Hello old friends

​Our last post was on March 29, almost 3 weeks ago, and I thought spring was right at the doorstep. Fooled again! I'd been scouting the woods and fields every day or two since then. We noticed the first new green of the year only yesterday, with ramps making their 2013 debut.

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​Ramps (Wild Leeks) breaking through a soft bed of pine needles.

​The ramps I transplanted along the side of the house last year - perhaps six total root clusters - also showed themselves yesterday. That project looks to be a success, and I'll be transplanting even more this year, possibly 50 or more root clusters along the north side of the house.

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​Cluster of transplanted ramps from last year sprouting at the side of the house.

During a short walk through the woods I did find a single, small garlic mustard seedling making a lonely first appearance. Of course its solitariness was just a ruse; no doubt it will soon be joined by an army of its invading brethren. We found no morels, which did not surprise me, as we haven't had more than a few hours total of adequate temperatures in the last month (it did hit 63° for a couple hours two days ago, before quickly dropping to the lower 50°s). But there were plenty of other interesting things to see in the still naked forest.

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​A few Great Horned Owl pellets with the remains of mice and squirrels. 

I picked a few bones from some owl pellets, saving a couple of mouse jawbones for my daughter to make a necklace charm with (I suppose that does perhaps sound a tad unusual, but she's an unusual girl...the apple didn't fall far from the tree with her). A group of seven whitetail deer were unafraid and curious, as urban deer are wont to be. ​One young buck was showing the knobby beginnings of what will become his headgear this year. We also enjoyed watching three beautiful and glossy mallards making use of a small rainwater puddle. They looked so pristine that it made me slightly embarrassed for our own ducks at home, with their natty plumage.

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​Mice jawbones picked from owl pellets.

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​Mallards enjoy a puddle swim in the middle of the woods. These fellows were so glossy they appeared to almost be holographic.

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We plan to start filming again early next week. Stay tuned and, as always, please feel free to let us know what you think or would like to see in the way of Creative Sustenance episodes, wild edibles and other food projects.

Spring is here, right?

I've been waiting, waiting, waiting for spring to show it's face for more than the quick, furtive glances it's been teasing us with lately. I think it's finally here to stay. The coming days promise temperatures in the 40s and the snow seems to be melting at a fairly steady rate (still don't see the grass beneath, but it's getting close!).

This is always a fun and enjoyably anxious time of year. Spring's wild edibles will soon be appearing, a little here, a little there, hinting at the mass invasion to come. And the roots that have always been available, though buried beneath several feet of snow, will be accessible too. 

​I've got a lot of dishes and recipes to share with you that make great use of spring's wild edible harvest, some that are very simple, some that are more involved, all that are delicious. I'm excited.

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​Maple blossom. These tasty and stunning little flowers were out in force on March 25 of last year. 

Images & Wis Public Television

Yesterday I added several images to the Gallery page of this site. Most of the images are shots of various wild edibles gathered while foraging, although in the coming days and weeks I intend to add more shots of food and other related subjects. We also changed the viewing format from a slide-show to one where the page displays a grid of thumbnail images that you can enlarge by clicking on a specific image. The enlarged image will appear in a lightbox, from where you then can scroll through more images by clicking the arrows on either side or by simply clicking the image to move you forward. Mousing over the enlarged image will also activate a description at the bottom of the image.

Also, last week we mailed our Creative Sustenance program proposal to Wisconsin Public Television. The WPT Program Proposal forms asked several questions, including asking for a show description, how it complies with WPT's mission, what viewers might get out of it, and so on. I thought I'd share with you a portion of the answers we gave, condensed, below:

Creative Sustenance is a video and multimedia project that takes viewers into the fields and forests, rivers and lakes, backyards and alleyways of Wisconsin and the Midwest to discover our region's abundant and diverse wild edibles. Our main focus will be on foraging and preparing wild vegetables and fruits (nettles, ramps, mustards, milkweed, docks, nuts, berries, etc.). Our state is blessed with a plethora of delicious wild plants, although we will also pursue the occasional under-appreciated protein source with episodes featuring animals such as turtles, frogs, possum, beaver, and even insects.

We will follow up the "in the field" portion of the program with an "in the kitchen" section, where we'll show some ways to prepare for the table what we've harvested from the field. The kitchen segment will feature either myself as chef or, in some cases, other restaurant chefs who make use of wild edibles in their menus. 

