November Garden

So I went out to the garden the other day to see how the brussel sprouts were doing.  They have been slow to mature and I was afraid that a hard freeze would set in before they were ready to harvest.  Southern Wisconsin has had an unusually mild fall with average lows in the 40s and average highs in the 60s.  We have not even turned our heat on in our apartment yet.  Albeit, we do live in a middle apartment so we get heat from our lower and upper apartments.  We did put that plastic on all the windows which has helped tremendously.  So back to the garden....I had forgotten about the cauliflower and was not expecting a good harvest, but the short days and cool/mild fall gave us some huge heads of cauliflower.  Cauliflower is a hard vegetable to grow because if requires temps in the 60s and 70s and short daylight or it bolts and forms puny sized heads.  So hear you go.  Here is our prized cauliflower and other vegetables.  BTW, we did not grow pumpkins, that came from a friends garden.  Next year, I want to grow some sugar pie pumpkins.  These are small, sweet, densely fleshed pumpkins that are great for cooking with and for making pumpkin pies.

Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread

So, I like to bake, mostly because I love almost every bread product ever known to man. When we moved to Madison, I had a lot of time on my hands. With that time and a limited budget, baking seemed like the most natural solution. I discovered that I have a talent for baking bread (after you exclude the inevitable mishaps that go along with "Ruthie in the kitchen"). It all started with the Pretzels, Pasta, French Bread, then came the Sandwich Bread, and my most favorite Ciabatta (which like most things started out with calculation mishaps, however, we love this bread and I make tons at a time --this past go around I *accidentally* made 24 loaves, it's a long story...needless to say my time in the kitchen isn't without it's humor).

I follow a baking blog called Bakers Banter put on by King Arthur Flour. It's an excellent blog for the carbohydrate lovers out there and especially nice for me because they do step by step pictures (my favorite)! I book marked a recipe for a sandwich bread they wrote up recently and just had the chance to give it a go. I must say, we are pleased....very pleased. It will replace our current sandwich bread recipe mentioned earlier. Here's my abbreviated recipe: It is a wet dough, but really is as simple as mixing a starter 4 hours to 2 days prior to baking (which is a nice touch that it can fit MY schedule instead of the other way around). Next you mix in some other ingredients, put it in your mixer and kneed it, take it out, let it rise, cut it in half and put it in two loaf pans, let it rise and then bake and voila! wonderful bread. No rolling out, folding and wrapping, just glop and rise glop and rise.

You will find the pictorial/technique explanation here and the actual recipe here. I didn't use ascorbic acid from their version and substituted brown sugar for the demerara sugar they recommended. Next time however, I will use honey.

Here's my version of the recipe with all credit going to KAF.
For the starter - make 4 - 48 hours ahead of time:

• 1 cup Unbleached Bread Flour
• 1 cup Whole Wheat Flour
• 1/4 teaspoon sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon instant yeast
• 2 cups cool water

For the Dough:

• all of the starter
• 2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
• 4 1/2 cups Unbleached Bread Flour
• 1 tablespoon kosher salt OR 1 1/2 teaspoons table salt
• 6 tablespoons granulated sugar
• 4 teaspoons instant yeast
• 1/4 cup flax seed, ground
• 4 tablespoons butter or 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup lukewarm water
• 2 9 x 5 loaf pans (we actually used 1 9 x 5 loaf pan and a 8 x 4 1/2)

Recombine the starter with the water that's seperated out of it. Add 1.5 cups of the bread flour, the oats, flax, yeast, sugar, and salt.  Coarsely combine in the mixer.  Add melted butter or oil and the water. 

Add the rest of the flour and transfer to the mixer (I had to split mine in half mid way through because it was too hard on my mixer). Kneed in the mixer for 7 minutes or so until it has all come together and is pulling away from the sides of the mixer. (I had to add a little bit extra - 2 T to each half of the dough- water mid way through kneading due to it not combining well).

Let rise until doubled in size. (60 - 90 minutes) - I preheat my little oven to 200 for about 5 minutes, turn it off wait until I can put my hand in the oven and it isn't too hot, rather just warm, and then put my bread in it to rise. This usually always cuts my rise time in half. Sometimes I turn the oven back on to 200 for 3 minutes if it's gotten cold. You'll just have to determine what's best for your oven.

Divide it in half and shape into two logs for the lightly greased loaf pans.

Let rise until it's "fully risen" (one inch or so above the lip of the pan).

Bake for 20 minutes at 350 uncovered, then make a foil tent and cover for 25 more minutes until nice and brown on top.

