setting on our new oven is 175F, but I put it at the lowest temperature it would go: 145F. Then I left the trays in the oven overnight.

This morning…

Well… they did dry very thoroughly!

This is the sheet of white button mushrooms. They had been quite crowded together, and I could barely fit all the pieces in. They are now about 1/3 – 1/2 the size before drying.

They are also thoroughly stuck to the pan.

The shitake mushrooms didn’t shrink anywhere near as much, and were easy to loosen.

These are the crimini mushrooms, which are also very stuck to the pan! I have been using a spatula to try and scrape them off. We’ll keep working at it, little by little, as we are able, throughout the day.

Well, I wanted powdered mushroom, and I’m getting powdered mushroom!

Normally when I dehydrate in the oven on pans, I like to use a cake rack to allow air circulation under whatever I’m drying. Some things are just too small for that, which is why I didn’t use any this time. I was thinking that it might have been better if I’d had a drying screen, but looking at how the pieces have adhered to the pans, I’m thinking they would have done the same to a screen. At least with a pan, I can scrape them off and still use them. If they had stuck to a screen, there probably would have been no way to get them unstuck without damaging the screen.

So in the future, I’ll know to cut crimini and white button mushrooms thicker! I know we should be able to leave them whole, or just cut them in half, but I don’t want big pieces. I’ll have to find that balance.

We’ll just have to get more mushrooms and try again.

Not that we need an excuse to get more mushrooms! :-)

The Re-Farmer

Poor Man’s Hippocras: taste test

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The girls and I had a lovely evening, sharing a charcuterie board to go with our version of hippocras.

We strained the spiced out using a jelly bag, and kept it warm until we were ready. Here is how it turned out.

The first thing to notice was how deep the colour had become. You can see in the photo that the glass even steamed up from the warmth. It had been kept on low heat, too!

So how did it turn out?

For my initial taste test, I could make out the predominant flavours of the cinnamon and cloves. The whole flavour profile could be described simply as “stronger”. Compared to making mulled wine in the past, I would prefer the mulled wine of this, even though there were many shared ingredients.

We did end up adding a bit of honey to the mix, which did improve the flavour. Though the hippocras was strained, some of the finer particles still got through, sinking towards the bottom of the pot but still fine enough to be floating. Which meant that when I tasted it again, after the honey was mixed in, more of these spices showed up in the glass. At that point, I was really tasting the pepper a lot more, and the spice flavour in general was stronger.

I was not able to finish the glass.

When we were done for the evening, we poured the remains into a 1L pitcher to go into the fridge. There was more than a litre left, but the last little bit was so full of spice “dust” that we didn’t keep it.

It should be interesting to see what a difference in flavour there is when drinking it chilled.

One of my daughters didn’t like it at all, but that was more about drinking wine that was warmed. She had unadulterated wine from the second jug, instead.

I think I will find ways to include the wine in our cooking, to help go through it faster, so we can use the 3L jug we bought it for! :-D

Would I make this recipe again? Probably not, however we weren’t actually true to the original recipe, not having access to the more expensive, rarer spices. If we were able to get those spices, then yes, I’d definitely want to try it again.

Until then, I think we’d just stick with our usual mulled wine combination – without pepper!

The Re-Farmer

Poor Man’s Hippocras: in progress

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Yesterday, I wrote about picking up a whole lot of wine, so that we could use the 3L jugs as carboys for the second ferment on our hard crab apple cider.

The problem is, we now have to do something with the wine. We’re not really wine drinkers in general and, ironic as is seems for someone who is getting into making alcohol, I don’t really like alcohol in general. I had a couple of glasses of the wine last night and… well… it’s wine. I can’t even say if it’s particularly good wine. Just that it’s not bad wine. Going through 6L of wine between three of us, though, was probably going to take a while, and I really want those jugs to rack that hard cider.

We have, however, made spiced wine for special occasions in the past, and I did enjoy that. Since I’m also into modern recreations of historical recipes, my mind when to this video I’d found some time ago.

