Grandma Wolff

I wrote this for a church service given by our Women's Spirituality Group, when we were asked to honor our ancestors, to introduce member of our congregation to someone important to us.  I thought you might enjoy meeting my Grandma Wolff through these words.

I want to introduce you to my Grandma Wolff.  She was born Helen Kathryn Ploch around 1883 and married my grandfather, Charlie Wolff, in 1907.   Grandma had four pregnancies, the first, a boy, was stillborn, then came my mother, then she miscarried (another boy), and completed the family with my Aunt Ruthie.

Grandpa was in love with my grandma throughout their whole marriage, or so I was told.  She was beautiful and had long black hair.  During the '20s she decided to have it bobbed – cut short to the neck in back, what was called a shingle – and when Grandpa saw her, he cried out, “My God, my God, woman, what have you done?”  And then he sat down and cried real tears.

Grandpa died on my sixth birthday, and Grandma was not in a financial position to live alone.  So she spent half her time with us and half with my Aunt Ruthie's family.  We argued over who got Grandma for Christmas.  We loved having her with us.  If there was friction with her daughters, we never saw it.  I remember the three of them canning and making soap and stuffing sausage in the summer kitchen.  I loved the sound of their laughter and the occasional argument as they worked together.

Being close to Grandma was a treat.   I loved how she smelled, and the sound of her voice so soft and gentle.  She liked to dress up and had several sets of matching earrings and broaches, just costume jewelry, but always in good taste.  I have some of her jewelry, as well as a tiny tray for trinkets that sat on her dresser.  It has a picture in the bottom of it of Starved Rock, which is where she and Grandpa went on their honeymoon.  I didn't care about getting anything else, because none of the other things reminded me of her the way the small tray and the earrings and broaches did.

I remember the feel of her hands stroking my forehead as I lay with my head in her lap.  I would take hold of her hand, feeling the paper thin skin, and I’d push on the veins on the back of her hand and watch them pop back up, quite fascinated by it.  Now I look down at my hands and see the same thing on my own.

My kids don't have any real memories of my grandmother, although both were born before she died in 1967.   To them, she is a flat person in a frame on a wall, and the memories of her are all second hand.

My mother was the last of her generation, and now that she is gone, my cousins and siblings and I are all that stand between our children and death.  I know that my life is dwindling down, and I'm okay with that.  I've had a good life, and Grandma Wolff was a big part of that. 

Although I'm not looking forward to death, I can accept it.  But there is one thing that bothers me.  When I am gone, who will remember my Grandma Wolff?

August 24, 2008

My new salsa recipe

The garden is overflowing with tomatoes and hot peppers.  So that means it's time to be making and canning salsa.  I have three different recipes that I have made in the past.  Yesterday I decided to combine the best of all three and crank up the hot peppers, since I like may salsa pretty hot.

Here's the finished product.

Here's how to make it.

SUSAN'S BEST SALSA

This makes eight quarts, seven to preserve for later and one for right away.  You will also have about a quart and a half of spicy tomato juice.

I started with 24 lbs. of heirloom tomatoes, many different colors and types.  I measured as I worked so that I could keep my proportions if the recipe turned out well.  All who have tasted it have given it high marks.  So anyway, my 24 lbs. of tomatoes yielded 36 cups of peeled and diced tomatoes, after draining.

Set up your work space – wash ten quart jars with hot soapy water and set aside.  Get out your cold pack canner and fill about a third full with water.  Place your lids and rings in a pan large enough to hold all of them with at least an inch of water over the top of them.

Wash and dry your funnel, jar lifter and lid magnet.  You can buy these items in a kit if you don't already have them. They come in a kit with all three pieces, and some have a fourth piece for making sure you have all of the air bubbles out of the jar before sealing.  Ball Utensil Set For Preserving And Canning - 4 Piece is available at Kmart.  Meijer's has a lot of canning supplies and they probably have them there as well.

