Several kinds of food for thought

Tomorrow we pick up the last share for the year of the Community Supported Agriculture [CSA] we participate in. Our final week's box contains:

• BABY PIE PUMPKIN
• BUTTERNUT SQUASH
• CARROTS
• CELERY
• GARLIC
• KALE
• ONIONS and
• POTATOES

As the farm now considers “the work of winterizing the farm. We find ourselves looking forward to slower winter days with ample time for dreaming and visioning for next year,” I think that this weekend and next week may be the last yard work sessions for the year before we switch over to moving snow. I went and got my bivalent COVID booster today so I’m hoping to feel up to getting some exercise while I tidy the place a little, if not tomorrow then the day after.

Although I’ll miss the weekly trip to pick up our CSA veggies, I have to confess that I’ve eaten enough cabbage the past few months to hold me until next St. Patrick’s Day, although I suspect the Better Half may sneak in a New England boiled dinner or two over the winter. She more than compensates for that kind of behavior by baking a couple of kinds of my favorite cookies.

Artisan Bread in Five Minutes A Day

Photo by J. Harrington

Speaking of baking, my new book on Sourdough by Science has a chapter on sourdough starters. I’ve almost finished reading through it. I want to think a little more about it but I believe the care and feeding of starters as the author proposes will work better than the approach I’ve been stumbling through for the past decade although it will require some careful planning of the transition. The author maintains a smaller starter and feeds it smaller amounts than I’ve been doing. I’ll report back as I work through those changes.

I’ve been baking artisan bread for about a decade now, first following the “Five Minutes a Day” program and then moving into artisan sourdough. Mostly it’s been fun and tasty but I’ve grown unhappy with  the volume of starter discards I’ve created and recently have had my dough behaving differently than it used to. Artisan and organic and bacteria and yeast do not make for a mechanical process, but it’s a good learning environment for us Type A control freaks.

Bread Soup: An Old Icelandic Recipe

By Bill Holm

Start with the square heavy loaf 

steamed a whole day in a hot spring 

until the coarse rye, sugar, yeast 

grow dense as a black hole of bread. 

Let it age and dry a little, 

then soak the old loaf for a day 

in warm water flavored 

with raisins and lemon slices. 

Boil it until it is thick as molasses. 

Pour it in a flat white bowl. 

Ladle a good dollop of whipped cream 

to melt in its brown belly. 

This soup is alive as any animal, 

and the yeast and cream and rye 

will sing inside you after eating 

for a long time.

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