It turned out my daughters were thinking in the same direction, and were quite on board with trying a historical recipe. Of course, we’d want to be having something with the spiced wine, and we started talking charcuterie. So when I headed into town this morning to go to the hardware store, I also popped by the grocery store next door to pick up what we needed.

Now, the recipe for hippocras used in the video above includes ingredients that we just can’t get. I suppose I could order them online if I really wanted to, and try recreating it more exactly in the future, but frankly I can’t justify the cost. So spikenard, galangal, long pepper and grains of paradise are out!

After going through our spice cupboard, I only needed to pick up some marjoram, fresh ginger and cardamom.

Ah, the joys of small town inventories.

It took some searching before I found their last jar of marjoram. I did not expect that to be hard to find! However…

No cardamom.

At least not the whole seeds. I did finally find a single jar of ground cardamom, but it cost almost triple what the marjoram cost!

I didn’t buy it.

We did have some ground cardamom at home, but just a tiny bit. Better than none, I guess!

So this is our poor man’s version of hippocras.

Cinnamon sticks
fresh ginger
whole cloves
black peppercorns (substituting for long pepper)
nutmeg (ground)
marjoram
cardamom
ground cinnamon

Plus, to make up for the lack of sweet spices we’re skipping completely, some granulated sugar.

We eyeballed the quantities from the video for what was probably just over the equivalent of 2 bottles of wine. Except the cardamom. I just emptied what was left in the jar, which was probably less than a quarter teaspoon.

The cinnamon sticks were duly cracked, the ginger sliced, the remaining spices ground in a mortar and pestle (I love my mortar and pestle!), then everything mixed together in a pot with the wine.

The mixture is supposed to sit for a day or two before straining, then served warm.

We plan to drink it tonight, so to speed the process, we got it all set up and on the stove on low heat, where it will stay for the day.

It should be interesting to see how it turns out after we strain it this evening!

Of course, that still leaves us with another jug of wine. If this turns out okay, maybe we’ll make it again for Thanksgiving dinner, which we’ll be doing on Sunday.

The Re-Farmer

Trying out the beets

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Many thanks to carolee of herbalbelssingblog for her suggestion on how to cook our little beets.

She wrote:

Even tiny beet thinnings are wonderfully tasty! Pulled whole and left intact, scrub the beet and root to remove any soil and give the green parts and stems a good rinse. Heat butter in a skillet and throw the entire beets in. Cover with a lid and let cook a couple minutes. Add a bit of chicken broth or water and cover again. Cook just until beet is barely tender and greens are wilted. Salt and pepper. (If beets are 1″ or more, I cut them off and cook them a couple of minutes by themselves before adding stalks and greens.) Enjoy!

Which sounds awesome!

Me being me, I had to modify things a bit. After scrubbing the beets, I found I did have to cut off the remaining greens and trim bits and pieces off, then cut them into similar sized pieces. I started them in butter, as suggested, but I didn’t have chicken broth.

I did, however, have leftover roasted ham still in its gel, so I cut off the last bits of meat from the bone, and used the gel as the liquid with the beets.

Because you can’t go wrong with pork, right?

There was quite a bit of the gel, and not a lot of beets, so I cooked the liquid down until it was basically a glaze.

My apologies for the following picture. :-D

This is the better of the pictures I took.

Those deep red beets make it all look like carnage happened! :-D

You can still make out the rings in the beets with alternating red and white rings, though the white is dyed pink now! The golden beets were so few and so small, you can’t really see them at all. There is one right on top. Honest!

But those deep red ones… wow!

So how did this crazy combination taste?

Really good! It had a salty, “meaty” flavour, but the sweetness of the beets still came through, and the flavours complimented each other surprisingly well. Some major umami happening in there!

In another pan, I browned the last of the ham bits, added cubed sunburst squash and green zucchini, with a bit of water to cover and steam them, before cooking away the liquid. Lastly, I covered it all with beaten eggs and covered the pan again, turning the egg mixture a couple of times to make sure it was cooked through.