Put a large pan of water on stove and bring to a boil.  Place a large bowl of ice water on the counter near the pan of boiling water, along with a slotted spoon.  You will need a very sharp paring knife and a medium bowl for the peels, cores and any bad spots you cut out of the tomatoes.  Also, I keep a small bucket nearby to dump the bowls of peels into.  Set a two-cup glass measuring cup in your work area.

Set a large strainer over a stock pot to strain the tomato pieces, especially if you are using tomatoes other than paste tomatoes, since they are a little too juicy.  I like my salsa to be pretty chunky, so I drained mine.   I'll tell you what to do with that juice at the end of this recipe.

Lastly, put an extra large stockpot on the stove for cooking your salsa before bottling it.  It should be about a three gallon pot, must be at least 2-1/2 gallons to hold everything.  If you don't have one that big, then use two.  But put everything into a large pan (a clean plastic dishpan will work) so that the ingredients are well distributed before putting into the two separate pots.

Okay, so let's begin.  Wash and drain your tomatoes as you go - I put about a fourth of them at a time into a sink of water, then take a few at a time out of the water to drain.

Your water is boiling on the stove.  Get the timer out, since you don't want mushy tomatoes, and you only need them in the boiling water for one minute to loosen the skins.  It's worth the bother, since it is hard to estimate one minute when you are working on so many things at once!  Put about six to eight tomatoes into the boiling water and set your timer for one minute.  When it beeps, put the tomatoes directly into the ice water, put another set of tomatoes into the boiling water, them start peeling the ones from the ice water.  I chop them very roughly once peeled and put directly into the two-cup measure.  When the measuring cup is full, I put the tomatoes into the strainer to drain a bit.  I also write down on a paper that I have now done two cups.

Unless you can work a lot faster than I can, you will have to turn down the boiling water every now and then to catch up, and to put more tomatoes into the wash water in the sink, to empty the bowl with peels into the bucket, and all that stuff.

Once the tomatoes have drained a bit, they go into your cooking pot.  I measure again, since that is the final measure.  You will always lose a little due to the draining.  So keep track of the number of cups you scoop out of the drainer and put into the pot.  For my recipe, and to get the same proportions, you will need 36 cups of drained tomato chunks going into the pot.

Once the tomatoes are in the pot, you need to add the following:

• ¼ C. sea salt
• 2 T. chili powder (a good brand – if you are using discount chili powder, then you probably need to double this amount)
• 2 T. toasted and ground cumin.  I think it is worth the extra bother to toast the seeds in an iron skillet until turning color, and then grind yourself.  Much more flavor than store bought cumin powder.
• 6 C. onions, chopped
• 10 large cloves garlic, crushed or chopped
• 1½ C. jalapenos and/or serranos (Serranos are a little hotter.)  I remove some of the seeds and ribs, but not all, since I like my salsa pretty hot.
• 2 to 3 T. Thai hot chilies (these really crank up the heat!!)
• 3 golden cayenne peppers (pretty hot, too!)  These are added mostly because they add some bright color.  If you can't find them, just do a few extra Thai hots.
• 2 C. chopped cilantro, lightly packed.  I cut off the stems from the bottom of the bunch, but do not worry about the rest of the stems.  They add flavor, just make sure they are chopped up pretty good.

 Okay, the hard part is done.  Bring the whole thing up to a boil.  While doing that, get your pan of lids and rings boiling, and put some hot water into your prepared jars, so that you are not putting boiling hot liquid into a very cold jar. 

Once the salsa is boiling, take out a spoonful and let cool a bit to taste.  Some people like to add some cider vinegar to it, but I didn't think it needed it.  This is your last chance to fiddle with the recipe – add a little salt, maybe you want to kick it up a notch with some more hot peppers.

Now put your canner onto the stove to begin heating and start bottling your salsa.  Use the funnel so that you keep the neck of the jar as clean as possible.  Fill to about a quarter to half inch from the top.  Set your funnel into the next jar, then wipe the rim of the jar you just filled with a clean paper towel, use your magnet to lift out a lid and a rim, put on the filled jar and tighten down pretty hard.  Then use your jar lifter to set the filled jar into the canner.  Proceed with the next six jars, then make sure that all of the jars are completely covered with water.  As soon as the canner water boils, put on the lid, turn your heat down a bit and process for 35 minutes.