Creative Sustenance is both an educational and entertaining program. Viewers will learn that there is a cornucopia of wonderful and nutritious food not too far from and oftentimes right outside their own back doors. The program will certainly enhance and enrich viewers' understanding of and appreciation for many of our region's hidden food treasures. It will also educate them on how they may take good and ethical advantage of these wild food resources in their own homes by creating delicious meals that use wild edibles, thereby further enhancing their personal connection with our region's flora and fauna.

We're in the midst of a food revolution in this country, from urban poultry and beekeeping to a significant increase in people growing gardens again and more and more restaurants using wild edibles in their menus. Creative Sustenance speaks directly to that growing interest.

Wish us luck!​

A gallon of yogurt for the price of a gallon of milk

Everyone knows that yogurt is a healthy food choice (I'm talking natural, live yogurt, free of sugars and additives). Most people also know that it's very easy to make yourself. ​ It's so easy, in fact, that a lot of people already know how to make it, and this blog post is probably little more than an exercise in redundancy for many readers. But making yogurt is an activity that I'm doing on a pretty regular basis, like making bread, and I thought there might be a few folks who read my stuff who haven't made yogurt but would like to give it a whirl.

One of the perks of making your own yogurt is that you can make a gallon of the stuff literally for the price of a gallon of milk, after the first batch. A large (I think they're quart-size) container of store-bought plain yogurt costs around $5, depending on the brand. If you make a gallon you end up with 4 quarts for the price of one, or even less, depending on what you pay for a gallon of milk. 

Here's what you'll need:

• candy thermometer (cost around $7, but you also might find one for a buck at a resale shop like St. Vinnies or Goodwill).
• kettle large enough to heat a gallon of milk (of course you can make smaller batches, but I make a gallon at a time, once every week or two)​.
• rubber spatula to stir with.
• containers to keep the yogurt in your refrigerator.
• heat source that will incubate your yogurt at 100° F. 
• gallon of milk (I use organic whole milk, but pretty much any milk will do, although you may have some issues if you use skim milk).​
• yogurt with live, active cultures to use as a starter (the container will tell you if it has live, active cultures. This is the only yogurt you'll need to purchase from a store. After this you'll be able to use the yogurt you've made as a starter for the next batch.).

​Procedure:

1. Clean and sterilize all of your equipment and utensils. Add the milk to the kettle and slowly bring the heat up, periodically stirring/scraping the bottom to avoid burning or scalding the milk. You're aiming for 185°.

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2. Again, 185° F is your target.

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3. As soon as you hit 185° place the kettle in a sink of cold water and ice, and bring the milk down to 110°.

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​4. Once you hit 110° add 1 cup of the active culture yogurt (2 tbl per quart) and gently stir to mix.

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5. Transfer the milk/yogurt mixture to containers that ​will be okay to heat to 100° for several hours. I use plastic freezer storage containers or glass canning jars.

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​6. Place the milk/yogurt-filled containers in something that will safely heat them to around 100° for 7 to 10 hours. An oven will work if you can regulate the heat low enough not to melt plastic if that's what you're using. I use an old electric blanket set on high. I probably didn't reach 100° but I fold it four times and wrap it around and over the containers, let them incubate for about 10 hours and it comes out fine.

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7. After 7 hours or so, check the yogurt to see if it's set up. If not, let it incubate longer. As I said, mine takes 10 hours buried in an electric blanket. When it looks like yogurt, just refrigerate it and that's it...badaboom badabing, it's ready to eat. Add fruit or jam if you want to sweeten it up. Also, if you prefer the texture of Greek yogurt you can get it by simply draining the yogurt in a couple layers of cheesecloth to get rid of the whey. 

* Forgive the shoddy, grainy photography on this post. Had some technical issues with the camera to overcome.

Faviken Linseed Crisps

​There hasn't been a lot to blog about this past month. In spite of several warm days (if temperatures in the 30s can fairly be called warm) the ground has remained hidden under a thick blanket of snow. I think we've had three nice, heavy snows in the past 4 weeks. I've been doing a good deal of playing and cooking in the kitchen, but nothing I really consider worth sharing with you all. Mostly I've been replanning the garden, replanning our Creative Sustenance shooting schedule, replanning the order of things that need to be done in the house and yard...replanning already laid plans. 

Today, however, I did make something worth sharing, if for no other reason than because I'd not made it before. 

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Linseed or Flax Seed Crisps with hot honey sauce.

