Odd Bits – New Hampshire Green Leaves Blog

Year’s End: Food For Thought

Now that the year is nearly out, the Christmas bacchanalia has receded, so things are quieting down. New Years usually doesn’t get celebrated by me. I gave up on watching the ball drop in Time’s Square years ago as I found getting a good night’s sleep more desirable. With the Winter Solstice past and the chill this time of year settling in, I find myself thinking more about food.

I like cooking from scratch, something I took up when my late mother began having too much difficulty moving about. It tastes far better than prepared foods since I can make meals from fresh ingredients without all the additives which make commercial foods questionable.

The old Rival crock-pot which my mother rarely used, though a bit beat, still works and get a lot of use making soup stock, so much so that I never buy commercial soups anymore.

Making stock (or broth, I’m not sure on which to call it) is astonishingly simple. Just save up bones and skin from poultry, beef or pork. I use a zip-lock freezer bag. When I have enough collected, I thaw and place in the crock-pot along with some chopped onion and celery, add water until it’s just barely covered then turn on the pot. It has a low and high setting so I use the high setting to start with. When it reaches a simmer, I turn it to low and just leave it. Four hours for poultry, six or so for beef or pork. For bone broth, simmer for at least 24 hours with beef bones or ox-tail. Be sure your meat is of good quality.

Some people may express concern about the fat content of poultry skin or bones but if you get meat from pastured animals rather than battery raised, the fat profile is far more healthy and should not be a matter of concern for you. Fat has been demonized for so long that it’s hard to get across that it’s not the enemy. Locally produced meat, which I have access to, has far less to travel and if you have a farmer’s market near you, you can become acquainted with the farmers who raise these animals. Healthy animals translate into healthy meals for you.

Years ago, I made loaves of whole wheat bread. The loaves came out dense and chewy but good. However in the press of work and looking after aging relatives, bread making fell by the wayside. Now with food prices looking to rise, I want to resume bread making. This time I will be looking to lighter bread, with some whole wheat but enough unbleached bread flour to make sandwich breads or rolls.

You-tube is an interesting source for bread recipes and methods of making loaves as I re-familiarize myself with bread-making. As with all their how-to videos, it’s a mixed bag with some just using it as a venue for showing themselves off. Others can’t seem to hold the camera completely steady, a non-starter as I am prone to motion-sickness so a herky-jerky video is pretty much unwatchable. But more than a few do a good job demonstrating their techniques.

Now which is the best technique for making a basic loaf of bread? Well, my come-away is that they all work. Some use bread-making machines but others do it by hand, which is my preference. It doesn’t seem to matter if you knead or don’t knead. Not kneading tends to give you a rougher more artisanal type loaf, while kneading and shaping produces the traditional rectangular loaf. Ingredients may vary but basically are wheat flour, salt, sugar or honey and yeast. Sourdough can get a good rise without yeast but maintaining the sourdough starter is more work than what I want.

So, once I settle on a good recipe, I will begin baking and with any luck add to my repertoire of recipes.

Happy New Year!

Tail End of November

It’s amazing how fast this month has come and gone. So much has been happening, it’s hard not to be left a little dizzy by it all. A Thanksgiving Day storm allowed only one of my brothers to come for dinner. It was a quiet meal as we avoided politics and stuck to mundane topics like odd family relatives, cat hijinks and how easy it really is to replace the battery in a watch.

The weather in the earlier part of the month was mild enough to I was able to snap this picture in mid-November of a dandelion plant, near the edge of the road, sprouting a pair of bright yellow flowers.

There have been enough frost so that it’s unlikely pollinators will be visiting these blossoms. But dandelions are rugged little beings. If they could talk, they would say “We don’t need no stinking pollinators.” They can self fertilize and set seed. The seeds can lie dormant in the soil for up to five years before sprouting. The plant can re-sprout from bits of small taproot left in the ground. No matter what you do to them, they can bounce back from any blow.

Now there’s snow staying on the ground so winter is here, at least for now. But take a lesson from the dandelion. It’s possible to bounce back from anything. If a lowly weed can do it, so can we.

Peace and long life.

Spring Equinox Tidbits

Well, last month the main topic was the abnormally warm weather we’ve had this past winter. That continued to be the case right through March up to and a bit past the Spring Equinox. Then this past Saturday, winter decided to take one last whack at us. Beginning early in the morning, a fine snow began falling at a great clip, rapidly accumulating. Weather forecasters had already put out the winter storm warning so I was stocked up grocery-wise in case I was snowed in. There had been a snow-fall several days before of about four inches.

By the time the snow had tapered off Sunday morning, there was sixteen inches of fresh snow on the ground on top of what we already had. Some places got as much as two feet. In all, I think we got more snow the first week of spring than fell all winter. Global wierding indeed.

