Anyhoo, when I was ordering seeds for my garden, I saw sprouting seeds and ordered fresh peas. I started these guys 2 days ago and already they have the tell-tale tails (oh dear, maybe this isn’t the morning to try and write a cohesive post) that show they are sprouting. It’s taking all I have not to stand next to them and yell at them to sprout faster. I’ve never grown them before and have no idea how long they take. I’m trying to be patient as I tie a napkin around my neck.

When you are interested in foraging, you really have to pay attention to the seasons. If you read about ramps in the winter, you are going to have to wait until spring to find them. Shopping at grocery stores seems to have made us forget that certain things grow at certain times of year. At least locally, that is. I had read about making acorn flour a while ago, but it wasn’t acorn season. I forgot all about it until I saw Stephanie mention it in her blog. I was going up to the Berkshires for the weekend and it was the right time of year for acorns.

We went on a hike and I brought a backpack along to gather nuts. I had no idea how many I would need, so I summoned my inner squirrel and kept gathering and filling my bag. When we got home, I weighed the nuts I had found and had 8lbs. After pulling off the tops and discarding the ones that had worm holes in them I had 6lbs. I read in a couple of places that you place the acorns in water and the ones that float aren’t viable. I tried that and almost all of mine floated. I decided to check inside and see what they looked like. Some were bad, but most were good, so I decided to skip that theory.

Now comes the gross part…grubs! Many of the acorns had grubs. The fat, white, wiggly things totally grossed me out, so I decided to bake the acorns at 170 degrees F to kill them. A dead grub is still gross, but a wiggling one is much worse.

After discarding the acorns that were discolored or had grubs in them I think I was down to about 2-3 lbs. Acorns are full of tannins, so you have to soak them for several days to remove the bitterness. I tried soaking them when they were chopped, but thought that the water wasn’t getting to the inside of the acorn meat. I ran them through a meat grinder to chop them smaller.

Directions for how to make acorn flour:

• Gather a ridiculous amount of acorns
• Discard any that have obvious problems (squirrel bites or worm holes)
• Bake acorns at 170F for 1 hour to kill grubs
• Shell acorns tossing out any that are discolored or have grubs. It is pretty obvious which ones are good and which ones aren’t
• Grind acorns in a food processor, or a meat grinder
• Wrap in several layers of cheesecloth and soak in water. You will need to do this for several days, until the meat isn’t bitter.
• Lay the acorn flour on a pan and either dry in the sun, or in the oven on the lowest setting. Make sure it’s completely dry or it will mold.

I will post some recipes within the next few days.

For several months we have been living with chairs that looked pretty shabby. The fabric covering started to tear on several of them. This weekend we finished re-covering them, which was a simple process.

One of the enormous benefits of living in New York City is the ability to find almost anything. I needed upholstery fabric, foam and dacron. I got the fabric at Mood fabrics (famous for supplying the show Project Runway) and I got the foam and dacron at Canal Rubber. Dacron is a stretchy, web-like material that covers over the foam. If you are at all like me and are not on top of *everything*, you might have chairs that go neglected. What happens under the fabric is that the foam turns a gross shade of orange and becomes brittle and powdery. The dacron stretches over the foam and keeps this powder from dusting the floor under the chair. Have I shared too much??

Anyhow, the internet is rich with videos on how to re-upholster a chair. Each version is slightly different. Glueing the foam to the seat didn’t seem right to us, so we stretched the dacron over it and stapled it down. It’s mostly just common sense.

Neil unscrewed the seat of the chair from the wooden frame. There were 4 screws on the bottom of the seat. He then took a flat head screwdriver and removed all of the staples holding the fabric and foam onto the seat. The seat is just a sheet of plywood.

I traced the plywood shape onto the foam, giving an extra 1/2″ of space all around. I cut the foam with an electric turkey carver. Now I feel I have to explain something…we don’t use this carver to cut turkey. We bought it when we made a foam turtle shell for our daughter’s Halloween costume years ago. The man at Canal Rubber suggested using a box cutter to cut the foam, but if you can get your hands on one of these electric carvers, your life will be much easier.

I cut the dacron with a pair of sharp scissors to a size about an inch or 2 larger than the foam. We placed the foam on the plywood base and stretched the dacron over it. Then we used short staples and a staple gun to attach it to the wood.

I traced the shape of the old fabric onto the new fabric. The foam we used was slightly puffier than the old foam, so I needed to add about an inch and a half all around. You can use scissors. I used a rotary cutter. Then you stretch the fabric over the dacron and staple it down. I found this much easier with two people, but you could do it solo. We also did the canvas stretching technique, which is when you start stapling the fabric in the middle of one side, then flip it around and staple the middle of the opposite side. You do this on all sides and work your way to the corners.

I should have taken more photos, but I think it is really common sense. When you get to the corners, fiddle with how you fold the fabric so it looks nice.

