The margarine effect describes the divide perfectly. While visiting family this summer I stayed in one house that used butter and one that used margarine. And while I would have preferred to not eat margarine, I followed the rule and I'll admit it's conveniently soft right from the fridge.
But the war between margarine and butter excludes the idea that there could be a third or more options, after moving abroad and switching cuisines I find my two most used fats are pork lard and sesame oil, butter is too expensive here.
Margarine is cheap but using animal fats, especially lard from rendered pork belly is even more thrifty. I think of how hard my mum worked to drain the fat from everything she cooked, because she was told how bad it was, and now I save it.
Another trick done to us was to sell us boneless skinless meat and cartons of meat flavored salt water as "broth". But broth boxes and margarine are so easy, it's easier to go with the trends and what's available. I wonder how many people would change from margarine if it became more difficult and expensive to use than butter.
Butter is not the same anymore. Cows are being fed diets high in palm oil and it's changed the consistency of butter masking it more solid than grass fed cows. Even cream is different, I can make clotted cream from the European cream I buy in Korea, but grocery store cream in Canada wouldn't clot.
I'm probably damned by whatever fat I choose, factory farmed pork lard rendered at high temps, canola oil, imported butter full of who knows what. I prefer butter over margarine, but eating my sister's vegan margarine for two weeks didn't kill me either.
Translated from many Korean recipes for "pig potato" pickles (doeji gamja jangajji)
Note: Because harvest amounts vary, pickle making, unlike baking, is better suited to ratios rather than exact measurements. The following recipe is given in ratios than can and should be changed slightly to suit the tastes of the family.
Vegetables:
Sunchoke roots
Optional suggested flavoring vegetables:
Peeled garlic
Fresh hot peppers
Peeled and sliced ginger
Onion petals or quarters
Any other vegetable that can be eaten raw and will stand well in brine and you have on hand can be added
Brine- measured in roughly equal parts according to volume of raw vegetables
Plain water or anchovy seaweed broth
Soy Sauce (not low sodium)
Vinegar ( recommended fruit or rice vinegars)
Sugar or sweetener (start with half the measure and add more to taste)(brown or sugar like syrups could be substituted eg honey, maple syrup, fruit syrups)
Seasonings such as black or chili peppers, bay leaves, dried mushrooms etc can be added.
Note: do not attempt to reduce the soy sauce by too much, salt is important for preservation and salt reduced by too much will result in a pickle that spoils quickly. However; reduced salt pickles may be made for quick consumption and pickles meant for aging should have a higher ratio of soy sauce.
Method:
Thoroughly scrub and clean the sunchoke roots, trim unpleasant bits, and slice into bite sized pieces or thin rounds.
Prepare the other accompanying vegetables, wash clean trim slice, etc.
Place all prepared vegetables raw into clean or sterilized container/s and set aside. Containers may be sterilized by boiling water or steam.
Prepare the brine enough to cover the vegetables in their containers/s.
If making anchovy broth, boil dried anchovy and seaweed first, if not, begin with fresh water. If using dried seasonings simmer in water or broth first to release flavor. Add the remaining brine ingredients to the saucepan and bring to a boil. Remove from boil and taste the brine, add sweetener/water/soy sauce/vinegar until desired taste is reached. Brine should be salty and slightly sour and sweet and just a little bit strong. Pour hot brine over the prepared vegetables. Cap loosely and let cool to room temperature. Cap tight and place in fridge once cooled/next day. Wait 3 days for flavors to develop, the pickles will keep for several months stored in the fridge under the brine. Remove portions with clean utensils only and pickles will not spoil, but may lose texture if kept for too long. Never return uneaten portions to the main container.
Serve pickles in small portions alongside main dishes or dice and add into recipes. Do not discard the brine, it's delicious as a dipping sauce or marinade.
This is a basic pickle that most Korean families have at all times in their fridge as it is quick and simple to make. Often huge batches are made with a harvest of seasonal vegetables and shared among friends and family. They make great gifts, I still have a large container in my fridge from a neighbor who has since moved away. If the brine is plentiful and still good, fresh vegetables can be added into the brine (if someone has cherry picked a certain veg out of it more can be added) and the pickle can be fed this way for a while. The flavor deepens with age and the spiciness of the hot peppers and garlic mellow out. The sunchokes are not essential, try making the pickle with garlic scapes, garlic, onions, peppers, spring onions, cucumbers etc.