Robins must listen to the weather forecast as they showed up in the front yard, the day before the storm, filling themselves up on berries from my two hawthorn trees, dislodging some cedar waxwings which had begun to feed.

The robins still had their winter plumage, which consists a large white patch at the base of their tails, spreading up to their abdomens, giving them the look of wearing their long undies. Being larger than the waxwings, they dominated the trees, though a few pine siskins and a house finch managed to sneak in a few bites.

Several weeks prior to this, I saw several small flocks of geese migrating overhead on their way back north. Thanks to the mild winter, there is open water for them to land on when they stop to rest. Lake Winnipesauki had ice-out declared on March 17, beating the old record of March 18 set back in 2016. Never mind what the calendar says, spring seems to be coming earlier every year. To add to the wierdness, Easter falls on the last day of the month with April Fools Day coming the very next day.

Now the weather has warmed above freezing again, melting away the snow. It should be mostly gone by Easter, just over a week after it dumped on us. A solar eclipse will be happening on April 8, but given how mercurial the weather is here, it may be cloudy when it happens. What next?

Well, here’s to hoping April won’t be too crazy. Have a happy Easter.

February Holidays

At the beginning of each month I use Open Office to create a calendar day for that month which gets stuck on the fridge. The Drawing program is the best one for building a month. I insert a picture, usually a humorous one, near the top, then using the Insert Table function, I create a table for putting in the days and weeks of the month.

I then mark in some holidays of the month while leaving other days open so I can note appointments and other events on them.

For February, there’s Groundhog Day and Valentine’s Day. Groundhog’s Day (February 2^nd) is an odd holiday which we inherited from the Pennsylvania Germans who emigrated here back in the 17^th, 18^th and 19^th centuries. The notion was that if the groundhog (we call them woodchucks here on the US east coast) comes out of his burrow and spots his shadow on this day he will return to his hole to hibernate another six weeks, while no shadow meant an early spring. The fact that there are precisely six weeks between February 2 and the Spring Equinox, irregardless of whether or not the weather is clear doesn’t seem to matter. That is apparently beside the point. It’s an excuse for a small group of men to dress up in formal wear and drag out some poor woodchuck and hold him up the waiting cameras.

February 2^nd is also known as Candlemas, a Christian feast day celebrating the presentation of Jesus at the Temple purportedly 40 days after his birth. It is also called Imbolc or Saint Bridget’s Day although traditionally that is actually celebrated the day before. The origins of Imbolc are a little more uncertain than Candlemas but it seems to go back to early Medieval times.

February 14^th is Valentine’s Day, also a Christian holiday commemorating the martyrdom of Saint Valentine. There were apparently several men named Valentine, dating back to late Roman times. The custom of giving flowers, sweets and other gifts seems to have originated in Britain. In Slovenia Saint Valentine was the patron of spring, good health as well as of beekeepers and pilgrims. This sounds far more benign than the current commercialized bacchanalia of chocolates that cram store shelves around this time, soon to be displaced by the avalanche of sugar poured out in celebration of Easter and Mother’s Day. Small wonder we’re all turning into diabetics.

There are a few lesser holidays such as President’s Day, celebrated on the third Monday of the month. If you do a Google seach, you’ll discover a plethora of holidays for each day of February: Carrot Cake Day, National Homemade Soup Day, National Peppermint Patty Day and so forth. Who comes up with these and more importantly why?

I prefer to keep it simple. Celebrate the birth of Saint Bridget, light a candle to her. Celebrate Saint Valentine’s Day the Slovenic way with perhaps little displays honoring good health, the spring to come and yes even beekeepers everywhere. Don’t forget to eat a bit of chocolate in their honor.

Happy Curmudgeon’s Day!

New Years Eve 2023

Well, another year has come and nearly gone. When I look out into the front yard this is the view I have.

The total lack of snow is quite notable. While we have had snowless Christmas’s before, they were few and far between back when I was young. It was more customary to have at least five inches of snow on the ground, if not more, by the beginning of the New Year. Now it seems to be more like every other year. Thanks to climate warming, this is the new norm.

The implications for gardening are hard to measure. With insufficient snow pack, some plants cannot make it through the winter should there be a sudden severe cold snap. Weed and insect pests which might have died from the cold can now make it through to spring. All this requires adjustment on my part when planning a garden. What will do best come summer? What soil amendments will be needed? How heavy or light will the rain be? This past year was quite wet, a change from the semi-drought conditions of the past decade. But these are questions that have always come up no matter what climate change has done or not done.

Many months lie between now and spring allowing me to peruse the latest batch of seed catalogs and mull over what to try in 2024.

Have a happy New Years!

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