1st week of March 2010

Flemish Desem Bread The sun is reminding us that spring is on its way even though there is still snow on the ground. While we wait for the snow to melt, we've been taking advantage of the extra time for some more experimenting. A friend who bakes for the Local Roots Market shared some Flemish Desem sourdough bread starter and I tried a batch last week. After carefully reading the 18 page manual I gave it a whirl. It was lighter and tastier than the regular sourdough I make and the two loaves disappeared in a hurry. The original recipe is for baking in real hearth and we mimic that by using a two quart covered casserole pan and adding 3 T water before baking. Maybe when I get the recipe perfected someday I'll have a real hearth to use!! We have abundant milk again with the birth of a Jersey heifer, Snowdrop (pictured). So I've been making some cheese again and tried a new one. Queso blanco is a traditional Mexican variety that uses vinegar to make the curd. It doesn't melt like other cheeses and can be used in stir fries which is how we ate it. With my upcoming cheese class at Lehmans (April 1 from 6:00-7:30pm) I want to do some more cheese experiments.

Jersey Calf Snowdrop It's time to start seeding flats for spring plants so our kitchen turns into a potting shed to accomplish that. Here my assistant is helping seed onions, leeks, lettuce, broccoli and cabbage. I can tell I'm in for an interesting year of gardening. My early tomato seedlings were happily growing in the window until they suffered a toddler accident last week. I salvaged most of the jumbled plants but will now have surprise tomatoes with three varieties scrambled. Fortunately the Stupice variety has potato type leaves and I'll be able to tell those apart once the leaves develop further. The Sun Gold cherries and New Girl slicers will just have to remain a mystery till harvest. I think I will be growing patience this year!!

Planting Leeks Our family also took a field trip to Tucker Packing in Orrville when we took a beef in to butcher in February. It was very interesting to watch the whole process . After watching the movie Food Inc. which showed the industrial side of agriculture and had footage from gigantic meat processing plants, it was nice to see a small operation in action. It even inspired our 8 year old to write "The Butcher Rhyme." It's quite a job to transform a 1400# beef into steaks and one pound packages of hamburger. While we were looking at the carcasses in the freezer the owner mentioned that our beef had a nice fat cover that made it a good candidate for 21 day aging. He said the longer aging makes for tender steaks. Usually we do the standard 14 day aging and we are looking forward to tasting the difference. We do have a quarter left for sale from this beef. Contact us for details on ordering custom cuts and pricing.