Translation of a Korean recipe for dried "pig potatoes"
For about 4kg of sunchokes, trim the nobs/bumps off and scrub well. Slice lengthwise into thin slices and rinse slices in cold water.
Place sunchoke slices in a cloth lined steamer and steam for 15-20m.
Place in thin layers on a dehydrating rack and dry at 70C 160F for a couple hours or until they are slightly damp. Wet sunchokes will dissolve the sugar so it's important to part dry them.
Coat the slices in white sugar (raw granulated sugar should also be fine) and arrange them neatly on the dehydrating trays. Dry them for 9 hours at 70C flipping them 3 hours in.
Store them in a cool dry place, they make a great snack.
I'm sorry to hear about your figs, I have one and was thinking of training it to grow real low, step over style, to cover it well for the winter. But it's in a pot still now because we have to move yet. How big were your figs?
I planted amaranth for the first time this year, haven't decided what I should do with it. Do you make a hot cereal from it?
Why write short posts when you could be thorough and describe in detail!
I'll follow your suggestion and store my sunchokes in the ground, I prefer lazy methods anyways.
I'll work on translating some recipes for you to try. I found a giant sack of mung beans in the back of my mum's cupboard and I might try making Chinese bean desserts with some. I like the sweet bean desserts, they are less sweet usually and have healthy fiber and nutrients.
When I started farming I imagined I'd be succession planting lettuce to eat all summer in pretty rows. But I'm far too lazy and 9/12 months there's something green to forage to eat, and that seems to be my style. It turns out that called seasonal eating and it's also really good for you, haha. Now I look forward to having Shepard's purse greens in the early spring, and hot weather spinach alternatives, and radish leaves in the fall. If you grow pepper plants, the leaves you're supposed to thin out are very tender and better than spinach. Mulberry leaves are also supposed to be edible and on my list to try. Still waiting to try hostas shoots, couldn't find a big enough patch this spring. If you have foraging suggestions share them, I'd love to try!
Cider sounds delicious, we don't have apples but we make our own beer here.
Solar panels are covering more and more rooftops here. People are starting to install them over parking lots, and everyone loves that for shade in the summer. So it would make sense to install them over areas that are already paved or would benefit from shade. The largest paved area I can think of are all the highways and roadways, there's already power lines running alongside roads, what if panels be added into existing infrastructure? You can use current designs better if you can use them in ways that stack functions.
But I agree with you, solar power is not going anywhere yet, so we should be improving the design, and I think nature has a lot to teach us design wise. Like you said, why does it have to be either/or?
You're right about well intentioned policies backfiring. Think critically is less specific and therefore avoids the problem of overgeneralization.
I don't want to just be a complainer, we are hoping to get our own land nearby next year, and I plan to research and do what I can to make the forests around us less flammable. But you have to be careful, because it's easy to get in trouble for doing such things yourself.
But the 72 bricks are such a great place to start there's a lot of little steps in the right direction and many of them are things that anyone can do and plenty more that I want to try!
We are forgetting the value of trees. A short walk from where I'm living in South Korea, the whole south side of a small mountain has been cleared of trees and covered instead with solar panels to power the factory at the base. The greatest irony being that trees are the original solar power and do so much more. It's an incredible eyesore and a sign of very poor policy decisions by previous government.
"Plant more trees" sounds overly simple but the importance of trees is being forgotten,maybe it should be "protect the trees"?
On a side note, South Korea is ravaged by forest fires every spring, yet I see no signs of forest management. Trees were planted en mass after the war to reforest the hills, but without upkeep the dead trees, branches, and kudzu vines are dry kindling every spring. There's fire bans every year with dollars spent enforcing the bans, and seemingly none going to forest management. But workers will drive around cutting trees back from power lines and leave the branches in permanent dry brush piles at the edge of the road. I don't get it.
