Monthly Archives: March 2013

Kefir

27 Wednesday Mar 2013

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Funny looking word, I know.  I think it’s properly pronounced as “kuh-FEER”, but some people say “KEE-fur”, like Keifer Sutherland, I guess.

However you pronounce it, the stuff is strange.  Fermented milk.

Since the invention of refrigerators and cooking, we don’t tend to ferment a lot of our food.  I come from a Ukrainian heritage, so the only fermented food I was ever familiar with was sauerkraut, and I didn’t like it.

A friend of mine had some extra “grains” (not really grains at all, but a bacterial culture that resembles small pieces of cauliflower), so I decided to give it a shot.  I’ve been making and eating my own yogurt for months, and I’m pretty sure it’s what kept me healthy all winter when everyone else was down with the plague this year.  Kefir is supposed to a powerhouse of probiotics and good stuff for your gut.  So why not try it?

It’s very easy to make.  You put the grains in a jar, and add a couple cups of milk.  It releases gas as it ferments, so cover it with a tea towel or a coffee filter – something that will keep fruit flies and other nasty things out, but let the gas escape.  Leave it on the counter for 24 – 48 hours.  The longer you leave it, the thicker and more sour tasting it becomes. Then strain it through a plastic strainer, reserving the grains, and start the whole process over again.

It’s not pleasant, at least, not to me.  You are drinking sour, carbonated milk, which tastes about as good as it sounds.  But, if I stick it in the Magic Bullet with two frozen bananas, it actually makes a fantastic smoothie.  So I get a shot of probiotic-filled kefir, and two servings of fruit.  Win-win situation, I think.

Making KefirAnyone else tried this stuff?  Do you have any good recipes to share?  I hear it makes great pancakes, too. 

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This is Spring

25 Monday Mar 2013

Posted by in This Week on the Homestead

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We got tired of waiting.  The first official day of Spring came and went, and we still had snow and ice.

We lugged the BBQ into the garage, and like a true prairie man, Will grilled our first steak of Spring during a mini-blizzard.

We had to celebrate.  The green stuff has returned to the Farmers’ Market.

Our entire supper – seriously, everything on that plate – was grown/raised/butchered right here in Saskatchewan.  Right down to the delicious bacon fat that we rubbed into the grass-fed beef rib eye steaks.

Local Saskatchewan food

A Whole New Level (Again)

22 Friday Mar 2013

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Uh oh.  I’ve been reading homesteading and real food blogs, and I think I’m ready for a whole new level of hippy-ness.

Lard.  Yup, lard.  Apparently, this stuff is actually healthy and good for you.

Let me be clear – lard is not Crisco.  Crisco is not real food.  Crisco, in the words of Michael Pollan, is an edible food-like substance.  Lard is real food.  You can read more about it here (this is the blog post that brought about my lard revelation).

Since we’ve been buying wild boar bacon at the Farmers’ Market, I decided to save up all that wonderful bacon fat, and clarify it.  This is a first step.  Soon, I’ll be walking into a butcher shop to buy a bag of pig fat, but not yet.  Baby steps.

Keeping a jar of bacon fat in the kitchen used to be a common practice, and still is in some parts of North America. Clarified bacon grease can be used for lots of wonderful, tasty things.

  • Last night, we rubbed down a ribeye steak with bacon fat before tossing it on the grill.
  • Use it to fry up veggies or eggs.
  • Use it in making the pastry crust for a quiche.
  • Smear it on a griddle for pancakes or french toast.
  • I even thought of tossing a spoonful into the mashed potatoes last night, but resisted.  (But I’m pretty sure it would have been delicious).

The clarifying process is pretty simple.  Put the saved grease in a pan with an equal amount of water.  Heat until all the fat has melted.  Pour it into a container and wait for it to cool.  The fat will rise to the top, and the water with all the nasty bits will stay at the bottom.  Scoop off the fat and store in a container in the fridge.  Done.  Another method is to clarify by pouring the bacon grease through a paper towel or cheesecloth immediately after cooking.

Clarified bacon fatHere’s a couple of easy tutorials –

How to Render and Store Bacon Fat
How to Clarify Used Cooking Grease

Pysanky!

20 Wednesday Mar 2013

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I LOVE decorating Easter eggs.  Even though I don’t have kids, I do it every year.

Last year, I took a pysanky workshop at the Ukrainian Museum of Canada, and quickly fell in love with this folk art.  I hadn’t made a Ukrainian Easter egg since I was in grade school, but the memory of it came rushing back.  I love the smell of the melting beeswax, and the careful concentration it requires.  It’s totally zen.  A small meditation.

Apparently, the tradition pre-dates Christianity.  It’s an age-old tradition to decorate eggs for the Spring Equinox.  Maybe that’s why I’ve always loved decorating Easter eggs.  Turns out, it’s not just for kids after all.

Pysanky

Better Late Than Never

18 Monday Mar 2013

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Opening weekend is over, and it went very well.  I’m learning lots of stuff about performing in small, intimate spaces.  Mostly, it scares the crap out of me, but in a good way.  In a “I’m still learning, and I’m so alive” kind of way.

We’ve been neglecting the homestead a bit because theatre tends to be a black hole that sucks all your life energy.  Seriously.