Now you have that extra quart of salsa and the tomato juice to think about.  Put the tomato juice into the pot with the remaining salsa and bring all back up to a boil.  Put the funnel into a clean jar and put a small sieve into the funnel.  Now ladle out the hot mixture into the funnel and fill the jar with tomato juice that is now nice and spicy.  As you collect the remaining salsa in the sieve, put that into one of the two remaining jars.  You should end up with about a quart and a half of juice and a full quart of salsa.  I add a little of the hot tomato juice to the jar of salsa to make sure it has enough juice, and then cap it.  It will probably seal without canning it, but this is the one you want to put in your fridge to eat right away.

I am on a low carb diet.  Two options for dippers – the easiest is good old pork rinds.  The other is to get low carb wraps, cut them into eighths, spray with some olive oil and sprinkle some salt on them.  Then toast in oven until crunchy.  They are a bit of a bother, but pretty darned good for very few carbs!

Why is a Monsanto lobbyist serving as the FDA's Food Safety Czar?

To my readers ~

I do not usually get into politics, but this is the politics of food.  I am hoping you will read and act.

While factory farm operators are getting away with serious food safety violations, raw milk dairy farmers and distributors across the country have been subjected to armed raids and hauled away in handcuffs.

Not surprisingly, the person responsible for prioritizing armed raids on small dairies over holding agribusiness accountable is a former Monsanto attorney and chief super lobbyist. Monsanto's Michael Taylor is the second highest-ranking official at the FDA, and as Food Safety Czar is responsible for implementing the day-to-day policies that govern the food safety laws for the U.S.

Ask President Obama to fire FDA Food Safety Czar and former Monsanto lobbyist Michael Taylor. Click here to sign the petition.

http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/fire_michael_taylor/?r_by=26849-3476437-SeOTkdx&rc=paste1

Why I'm tired . . .

It's Labor Day today.  It wasn't a holiday for me.  I didn't even think about it, realized I had scheduled Kayla to come in today and thought I should call her to see whether she really wanted to be here.  About that time, she pulled in, and we got to work.  I had already started a pot of soup and was working on a new batch of sourdough rye bread.  My very dense and sour rye bread has finally taken off - I'm getting a lot of orders for it, in fact I made a dozen loaves last week and they are all gone but one. Most of the people who buy it at my booth at the market have European accents.  It's not for the Wonder Bread crowd.

Beef soup

Sourdough rye- first rise

I sent Kayla down to the garden to pick tomatoes so that I could get on with my canning.  The jars were running through the dishwasher while I was doing bread and soup.  I also had an order for 12 bunches of basil, any type, so Kayla got those ready.

Many kinds of basil - sweet, Thai, cinnamon, purple, lemon . . .

While the pressure cooker was doing its thing, I went down to the garden and dug potatoes.  One of my customers at the market just loves a French potato called La Ratte.  It is a small fingerling, and the French insist it is the tastiest potato in the world.

La Ratte fingerling potatoes

The weather is magnificent today!  Finally the heat wave has broken.  High today was around 65º, and it is quite windy.  What better day to hang out the sheets?  So I threw them in the machine while I was waiting on the pressure cooker to complete the first load.

Sheets drying on the line

Kayla asked about these wrinkled little peppers in the garden, because I had given her some of them.  What should she do with them?  I told her I was going to start some fermenting this afternoon, so she could help me, and write down the recipe to do her own.

Pepperoncini fermenting in Suze Goldberg jar

Between canning and bread making, I picked up eggs and then went down to the garden for a few more pepperoncini so that I had enough to fill a half gallon jar. I picked while the last batch of jars was cooling in the pressure cooker.  By the time I got back from the garden, they were ready to remove.  I love to listen to the jar lids ping when they seal.

Tomatoes and beans ready for winter meals

Then I checked my orders for market baskets and Kayla went down to the garden to get some kale, chard and collards which we will need for tomorrow's deliveries
.

