Midwinter Tropics

No, we didn't suddenly get warm.  The snow is still there.  But, happily, it is still pineapple and citrus season, which means that I can find ridiculously low priced, ripe and delicious pineapples at my local ALDI. (I love ALDI.  They have such great pricing on essential items for the pantry, plus they've started carrying more and more organic produce and dairy items.)

If you've never tackled a whole pineapple, it is really easy.  They do sell specific gizmos that make the job "simpler", but I like using my favorite kitchen knife and wooden cutting board.  While they look intimidating, it's a piece of cake to get into a pineapple.

Step 1: Cut off the green top.  The chickens like playing with this.  They nibble at the sweet stuff on the bottom, and crunch a bit on the green bit.

Step 2: Cut about a half-inch off the bottom.  This helps the pineapple stand up straight on the cutting board.

Step 3:  Cut down the side with your knife, slicing off the brown skin.  Your pineapple may end up looking a little hexagonal, but its all good.  The rabbits adore this part and nibble it away to nothing.

Step 4: Cut the pineapple into fourths.  Stand one fourth on end, and slice the pithy core off from the middle.  If you have come across any over-ripe spots, go ahead and chop these off.  They can go in with the chickens, or the rabbits.  Everybody loves a bit of pineapple as a treat!

Now all you need to do is cut it into slices.  I find that for dehydrating purposes, cutting them about 1/4 inch thick lets you get a nice chewy final product.  Otherwise, it goes more crispy--still good, but it winds up crunchy not chewy.  While it isn't necessary, I do put my slices into a bowl of water with a slosh of lemon juice in it.  It helps keep them from browning, if I have a lot of slicing to do, and it does perhaps help the final product stay golden yellow when it is dried.

I love mixing dried pineapple with dried tart cherries and a handful of walnuts, and perhaps a little sweetened flaked coconut.  Its a wonderful tropical snack mix to eat while watching snowflakes drift down.

Slow to Start

It is weeks yet before I can start my hot weather loving plants, like tomatoes and peppers, but I've got plans for some harder-to-germinate items that can be started now.  Every year, I spend oodles of money at greenhouses buying the same herbs: savory, chamomile, sage, lemon balm, basil...and usually, I either kill them off accidentally, they get eaten by something, or I forget them one frosty night and wham, down they go.

I think the reason why we all buy these things at greenhouses is because, well, they are terribly fiddly to start.  They have very specific preferences: winter savory likes light and just wants to rest on the surface of the soil, while sage needs to be 1/4 inch deep--no more, no less.  They all want to stay moist but not soggy.  They want a lot of light, but not too much heat. 

Persnickety little boogers.

Good thing it is arctic outdoors and I have nothing else to do but attempt the impossible.  If it works, I will be a heroine in my own eyes.  If it fails, ah well. 

I'm hoping for success by broadcasting seed on top of recycled plastic tubs (I cut lots of holes in the bottom for drainage and/or wicking of moisture up from the trays they are set in).  Herbs have a historically poor germination rate, so if I plant 25 seeds I may get 10 to start.  Once they are big enough, I'll break out my chopsticks and prick the seedlings out, moving them to individual small pots to continue growing.

Of course, they have to start breaking out their seedy shells, first.

Taking Root

My rosemary plant that I brought inside last fall is growing like mad.  I can't believe how happy it is--it's the first rosemary plant that I've brought in that hasn't croaked midwinter on me.  I should probably knock on wood, but first, I'm starting some cuttings for additional plants.

Starting woody plants from cuttings is incredibly simple:  First, find a spot of new growth that looks healthy.  Second, trim it off cleanly with a pair of sharp scissors.  Third, peel off any leaves, leaving a bare stem at least one inch long.

Then all that is left to do is plonk your cutting into some damp potting mix so that the stem is at least a half-inch down in the soil.  Keep it very well watered, and in a few weeks, little roots will appear.  Once you have a hearty amount of roots, take each little cutting and place it in its own pot so it can continue to grow. 

Before you know it, you'll have plenty of little rosemary plants to share with all your friends.  They make great swap items, too!

Everything But The Squeal

On Sunday, I got my half-a-pig delivered.  It barely all fit into the chest freezer on the porch!  Sausage, bacon, roasts, pork chops, ribs, a hock, an enormous healthy liver--all of it from one half of an enormous, happy pig raised in lovely pastures.

