Nebulous Mooch

Yesterday I talked with my mother on the phone and she asked me if I’d gotten any interesting vegetables in my vegetable box lately. I told her that I didn’t. “Just normal summer things,” I said, “like tomatoes and zucchini and lettuce.”

Imagine my surprise when I opened my box this morning and discovered this.

That's me looking surprised.

Do you have any idea what it is?

Okay, I’ll tell you. It’s a black radish. The question is what do I do with it? Does it go in a salad? Do I cook it? Do I ferment it?  I have no idea.

I never understood the point of artichokes–so much work for so little food–but now I think they’re heavenly.

I’ve been fermenting food recently. There’s nothing like some old vegetables to compliment a meal. It’s true. I currently have lacto-fermented salsa and kimchi  in jars in front of the radiator in the living room. Our kitchen is too cold to encourage the fermentation process. Actually, we really don’t need a refrigerator. We can keep our veggies cold by storing them in the cupboard. I’m also growing an experiment in gluten-free sourdough bread in front of the radiator.

The other day my husband walked into the living room and said, “It smells like a barnyard in here.” He was probably thinking that I was trying to make kefir again, but I haven’t tried that since the last kefir debacle.

Anyway, when my family starts complaining about the barn-like odor I know it’s time to put the ferments in the frig. My salsa and kimchi joined my raw sauerkraut in the refrigerator this morning. Of all the fermented vegetable sauerkraut is my least favorite. What were they Germans thinking? Didn’t they have any other seasoning besides salt?

I proofed my sourdough last night. I started a loaf rising this morning and now it’s in the oven. I have no idea what it’ll be like. As I write this I’m realizing that I don’t even know what time I put it in the oven.

My husband who happily eats my fermented foods is always ready to make fun of the process of making them. Here’s his recipe for sourdough bread.

First put some dough in a jar and let it sit for three days.

Next put the dough in a glass bowl and let it sit overnight.

Then put he dough in a loaf pan and let it sit for a few hours.

Finally bake it.

It isn’t rocket science, but it is a little more complicated than that. As one of sourdough websites I read said, “If this sounds brain-dead simple, that’s because it is. People who didn’t believe the Earth was round did this for millenia.” They may of not realized the Earth was round, but they sure made some good bread. I wonder how good they were at figuring out whether to push or pull a door open. Probably better than me.

In Case Your Wondering:

You may be wondering, “Hey, what’s up with all the fermenting going on in your house?” You may find it frightening. You may even be thinking, “Remind me never to eat at Lovelyn’s house.”

The good bacteria found in fermented foods promotes gut health. Fermented foods have been part of many traditional diets for years. Find out more about the health benefits of fermented foods.

This post is part of Real Food Wednesdays on Cheeseslave.

I love curry. Most people who know me know that, including the management of Camden Lake Apartments who charged me a large sum of money when I moved out because my apartment smelled like “spices.” That’s why it’s so shocking that I completely missed National Curry Week. Last week was dedicated to celebrating all things curry. I don’t even think I ate any curry last week.

I’m on my second attempt of making sourdough bread. I thought my husband would be enthralled by the process of getting a sourdough starter going, so I just spent a few minutes telling him all about it. When I was done he turned to me and said, “And then I came down this street…”

It’s starting to get cold out. Every time I step outside I’m reminded of how much I don’t like the cold. I’m wrapped up in my winter coat and there are still people going out in t-shirts. I’m a weather wimp. I openly admit it.

The cold mornings have made me less fond of the chilly fruit and yogurt that I eat to replace cereal for breakfast. I’ve been trying to find some alternatives. I tried eating eggs and though I like eggs, I just don’t like them for breakfast. So I’ve started eating oatmeal. My oats are carefully prepared by soaking them overnight in water with lemon juice to break down the antinutrients in them, but you don’t really want to hear all about my grain soaking obsession here.

The oatmeal is great. It cooks up fast. I add a banana and some raisins for sweetness. This is my new favorite breakfast. Who would’ve thought that me, the girl who always refused to eat oatmeal would say such a thing. Just this morning I said, “I love oatmeal.”

My husband who was reading something really important on the NFL site said, “That’s good.” But I could tell by the way he said it that he wasn’t really listening. He didn’t really understand how much I love oatmeal, but I couldn’t be bothered to push the subject just then. I had a delicious bowl of oatmeal to eat.

My relationship with oatmeal isn’t all good. I don’t much care for this strange skin it leaves all over the pan.

My stepson likes countries. He can tell you the name of the leader of just about any country and the type of government they run. He has lots of very strong opinions about these leaders and governments.

Lately, he’s taken to naming a country and then asking if I’d like to go there. I think he would base his decision on whether or not he approves of their government. That’s probably a good way to make that decision, but as with most things, I found myself making that decision with my stomach.

“How about Thailand?” he’d ask.

“Yeah, I’d go there. I really like their curry.”

“India?”

“Of course, I’ll go any place with curry.”

“How about Iran?”