I just signed up for a fermentation workshop with Sandor Katz. The June 8th workshop is being put together by Just Food here in NYC. Sandor Katz will talk about the health benefits of live-culture ferments and will also show how to make sauerkraut, kimchi, pickles, etc. I tried making pickled green tomatoes last year, so I look forward to learning about more options. I’m also a big fan of kimchi, so it will be nice to be able to make it myself.

I’m meeting my friend Victoria there and hope to see some other familiar faces. The admission is $30 or pay $45 and they’ll throw in a copy of Sandor’s book Wild Fermentation. Here’s a link for more information. You can buy tickets online.

I hope everybody has a wonderful and creepy Halloween!

I had snack duty today for Lindsay’s class. I couldn’t help myself….those are glow-in-the-dark pirate rings.

The cupcake recipe is from Magnolia Cupcakes. You can get the recipe at that link. It’s my go-to cupcake recipe these days. It calls for 2 sticks of butter for 24 cupcakes, but I think that can be reduced a bit. I’m going to try 1 3/4 sticks next time and then go down 1/4 stick each subsequent time I make them.

I got a 2-layer cupcake pod that carries 24 cupcakes. It looks a bit ridiculous, but it’s going to be indispensable for the next 10 years of birthday and school parties.

Last night we were having dinner with friends in our garden. It was about 7pm and our chickens had gone inside their coop for the night. All of a sudden there was a commotion and the hens clamored out of their coop and into the run. I have a larger run attached to their secure run that isn’t 100% predator proof. I lock the door between that run and the secure run every night. I hadn’t done it yet and I have to admit that I have forgotten entirely some nights. I had heard that there have been raccoon sightings in our Brooklyn, NY neighborhood, but never saw one myself. Until now.

I walked over to the chickens to see what was going on and standing about 5 feet away from me behind the wire run was a raccoon. It saw me and promptly flipped me the bird. It wasn’t scared of me in the slightest. The chickens ran into the larger run and were totally freaked out. Since I wasn’t scary enough to make the raccoon leave, we pulled out our garden hose and sprayed the raccoon with jets of water. It didn’t like that and climbed over the fence. About 30 seconds passed and it climbed back into the yard. We sprayed it again and it eventually went away. But it climbed on top of the secure run and tried to reach through the wire of the larger run. I’ve heard of raccoons grabbing and killing chickens by reaching into a run. Gah!

Neil threw rocks in it’s direction. He doesn’t think he hit it, but it again casually went away. Actually it scaled the 2-story building that adjoins our yard by climbing up the ivy. It kept peeking over the roof at us. Not only were the chickens freaked out, but our daughter was really upset as well. I was upset because I know that this critter is going to come back. It wasn’t afraid of us *at all*. We also live right along a very popular restaurant row, so there’s really no end to the tasty trash cans filled with food nearby.

I’ve spent the morning reading various chicken sites and doing google searches on raccoon control. I’ve come up with the following possible solutions:

1. Get a hav-a-hart trap and bait it with cat food. There are several unsavory outcomes to this solution involving relocating, drowning and shooting. Relocating wild animals is not a very successful endeavor. You are dropping your problems on someone else and the animal doesn’t know the natural resources, so can just starve to death.

2. Pee around the perimeter of your yard. I’m guessing that the raccoon, who wasn’t at all scared of me, will not be scared of our pee. And besides, I’m already the crazy chicken lady, I don’t need to add another layer to that!

3. Put down coyote urine. Yes, you can buy predator urine to discourage animals. My in-laws ordered synthesized fox urine online for a groundhog that was digging in their foundation. There’s a website called predatorpee.com. Love the internet! I’m not sure any of these raccoons have seen or smelled a coyote for the past several generations, so I’m not sure if the smell of coyote urine would register fear with them.

4. Hot sauce bombs. The mad-scientist/cook in me loves this one. You take jumbo marshmallows, poke a hole in one end and fill them with the hottest hot sauce you can find. (Wear gloves) Then scatter them around the yard. The raccoons eat them and then won’t come back. This option appeals to me for a few reasons. I like DIY aspect. I like that I’m not actually physically harming/killing the animal. And I kind of love the immature 15 year-old revenge fantasy part of it.

In any event, I’ve set an alarm to remind me that dusk is approaching and I need to lock up my hens. Raccoons generally only like to eat the chicken’s crop (filled with yummy grains), so it’s a gruesome death. Plus you get the added bonus of finding a decapitated chicken left behind.

Wish me luck! Maybe I’ll make Rice Krispy treats with the leftover marshmallows.

This spring I went to a garden center to buy some herbs. I was intending to buy lemon balm, but somehow came home with lemon verbena by accident. If you are like me and never grew lemon verbena before, you won’t know how intoxicating it’s lemon scent is. I think it’s what they base the lemon-scent of most furniture polishes on. Kind of like when I tasted my first concord grape and realized, “Hey, this is the grape flavor they put in all the candy that never tasted like any grape I had ever eaten before”. Lemon verbena is used in a lot of perfumes because it smells so wonderful and happy and exotic. So, while I liked crushing it in my fingers to awaken the scent, I still didn’t know what to do with it. It also turns out to be an annual, so I had to figure out something sooner rather than later.