And that was lunch. :-D

I’ll likely try beets cooked this way again, though with some other liquid. Maybe even the recommended chicken stock! :-D

Meanwhile, I picked more sunburst squash this morning and we’re getting to the point of having to start preserving them. I’ve looked at some recipes to do a quick pickle with them, but so far, none have really appealed to me. Plus, they all called for ingredients I don’t have.

With today looking to hit 30C, it’s going to be an inside day, so I’ll have plenty of opportunity to look up other ideas.

We will most likely just freeze them. :-D

The Re-Farmer

Not quite a recipe: three cheese scalloped potatoes with kielbasa and carrots

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While making scalloped potatoes yesterday, I wanted to find a way to use the carrots from our garden I had picked that morning.

If they had been larger, I would have just sliced them thin and layered them with the potatoes, but these were on the small side.

So I got creative.

Here is how I ended up making the the scalloped potatoes.

For the cheese sauce, I used 1 medium onion, sliced thin, butter, flour, seasonings, whipping cream and cheese.

We already had old cheddar and grated Parmesan in the fridge. I also picked up a cheese that has recently showed up in local stores that is just awesome. BellaVitano Reserve. We’ve tried the three different varieties we have available, and I picked up Tennessee Whiskey this time. They have an Espresso one that it really good, too. I shredded this, plus the cheddar, and mixed it all together with some grated Parmesan. I used most of it in the sauce, saving some for later.

For the seasonings, I used mushroom salt, freshly ground pepper, garlic powder and paprika. For the liquid, I like to use whipping cream, but it can be made with milk or a lighter cream, though why anyone would want to, I don’t know. ;-)

To make the sauce, the onion first gets slowly cooked in about a tablespoon of butter until soft. Then, a couple more tablespoons of butter is added. When that’s melted and bubbling, the flour (about 2 tablespoons) is added and cooked, stirring constantly with a whisk, for maybe a minute. Then 2 cups of room temperature cream is added, little by little, with pauses to whisk it smooth. For the first while, the flour thickens the cream very quickly. After all the cream is added, the sauce is simmered, while constantly stirred with a whisk, until it is slightly thickened. Then the seasonings are mixed in. Finally, the heat is turned off, then the shredded cheese mixture is stirred in until melted. After tasting to see if the seasonings need adjusting, it is set aside.

For the rest of it, I had potatoes peeled and sliced thin and the carrots were peeled and shredded. I didn’t count how many potatoes I used. They were on the small side, so it was probably around a dozen. The shredded carrots made about 3 cups, loosely packed.

In a buttered baking dish, I put a layer of potato slices, topped it with 1/3rd of the shredded carrots, then added 1/4th of the onion and cheese sauce. This was repeated two more times, then the top layer was just potatoes and the last of the sauce.

It then went into a 350F oven for about 40 minutes.

Shortly before the time was up, I took a ring of Polish sausage and cut it into slices. The slices were then laid on the top of the potatoes.

I hadn’t originally planned to use the sausage, but I happened to have it, so why not? :-)

I did have some concerns at this point. We’re still getting used to the new stove, and haven’t used the oven much at all in this heat. When stabbing the potatoes with a fork before adding the sausage, they were still surprisingly hard. I had forgotten to cover it with foil at first, so that might be why.

I covered with foil at this point, but it really should have been added right from the start.

With the sausage on the top, I put them in for another 10 minutes. Most recipes for scalloped potatoes that I’ve seen say to bake for 40-50 minutes, and I was shooting for 50 minutes in total. After that, I added the rest of the cheese mixture on top.

Back in the oven it went, though without the foil. I didn’t want the cheese to stick to it. I then baked it until fork tender.

It ended up taking a lot longer to cook than I expected.

Also, handy hint. Put the pan on top of a baking sheet, in case the sauce bubbles over.