Let cool in the pan for 3 - 5 minutes (but no longer because condensation will build up in the pan giving you soggy bread). Turn out and let cool on cooling rack.

Slice and enjoy.


Hope you love it as much as I do!

The October Garden

The garden season is coming to an end here in Madison. Last week we harvested the last of the golden beets and carrots. The basil, swiss chard, peppers, broccoli, and bean plants were pulled up and composted. Our third planting of green beans never really made it. They were hit with low 30 degree night temperatures in late September and just sulked there with all of their flowers dropping off. We did get a few handfuls of tender small green beans for a couple meals, but in the end, I just pulled them up and composted them with all the other end of the season garden refuse. We finally had a good freeze and a couple of frosts, putting an end to the growing season except for a few hardy vegetables such as the brussel sprouts and kale and cauliflower. The frosts should actually increase the sugar content of the kale and brussel sprouts. Brussel sprouts are extremely hardy and we should be harvesting them all the way into December. Last week I turned all the beds over, and added about two inches of compost and planted our cover crop. It is a mix of hardy legumes, bell beans, and oats, which will grow up until mid-December when we get our first big winter storms. This above pic is the cover crop starting to spring in the beds.  The cover crop provides a duel role in the garden.  First, the vigorous roots dig into the soil and hold it firm to prevent erosion during the Winter. Second, because the cover crop has a hefty amount of legumes, it captures atmospheric nitrogen and converts it to a form the the plant can use. Since these plants will be turned under at the first of Spring, all that nitrogen is released into the soil for next seasons crops to use. We practice high intensity gardening with crops grown in succession all season long. When one crop is harvested, then another is planted in it's place.

For this type of gardening in the long run to be sustainable, it requires a large amount of fertilizer, micro-nutrients, and organic matter to be put back into the soil. There is no one solution either. We turned in over 6 inches of compost this year alone! To get a perspective of how much that is, that is about 7 cubic yards of compost which is about 7 front loader buckets full. That is a lot of compost for a 25 x 25 foot garden. I don't expect to add that much next year, but we inherited some worn out soil with almost no organic matter and who knows how much available nitrogen. We also turned in 50 pounds of soybean meal this season as well (soybean meal has a NPK of around 7-2-2). Finally, the cover crop. The other advantage of the cover crop is that it works during the late Fall, Winter, and early Spring months when nothing else is growing. This is truly sustainable organic gardening practices.

Last but not least, we planted our garlic and shallots last week. This is one of the things I am really excited about. I ordered a variety of garlic called Red Siberian from Peacefully Valley, a well-known online organic supply house. We ordered enough so that we can replant part of our harvest next year and continue doing that year after year. I also planted shallots. We planted some this past year and were surprised how easy they were to grow and how productive they were. We planted 10 bulbs this past year and harvested over 50 bulbs!  This year I planted I planted 40 bulbs and should harvest around 200 shallot bulbs if were lucky.
    That is it for now.

...We're gonna have a good time...

My Love, originally uploaded by musings from madison.

Today is my sweet husbands birthday.
Those who know us, know we love to celebrate...I mean, we REALLY love to celebrate.
So for Eric's birthday we are celebrating all week long. This past weekend, Eric's sister came up with her husband and we were able to celebrate with them on Saturday night. Last night we went to L'Etoile for dinner. They offer a $22/Tuesday meal and last nights was Pulled Pork BBQ... cole slaw, macaroni and cheese, and texas toast. We made reservations over a month ago, because these things fill up fast. It was yummmm..... We enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. I must say however... the northerners don't know how to do barbecue like southerners...it was delicious don't get me wrong, and it was by far the best that we've had since we've been up here... and it was in fact extremely delicious. However we agree...the BEST barbecue is yet to be found. So if anyone in the Madison area has any suggestions...

Tonight we are celebrating with friends at one of our FAVORITE places, Tex Tubbs Taco Palace. For those of you who read this in Knoxville, it is like our La Paz. Eric happens to share his birthday with Tex Tubbs (it is their 2nd? maybe?). So we decided a joint celebration would be appropriate. Tex Tubbs also has a special brisket taco that Eric is CRAZY about. To cap of the week of celebration Eric is playing poker this weekend. So those are the celebration plans for the person we celebrate.

The person we celebrate: Eric is my favorite and I delight in him. He is my very best friend. His passions are contagious and the zeal with which pursues them is dynamic. He is exactly who he is without reservation. He loves people well. He loves me well.

So to my sweet husband, this is to say happy birthday until I can find a card that is inappropriate enough to give you.