One of my favorite cookbooks from last year is Magnus Nilsson's Faviken. ​It's as much foodie philosophy as it is recipe book, and the recipes are wonderfully interesting. One that I thought would translate well to our future dining and tapas menu is Nilsson's "Linseed Crisps". It's a very simple recipe (only three ingredients), yet one that creates a finished product that is elegant and unusual. I of course complicated the process a bit by making my own potato starch rather than simply purchasing it, but we've been snowed in for a month and such circumstances are conducive to more hands-on effort.

Ingredients (for my initial experiments I reduced Nilsson's quantities by half):

• 100g flax seeds (flax seeds & linseeds are the same thing)
  
• 20g potato starch (you can buy it. I made my own, and tell you how below)​
  
• 2g salt
  
• ​350g water

Weigh everything out. Mix the seeds, starch and salt in a bowl. Pour in 350g boiling water ​and mix thoroughly. Let it soak for a while (Nilsson recommends 20 minutes; I was impatient and waited 10 minutes). Pour the mixture onto a baking sheet pan covered with a sheet of parchment paper. Nilsson recommends laying another sheet of paper on top and roll the mixture very thinly. I just spread it out into a more or less even layer with the back of a spoon. Bake at 300° for as long as it takes for the layer of "dough" to get hard and begin to pull away from the paper. It took more than 30 minutes for mine.

Gently, very gently, pull the crispy layer from the paper. It will likely break up into any number of irregular shapes and sizes. Achieving more uniform pieces is something I intend to work on in succeeding attempts.​

The crisps are now ready to eat, with a dipping sauce or as a funky topping for ice cream or any other way you can think to use them. They have a warm, nutty flavor and look pretty cool. They're also gluten free. Part of the appeal of these is the appearance, with the seeds looking as though they are suspended in sugar glass or candy glass. This gave me the idea of trying to make some in actual candy glass, or at least making them with an added sweet ingredient like cane sugar or maple syrup. I'll let you know how that works out when I do it.

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​Flax Seed Crisps in ice cream.

​Make your own potato starch.

You can buy potato starch. I think Bob's Red Mill sells it. But what fun is that, when making it yourself is so easy and so interesting.​ Here's all you do:

Peel 7 to 8 average-size potatoes. I included a cassava root I had, along with the potatoes, as cassava is a very starchy vegetable (there are apparently some pretty intense toxicity issues associated with cassava if it's not cooked or prepared properly, so do some research and keep that in mind if you're going to use it). Grate the potatoes over the smallest holes on your grater.

Double layer some cheesecloth over a bowl and drop a big handful of the grated potatoes into it. Pour a little water (maybe 1/3 cup or so) onto the potatoes, Bring the corners of the cheesecloth together and twist tightly. Then squeeze the dickens out the potatoes, with the juice going into the bowl. Repeat this process until you use up all of the grated potatoes. Let the liquid sit for a while (20 minutes), then gently pour off the top liquid, leaving a sedimentary layer of starch at the bottom of the bowl. Scrape this sediment out with a spoon and there you go. I let my starch dry overnight, before breaking it up with a fork into a more powder-like substance. There are all sorts of ways to use this starch (just about any way you can use corn starch). It's just pretty cool to be able to make your own if you ever want to. Note: I mixed the starchless potato/cassava gratings with salt and pepper, and a little onion, and fried them as hash browns for breakfast. Double bonus!

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​Homemade potato starch and flax seeds.

Goat Cheese

This past weekend we lent a hand (literally) to friends Brian & Christine, by agreeing to milk one of their goats while the couple took a day off to head out of town for their anniversary. Nina, one of a dozen or so goats Christine has, had lost her kid and needed to be milked three times while the two still-kind-of-newlyweds were away. We got a little more than a half-gallon total from Nina. 

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​Nina   (click all images to enlarge)

While goat milk tastes great all by itself I instead decided to make a little goat cheese from what we had.​ This particular recipe for goat cheese couldn't be any easier or quicker. I think, all-told, it didn't take more than an hour, and I dawdled at that. The simple recipe also lends itself to a lot of flexibility in the final product, depending on what you choose to add to the finished cheese. I chose to make a savory goat cheese, by adding the herbs thyme, summer savory and a little rosemary, along with garlic. But you could just as easily make a sweet or fruity cheese by adding things such as blueberries, honey, or figs.

