Pour the batter onto sheets and put in the dehydrator for several hours until dry and crisp.  You’ll have meaty pet treats that don’t require refrigeration and last for months.  Compare ingredients to commercial products and you will feel much better about homemade healthy treats.  For example, a PetSmart dog cookie lists wheat flour, corn syrup, palm oil, honey, yogurt and 5 artificial colors.  The above sample lists organic turkey, applesauce, sweet potato and parsley.  Quite a difference.  And I deprived the garbage disposal/septic system of a daily meal grinding up my food dollars.

Exercise CAUTION using only slightly outdated food, whole foods rather than processed food or general table scraps and very little dairy for dog treats.  Use little or no baked goods, refined flour snacks, bones, raw eggs or dessert foods.  Don’t think of it as the “kitchen sink” but rather an extended use for whole food entrees that would otherwise be discarded.  And set the dehydrator on the highest temp (around 160 degrees) so the meat content is completely dried like jerky and will not spoil.

If you process leftovers throughout the year, you will have extras for creative pet treat gift packages for the holidays or hostess gifts.  Your pet friends will sincerely thank you for economical healthy snack treats.

For those without a greenhouse, terrarium mason jars are a compact and efficient method for getting a 4 week head start on the season. This 6 tier stack, Target chrome bookshelf is only 12x12x56 inches and can start hundreds of seeds. All you need is peat, mason jars, seeds and plastic wrap. I put 10 to 15 seeds in each large jar and 6-10 seeds in small jars.  Keep moist at all times by misting and lightly sprinkling inside each jar.

These starts are easier to transplant as well, using peat instead of paper towel or cloth. When I used paper the roots stuck or grew into it requiring surgical removal of the little sprout. With peat, they are ready to thin and go.

So try starting this terrarium seed nursery in a sunny window. Watching the seeds sprout is fascinating and rewarding.

When I advocate juicing in the summer, many are unmotivated because the produce is abundant. But the big payoff comes in winter when juice is as close to vine-ripened as we are going to get.

The small jars seen below hold benedictine cheese made from pureed cucumber with cream cheese and a dash of onion/garlic salts.  The garlic and onions were grown on the farm as well, chopped finely and combined with Kosher salt.  After roasting for 30 minutes at 400 degrees, the combo goes through a coffee grinder and lasts indefinitely.  So easy to use in a pinch!

So this summer think of juicing and freezing from your garden produce and you will thank me next January.

Cucumber Juice in hybernation

1/3 each suits my taste

Choose American artisanal cheeses

Ms Gudrias passes on information from Cowgirl Creamery, in Point Reyes Station, California, offering one typical message on its website: “In buying farmstead cheese rather than industrially produced cheese, you will support the fine art of farmstead cheesemaking,…help to ensure jobs in rural areas, and contribute to protecting farmlands from development.”

“This is one of the observations Heather Paxson, a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, intends to present in the book she is writing this year (tentatively titled “Cheese Cultures”). Paxson—an associate professor of anthropology at MIT and the author of a 2004 book on Greek women’s changing attitudes toward family planning—specializes in the anthropology of the everyday: how individuals connect themselves to a web of social norms through their actions, and how those actions, en masse, shape the norms.”

Watch for Ms Paxson’s book in the future and here is a link to the article highlighting the importance of our American cheese cultures.

http://harvardmagazine.com/2010/01/anthropology-of-american-artisanal-cheese

Creamy yogurt with berries, finger food

How can yogurt be finger food without refrigeration for up to 5 days?  First make Greek yogurt from organic, whole milk then take the next step to make berry yogurt bites.

Did you know Greek yogurt is made with any kind of milk and simply drained of whey liquid after it sets?  I thought Greek meant goats milk yogurt like feta cheese.  I learned to make yogurt last Fall to organically penny pinch and found it was surprisingly easy.  I am a reluctant culinary adventurer.  The result cannot be matched by supermarket brands in my biased opinion.

Thanks to detailed instructions and cultures obtained from Steve at thecheesemaker.com, it takes no time to heat milk, let it cool and add culture.  I add 1 tsp of flavor in extract form and 1/4 cup of xylitol for sweetness at this point.  You need to incubate the yogurt for 6-12 hours at about 110 degrees.  More about an incubator/dehydrator later.  You will love the creamy thick yogurt from whole or 2% milk, even chocolate milk if you prefer.  Like sourdough you can make future batches using the same culture reserved from the initial batch.  Very economical.

Yogurt Going Greek

As gently as possible, transfer the finished yogurt into cheesecloth while the whey drains for 15-20 minutes.  Help it along by hanging the bag tied to a dowel over a pot.  Chill and you are ready to eat with berries, nuts or dehydrated persimmons as gathered at Pillow Road. If you fail to devour it all, you may go on to the dehydration phase and make yogurt bites.