Kale, collards and chard sitting in ice water

It's 6:30 now.  Time to stop.  I haven't eaten since breakfast, and I'm hungry.  So I spent Labor Day laboring, but it was all enjoyable, and I am going to crawl into a bed with fresh sheets that smell like the great outdoors, to dream of eating tomato soup on a cold winter's day, or snacking on sharp and vinegar-y pepperoncini.  It really doesn't get any better than this.

A tale of six roosters . . .

My initial plan was to keep only one breed of white egg layers - Campines, an endangered species - and only have Campine roosters.  The plan was that if I had a broody hen, whatever breed, I would slip white eggs under her, and they would all have Campine fathers and Campine mothers - couldn't be any other combination.  Any chicks that hatched would be full blooded Campines.

A woman had to get rid of some chickens in town due to complaining neighbors.  She told me they were all pullets.  However, three of the six Buff Orpingtons began crowing and breeding my hens - definitely not pullets.  I sold one, found one dead in the Moop one morning, and still have a third.  He is so beautiful!  His name is Stewart, Stew for short because my plan was to put him in the stew pot.  He has messed up my breeding plans!  If he breeds a Campine, then a white egg could have a Campine mother and Stewart, a Buff Orpington, as the father.  I would have no way of knowing what breed the chicks were until they hatched.

Stewart with a few of the girls

Buster front left, Stewart in center

Stewart is still in the chicken yard.  I cannot bear to butcher him.  My vet told me that I might consider taking him to the local auction, that he got rid of a rooster for $2.00 to someone who wanted to use him for breeding.  I might do that.  Stewart is a fine bird!  He is just the wrong bloodline for my breeding plan.  He is also way too big for my tiny Campines, and his spurs have left many of their backs nude of feathers.

Buster is a fine bird!

My only picture of Roscoe

Chicks are sexed the day they are born, so when you order pullets, you are supposed to get pullets, and not random pullets and roosters.  You only need one rooster for every 15 hens, but odds say you will get 50:50 if you leave things to chance.  If you buy them unsexed, it is called a "straight run," and the cost per chick is pretty cheap.  If they are sexed, you pay more to get all pullets - the ones that lay the eggs and provide some income.  However, Campines are rather hard to sex.  The first year, I got two roosters by mistake, but the hawks got one.  Only Buster was left.  Last year I got one rooster by mistake, and I named him Roscoe.  Sometimes roosters fight, but Buster and Roscoe got along just fine and spent most of their time within a few feet of each other.  Sadly Rosco has disappeared, gone about a week now, so I'm pretty sure he became fodder for some wild animal.  Kayla said she heard wolves near the house yesterday morning.  And I have plenty of hawks -- Campines are rather small birds, and a hawk could carry an adult rooster off quite easily.  Sigh . . .

I bought two Campine roosters this year, and they survived babyhood, are crowing lustily and even thinking about getting into the breeding game.  So there are three Campine roosters now, with Roscoe gone.  And of course there is Stewart.  And Tiny.  One of the four accidental chicks that hatched out last spring appears to be full-blooded Campine.  I was hoping it was a pullet, but he is crowing.  So that makes four Campine roosters.  And Stewart.  And Pretty Boy, another of the accidental chicks.  Unfortunately, he is most definitely a rooster, and a huge one at that!  He has just started to crow.  It's funny, the Campine roosters crow at a lot earlier age.  But I had Pretty Boy figured for a boy long before he crowed.  He is huge, and he is the most aloof of the four chicks.  He won't let me pet him when he is running around the yard, only sits on my lap when the mood strikes him.  Last night he spent about two minutes there, then he was off.  He is a beautiful bird, definitely part Buckeye based on how his tale feathers are colored, and most certainly Buff Orpington (Stewart) from his dad.

Here are the four "accidental" chickens.  Tiny is to the right.