Well, I found that product the guy was making, and it's mostly a pureed bean candy with only liquid extract of the sunchokes for inulin fibre. Since it doesn't use the tuber in its whole form it's probably not the best use of it. They are also being sliced and dried and used as a diet tea, probably also not what you want to do.
I did see a recipe for slicing, blanching, and half drying, then rolling them in sugar to make a kind of sweet snack. Not sure how the taste would be, but that was interesting. Another popular recipe is a sweet soy sauce sunchoke condiment, it keeps well in the fridge.
Don't forget about the leaves though, young leaves can be blanched and seasoned with spiced garlic oil and it makes a great vegetable side (similar to spinach). In the heat of the summer it's a great replacement for spinach greens.
How are you storing your sunchokes and how long do they last? I also have a lot of trouble keeping potatoes from sprouting prematurely. We only grew potatoes because it was something to do with all the sprouted potatoes that we couldn't eat. I don't keep them near my onions anymore, but still haven't found the secret.
When the sunchokes get going, nothing much grows between them, they make a really tight patch for us. But if you let them get tall they can support vines, we had morning glories crawling up ours.
We are using ours and roadside patches for rabbit forage this year, it's tradition to harvest the roots once foliage dies back, around November or December in South Korea (zone 7). Then the roots are supposed to be sweeter or more full of nutrients. There's a neighborhood guy making some kind of jelly from the sunchokes fiber, I can try to look for that recipe in you're interested.
You can try to plant a pole bean, but you'll need a late variety because it takes a while for the sunchokes to wake up and get tall, so only the September blooming morning glory climbs ours. They handle a fair bit of soil disturbing, so you might consider planting garlic and onions that overwinter and are harvested in the spring before the sunchokes get going. That might be a good routine. Ours grew next to the onions and garlic we planted and didn't seem to be affected by it. But then you might have to harvest them too early at the time you're planning the onion and garlic bulbs.....
Honestly I find the sunchokes to be a poor substitute for potatoes, which seem to grow more bountiful anyways. But the leaves are very nutritious and edible, opposite from poisonous potatoes, so I suppose they are a more useful plant.
Dian Green wrote:... now they are asking for info and how to handle their volunteer mulberries ...
Apparently the new leaves are human edible. I admit I haven't tested mine, as our spring weather was weird and I didn't want to take strength from the plants. Mulberries are a bit marginal here, but they actually seem to be having a good year. Getting people interested in less common foods is great, because these foods are less likely to be produced as a monoculture.
Mulberry leaves are edible, here in Korea they are used as famine food, I use them as rabbit forage. They grow like weeds(zone 7) so there's almost enough to supply my ravenous bunnies. Koreans typically prepare foraged greens by blanching them and seasoning them. I have yet to try eating the mulberry leaves myself. Choose young leaves, older ones are usually lacy from bug nibbling.
Mulberries are a very useful tree and one I'll be planting when I get my new farm. They produce black berries that are somewhat tasty and make a decent vinegar. Large tender heart shaped leaves are edible by most, they grow quick like willow trees so could be used for quick wood or brush supply. Very hardy here in zone 7. White mulberries can feed silk worms which can produce fibre and larvae for fowl.
Koreans traditionally malted barley, but not for brewing beer, preferring rice alcohol instead. They would malt the barley and mash it to make the sweet malt liquor (wort) and then use the sugary liquid boiled down to syrup as a sweetener, or as is in the fermented pepper paste known as gochujang. So you don't have to necessarily make beer from your barley. Barley was eaten by the poor instead of rice, especially in the summer, not sure how polished it would've been as it's much tougher than rice.
Barley wort is high in yeast nutrients and would probably make a great ginger bug sweetener, possibly substitute for molasses.
Don't waste the grains that you wring out, feed them to livestock if you have, we feed our rabbits on it and they go crazy for it. It's very high in fibre and protein and low in carbs, so we eat small amounts of it in our daily rice. It's suggested to substitute up to 20% of the mashed grains to be palatable in human food such as baked goods.
I'm glad to read about your successful malting and brewing experiment, because I am going to start doing that seriously from October.
We planted almost a half acre of barley this spring and got 400kg (poorish yield) and it's all for malting over the winter!