We’ll be testing out the oven’s self cleaning function, next…

:-D

When it was fork tender, I took it out and topped it with chopped parsley I’d picked from our garden that morning.

This was quite an experiment from how I usually make scalloped potatoes. They are usually just the potatoes and onion-cheese sauce, these days. I was very curious as to how the carrots worked.

They pretty much disappeared!

I used some of each type of carrot we have; white satin, rainbow (orange, pale yellow, and white), and deep purple. The purple carrots left colour on the potatoes, but with them being shredded, and such a long cooking time, they all pretty much disintegrated and disappeared into the sauce. I could taste a hint of their sweetness, but that was it.

I would definitely be up to including them again.

The addition of sausage… well, you can’t go wrong with adding kielbasa!

The cheese mixture worked really well, too. That Tennessee Whiskey cheese added to the flavour, but did not overpower.

All in all, this was quite a success!

The Re-Farmer

Fire pit mods, done!

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We have been talking about using the fire pit to do an actual cookout tomorrow (weather willing!). That will require a trip into town to pick up things we want to cook over a fire, so I cleaned out and modified the fire pit today.

The first thing to do was empty out the ashes. I have done that once before, in our first year here, but not as thoroughly as I wanted before adding modifications to the pit.

I filled our large wheelbarrow twice! The first load was pretty much all ashes, while the second was a mix of soil and composted ashes.

I dug down far enough that I was starting to fight with root mats. Then I started hitting a… mat?

I pulled out the buried remains of… whatever this is.

It’s some sort of woven material that looks similar to a tarp, but… not.

When I pulled it away, I had another surprise under it.

Do you see those whitish specks among the roots?

Those are ants eggs!

Ants have somehow managed to survive in the fire pit! Considering how hot it would have gotten, just last night, I’m amazed. They weren’t just under the sheet, either. I found more around the edges, elsewhere.

Well, I hope they move on to someplace else because, now that the ashes and dirt are gone, they’ve lost what protection from the heat they had!

Clearly, this fire pit has been used to burn garbage, too. Along with the green mat I pulled out, I found broken glass and old nails, along with more expected things, like chunks of wood and rocks.

Once the pit was cleaned out and raked even, it was time for the concrete blocks.

We have a few of them around, but most of them are where they are, for a purpose. Like the ones around the storage house, that are holding various panels to cover what used to be the top of the basement. I haven’t moved them to try and see what they are covering yet, so I’m leaving them be for now.

I did have one available that wasn’t being used, and there was another in the middle of the tire planter, that had been buried in the middle to support the bird bath, which is now set up in a different location. So I dug that out and hosed out the dirt that had filled the openings.

I then had to decide how to orient things.

I decided to orient it with the nearby gate. That gap where the wind usually comes from, and I wanted some air flow over the fire. The openings in the blocks will allow for some air flow from the sides, too. I used one of the oven racks to determine how far apart to put the blocks.

I wanted to have the option of using both racks, so I also brought over the 1 half-block we have.

It’s shorter than the full blocks, so I added a couple of bricks under it, to make it level with the others.

Then I hosed everything down.

We now have several options.

If we want to do a simple wiener roast, we can leave the racks off, and the blocks can be used to support our roasting sticks.

Once we’ve built up the coals, we can place both racks on, like in the picture, for a large cooking area. If we need to, we can still easily feed the fire from one end.

Or we can use one rack across the middle, supported by the two large blocks.

Or, we can have one rack towards the end, supported by all three blocks. We’d be able to keep a fire going at the open end, and push hot coals under the cooking area as needed.