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Ingredients:

• 2 quarts goat milk
• 1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
• sea salt
• ​fresh herbs (thyme, summer savory, rosemary) or berries, honey, etc.
• garlic clove finely diced

​Other gear:

• ​cheesecloth
• thermometer
• large bowl
• deep sauce pan
• wooden spoon and/or spatula
• sieve (I used a cocktail strainer)​

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Heat milk in sauce pan to 180°, stirring constantly.

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At 180° drizzle the lemon juice into the milk and gently stir to mix.

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Ladle the curds into the cheesecloth.

Procedure:​

1. Heat milk in sauce pan to 180°, stirring constantly.
2. Once you hit 180° drizzle the lemon juice into the milk and gently stir to mix.
3. Let milk/lemon juice sit until small curds form, which should be almost immediate (maybe 10 seconds or so).​
4. ​Set a double layer of cheese cloth into a deep bowl and ladle, with a small strainer, the curds into the cheesecloth.
5. Bring the corners of the cheesecloth together and tie them (2 loose knots, from opposing corners)​ but leave enough room or play under the knots to get a wooden spoon through. The cheesecloth bag will hang from the wooden spoon over the bowl, allowing the curds to drain the whey into the bowl. this shouldn't take long; maybe 5 or 10 minutes.
6. Remove the drained cheese from the cloth and add the herbs, garlic and sea salt to taste. Mix everything together well.
7. Press the cheese into a mold (I just used a small bowl), and that's that. 

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​Curds and whey.

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​Let the curds drain for about 10 minutes.

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​Mix in your herbs and/or fruit.

You can eat it right away...make some bruschetta, for example...or wrap it and store it in the fridge for a week or so. I like to let it sit in the fridge for at least a day to let the cheese, herbs and garlic get to know one another a little better. I tell you, this is so easy and so tasty that my desire to get a couple goats is getting more serious with every bite.

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​Finished goat cheese.

Root Hash & Beer Jelly Chicken

For dinner tonight I made root vegetable hash and beer jelly glazed chicken. The beer jelly glaze was from some "beer jam" I made and canned last fall and spiced up to use as a glaze tonight.

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Root Hash & Beer Jelly Glazed Chicken.

The basic recipe for the root hash came from Michel Nischan and includes parsnips, potatoes, carrots, onions, garlic, and sweet potatoes. Roast all of the root vegetables in the oven until they caramelize and soften a bit (but poach the parsnips for 10 minutes before adding them to the roasting pan). Of course you want to salt and pepper everything to taste. Once the vegetables are roasted properly let them cool and then loosely chop everything to a similar size. Then, saute garlic in olive oil and butter until softened, before adding a couple cups of roughly chopped portabello and button mushrooms (I would have preferred morels and/or boletes but didn't have any left). Once the mushrooms are cooked add all of the chopped root vegies to the skillet and saute everything for another 10 minutes or so.   

For the chicken thighs, I roasted them as you normally would. But as they were just about to finish in the oven I brushed them with the beer jelly concoction, which included a cup of the beer jam, salt and pepper, red pepper flakes, mustard powder and a pinch of cayenne pepper. The glaze creates a lovely sweet and savory crust on the skin. I'll share the beer jelly recipe sometime. Mostly I use it as a pancake syrup because it so sweet and fruity. 

Doc's Draft Pear Hard Apple Cider was the drink of choice tonight.

Musings: Chef vs Cook

People most often refer to me as a chef. That's accurate, but I prefer to call myself a Cook. Chef is a job title, like Manager or Foreman or Shift Supervisor. There are different kinds of jobs that require a chef. There are restaurant chefs, pastry chefs, personal chefs, executive chefs, sous chefs, corporate chefs, Even McDonalds has an Executive Chef, aka the "Senior Director of Culinary Innovation" (does pairing McDonalds with "culinary innovation" seem as oxymoronic to you as it does to me?).

If you graduate from a Culinary School you get a diploma that verifies that you are theoretically qualified to be a chef, not unlike the diploma one gets when he or she graduates from college with a degree in education and teaching, theoretically qualifying him or her to be a teacher. And just as there are good and bad teachers, chefs also can be good or bad, competent or incompetent. 

A Cook, on the other hand, is a title that seems more personal. A Cook is a craftsman, a tradesman, at times a composer, and once in a while maybe even an alchemist of sorts.  The act of cooking is the act of creation, creating with raw and beautiful materials from the earth.

Being a chef is more about management. A chef's job does of course involve food, but it also requires (if the chef is at all competent) people skills, financial and numbers skills, organizational skills, communication skills, teaching skills, leadership skills and more. The job skills of a good chef are not unlike those of a good CEO. (Mario Batali is, in practical reality, certainly more CEO than cook these days.) I've done that job, being a chef, am pretty good at it and enjoy it.