I also got this:

Yeah.  That's a head.

Stay with me now, folks.  A couple years ago, I would so have been going eeeewwwwww!  A freakin' head??? What the heck are you THINKING?  But since then, I've been reading.  And I've been watching documentaries about food waste.  And I've been watching cooking shows from the UK and other countries where they do, in fact, routinely eat things like...heads. So when the opportunity came up to be brave and give it a go, I took the head that was offered to me.

Now, saying sure, I'll take a head and actually doing something with said head are two different steps.  And I started thinking, after I had shoved the head into the last corner of available freezer space, that perhaps that head could just stay in the freezer for a while.  That idea was pretty attractive...but then I thought, no girl, you have GOT to just DO this thing.  So I went back downstairs, out onto the cold porch, and brought that frozen head in to defrost.

 In the morning, I started off like this:

I don't know if that is better or worse for those of you who are already howling in horror, but it is a fun fact that a pig head fits rather nicely in a standard turkey roaster.  I'll bet you didn't know that, did you?  I added sliced onion, preserved ginger, peppercorns, and a little bouquet of fresh herbs from the pots on my seed starting shelves, and topped it off with a quart or so of water.  Then it simmered, covered with a layer of foil and the roaster lid, all day long--about six hours--until it was tender, the meat was falling off the bones, and I could pull it off easily with my fingers.  There is a surprising lot of meat on a head; there is also a lot of stuff that I find completely unappetizing, so the chickens will be delighted with their breakfast in the morning.  After sorting the best bits, I wound up with a bowl filled with about two pounds of rich, dark meat.

Now, most people associate using a pig's head to make something called head cheese, or braun (similar but with a British twist).  I am not a fan of head cheese--its too smushy textured.  Bleah.  So I took my meat bits, and broke out my favorite Amish cookbook and made a batch of scrapple.  Scrapple is essentially a cornmeal pudding that you cool in a loaf pan, then slice when it is really cold and fry for breakfast.  Served with maple syrup or homemade applesauce, it is delicious.  You can even slice it into sections, and then freeze it for later (which is what I plan on doing with at least one of the two loaves I made.)

Now that I've tackled cooking a pig's head, here are my thoughts.  One, it took all day to make the end product (scrapple).  That's a pretty big time investment, and its not one that I suspect many people would undertake.  I think that's why we don't see heads for sale at the local grocery store.  Second, I'm feeling pretty proud of myself for attempting this.  These pigs had great lives, and to me, have an incredible value that goes far beyond pork chops and bacon.  So while it is a lot of work to get a few pounds of meat from a head, I'm happy to have done it.  If you like head cheese, you'd get far more meat product "stuff" than I did.  I don't mind letting my chickens feast on the remains--they've earned a treat.  And I am happy to have authentic "pudding" meat to use in one of my favorite breakfast foods.  I wound up with two one-pound loaves of scrapple, more than enough for tomorrow's breakfast with plenty to go into the freezer for a ready-made meal in the future.  I even have a cool skull to do something with.  And third, I think if more people attempted cooking a whole head, we'd all view the current food system with a more critical eye.  I mean, all those pig heads aren't solely attached to slabs of delicious bacon.  They go somewhere--and that somewhere is usually into low grade hot dogs, McRib sandwiches, commercial animal feeds, or sadly, into the landfill.  It's a sad end to a pig's life.  And if we took the time to cook down a head and deal with the willies of looking at a piece of meat that obviously looks like what it once was--the head to an intelligent, living animal--I think we'd be a little more conscious about consuming meat instead of wolfing down faceless hamburgers and chicken nuggets.

That said, it isn't a project for the faint of heart.  I admit I had a few moments where I was thinking, what the begeebers am I doing??  Let's just say, eyeballs are really really big.  And they still look like an eyeball after they've been cooked.  Shudder shudder...

I'd do it again, though.  Next time I get a half-a-pig, I'm going for that head.

Scrapple (from The Menonite and Amish Cookbook)

You'll need: 1 1/2 pounds of "pudding" pork meat (either picked off the head like I used, or you can substitute browned and drained pork sausage or ground pork); 4 cups boiling water or pork broth (the broth from cooking the head is incredibly rich and flavorful!); 1 1/2 cups cornmeal; 1/4 cup buckwheat flour; salt and pepper to taste.