We can also fill the half block with coals for anything that needs high heat, like setting a pot or kettle of water to boil, and have the one rack covering it as it is in the photo, for air flow. To do this, though, we’ll need to get a long handled, metal scoop, like are used to clean fireplaces. Mind you, it’s entirely possible we already have one, hiding in one of the sheds. LOL

Now that the set up is complete, we can keep it in mind when we go into town tomorrow. We still might go for an ordinary wiener roast, but who knows what we might find to inspire us, instead. :-)

I’m really looking forward to it! I hope the weather co-operates. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Historical cooking: chickpea soup with fried bread

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One of my Recommended posts was for the Historical Italian Cooking YouTube channel. Recently, they put out a new video for a super simple dish made with ingredients we typically have on hand. Today, I was able to give it a try!

Here is the video.

You can also visit this link for the written recipe.

This is an ancient Roman dish; chickpea and leek soup, with a fried flatbread called lagana.

About the only thing we had to go out of our way to get for this recipe was the white wine.

There was one ingredient we couldn’t find, though. Durum wheat flour. Any type of flour is just now becoming easier to find, but there’s no chance of finding any out of the ordinary flours. All Purpose flour, which is what we have, is made with a blend of hard and soft red wheat. Here in North America, durum wheat tends to be used in pastas. It’s the sort of thing we’d have to go to specialty stores to find. I’m sure I could find it in the city, but certainly not locally.

So I substituted AP, since that’s what I had.

First, the soup ingredients.

Another substitute I made was to use canned chickpeas instead of soaking dried chickpeas overnight. The recipe called for 2 leeks, but has almost no other quantities given. I had 2 leeks, but they were pretty massive, so I used 2 cans of chickpeas to balance out the quantities. There’s also the white wine, some olive oil, and caraway seeds ground with a mortar and pestle. I eyeballed most of the quantities based on watching the video. :-)

The soup was started by boiling everything but the leeks in salted water for 10 minutes. Then, the leeks are added and cooking continues for another half hour.

While that’s being done, the flat bread is made.

The flour was the other thing with a quantity given: 300 grams.

Unfortunately, my kitchen scale disappeared. So we had to use a converter. I used a little under 2 1/2 cups of flour. Salt is added, then a dough is formed with some warm water. That’s it, that’s all!

After the dough is kneaded until smooth, the recipe said to divide it into 10 pieces. There are 4 of us in this household, so I divided it into 12 pieces, instead.

The pieces of dough are then rolled out into rough circles.

The recipe calls for olive oil to be used to fry the bread. Olive oil has a low smoke point, so I modified the recipe a bit more. I added a bit of vegetable oil to increase the smoke point a bit. I was just frying in a pot on the stove, so this was more of a safety issue.

Once the oil was hot, the rolled out dough was fried, one at a time.

The dough bubbled up a bit in the video, but not into big dough pillows like this! :-D This could be because of the different type of flour, or even because of the oil blend.

Not that I’m complaining! :-D

These fried up very quickly. Maybe half a minute on each side, to get them to a golden brown, before placing them on paper towel to drain. The bubbles cracked on a couple of them, allowing oil to get into the pockets. That took a fair bit of draining! The bread was finished well before the soup itself was.

They look absolutely amazing!

Taste test time!

The soup itself was very mild tasting. Possibly because I used more water than in the recipe. I couldn’t distinguish individual flavours of the caraway or the wine, for example. No one ingredient overpowered the other.

The lagana bread had a surprising amount of flavour for something that is just flour, salt and water! The outside was crispy, while the inside was chewy. It went incredibly well in the soup. A real balance of flavours. Making one without the other would not be as good as the two together.

This is a remarkably easy soup to make. The lack of quantities in the recipe made it a bit more interesting to work out, but that just gives room to adjust to one’s one preferences!

I can definitely see us making this recipe again!

The Re-Farmer

Lemon cheese, end result

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Here is how the lemon cheese turned out! :-D

This photo was taken right after the bag was taken down from the hanging rig.

Of course, I gave it a taste.

It has very mild in flavour, as to be expected with a cheese like this. Lightly salty – I probably could have added maybe an extra half teaspoon, instead of the quarter teaspoon or so I added, to adjust for using 4L instead of 1 gallon. It has a light, almost creamy texture to it.