Below you can see 2″ tart rings (or silicone cupcake liners) hold pureed fruit with yogurt spread on top.  Don’t puree fruit to liquid or it will run when you remove the ring.  You may use frozen berries in a chopper and they’ll be firm enough not to run.

Berry yogurt bites, ready for dehydrator

The Excalibur brand small dehydrator shown below incubates yogurt, makes jerky, dries herbs, tomatoes, fruits and makes fruit leathers.  These foods provide optimum nutrition as warm air drying preserves probiotics, vitamins and enzymes usually lost to traditional cooking.

This dehydrator costs around $120 shipped via internet.  I use it much more than I thought I would.  You might think about adding this handy, healthful item to your kitchen.  Caution:  round ones can’t make yogurt because the containers won’t fit inside.  My inventive friend set the container wrapped in a towel on a heating pad set on medium-high.  This works just fine in lieu of contraptions. Monitor with a food thermometer the first few times to determine a setting that yields the 110 degree target range since a high temperature will kill your culture before it can make the yogurt.

Shelves of yogurt bites inside dehydrator

4-8 hours later you have mini-cheesecake (like) treats that are refined-sugar free registering LOW on the glycemic index. Although rich tasting they are low in calories, high in probiotics, anti-oxidants and vitamins.  They are appealing chilled but like all dehydrated food, no longer require refrigeration.  Plastic wrap separately as they will stick together.  Yogurt bites are mess-free finger food providing nutritious snacks and dessert.

A great advantage of dehydration is preventing spoilage of pricey organic produce.  By dropping extras or leftovers in the blender, resulting purees store much longer sealed in jars and refrigerated or frozen. When I get time I can pour the purees for dehydrating and 8-12 hours later have fruit leathers.  The leathers last 4-5 days at room temp, up to a month refrigerated and one year frozen.  I can post some ideas for making fruit leathers another day.  First you can get started on homemade yogurt whether Greek, plain, chocolate, lemon or vanilla – it’s great.

Seed saving from 2009 cucumber crop

This is my first attempt at posting to a blog. We live on a farm in Kentucky and a few friends get together here every couple of weeks for Garden Chat.  I am Dale’s sister and we share project notes and outcomes via phone, mail and now this internet blog.  Fun to trade info and keep in touch.  Our parallel interests have developed intuitively and we can agree that genetic pre-disposition has little to do with it.  Maybe the California sunshine inspired us early in life?

Barn and workshop on a Spring day in Kentucky

Our shared farm projects are cheese and yogurt making, cooking with herbs, dehydrating garden harvest and seed collecting.  I am becoming the ‘dehydrator queen’ and chose the WellFarm moniker for fruit and vegetable snacks for kids and weight watchers eating on-the-go.  I have not ventured into livestock or brewing as Dale has.  Members of our group are from Parker Mountain farm down the road and they raise Tarantaise cattle and lambs. Godspeed Farm, our immediate neighbor has constructed a 6 hen condo providing fresh eggs that are splashes of color never seen in a supermarket.  So little by little we are sprouting a farm micro co-op and marvel at the quality of our simple, new ventures.  As empty nesters we invite young married couples into the fold to support their interests in natural food, farming and organic product choices.

Currently we are reviewing our seed inventory to prepare for ordering. In addition, we have tree (nut and persimmon) and vine planting aspirations (blackberry and raspberry).  Since seeds are this week’s topic, here are some amazing numbers I calculated for the mighty backyard cucumber. It gives us an idea of the exponential value of  a single seed and the abundant provision we have entrusted to corporate interests.  Seed saving is of great value and becoming more critical each year as heirloom lines are bought up, controlled and/or destroyed to the benefit of genetically modified seed marketeers.  I became determined to save our seeds after learning more and can now be perceived as ‘nutty about seeds’.  Rightly so when you digest the following:

Q: How many cucumbers do I need for seed* in 2010 so the yield in 2011 supplies enough cucumbers to provide one seed for each citizen in the United States? (300 million population)

A: 3 cucumbers

300,000,000 seeds come from a 3,000,000 cucumber supply next year. 3,000,000 cucumbers can be harvested from 300,000 plants.

300,000 seeds for 2011 plants require 3,000 cucumbers this year. 3,000 cucumbers can be found on 300 plants. 300 seeds come from 3 cucumbers holding 100 seeds each.

*Key: 1 cucumber holds 100 seeds and 10 cucumbers harvested from 1 plant. A single seed can yield 1 million seeds in 2 seasons.  Yes there is waste but this gives us an idea.  So we start with 4 cucumbers in case 1 million seeds don’t sprout?  Oh well.

Save one seed – reap a million blessings!