From the research that I've done in preparation, there's rules that the industry follows for maximum efficiency and predictable product. These rules can definitely be disregarded for homebrewers who don't need to worry so much about that or want a less arduous task.
We harvested in mid June, and I'm letting or barley rest for about three months to mimick seed dormancy before sprouting, this is supposed to improve germination rate and help it to sprout at a same rate which makes a higher quality malt.
I found the answer to why industry doesn't brew with green malt, there are chemicals present in the fresh malt that need to be aged out, if not there's a risk of the beer having a cardboard taste from these chemicals oxidizing during the brewing process. To it's recommended to age the malt for at least a few weeks for roasted malts, and a month or more for pale malts. Heat and dryness are what reduces those unfavorable compounds. Researchers were looking into ways around drying the malt to save energy and there's no easy shortcut. Now if you're not getting those off flavors when you brew, then that's great, but there's a risk of that, and probably more so in certain beers than others.
So there's a lot more waiting time than I initially expected, I won't be able to drink the barley I harvested in June until about December.
There a lot of specialty yeasts available, many are certain strains that give special flavors, such as the German or Belgian yeasts. I brew most of my beers on regular saf 05, it's an easy yeast that ferments well without being too fussy about temperature. I save the yeast trubb from the bottom of my bucket just by keeping it clean and pitch the next beer right on top of it (cooled) because I brew back to back. Like a sourdough it's wonderful if you use it often because it starts fast. I'll use it as many times as I can and only start fresh if I'm going from a dark beer to a light, or if a bug fell in. It's possible to have wild yeasts join in, it happened once and it was wonderful, but it's nice starting with a strong base of something that's really good at fermenting beer. There's people culturing and even patenting wild yeast, but I'm not ready for that yet. For less frequent Brewers there's ways to save the yeast, an easy way is in a jar in the fridge with a layer of beer on top. I've not done it, but it's supposed to keep a while that way, mine will easily wait a couple days on the floor in a sealed bucket, so it's not that hard.
I'm glad there's someone else out there brewing beer really from scratch, wish we were close enough to trade bottles!
I'm planning my first patch of flax this summer, so this is great to know in case I can get any useable fibre to play with. Hemp rather than linen is the historical fibre crop here, but for political reasons I can't grow a field of it. Summers are very hot and humid here, so I'm worried about the flax, but the humidity will be really helpful. Thanks for the information!
I have a steady supply of Brewer's spent grain and would like to try growing mushrooms of any easy variety on it. I grabbed two small samples of fresh grain and stuck in some mushroom butts that I had on hand. They seem to be taking to the grain, which prompted me to consider growing mushrooms more seriously.
I know the commercial way would be to grab grow bags and culture syringes and try to do it in a sterile way and I've only seen grain done that way, is that really the only option? I know grain is not natural like wood, and I have doubts that I can grow mushrooms and not a bunch of mold unless I start sterilizing the bags.
But if there's a more holistic approach with less disposable plastic I'd like to try that. Would lacto-fermenting the grain help deter rampant mold? I can keep the grain in my fridge for a good week without mold growth, can mycelium spread at those temps? Any thoughts from people more knowledgeable about mushrooms?
Kate Downham wrote:I was wondering if anyone here had made beer completely from scratch - starting with raw barley, malting it yourself, and then going through a typical all-grain brewing recipe?
What was the process that you used? What method did you use to sprout the barley? How did you dry or roast it? Do you know what a good amount of barley to work with at a time would be if I wanted to try drying it in my home oven? Any other wisdom to share about the process? Recipes?
I go through about 5kg of malt when I make one 20L bucket batch of beer. You lose weight when your grains sprout so if you want to make enough for one batch you'll need to add extra to end up with the right weight, there's a calculation for this somewhere. From what I've heard, ovens are tricky because they don't go low enough to match the temps of grain kilns and waste a lot of power running them open for such a long time. I'm planning to remove one of my sliding door screen panels, clean it well, then dry my malt on the screen propped on boxes or chairs with a fan positioned to blow on it. There's a WordPress blog called "brewing beer the hard way" and I plan on following his method for malting at home.
