Fooding

I'm so proud of my onions. Here they are all clean and trimmed of roots and tops. There aren't very many and we go through onions pretty fast around here, so I'm not worried about long-term storage.

I've got big plans for things to make this month. Since it's almost fall I'm going to make a batch of granola with lots of walnuts and maple syrup. I've never made it before but it seems so easy that buying it is probably a waste of money, and I can customize it. RC has requested a pecan pie, and I've got my eye on a recipe for chocolate cake which includes zucchini, for which I can substitute my yellow squash.

My previous batch of dill pickle spears failed spectacularly. I made them via lacto-fermentation, and though I've had great success making sauerkraut that way, the spears were mushy and gross. So I'm going to cave to modernity and pickle them with vinegar, and just get my probiotics elsewhere. I'm also going to pickle homegrown carrots and store bought daikon together to make Vietnamese do chua which I will use to make banh mi sandwiches.

Roots

We went out on a chanterelle foray this past Saturday, but we didn't find any. I think I saw about two nondescript brown mushrooms, but we didn't see any chanterelles at all. It may be that since it has just started raining again, they haven't had time to come up. We shall try again later.

It may also be that someone already came through and took all the chanterelles, the idea of which annoys me on a few levels. One, that I didn't get any, and two, removing every single mushroom from a patch of woods is just bad foraging practice because then no spores get distributed and there are no more mushrooms in the future.

So we picked a whole bunch of blackberries instead, which I made into jam. I also made tomato jam earlier in August, and I'm going to make blueberry jam and maybe something else so that I'll have a good stockpile for the coming year!

I've been harvesting our modest crops of root vegetables, namely onions, potatoes, and some carrots. Roots are the most mysterious to grow since they're underground and you can't see what's happening down there. Therefore, I was really curious to see what I got. And, well, I got just enough potatoes to make a single dinner, gratin dauphinois to be exact. Next year I may try growing potato plants in a stack of tires, which is apparently a good way to have the plant produce more potatoes as it gets gradually buried.

Here are the onions, currently curing in the drying rack in our mudroom. You have to let onions cure, and then store them in a ventilated box filled with damp sand. I don't know where I'm going to find a box of sand, so I may just have to put them in the fridge.

Carrots have been growing large enough to pull up as well, with more on the way. I planted a variety called Red Dragon. They have a spicy red skin but are orange inside; quite lovely and delicious.