Food Archives - Page 19 of 20

Three Sisters

Five Feline Farm is planning a garden area on the south end of the property to showcase new crops as well as heritage varieties of familiar crops. In time, a garden shed, marked pathways and dedicated plant beds will be added. Visitors can expect to see this area expand and develop over the next two to three years. Each new variety will be planted in the most sustainable method available.

The central feature for 2014 will be a Three Sisters companion planting. You may recall this referred to in the last post. Three Sisters is an ancient method of companion planting corn, beans and squash. Some accounts or legends associated withThree Sisters suggest this is the method that was taught to the English settlers by the Native Americans. Each plant benefits the other. The products harvested then support a balanced diet for the gardener.

Varieties for the Three Sisters area at Five Feline Farm have been sourced from Native Seeds. Each reflects an ancient culture and are open pollinated.

Three Sisters begins with corn. The sturdy stalks provide a natural pole for the beans to climb. We will use two varieties of corn: Hopi Greasy Head and Mayo Tuxpeño. Both of these are “dent” corns to be dried and ground into cornmeal.

Pole beans are the second sister of the trio. Beans collect nitrogen from the air and impart it to the soil. Nitrogen is a critical nutrient for healthy corn development. In keeping with the Native American theme, Hopi Black Pinto beans are the variety of choice for this planting at the Farm. These beans can be picked and eaten green but also allowed to ripen and dry for long term storage.

The final sister in the planting is squash. We will be using Yellow Crookneck. The large leaves of squash vines shade the ground under the group acting as living mulch to conserve moisture and block weeds.

The Three Sisters are planted in a slight mound with a flattened top. The mound is approximately one foot high and four feet or so in diameter. Corn is started first and allowed to grow to about twelve inches before the beans are started. One week after beans, squash is planted.

Meanwhile as we dream of weather warm enough to start Three Sisters, early seed starting is beginning in the basement. Marigolds, heirloom tomatoes ranging from Cherokee Purple to Roma, peppers, tobacco and herbs will be poking through the germinating mix soon.

As you can see, planning for the growing season, dreaming of warmer weather and starting the garden plants indoors is how we address the winter doldrums here at Five Feline Farm. Post a comment to let us know how you are coping with the cold winter.

Don’t forget to watch the website for an opportunity to sign up for our newsletter for exclusive subscriber content about life at Five Feline Farm. Target release date is January 31, 2014.

Black Walnuts: A Forager’s Treat

Foraging for food is part of the joy of living in the country with natural resources. Our food supply does not end when the gardens are put to rest. The abundant black walnut trees at Five Feline Farm provide nuts with a distinctive flavor and are one of our favorites.

Harvesting the nuts is a process starting with the easy part: collection. Simply pick up nuts that have fallen to the ground. It doesn’t matter if the outer hull is green or black at this stage, just pick them up and fill a bucket. Collect way more than you think you need. By the time you have hulled, cracked and picked out the nutmeats, a five gallon bucket will yield about a quart of nuts.

The next step is to let the nuts dry until the hulls are completely black and withered. A great place to do this is in the greenhouse. The easiest way to remove the hulls is spread them in the driveway and run over them repeatedly with a vehicle of some kind. This year the riding mower was pressed into service but a pickup truck or car works nicely too.

Step three is sort the nuts from the hulls. Wear gloves for this step. Walnut hulls can be used as a dye and make everything a nice warm brown color. Although this is a wonderful natural dye for fabric and wool, it is not great for skin unless you like an uneven brown tone on your hands. It will not wash off, so plan for a week or more with your hands in this condition. Again, wear gloves.

After picking up the hulled nuts, let them dry again in the greenhouse for several days. The nuts can keep for a significant period of time at this stage. Mesh bags that ten pounds of oranges come in are a nice ventilated bag to store the nuts while drying. After drying, some people wash them off in a bucket of water to remove the additional pieces of hull or dust that remains. You can also just shake the bag to rattle off some of the remaining dried bits of hull. This makes the cracking process a little cleaner.

Now the most difficult part. Cracking the nuts. Black walnuts are one of the most difficult to crack because of the hard shells. Really hard. It is worth the investment to buy a good lever action nutcracker made especially for black walnuts. This will create enough leverage to actually crack the nut without crushing all of the nut meats. Just such a nutcracker is available from www.lehmans.com for about $40.

Lastly pick out the nuts. Black walnuts do not come out in good halves like pecans or English walnuts but you can get some sizable chunks. The flavor is worth every crumb. The best tool for picking out the small pieces is a dental pick which is readily available at most pharmacies.

The flavor of black walnuts is woodsy and earthy, rich with distinctive flavor. Black walnut ice cream is a delicious treat or try adding some to your favorite fudge recipe.

What other recipes would you recommend for black walnuts?

Persimmon Pulp

Now that the frost has sweetened the persimmons and seeds have been cut for winter forecasting, it is time to make pulp.

Pulping is a problem. Wild persimmons are small and full of seeds. I have tried several methods none of which are satisfactory. The Juice Mate clogs, a colander smears the pulp around inside and not through the holes. I usually resort to using my hands. This is a messy proposition at best.

A neighbor reports using a food mill finding this a reasonably efficient way to extract pulp from the skin and seeds. I am going to try this method for the ones stored in the refrigerator. I would be willing to collect more and develop more recipes if the pulp was easier to obtain.

Persimmon and black walnut would be a great, timely pairing for fall foods at Five Feline Farm.

What methods do you use to extract persimmon pulp? Do you have a favorite persimmon recipe?

Please share in the comments section.

Making Herb Butter

Five Feline Farm produces not only vegetables and fruit but an array of herbs to complement any dish. Unfortunately, the growing season is coming to a close in Central Illinois, so it is time to pick some herbs to be held over for winter use.

Herbs can be dried and stored in glass jars or chopped and frozen in ice cube trays. Both of these methods provide a warmth of flavor to winter meals enhanced by knowing there are no fertilizers or pesticides. The down side to dried herbs is a bit of a change in the flavor. Fresh flavor is diminished and although superior to herbs bought in plastic shaker, it is still a dried herb.

Herbs frozen in ice cube trays offer an advantage of holding onto some of the fresh flavor, but the cubes tend to frost over and stick together in time. Plus the added bit of water can be undesirable.

Both of these methods have a place, but recently I started making herb butters to preserve and utilize fresh herbs. Wrapped in waxed paper and sealed in freezer bags these have kept for several weeks. Since butter freezes well, it seems that herb butters should also freeze well.

To start, wash and air dry the herbs. Select a handful of herbs to snip into tiny pieces. Judge both the size of the pieces and the amount of herb by what you would want to find in your finished dish.

Mix the herb thoroughly in one stick of softened butter.

Spread the butter into a rough log about 2 inches from the edge of the waxed paper.

Fold the waxed paper over the log and lightly squeeze into a log.

Roll up the log in the paper and twist the ends.

Label and store in a freezer bag.

To use, unwrap and slice off the amount desired.

The freezer now contains butters with chives, basil, oregano, thyme, curry and rosemary. The options for using these butters is only limited by the cook’s imagination. A slice of chive butter on a baked potato or a bit of basil butter melting over sautéed chicken breast will warm the winter months with a reminder of summer.

What would you put herb butter on? Drop us a comment with your ideas.