My first inspiration came when my friend Victoria came over. She’s a cookbook author, food-stylist and all-around food lover. She told me that I could put some leaves in sugar to infuse the lemon scent. Sounded wonderful. I also looked online and found a couple of other great ideas. One was for a lemon verbena and mint tea. You pick a bunch of leaves from both plants, put them in your teapot, pour in hot water and steep a few minutes. Don’t put in mint stems as it can make the tea bitter. The tea was delicious, light and clean tasting. Hmm…maybe that’s my association with the furniture polish again…

The other idea was to infuse vodka with the lemon verbena. Wash a few sprigs of lemon verbena well, drop in a clean jar and fill with vodka. Wait a day or two and then remove the sprigs. The vodka takes on a nice, light green color and smells wonderful. My husband makes me delicious cosmopolitans using St. Germaine (elderberry liqueur), but now we’re going to try it with the lemon vodka. We might try lemon drops as well. Intoxicating lemon aroma indeed!

While we are helping birds out this hot summer, let’s think of our backyard chickens. It’s been in the 90s here for the past couple of weeks. The run is in a shady part of my garden, so the girls aren’t bearing the brunt of the heat. However, they are wearing little down coats and have to be feeling it. I’ve been getting fewer eggs on the really hot days, so I decided to try a “redneck air conditioner”. All that consists of is a frozen bottle of water. In this case I used a cranberry juice bottle filled with water. The idea is that  you put it in their run and they can sit or lean up against it to cool off.

The temperature outside is unbearable, and I can’t remember the last time we had a decent rain. Besides watering your plants (sparingly!) put some water out for the thirsty birds. You can put together a simple birdbath for not a lot of money. Don’t worry about having mosquitoes breed in your birdbath. Mosquitoes need water that hangs around for at least 10 days. You will dump out the old water and add fresh water more often, so you won’t have that problem.

I had been looking around for a nice birdbath for my small Brooklyn garden without much luck. They were too expensive, too ornate or too big. Mostly it was the cost that deterred me. I was in a garden shop this Spring with Neil when we put together the idea for our birdbath. We have a large terra cotta flower pot that we turned upside down. On top of that we put a glazed dish. The dish is actually what you put under a flower pot to catch the water that flows out of the bottom. Nice garden supply centers can carry these in pretty large sizes for a decent price. I think this one was $20 or less. The terra cotta pot is fairly big, so the dish is stable on top of it. I like that it isn’t too high or large and fits into the garden in a very low-key, organic way. We have robins and catbirds coming into the yard to drink and bathe, which is a nice change from the sparrows that usually hang out with us.

Take cheese making for instance. How many people know how to make their own cheese? Maybe there isn’t enough incentive now that wonderful, artesian cheeses are available in every decent-sized town. We have a great cheese shop in our neighborhood called Stinky. But I digress.

Almost a year ago I started to read up on making cheese. I found the New England Cheese Making Supply Company online and promptly ordered a cheese making kit. They teach you how to make fresh mozzarella in 30 minutes. I tried it and it was delicious. I decided to try yogurt and discovered this site. He errs on the side of caution with heating the milk up, but I decided I would try his method and then I could always scale things back when I was more comfortable with the process.

So let’s make yogurt!
You will need:
1 gallon of milk
1 8oz. container of yogurt that’s unopened
powdered milk (optional)
a big stock pot
enough jars (mason, spaghetti sauce) to hold the gallon + of milk
cooler

• First you want to steam the jars you will be using for about 10 minutes to sterilize them.
• Add a gallon of milk (not ultra pasteurized!) to a big stock pot (with a heavy bottom). You can make your yogurt full fat or lowfat by choosing what kind of milk you use. You can add 4 T of powdered milk to make a thicker yogurt.
• Heat the milk slowly until it reaches about 185-195ºF.
• Place the covered pot in a pan of cold water to cool it down. Again, some people skip these first steps, but this kills any pathogenic (euw!) bacteria that may be hanging around.
• When the milk cools to 122-130ºF, remove it from the cold water bath. Pour 1 cup of the milk into a 2-cup measure.
• Add 1 cup of fresh yogurt until mixture is well-blended.
• Slowly add your yogurt/milk mixture into the rest of the milk and mix well.
• Pour milk mixture into the sterilized jars and cover immediately. One of your jars can be an 8oz. jar that will serve as the fresh yogurt for your next batch.
• Add water that is about 122-130ºF to the cooler. Set the jars in the cooler. The water should be below the level of the lids. Let the jars sit undisturbed for at least 3 hours. If you don’t have a cooler, you can wrap the jars in towels and keep in a warm spot.

Your unopened jars will keep for up to 2 months in the fridge, so you have plenty of time to enjoy this delicious yogurt.