“No, I don’t think so.” I’d watched part of a show on the BBC the previous day called Taste of Iran. I’d only watched the first 20 minutes, but the food just didn’t seem appealing. It was so unappealing that I had to just turn the show off.

Most people travel to see the sites. They want to have their pictures taken next to famous landmarks. I want to travel the world with my taste buds. I’d rather eat something I’ve never eaten before than see something in real life that I’ve seen in pictures a million times before.

I got this in my vegetable box today. The only reason I know what it is because its name was on the receipt. The question is can you identify this vegetable? If you can, can you tell me how to cook it because I have no idea.

I have a problem with following instructions. I don’t like to admit it, but realistically I do. If someone tells me how to do something I’ll usually do what I’m told, but if given a set of instructions to read I usually don’t bother. So I guess my real problem is reading instructions not necessarily following them.

I decided to start making kefir about a month ago. I though it would be a good way to get some healthy fermented foods in my family’s diet. I bought some kefir grains online. Kefir grains are the bacteria cultures used to make kefir. I ordered them from a woman who calls herself the Kefirlady. The Kefirlady owns Nigerian Pygmy goats and grows her kefir grains in fresh raw milk.  The Kefirlady is also untrusting of the banking systems and only excepts payment in the form of cash mailed directly to her home. I picture her as a hunched old woman with scarf tied around her head, a shepherd’s staff and bony hands.

I put my payment in the mail and nervously waited for my kefir grains to arrive. A week later they did, along with 10 pages of instructions which I sort of read–if sort means reading the first paragraph and putting it on my desk to be buried under a bunch of other papers.

So I re-hydrated my grains in water for 24 hours. Then I put them in milk and thought I’d have delicious kefir in 1 week. After a week of changing my kefir’s milk  roughly every 24 hours, I didn’t have delicious kefir at all. What I had was a thin milky substance that tasted like something that was wrung out of a sheep. Now I know what a barnyard tastes like and it’s not good. This can’t be right, I thought the first time I tasted it. Undeterred, I kept my sheepy kefir grains fed in fresh milk for two more weeks. It just kept getting sheepier and sheepier tasting. Finally, I gave up and got rid of the whole concoction.

After disposing of the Great Kefir Experiment of 2009, I decided to sit down and read the instructions that came with my kefir grains only to discover that my failure may have been my own fault. That’s unfortunate because I was sure the Kefirlady had tried to kill me. I pictured her taking my $10 bill from the envelop, putting in her apron pocket, then rubbing her bony hands together and saying, “Thanks for he $10, dearie. Now I will poison you.”

The kefir rules I broke:

1. Stir kefir with a plastic spoon. I only broke this rule once, but maybe once is enough.

2. Change the milk every 24 hours. On the 5th day, I got this brilliant idea to just put some new milk in with the old milk my kefir grains where  already in. 12 hours later I went to swirl the jar to see how my kefir was doing and it was solid. That led to the breaking of rule number 3.

3. Don’t squeeze the kefir grains. Initially, when reading this rule you may think, why would anyone squeeze kefir grains? When I accidentally made the block of kefir cheese mentioned above I was horrified. How would I find would I find my kefir grains in that? I wondered. I dumped it all out and started squeezing it through my fingers to find the little rubbery kefir grains. Does pinching each grain really hard count as squeezing? I afraid it might.

Lesson learned:

If something you’ve purchased comes with instructions you might want to consider reading them unless the instructions are too long, you’re too busy to be bothered, or you think you can figure it out on your own.

“Did you put something spicy in the salad?” my husband said making a face. He spit a mouthful of salad out into his hand.

“Ugh, what are you doing?” my stepson said.

“It’s a bug,” my husband said then ran to the sink to spit out any remaining bug parts.

Upon careful examination of the former contents of his mouth, we found legs, eyes and wings.

“It must be poisonous. It stung.” He rinsed his mouth out with water.

It looked kind of like this guy. This is a stinkbug. Isn’t he cute?

In some countries, stinkbugs are used to flavor stews and soups. In Mexico, they are crushed to and used in sauces and even used as taco filling. Umm, good.

Why don’t we eat bugs? If prepared correctly, they can be quite appetitizing.

When I was studying in China, I ate at a bug restaurant. I’m sure that it had other things besides bugs, but I always just refer to it as a bug restaurant. I had ant soup, silkworms, locust, and my favorite, fried scorpions. They were quite tasty. In Korea, roasted silkworms are eaten as a snack. They’re sold by street vendors.

In Florida, there are plenty of bugs to eat. I’m sure that we’d have saved on groceries if we’d started eating the giant flying roaches, called palmetto bugs in polite circles, that we’d find in our apartment on occasion. Even though catching enough to eat would work up an appetite–they’re fast. My palmetto bug sniffing friends have told me that they smell like almonds so they might be better in a dessert than a main course or in any dish that you’d normally put almonds in.

These are just suggestions. If any readers living in Florida would like to try this, let me know how it turns out. Maybe you could remove the legs and wings and put them in a stir fry. It’s just protein. A little protein never killed anybody.