Because it’s so loose, I squeezed it together in the cheesecloth a bit, then put it back into the colander over the bowl, put a plate over it and weighed it down with my stone mortar. Just for a couple of minutes, to make it easier to transfer into a container.

Since it’s such a fresh cheese, it will need to be finished quickly.

I don’t think we’ll have a problem with that! :-D

Then, because I had a big bowl of still-warm whey handy, I made up a double batch of bread, using whey for the liquid. This works out really well. Yeast seems to really like whey. The dough has a softer feel to it while kneading, and the finished bread is lighter, with a delicate crumb and a lovely flavour.

We’ll be storing the rest of the whey in the fridge to use in other baking. It would be awesome in a sourdough bread!

I’m quite pleased with the end result of this cheese. Definitely something I will be making again, and maybe playing around with adding things, like fresh herbs, to it at the salting stage.

The Re-Farmer

Making lemon cheese and a hanging rig

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I’ve been planning to do this for a while, and finally had the chance today: making lemon cheese. I’m using a recipe I found here. Do check this site out. Especially if you’re interested in different ways of preserving food, though there is lots more there, too.

After sanitizing my equipment, I started heating the gallon of milk.

Well… not quite.

This is Canada, and our “gallon” of milk is actually 4L, as you can see on the very handy measurement inside the stock pot I am using. A litre is just a bit more than a quart. At 4L, the difference is enough to warrant adjusting the quantities of the other ingredients.

Which are lemon juice and salt (I used Kosher salt).

For a gallon, the recipe called for 8 Tbsp of lemon juice and 1 Tsp of salt and I adjusted those quantities up slightly when I measured them out.

After heating the milk to between 185F – 190F (I got to break in my new candy thermometer. :-D ), the milk is taken off the heat and the lemon juice is added. (I used 3% homogenized milk.)

It curdles immediately.

It then gets covered and left to sit for 15 minutes.

Which is when I dashed downstairs to do a quick build. The cheese would need to be hung to drain later, and we don’t have a good set up for that. We’ve made do with whatever we could come up with when making jelly or yogurt cheese, but we plan to be doing more of this sort of thing in the future, so having a rig to hang things to drain would be very useful.

Since we have also finished the basement and have some pieces of wood handy, I can actually do something about it!

When my timer went off, I’d reached this point.

There was just enough of the wood we used to build a frame to block the entry into the old basement, to cut 2 ft long side pieces. One of them is missing a chunk at one end, but it’ll do. I then cut a matching 2 ft long cross piece for the top, and a pair of base pieces.

Then my timer went off and I headed upstairs. Thankfully, my daughter was handy, and she took over with putting the curds into a cheesecloth lined colander over a bowl, to drain for 10 minutes. That was just enough time for me to finish my rig.

I used what screws I had that were long enough, which were really way too long for the job, but whatever. I also added a cup hook to the centre of the cross piece to hang things from.

It is a pretty ugly rig right now. Normally, I would have sanded the pieces and used more appropriate screws. It’s kinda wobbly, but steady enough for the job.

By the time I took it upstairs to give it a good cleaning, it was time to add salt to the cheese curds.

Here they are, after salting.

This is basically cottage cheese, really. My daughter had given it a quick taste after salting it and says it tastes quite different from cottage cheese, but we’re not washing the curds or anything like that, either.

The recipe then says to hang it for 30 minutes for a spreadable cheese, or up to 2 hours for a dry and crumbly cheese.

We were using a fresh cheese cloth, without cutting it down to size, so I ended up tying the cheesecloth around the cross bar instead of using the hook.

We checked it after half an hour and decided to let it hand for the 2 hours. We’ll see how it looks, then!

When we’re done with all this, I will probably take the rig apart and finish it properly. Give the pieces a good sanding, then screw it back together, with some wood glue to make it more stable.

I am so loving having that space in the basement to be able to do projects like this!!!

The Re-Farmer

Easter preparations: baking day and frozen ground

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Today, while the girls continued to work on the basement (I have yet to go down to see their progress!), I worked on baking our Easter bread.