I am going to keep Tiny - after all, we have bonded and he looks like a full-blooded Campine.  Pretty Boy and Stewart have to go, and I think I will take them to the sale barn.  Then my only conundrum will be Goldie.  I may have to isolate her to see what color eggs she lays.  If she lays brown or tan eggs, I can keep her.  If she lays white eggs, I will offer her a home with a good friend who has a flock of chickens.  I know she will be taken care of and will be allowed to live several years on that farm.  If I knew her exact parentage, I would try breeding to get more like her.  Maybe I could develop a new breed.  She is certainly beautiful!

Goldie - she is a beauty!

Harvesting

After all of the frustration and HARD WORK of getting the garden in, finally we are harvesting a lot of food!  Our CSA members are very happy.  They get at least $12 worth of fresh organic produce each week for $10 (they sign up for 13 weeks of deliveries), and lately they have been getting closer to $15 worth!  We have so much, and I would rather give them all a bit more than take it in to the market and take my chances on it selling.

The potatoes, oh the potatoes.  How I wish I could eat them, but they are so high in carbs that I treat myself to a small potato maybe once or twice a week.  Someone told me that blue potatoes have fewer carbs and more nutrition.  I guess that is why I am just about out of them already.  Everything Kayla and I dig is gone by the end of the week - if it is a blue potato, that is.  Next year, there will be two full rows of blue potatoes.

My beans didn't do at all well.  We are expanding the garden, and they are in the new area.  The poor production there certainly shows how much we have improved the old garden area.  Things do not grow very well in the new parts.  We didn't plant much of the new area this year because we knew it wouldn't be that good, but we really needed the room.  In an effort to get the new area up to speed, we are doing some special prep work.  Most of it is still grass, with just a few areas planted - beans, squash and melons being about all that went in there.  We just mowed the grass low, and I am going to sprinkle it with SeaAgra sea salt, then sprinkle the area with about 50% of our composted manure, then cover the whole area with tarps.  Hopefully, when we pull up those tarps next spring, the grass will be composted and the salt will have worked its way down into the soil, along with that biodynamic compost.  Next year, I have high hopes for the new part of the garden.

We can no longer use anything for mulch that is not certified organic.  That is a new rule as of April 1, 2011.  I think it is a good rule.  However, my garden is getting so big that I will not be able to mulch using the leftover hay from the hay mow and grass clippings from lawn mowing.  Buying organic straw is cost prohibitive.  So we are going to have to do a "normal" garden next year, tilling between the rows where we used to mulch.  We will use our precious organic grass clippings to mulch around the potatoes and tomatoes.  The rest of it, get out the hoes.  Sigh . . .

Well, I'm just finishing up a new batch of Cheddar cheese, and it's time to wander out to the garden to see what looks good for supper.  Now that is what I call a SUPER market!!

Where is Roscoe?

I have (had?) two full grown Campine roosters.  They were usually together, never got into fights.  I realized yesterday that I haven't seen Roscoe around.  He looks very much like Buster, but he didn't go through the cold winter that Buster did.  Buster's comb got frostbite, and instead of spikes, the comb is rounded on the ends.  Roscoe's is crisp, with sharp points, and more of them.  So I could always tell them apart.

I couldn't find Roscoe in the Moop last night, but it was pretty dark in there and I didn't have my flashlight.  When I open the door, they all come rushing out so it is hard to find an individual chicken.  But I didn't see him this morning.

I haven't seen any remains.  If someone had hit him with their car, I would have seen the body on the drive.  But it is not looking good for Roscoe.  Two days outside the Moop means that he has become fodder for some wild animal.

It turns out that Tiny, one of the four little ones that bonded with me, is a rooster.  I was hoping Tiny was a hen, but now, with Roscoe gone, I guess it is a good thing.  That will make four Campine roosters for breeding.

I thought I had lost Tiny, too.  I didn't see him for several days.  Then one night, when I was sitting on the back step of the Moop, this little Campine hopped on my head and began crowing!  Tiny!!!  I didn't recognize him because he had finally developed some tail feathers - and quite a singing voice!

I am hoping against hope that Roscoe will miraculously show up, that I just missed seeing him for a couple of days but he was there all along.  I will keep you posted.