But being a cook is more about food, in both the literal and figurative sense...about connecting food to people, and that means that it's also about community. Being a cook is like being an artist, in that the act is largely about creation and pleasure. Mostly pleasing or satisfying other people, which in turn is also satisfying to oneself. When you cook, the feedback is immediate; the food is either good, bad or okay, and people have immediate reactions to and opinions on it. I like that.

I think of the Chuckwagon Cooks on the cattle drives of the Old West, feeding hungry and appreciative cowboys, and I think of the Navy Cooks on battleships from WWII until today, feeding hungry and appreciative sailors. (That romantic view goes for the Cooks in all the other branches of the military too. My Dad was in the Navy, and my Granduncle Lester - from whom the original Stumpjack was birthed - was a Cook and Paratrooper in WWII).

Given a choice, I'd rather be a Chuckwagon Cook than a Mario Batali.

Pilot episode complete

The first episode in what will become a series of foraging and cooking videos is finished. Film-maker Josh Kufahl and I are producing the series, "Creative Sustenance". which will highlight wild edibles in Wisconsin. The basic format of each episode will spotlight at least one specific wild edible, with discussion on how to identify the plants, followed by an "in the kitchen" segment where we'll show some ways to prepare our finds at home.

There are a few things that we hope set this series apart from other food and cooking videos, most notably the unique subject matter, but also the high quality production of the video itself. Josh is the owner of his own film production company and he's got mad skills with a camera and a talent for making things look amazing. I'll have his biography up here on the site very soon, so you can read more about his work and travels around the globe. As I write this he is packing to go on location in New Zealand (I of course was thinking that a few episodes in New Zealand, that require my presence, might have been appropriate...all in service to the show, of course). I'm the host of the series. I've got the foraging and woodsman skills, as well as the culinary experience to carry my end of the production. 

I'm stoked to say that we've also enlisted the musical talents of our friends John Statz along with Ryan & Jesse Dermody of The Brothers Burn Mountain. John is writing our opening music and BBM have given us permission to use their songs in the production. 

We start things off with this episode as we take a cursory look at the milkweed plant, with a couple of really simple recipes that hardly even require any cooking. 

Capers

I post a lot of food pics and updates on my personal facebook page that I don't share here. At least that's been my habit up to now. Most of those posts are more informal and certainly briefer than the content I'm used to submitting on the blog. But I suppose if people wanted to see those images along with a bit lengthier supporting text, reproduced here on the blog, I could do that. Let me know what you think (either here or via facebook).

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Yesterday made a facebook status update with an image of some bruschetta (left) that I made with limited ingredients we had in the house at the time, including capers. The update sparked some conversation on the merits and edibility of capers. One of my friends described them as tasting "like pickled, salty, raisins. Gross." That got me thinking, because while I enjoy capers now, my initial reaction to them years ago was much the same as that of my friend. Repeated sampling over the years has given me a greater appreciation for the little unopened flower buds, and I now find them indispensable as an ingredient in a number of recipes and dishes. My relationship with capers has followed a path similar to the one I had with anchovies, which I initially disliked rather intensely but now see as a requisite pantry staple.

Wikipedia has a brief, though solid entry on capers, on their biology, environmental requirements, propagation, history and culinary uses:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caper. Capers have been used for thousands of years, with a few notable ancient Greeks giving the plant due attention, and with allusions to its alleged aphrodisiac qualities also noted by the ancient Hebrews. Interesting stuff, this history of food.

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Four different capers from the pantry.

I use capers in pasta dishes, some sauces, bruschetta toppings and other tapas, and of course with fish like salmon, which is a traditional pairing. They offer a nice tart, acidic element to oily fish or rich sauces, as well as a counterbalance of sorts in salads that have strong citrusy or even fruity profiles. If you've tried capers and were initially turned off by them, I'd suggest you not give up yet. Try different varieties and brands (the preserving brine has a lot to do with the flavor, and there are of course as many different brine recipes out there as there are for any other pickled vegetable). Find recipes you like where capers are a key ingredient, and make the recipe with and without their addition to learn what they may contribute.

