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Feb. 24th, 2013 12:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynI was gonna post something about "oh well, so much for the blizzard of doom we were promised" here, but I have two reasons not to do that. One, making a comment like that is just asking for trouble, and two, the rain just shifted to snow outside my window, so I'm going to keep an eye out and see how bad the slush layer gets in the street instead.
In the meantime, I need to unpack a bunch more of my books and get rid of the boxes. When I've gotten as many rooms as possible clear of cardboard I plan on scheduling a much-belated housewarming party, especially since I have a recliner and a coffee table now in addition to the couch in the living room. (And some stools and a chair for the kitchen, so there's at least somewhere for anybody else to sit even if they don't quite go with the living room stuff.)
Unrelated: since there is really no point to having a dehydrator if you are only ever going to make beef jerky with it, I bought a bunch of fruit and a hand blender on Friday. ..... actually, looking at that sentence and remembering what happened in October with the mandoline, I should probably refer to it as a submersible blender instead. You know. One of those stick things you put into the container and turn on, rather than a container that goes on top of a very noisy base. The goal was to make fruit puree so I could use the dehydrator to try making fruit leathers from scratch, in addition to eventual plans to make dried apple slices- I've got a fondness for dried apple and pear chips. I should probably note that the hand blender also came with several attachments, which is why I wound up getting it instead of a standard blender. I have no real intention of making slushy drinks, so there was no reason to buy a blender capable of chipping ice down to margarita size, but I do bake things that require egg whites to reach soft-peak stage or better. I can either haul out the Kitchenaid and use that to attempt to whip up a measly four egg whites in the bottom of its bowl, then clean the whole thing, or I can stand in the kitchen for twenty minutes going WHOCK WHOCK WHOCK WHOCK with a whisk in a bowl. Or I can hook the attachment up to the blender, turn it on, and get a meringue in a quarter of that time. I'm good with that. I'm also good with the other possibilities of this blender, since the other attachments basically turn it into a small quiet food processor.
...
Kinda went off track there. Anyway, the point is, I bought a bunch of fruit and I bought the stick blender. Four cups of blackberries and five tablespoons of maple syrup turn out to puree up really, really well. The original recipe I found on the Net called for honey, not maple syrup, but the syrup was easier to pour and I rather like proper maple flavour anyway. A few rings of parchment paper later and I had the dehydrator going. It took about five hours to dry the resultant puree blobs down, but the end result was really, really good homemade fruit roll-up type things. If I do the blackberries again, I'll strain the seeds out. I have a strainer that I bought for cheesemaking a while ago, with much finer mesh than a standard kitchen colander. It should do for fruit purees. Not that I object to the extra fiber from the seeds and all, but blackberry seeds are kind of big and jarring to bite into.
I'll be trying again later today with kiwifruit and honey. Just plain kiwifruit, to see what that's like, since for whatever reason it's always strawberry-kiwi flavour around here. I also need to go to the hardware store and pick up some Mason jars or ceramic crocks or something, because I have a recipe in my DIY Cookbook for Moroccan-style salt-preserved lemons and I'd like to work on those, plus I want to catch my own sourdough starter and I'll need somewhere to put it. Come to think of it, I need to make some ketchup, too. No offense to Heinz, but I like being able to control what goes onto my hamburger. And if there's going to be ridiculous amounts of sweetener in whatever it is I'm eating, I'd rather be the one to decide whether or not it's corn syrup, thanks. I have nothing against corn syrup and I can digest all kinds of seriously crappy things and enjoy them, but I want to be the one to say when I'm eating it and when I'm not, that's all.
(On a marginally related note I finally got to the Book Depot yesterday and bought Stephen Puleo's Dark Tide: The Great Molasses Flood of 1919. It seemed the sort of thing I ought to learn more about from sources other than the Internet.)
In the meantime, I need to unpack a bunch more of my books and get rid of the boxes. When I've gotten as many rooms as possible clear of cardboard I plan on scheduling a much-belated housewarming party, especially since I have a recliner and a coffee table now in addition to the couch in the living room. (And some stools and a chair for the kitchen, so there's at least somewhere for anybody else to sit even if they don't quite go with the living room stuff.)