Then, since I was baking anyway, I made some sourdough soda bread, and another double batch of what has become my usual standby, a basic bread recipe modified by the addition of rolls oats and various seeds. This recipe, plus chia seeds and minus the rye flour. Lately, I’ve also included hemp hearts as well, which adds a really nice flavour and texture. Thanks to my dear friend, I even had yeast to use for the non-sourdough recipes. :-)

In this photo, the braided loaf is for our Easter basket, and I made 4 mini loaves with the other half of the recipe. In the back, left, are the loaves of sourdough soda bread. Which did NOT want to rise today. The house was a bit too chilly today, even though it has been warming up again, outside.

In between batches and rising times, I also made a soup using one of my meals in a jar mixes with sausage. The mix had brown lentils, red lentils, orzo pasta, turmeric cous cous, dehydrated vegetables, dehydrated onions, mushroom ketchup powder, 1 cube of vegetable bouillon and 1 cube of chicken bouillon.

The seedy bread was shaped into mini-loaves that made excellent bread bowls.

This was soooo good to break my Good Friday fast (for health reasons, I do not do a total fast).

While doing my rounds this morning, I checked the ground near the power pole in the old garden, where there is horseradish planted. It was rock hard, but I hoped that things would have warmed enough to dig some up by this evening.

After scraping aside last year’s leaves, I found the horseradish has already been trying to grow.

The ground was certainly starting to thaw out by this time, but the soil here is so full of rocks, it didn’t make that much of a difference. I can’t understand why my mother planted these here. For a plant that is grown for its roots, rocky ground would have been something to avoid. The area has always been much rockier than the rest of the garden; so much so, my parents eventually stopped using it completely. The base of the power pole, however, has rocks and gravel packed around it, so it’s even worse than anywhere else.

I did manage to break off a couple of pieces, then decided to see what I could find in the other spot my mother had planted horseradish; at the base of a spruce tree near our feeding station. I had hoped that, between the wood chip mulch and possibly a bit more sunlight, the ground would be thawed out more.

The horseradish here isn’t as big or prolific, but I could see where it was starting to grow.

I did scrape away the wood chips, but it’s still pretty hard to see.

There isn’t as much growing here, and they’re much smaller, but the ground was indeed a bit softer, so I got a couple of decent chunks out. The ground isn’t rocky here, but of course, there’s plenty of tree roots. Again, I don’t understand why my mother chose this location.

After much washing, then scrubbing with an old tooth brush to get into the crevices, I now have several chunks to use.

That big piece with three sprouts? I could potentially plant each of those, and have three fresh plants.

I think the two little ones will be enough for my mother. If all goes to plan, I hope to swing by her place tomorrow with a care package for her. I’ll leave these as is, so she can prepare them as she wishes – or plant them in her own little garden plot outside her window. :-)

We only need a bit for our own basket. I have been thinking of planting horseradish in softer ground; perhaps in a raised bed or planter. Something that will allow a straighter root to develop. If I can think of a good spot for that, I might do that with the big piece. My mother always kept a piece of horseradish, with the green parts still attached, in the basket to be blessed with the rest of the food, specifically to share with friends to transplant, or to transplant herself. I’ve tried it myself a few times, but the only one that succeeded (and didn’t get dug up by squirrels) was the one I’d included with our Easter basket the last time we were able to visit with my father, 5 years ago. I took it back with us to plant when we got home, and it actually survived. It got left behind when we moved, of course.

Normally, we would finished putting all our basket contents together tonight, in preparation for taking it to church for the blessing tomorrow morning, but since there is no church blessing, we’ll finish arranging the basket tomorrow and do our own blessing whenever we’re ready. I still want to do onion skin dyed and tea dyed eggs, which will be the last things that require any cooking.

For now, I think I’ll head down into the basement and see how things are looking after all my daughters’ hard work! :-)

The Re-Farmer