Gray Henon wrote:Let me preface by saying I know little about brewing, but is it even necessary to dry the malted barley if you move it directly into brewing after sprouting it? Is it possible that drying is just so the malted barley can be stored, shipped, etc?
I've never malted anything, nor brewed from green malt. But listening to beer podcasts I thought I heard of someone doing what you're mentioning. I'd like to try mashing without drying at least once. But the malting takes a few days and you'd need to brew as soon as your grains were ready, you'd have to organize your life around your beer making. Honestly the 2-3 day soaking and draining schedule seems like the most difficult part compared to drying so I'm not sure how much time and effort you'd be saving in the end. And drying helps to remove the rootlets...
I still think it's worth a try, I've heard the fresher the malt is, the better. And you could save water too.
Coydon Wallham wrote:
My impression is that crystal/caramel malts are modern shortcuts to giving more body and other qualities to the beer. If you go this route, you might want to make a batch with basic malts the first time. I think there's a fair chance more rustic malt production would produce interesting qualities such that you might not need specialty malts to flesh out the results...
That makes a lot of sense, this year I brewed and tasted my first all grain beer using 100% of the grain bill, undiluted with other stuff. I had no idea beer could be that good. Since the pandemic started I've been trying several foodstuffs non factory version for the first time in my life, and I've realized I've been eating a lot of garbage thinking it was the original flavor.
If I can make decent, even just adequate, basic malts I'll be happy with that!
We also want to do this, we are currently looking for land to plant a spring barley crop. I've been brewing all grain wheat beers, but with imported malt. Hopefully by next fall I have some grain to practice malting with, as intimidating as it is, grain to glass is our goal. Although I don't have experience to share with you, we can share the journey!
As far as low tech malting, I've heard of people malting in under the bed storage bins, and drying on screen panels with the aid of fans, and that's probably the way I'll go when I can start doing that. Because you're home brewing you don't need to worry about the consistency that factories need, your batches can vary a little. At least I tell myself this for encouragement.
The type of beer you want to brew will also determine what kinds of malt you want to make. So if you're only making beers with basic malt bills, you don't need to worry about roasting crystal or caramel malts. But I want to try to make them anyways, and I'd like to try to malt brown rice too.
What kinds of beer do you want to make, and what's inspiring you to grow your own beer?
So I was excited about this for my own projects, and I did a crude trial with a hairbrush. The concept works, and with practice would pleat great widths faster than doing so row by row with hand basting. The hairbrush made the pleats a little larger than I'd want for garments, so it would be worth investing the time in preparing a smocking plate with tighter spacing. I did have trouble keeping the fabric pressed into the tines, and with a smaller pleat this is likely to be more of a problem, maybe packing in the pleats with wire or line would be needed, or maybe a light pressing/steaming with an iron before running the needles would be enough to hold the pleats.
But regardless, I now have a way to realize my smocking projects without hunting down a vintage pleater or spending hours at basting pleats. I can't believe I didn't think of this sooner, I'm glad you asked about this today!
Ranson, I think you might have a hackle for processing fibers, do you? If so, I think you can use that as a crude pleating machine if the tines are arranged in a perfect grid. If you use elastics to set the depth you want for your pleats on your hackle, lay a strip of fabric on top and use a wire or knife to gently press the fabric between the tines to form pleats. When your hackle is full of pleats, use your longest needle to run stitches through perpendicular to the pleats. Use several needles and keep them running through the fabric as you move your fabric across your hackle pleater, just lift the pleated section, place the pleated end at the edge of the hackle, press new pleats and run the lines again.
If I'm wrong and you don't have a hackle, make one from finishing nails and soft wood or rig one out of several plastic combs. A large and uncurved hairbrush could work for small projects. I think I'm going to try to make one out of a piece of foam core with short pins pressed into it to try this out.
If this works, that's a huge time saver and you can focus on the fun part of fancy smocking stitches. What project are you trying to make with this?
This summer I attempted to make a smocked blouse and a smocked apron. Both projects are still unfinished and I want to restart the apron as it's not looking how I want.