Unrelated: since there is really no point to having a dehydrator if you are only ever going to make beef jerky with it, I bought a bunch of fruit and a hand blender on Friday. ..... actually, looking at that sentence and remembering what happened in October with the mandoline, I should probably refer to it as a submersible blender instead. You know. One of those stick things you put into the container and turn on, rather than a container that goes on top of a very noisy base. The goal was to make fruit puree so I could use the dehydrator to try making fruit leathers from scratch, in addition to eventual plans to make dried apple slices- I've got a fondness for dried apple and pear chips. I should probably note that the hand blender also came with several attachments, which is why I wound up getting it instead of a standard blender. I have no real intention of making slushy drinks, so there was no reason to buy a blender capable of chipping ice down to margarita size, but I do bake things that require egg whites to reach soft-peak stage or better. I can either haul out the Kitchenaid and use that to attempt to whip up a measly four egg whites in the bottom of its bowl, then clean the whole thing, or I can stand in the kitchen for twenty minutes going WHOCK WHOCK WHOCK WHOCK with a whisk in a bowl. Or I can hook the attachment up to the blender, turn it on, and get a meringue in a quarter of that time. I'm good with that. I'm also good with the other possibilities of this blender, since the other attachments basically turn it into a small quiet food processor.
...
Kinda went off track there. Anyway, the point is, I bought a bunch of fruit and I bought the stick blender. Four cups of blackberries and five tablespoons of maple syrup turn out to puree up really, really well. The original recipe I found on the Net called for honey, not maple syrup, but the syrup was easier to pour and I rather like proper maple flavour anyway. A few rings of parchment paper later and I had the dehydrator going. It took about five hours to dry the resultant puree blobs down, but the end result was really, really good homemade fruit roll-up type things. If I do the blackberries again, I'll strain the seeds out. I have a strainer that I bought for cheesemaking a while ago, with much finer mesh than a standard kitchen colander. It should do for fruit purees. Not that I object to the extra fiber from the seeds and all, but blackberry seeds are kind of big and jarring to bite into.
I'll be trying again later today with kiwifruit and honey. Just plain kiwifruit, to see what that's like, since for whatever reason it's always strawberry-kiwi flavour around here. I also need to go to the hardware store and pick up some Mason jars or ceramic crocks or something, because I have a recipe in my DIY Cookbook for Moroccan-style salt-preserved lemons and I'd like to work on those, plus I want to catch my own sourdough starter and I'll need somewhere to put it. Come to think of it, I need to make some ketchup, too. No offense to Heinz, but I like being able to control what goes onto my hamburger. And if there's going to be ridiculous amounts of sweetener in whatever it is I'm eating, I'd rather be the one to decide whether or not it's corn syrup, thanks. I have nothing against corn syrup and I can digest all kinds of seriously crappy things and enjoy them, but I want to be the one to say when I'm eating it and when I'm not, that's all.
(On a marginally related note I finally got to the Book Depot yesterday and bought Stephen Puleo's Dark Tide: The Great Molasses Flood of 1919. It seemed the sort of thing I ought to learn more about from sources other than the Internet.)
no subject
Date: 2013-02-24 06:07 pm (UTC)I've told people the only thing I ever want to make out of a box is pasta. And even then, I know I can make my own gnocchi if I put in the effort.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-24 06:13 pm (UTC)I'm also pondering a window garden of some kind. Something like one of these. My only real problem is the cats; I'd have to keep them from trying to eat whatever I was growing...
no subject
Date: 2013-02-24 06:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-24 09:05 pm (UTC)...wasn't there something in here about window farming? Am I crazy? Seriously, grow catnip for the cats, it should keep them away from the other herbs.
Your fruit rollup experiment sounds great.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-24 09:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-24 09:44 pm (UTC)And yeah, I mentioned windowfarming in one of the tags. Catnip might be worth a try...
no subject
Date: 2013-02-25 06:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-25 01:33 pm (UTC)