Bring the broth to a boil, adding in the meat.  Return to a rolling, high boil and then slowly add the cornmeal and buckwheat flours.  Add salt and pepper.  Stir constantly until thickened.

Cover pot and reduce heat to low.  Simmer for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Turn out scrapple into prepared loaf pans.  I like to line them with waxed paper, for easy removal of the loaves.  Cool completely, then place in the refrigerator.  It is best to let them set overnight.  Once set, remove from loaf pans, slice, and then fry slices in a little butter or melted lard until golden brown on both sides.  Serve with maple syrup or homemade applesauce for a delicious breakfast.

Simple Fixes

The wind is howling outside as I type, coming straight out of the north with one heck of a wallop.  Periodically, an extra strong gust comes along and makes the entire house shudder.  Given that its an old barn made out of layers of cinder block, that's really saying something.

Of course, being an old converted barn, it means that the openings for windows and doors were chopped into the same cinder block, and the frames for each shoved into place.  Oh, they were pasted in with something--from what I can figure out by looking at it, in spots its old horsehair mixture and in others, that spray foam in a can.  Whatever it is, it has long ago given up the ghost which means that the windows and doors leak draughts like sieves when the wind blows.  I've used those plastic kits on the windows before, but the leaks aren't from the window glass, it's more the entire window frame that is the issue.

So I've come up with some simple solutions.  For the windows, I've sewn really simple custom layered fabric "shades" that bundle up and get tied into place with grosgrain ribbon.  If I'd really been thinking, I'd have either included a thin layer of batting (that thin wooly stuff that is all natural) or pre-quilted fabric on the back.  Then it would be like a window quilt...hmm.  Well, next time I get a redecorating urge, I may go for that.  But for now, it's a layer of thick decorator fabric that I found on clearance for a ridiculous $3 per yard, backed by a layer of good quality cotton fabric.  Even without the batting/quilted effect, just having the layer of relatively thick fabric that covers both the window and the frame by several inches keeps the draughts hidden between the shade and the glass.  No more cold breezes sailing through the room!

For the doors, I've actually gone with a quilt.  Really.  I was watching Larkrise to Candleford a while back, and noticed that the cottagers in Larkrise had quilts hanging by rings in front of their outer doors.  At night, to keep the cold out, they simply pulled the quilt across the entire door frame.  How ingenious.  So I made a trip to the local hardware store, bought a huge dowel, some large screw-in hooks, and made an industrial curtain rod that could hold up a heavy quilt.  I had a whole bunch of those simple curtain rings with little clips on them from previous curtains hung in old apartments, so I simply chose a quilt from my collection of ragged-by-still-useful rescued quilts that fit the door, clipped it to the rings, and hung the whole shebang from the rod above.  This really works extremely well, which is wonderful, since the back door faces north and on days like today, you can feel the breeze blowing through the cracks around the door frame.  I'll keep it drawn all day, which helps keep things nice and cozy inside.

All in all, I think I've maybe spent $100 between windows and doors to do cold weather window treatments.  They also work great in summer, and help to keep heat from getting in--it has made a big difference in the summertime AC bill, I tell you.  Although, it seems ridiculous to think of needing AC on a day like today--it is seriously arctic out there!

Guess What I'm Watching Today?

Oh yes, another historic farming series!  Just in time for the super cold, unfriendly weather outside--all I need is my pot of tea and my knitting needles.  Of course, now I'm going to want a hazel fence...and the codpieces, oh my!

Battening Down the Hatches

Another bitter cold snap is predicted starting tomorrow, with rumored coldest temperatures yet.  I'm spending today baking bread, making sure all the animals have extra feed and bedding, and bringing in as much wood as possible so I don't need to make so many trips outside to the wood pile.  The wood pile is getting shorter, so I think I'm going to need to round up some more of that sooner than later (again).

I don't mind winter, really.  It's nice to be inside, making plans, and having a little break from the physical labors of tending the Farmlette.  But this winter...well, I am not such a huge fan of chronic subzero temperatures with incredible wind chill factors.  Going outside with a jug of warm water at -45 degrees is no fun.  Plus, it is seriously depressing to watch the water start to freeze as soon as it makes contact with the water dish.  Nothing like Mother Nature to give us an exercise in humility!

In any case, its going to be a nice, putter-around kind of weekend.  If nothing else, I'll have lots of toast!