I also don't have a pleater, so I was drawing the grid and running basting lines by hand, the smocking takes a while and the gathering takes twice as long. I wasn't gathering more than an inch or two, but it was so slow that it was a little discouraging. I couldn't imagine doing by hand the typical full panels of work as used in wide necklines or children's clothes.
There has to be a way to make a crude pleater without running all that basting by hand...
Beer and sake type rice ferments are really only similar in that they are both fermented alcoholic beverages, the microorganisms used are different and the resulting flavors are worlds different.
If you want a beer type beverage and flavor, you'd want to malt your rice and use hops, and practice with other additions until you get something tasty.
Aspergillus/sake type drinks are also really good and some are even easier than beer:
If you want a light, sweet rice "punch" amazake or Korean sikhye are only about 1% alcohol and really refreshing. It's not carbonated or fizzy.
Korean makgeolli is very easy to make, it's thicker and usually lightly shaken to disperse the sediment from the bottom. It's about 5% and lightly carbonated because it's consumed raw, but you can also prime it with a bit of sugar and allow it to build up CO2 for a fizzier drink, and stronger alcohol. Makgeolli is sweet and tart, it reminds me of a drinking yoghurts, full of probiotics and vitamins, and a hearty drink. Commercial makgeolli is back sweetened with aspartame, if you find your home brew too strong you can dilute it right before drinking with sugar water.
Japanese fine sake is an art in itself, cool brewing temps, ultra polished white rice, complicated brewing stages, racking and aging produce a fine clear wine nearing 20% alcohol. It's also not carbonated.
Why not try making one gallon batches of each, and see which one you like brewing and drinking the best?
I too snubbed bud for their use of rice in their grain. AND although I do not drink bud, rice does actually have it's place in craft beer, if you're going for a lighter crisper beer. I plan to try it out someday when I can design my own craft beer recipes.
I too make and drink the heavy yoghurt style Korean rice ferment, I want to try Japanese style sake one day if I can ever find the proper recipe again.
Fermenting rice needs enzymes of some kind to release the starches and sugars from the grain. That's why barley is malted, or specialty bacteria are used to digest the grain. You could malt rice, that's how brown rice vinegar was traditionally made in Asia, but it's not preferred for wine making, maybe there's a reason. Another very ancient way was to chew on the rice and spit it into a vessel, our saliva has enzymes that will break down starches. I wouldn't try that for obvious reasons, but if it's only for your own consumption I guess you could...
The question is, why specifically rice beer? If it's a gluten issue there are gluten free/gluten-light beer recipes out there apparently...
I bought linen to make towels with, because I read that linen works well in humid climates. Thick fluffy cotton towels get musty very quickly here in Korea.
Does anyone have experience with linen towels? Or will I have to find out what they're like by myself once I've made mine?
I recently came across the idea of putting egg shells in with lacto-fermented veggies to harness the calcium through the brine. This makes sense to me, since it would likely be a more bio-available form of calcium. An interesting idea for those of us who don't always have good access to fresh raw dairy in their diet. Will have to experiment with this one.
This is really cool idea, I'm going to try this for my next ferment.
We have the same sewing machine. After my electric one broke prematurely I decided to go analog. But like you now, there's no fancy settings like zig zag, buttonhole, stretch stitch.
I have to do the fancy stuff by hand. I've sewn elastic on a couple pairs of panties with hand sewn fly stitch as shared above. It takes some time but it's not bad for small projects.
This week I'm going to finally sew some buttons and buttonholes on a dress I've been wearing pinned together, hah! I guess this is what they mean by slow fashion...
Have you been able to build your capsule wardrobe?
I'm facing a similar dilemma, as I've moved from Canada to rural South Korea. I have had to give up my old uniform of black yoga pants and an oversized cotton pullover. With the heat and the bugs it didn't work.
I've started sewing myself loose cotton clothes with unbleached cotton that I got in bulk for $1.50 a yard. So far I have a pair of bloomers and a ankle length long sleeves dress.
I can't buy clothes or shoes in Korea. I'm much too long and large for anything to fit right. But you're right, it's hard learning to sew your own. I'm not really satisfied with most of my clothes, but then I'm not heartbroken if they get ripped or stained.