Capers come in different sizes, with nonpareilies being, I believe, the smallest, most common and most desirable. I've included a couple images of different capers I have in the fridge, including some nasturtium capers I made myself from the seeds of the peppery flowers we grow in our garden. In the image above, from left to right, we have a small group of capers followed by seemingly identical capers from an unknown terroir. The first little bunch were packaged in a small jar, not quite 4 oz worth, and have a very nice, mellow and slightly lemony flavor. The second bunch came from a large, 16 oz. jar I purchased at Whole Foods, and their flavor is quite salty, briney and closer to cheap green olives (or to the description my facebook friend gave capers in general). Both jars were also pretty close in price as I recall. You get what you pay for I suppose.

Next on the plate are caper berries. Capers are the unopened flower buds of the caper plant. If the buds are not picked for use as capers, but are left alone, they will eventually become flowers, which in turn will become a seed-filled caper fruit, or "berry". These caper berries are then picked and processed in much the same way as regular capers. They do, however, have a rather different flavor and texture than their softer predecessors. Caper berries are crunchy. They're filled with crunchy little seeds, and the ones that I've tried have had more of a slightly peppery, citrusy, pickled olive flavor. my favorite way to use caper berries is as a Bloody Mary or Martini garnish. They're perfect for that.

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l-r: capers, caperberries, nasturtium capers

Finally, on the far right of the plate, are the pickled nasturtium seeds. These pea-sized seeds make quite an interesting substitute caper. They have an intriguing flavor profile that combines the slight peppery bite of nasturtiums with the sweetness of the sugared brine I made, and a potent, unmistakable flavor of sweet cream butter. I never would have imagined that I'd get the flavor of fresh butter from pickled nasturtium seeds, but it's there in force. Amazing. And now here's where I embarrass myself by admitting that I made the foolish, rookie mistake of not writing down the brine recipe I used to make those nasturtium capers. I don't remember what it was and I kick myself every time I open that jar to pluck a few of the last remaining "capers" from it. I may not ever get that rich butter vibe again (although I'm hoping I get lucky). Always write down your recipes if it's something new you're trying.

New Blogsite

Welcome to the new Creative Sustenance blogsite, which will function as the online headquarters for Creative Sustenance projects, events and information. 

Most of the site's activity will take place on the blog page, which may end up becoming the Home page; at this early stage of construction we're not entirely certain what organizational format may be best.

I've imported most of the foraging, gardening and foodie related posts from the older Stumpjack/Creative Sustenance blogsite (stumpjack.com) to this site (that is, all of the posts older than this one). They're relevant to what Creative Sustenance is about and provide some continuity from where we started to where we are now and where we're headed. The older site will remain active, with all of the previous Stumpjack Coffee posts remaining available. That site may also continue to evolve as well.

There are a few pages still in construction (Video, About, Links, Calendar) and those should be up in the coming week. Let us know what you'd be interested in seeing. We'd probably like to see it too.

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Every blog post should have at least one image attached to it. This is a pic of a bucket of grapes I got from a friend last fall that I had in the freezer until now. They're about to be mashed, sugared, yeast added and allowed to ferment for a week before the first racking. Doesn't have much to do with this specific blog post...it just looks cool.

Storm damage equals early harvesting

We had a thunderstorm last night, apparently with winds that approached 60mph at times. I love thunderstorms, but this one reeked havoc on the garden, pretty well leveling almost everything and breaking several plants.

I plucked eggplant from plants that had been broken off at the ground, picked sunberries from a bush that was toppled over in its bed, harvested swiss chard that the wind had tangled with turnip greens and pulled a bucket of lettuce that was flattened like it had been ironed. As it was too much for us to store and eat in a timely manner, I gave my parents' half of the booty.

Fortunately no large tree limbs came down, which was the case with many other folks, and the tomatoes took what looks to be only minor damage. Time to clean out the beds to replant and reseed.

An hour's worth of milkweed pods

 

Here are some young, juicy milkweed pods I harvested in about an hour. While many plants are forming pods a fair number also still have unopened flower buds on them. Don't have time to go into more detail or what we'll be doing with these in the kitchen, but will be sure to share that with you later. For now, just wanted to share a few images.

 

Milkweed for knee strength? I wish...

Just back from the doctor, where I finally discovered why my knee(s) has been giving me fits for so long. X-rays showed a couple of bone spurs, one almost 2" long and broken, on a knee cap that is not shaped quite as it should be. Might have to get it scoped and cleaned, or just continue to live with the periodic debilitating pain...I'm thinking that the scoping is the way to go. The doctor seemed quite surprised and almost "excited" to have seen something on the x-rays that, he said, was so unusual and that he had never seen before. 