But we have a few homestead-y things to report:

  • Took home all the leftover veggies from opening night catering and made a lovely, yummy vegetable stock.
  • First time in months that we haven’t bought eggs at the Farmers’ Market because Scruffy is producing so well.  Way to go, Scruff!  More money to spend on wild boar bacon.
  • Bought some more wild boar bacon at the Market.  Plus carrots, and (happy dance) cucumbers!  The green stuff is starting to return.  The end of the root vegetables is in sight.
  • Attended Seedy Saturday last weekend.  Bought some seeds.  Planted some shit.  The grow-op in the basement keeps getting larger and larger . . .
  • Made yogurt.  This is now a weekly occurrence.  Love that stuff.

I’m going crazy for Spring.  More snow and -20C make Jamie very unhappy.  I hope next week warms up and the melting starts.

Meanwhile in Saskatoon . . .

15 Friday Mar 2013

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This is the view from my front window this morning. As if we don’t have enough snow already, it snowed all last night, and is supposed to continue all bloody day. Dear snow and winter – you have seriously out-stayed your welcome. Go away now.

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We made it through dress and preview yesterday. The preview was . . . awkward. Only nine people showed up (it was a “pay what you can” performance), and while there were a few lovely, warm faces in the audience, the rest were, for the most part, completely unengaged. It really affected the tone of the show. I felt pretty crappy afterwards.

Here’s something I’ve been struggling with for a long time. Years, really. As an artist and a performer, I invest a lot of myself into my work. How do I not base my self-esteem on the results of that work? Because sometimes, it’s going to fail. But I’ve put so much of myself into it, it uses up huge resources of my energy, my time, and my mental and emotional health, that I don’t know how to separate my worth, my confidence from the success or failure of my work. Not having that separation isn’t healthy.

Any other artists out there struggle with this? How do you separate yourself from your work? Or do you?

Who Needs Fast Food?

13 Wednesday Mar 2013

Posted by in Backyard Chickens, This Week on the Homestead

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We made our own Egg McMuffin-type sandwiches the other day.  We used Scruffy eggs and wild boar bacon (and plastic processed cheese – so melty and gooey).

New thing to try – making our own English muffins.  I came across a recipe in Canadian Living the other day for homemade English muffins.  Maybe once the show opens, I’ll give it a shot.

Homemade egg sandwiches on English muffinc

I Got Nothing

11 Monday Mar 2013

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I haven’t produced a show since 2007. And now I remember why. It’s bloody exhausting work, and in the end, we’ll be lucky if we make $500 each.

This weekend was a whirl of theatre business, plus a wedding in Regina, and a community association Winter Fun Rink Party.

I. Am. So. Tired.

I got nothing left for the blog. I apologize for the total lameness of my posts over the past two weeks. Once my show opens this week, things will get better. I promise.

I was going to take a selfie to show you how bedraggled I look, but it was just too hideous. So here’s a picture of the Zig instead. He got a haircut last week

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This Week on the Homestead

08 Friday Mar 2013

Posted by in This Week on the Homestead

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Even though we spent most of the week off the homestead, we still had a few good moments.

I’m still following the meat rule I created for my New Year’s goals, which has worked well so far.  But I must say – I really missed bacon.  So I was over the moon when I discovered the wild boar bacon at the Farmers’ Market last weekend.  Yes.  Wild boar bacon.  It’s delicious.  And gives off lots of bacon fat/grease.

Does anyone know if you can make lard from leftover bacon grease?  I’m gonna look into it.

Wild boar baconI picked up these ice cube trays at Value Village a few weeks ago, thinking it would be good to rid ourselves of some plastic.  I’m always looking for ways to use less plastic.  But after doing some research, I realized they’re probably aluminum, and people stopped using them because they were afraid the aluminum was leaching into the water.  So . . . I don’t know.  I mean, I stopped using commercial anti-perspirant because of aluminum.  I certainly don’t want to be putting it in my water.  I don’t mind the mechanism of the ice tray itself, but I think I’ll look for a stainless steel version instead.

metal ice cube trayIn my quest to eat more real food, I tried a new recipe that I found on the Food Babe’s website (very cool site with lots of food info).  It’s a Chia Seed Fruit Salad.

Fruit SaladIt’s okay.  It didn’t get as gelatinous as I would’ve liked (there’s a sentence I never thought I would write), but it tasted yummy, and doesn’t have any added sweetener or sugar in it.

I bought fair-trade organic shredded coconut at Ten Thousand Villages ($4 – about the same price as I’d pay for crappy grocery store stuff).  Then later, at the grocery store, I spent about twenty minutes reading the ingredients on bags of raisins.  Yes, raisins.  You would think the ingredients should just be raisins.  But no.  Some had sulphites and hydrogenated oils added.  So I bought the brand that listed only California raisins under the ingredients.

The more I shop at grocery stores, the more unnatural it seems that I should be eating anything I buy there.

Busy, Busy, Busy

06 Wednesday Mar 2013

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I’ve had no time this week to blog!  I’ve been super-duper busy (which is so unlike me) working on our upcoming LiveFive show.  It’s a one-woman show, performed by moi, directed and designed by Will (the hubby) AND we’re the producers, too.

I love producing because I have so much control creative input into all the different elements that create the show, like the lights, the sound, the set design, and the costumes.  I hate producing because in addition to performing the show, I have to PRODUCE it.  Producing is its own special hell of stress.

We’ve been blogging about the process of producing independent theatre in Canada, specifically Saskatchewan.  So if you want to know what I’ve been up to this week, check out the latest post on our blog at www.thescienceofdisconnection.com.