So, I decided to buck the "take it easy" route and immediately tramped through a field near my parents' house to pluck a bunch of milkweed flowers along with a handful of tiger lily flower buds from Mom & Dad's place, in order to make a quick breakfast before work. 

Simple: Sautee milkweed flower clusters and lily buds in butter with a little sea salt and cracked pepper, add a handful of spinach picked yesterday from the garden, quickly fry a duck egg, slice up a fat red tomato and badaboom badabing, there you go.

I'll write more about milkweed in the days to come. But for now, it's 90° and time for a lengthy soak in a tub of cold water before work. By the way, as far as I know, milkweed sap has absolutely no inherent attributes that may be beneficial to one's knee joints...I just like eating milkweed.Enjoy the day!

Breakfast doesn't get any fresher

It's hot on the lakeshore this morning, 84° before 10:00am. Some of the greens are beginning to bolt, so I cut a handful of sweet spinach and peppery arugula, and went around all of the pots pinching basil flower heads off, before things turn bitter.

I also pulled one nice, 6" or 7" yellow squash, the first of the year, from one of the vines. It was fat and juicy. The zucchini and yellow squash vines are putting out a lot of beautiful yellow flowers now, so I plucked a few of those as well. 

With a countertop full of colorful and fresh garden bounty, some big duck eggs, a bowl of fresh peaches Kim picked up the other day, and a bottle of black truffle oil I've been eager to open I decided to make something fun for breakfast.

With two iron skillets heating up I sweated an onion and the spinach stems in butter while crisping a few slices of whole wheat chia seed bread I made the other day in some of the truffle oil (as soon as I opened the bottle - really a metal can - an earthy truffle aroma filled the room...happiness!). When the bread had browned I sauteed the zucchini flowers in the same skillet, added the handful of spinach and the sliced yellow squash to the other pan and began to toss until the spinach wilted. 

Once the vegetables were ready I pulled them from the skillet and added some large chunks I cut from one of the peaches. Then, a little more truffle oil into the pan to fry the duck eggs. Duck egg yolks are so large that I cook them over-easy and let the yolks harden just a little around the edges, otherwise our plates are swimming in yolk when we cut into them. We finished by sprinkling some of the purple Thai basil flower heads on top.

There you go...savory with a little sweet, an underbelly of earthy truffle, fresh greens picked minutes before, and crusty bread. And coffee, of course.

Making time for breakfast again

I decided that regardless of how weary I feel lately or how little spare time I seem to currently have I am going to make time for breakfast again, and I mean the kind of breakfast I enjoy making, something with a little punch.

So, this morning's sustenance included a couple of duck eggs sauteed over-easy in pork fat and butter, on a bed of mustard greens and thistle stems sauteed with lardons and diced ramps. Simple, quick and good for the spirit.

Now to finish transplanting some herbs and hot peppers we picked up yesterday.

Sucker fishing - pickled fish & roe

My Dad and I went down to one of the spots on the Wolf River, next to the Shawano Dam, where we have always had good luck with panfish and bass. This day the suckers were in and spawning, and foiled our plans for bluegills. We decided to have some fun with the suckers anyway. We kept three for pickling.

They were each filled with roe, which I like sauteed in oil & butter, with onions and bacon, for breakfast. This batch of roe, however, I brined and pickled with what was left of the pickling juice I used for the fillets (they'll cook up much the same, but with a different flavor).

The recipe for pickled suckers is simple, and is basically the same recipe I use for any number of fish species, such as small northerns or bullheads. I don't pickle a lot of fish, because I much prefer my fish pan fried, baked, or broiled in foil over a campfire, but it is nice to have a few jars of pickled fish around for when the mood hits or when we just want a quick snack to go with a cold beer on a summer evening.

Ingredients:

• Kosher salt
• 2 cups distilled white vinegar
• 1 cup white wine (I used some of our apple wine)
• 1 cup brown sugar
• couple tablespoons of pickling spice
• sliced onion and a few small Thai or chili peppers

After cutting your fillets into chunks a couple inches wide let them soak in a brine solution of water and kosher salt (I use around 1/4 cup of salt for 4-5 cups water, but I admit I'm not real fastidious about measuring...it's more of an eye-balling and taste thing...). Let the fillet chunks soak for 1 to 3 days. I let these soak for only one day. Some folks say let your fish soak in the brine for 5 days, but I've never done that.

After they're finished brining, rinse them THOROUGHLY in cold running water for several minutes. Let them sit in cold water for several more minutes and then rinse them again. They should be pretty well saturated with the salt brine, which hardens them up quite a bit, but you don't want them to taste too salty, so a good, extended rinsing is in order.

While you're rinsing the fish boil the vinegar, wine, spice, peppers and brown sugar for a few minutes until everything dissolves (keep stirring it as it boils). Pack some sterilized canning jars with the fish chunks and onions, and pour the pickling brine over the top. Use a butter knife at the inside of the jar to allow pickling brine and spices to flow into the entire jar and remove some of the air pockets. Wipe the rims, put the lids on and screw on the bands. Date the lids and set the jars in your fridge for a few days to let the fish and pickling brine get better acquainted.

For this particular batch of roe I made a less salty brine and soaked the eggs in that for a few minutes, packed them into a jar along with a few sliced onion halves and then added the pickling juice (strained to remove the spices) to fill. These won't last long as I'll probably have them for breakfast over the coming week, mixed in with omelets or scrambled eggs. 

Sucker roe with onions.

For anyone wondering, sucker roe is much more mild than the salmon roe I cured a couple months ago. It has a very subtle, gentle flavor.

Dad with a couple of large suckers.

more ramps - pizzas

It probably goes without saying that during ramp season we use them in a lot of our cooking. Basically anywhere we might normally use onions, leeks or shallots as ingredients, and then in a few things that feature ramps specifically.

Many of the ramps we harvested this week boasted really beautiful, large bulbs, some as large as my thumb.

Had some of the crew over last night to welcome our friend Pat back from his short vacation. We made pizzas, had some wine and beer, and hung out around the fire for a while. The pizzas all featured ramps that I harvested the day before. 

I made three different pizzas, but each was highlighted with diced ramp bulbs and leaves. In the image above, from left to right, we have almost-ready for the oven: 1) tomatoes, ramps and cheddar cheese, 2) roasted red peppers, pickled artichokes, kalamata olives, ramps, 3) sliced baby red potatoes, mushrooms, ramps (I added mozzarella cheese to the final two pizzas after taking the picture).

Ducks get a little more yard area

This morning I put up a make-shift swimming pool and plastic netting enclosure for the ducks to use, just outside of their coop. They make such a wicked sloppy mess of their bedding in the area around their water bucket that I figured it might be better to have the watering area outside of the coop, at least during the warmer months. Next week I'll put together something more solid and attractive, but today I was in the mood and just used what materials we had on hand, including emptying out a big red tote that usually holds all of our Christmas decorations but now subs as a swimming pool.

We hope to put a fence all the way around the yard this summer so that the ducks can roam freely and safely in the yard and garden during the day. I still have some work to do on the coop, like finishing the roof off with some greenery, and I hope to finish that up this week as well. 

We clipped their wings before setting them loose in the swimming area, although Kim's duck, Daphne, is so fat that I doubt she could fly without some assistance from a jet-pack.

We're getting two eggs a day from them now, which is pretty cool and has me thinking that a couple more layers might be worthwhile.

Pretty pickled ramps for tonight's Foodie Potluck

I seem to be saying this a lot lately but I am just flabbergasted that it has been nine full days since I las updated the blog. Seems like just three or four days ago. How can these days be going by so quickly?! I suppose it's because I've been generally going full bore from early morning until bed time lately, trying to get as many tasks accomplished in the yard and house before I start work at the new restaurant that will be opening soon in town (more to come on that).

Our Foodie Potluck gang is meeting tonight and this month's theme is Earth Day. A few folks expressed interest in the pickled ramps I posted last week so yesterday I pickled a bunch that I had harvested earlier in the day to bring to tonight's potluck.

Kim holding a couple nice bunches of cleaned and trimmed ramps about to be pickled.

Ramps pickled according to the Curried Pickled Ramp recipe I shared last week. I love the color.

I decided to pickle the entire ramp with this one, thinking it might look pretty cool with the leaves still attached (the leaves taste great pickled too). I was right, they look funky and colorful. We'll see how they go over with the group tonight.

Note: I actually do a lot more posting of recipes, images and other info on facebook than I do on the blog, simply because it's so much easier to quickly load a few photos and write a few lines on facebook than it is on the blog. I am, for the most part, sticking fairly well to my new year's resolution to update the blogsite more regularly and frequently, but if you care to see more of this sort of thing (albeit in a "short-hand" version), you ought to friend me on facebook.

I'm at https://www.facebook.com/JavaTikiKing.