News From the Farm Front

Oh, what a week…  The recent craziness around here came to a relative end on Wednesday as 6 of the volunteers left, leaving just myself and the Belgian girl.  It was sad to see everyone go.  It’s been such a good group and we’ve worked really well together, been really productive, and had so much fun.  On Tuesday, we did a workshop day – a few of us prepared short workshops on some random skill or other to teach the others.  Sam the kiwi did one on bookbinding, I did one on friendship bracelets, Cara did one on making walnut milk and kombucha, and the Spanish couple did one on making fresh alioli (basically garlic mayonnaise – it is ridiculously easy and even more ridiculously delicious) and Spanish tortilla – an egg and potato mixture fried up in a pan.

The farm/garden (farmden?) has been transformed over the last few weeks.  Most of the beds have been completely cleared out, raked, and covered with mulch for the winter.  A new woven willow tunnel has been put in between two of the beds; the cuttings should root and produce new leaves, but it will also be overgrown with other greenery, providing a lovely shade spot in the garden in summer time and a shade bed for growing plants that thrive in indirect sunlight.  The leaves are falling off the  trees and the land is looking more barren.  It’s getting colder and colder, predicted to fall below freezing on Sunday night.  I went for a run the other morning and this was my scenery:

My Mizuna plants have finally started to grow, and we’ve even eaten a few leaves in salads this week:

I got to make lunch yesterday.  I was both excited and imitated because, if I haven’t already written about it, Cara is an amazing cook and we eat so, so well around here.  We usually have 5-6 different dishes every lunch.  A few of the other volunteers have been really outstanding cooks, too, and I’m just not that versatile or skilled in a kitchen, where I just have to whip something up with whatever I’ve got handy in the house.  We’re almost strictly vegetarian around here, so I planned a menu of freshly baked bread, mashed potatoes, vegetarian gravy, roasted vegetables, and vegetarian schnitzel, along with an appetizer of spinach rolls.

I started with the bread because that would take the longest.  Sam the kiwi had just given us a tutorial on how to make bread (this guy can do everything – he’s an ecologist by education and profession, fabulous cook, brewer of fresh apple cider, captivating story teller, built a set of steps out in the garden, made the willow structure, and gave that bookbinding workshop) so I put my new found knowledge to work.  Using absolutely no measuring tools, I mixed up my yeast and water, poured out some flour, a little salt and pepper, and some fresh rosemary, then sauteed up some garlic and onion to mix in.  I mixed it all together, then left it to rise.  Next was the mashed potatoes and roasted veggies – I cut up my potatoes and set them to boil, then cut up my veggies and set them to roast.  Then I had to prepare my spinach rolls as they need to sit in the freezer for a bit before being cut and cooked.

The spinach rolls are supposed to be a paste made of mayonnaise, garlic powder, onion powder, and Parmesan cheese with spinach (and artichoke hearts, usually, but I didn’t have any) mixed in and spread along a puff pastry, rolled up, then cut into slices and baked.  I didn’t have mayonnaise, garlic powder or onion powder, but no bother – I’d just learned how make garlic mayonnaise the day before.  I’d just add some fresh onion to it et voilà – I’ve got my paste.  I didn’t have any Parmesan, though, so I just threw in a mix of feta and halloumi.  Because I used fresh, wet ingredients instead of dried ingredients, my paste turned out more like a creamy sauce, which made rolling the pastry up a bit tricky.

I popped my roll in the freezer, then it was back to the bread, which needed to be kneaded and left to rise a second time.  By the time I got back to my mashed potatoes, they were overcooked.  Do you let potatoes cool before mashing them or mash them warm?  Never mind, I’ll mash them warm so they don’t cool down – how would I even heat them back up?!  I put them all into the Cuisinart with some butter, salt and pepper and got them to a nice consistency, chunky like I like it.  Then I decided to add some milk.  I added too much milk and by the time I had it blended all in, it was practically a paste.  Never mind, it still tasted good.  I cut up one more potato and cooked it up to add a little texture back to the potatoes.

Back to the bread.  It hadn’t risen as much as I had hoped and I was worried about it, but I stuck in the oven anyway.  Then I turned to my veggie gravy.  The gravy was new to me and I needed a recipe, which I found at allrecipes.  I had no idea what nutritional yeast was (turns out it’s marmite or vegimite), assumed we didn’t have any in the house (we did), and used regular yeast instead.  No dried sage, either, so I used fresh.  I decided to add a splash of red wine, as well, which gave the gravy a really decadent flavor.  I left my gravy to cook, whisking it every few minutes, as I got started on my schnitzels.

For my schnitzels, I ended up settling on this cutlet recipe from Chowhound, with substitutions, of course.  Instead of just chickpeas, I used a combination of chickpeas and sprouted mung beans.  We didn’t have any vital wheat gluten, so I used flour instead.  I don’t have any measuring cups (Cara doesn’t need them) so everything was measured by sight with a dash of hope added in for extra measure.  Cara also recommended I use an egg to hold it all together, which I did.  The egg made the mixture rather liquidy, so I added some more flour to firm it up.  It was still too sticky to shape or do much with, so I formed my cutlets by dropping them into the pan like drop biscuits and spreading them out in the pan.

In the meantime, my gravy wasn’t thickening.  I added in some cornflour, but I didn’t sift it first, so I ended up with these lumps of cornflour in my gravy.  I whisked and I whisked, but the lumps wouldn’t unlump.  I ended up putting the whole thing in a blender just to get the lumps out.

Finally, it was time to serve lunch (and only just a little late!).  I set the food out and hoped everything would be edible.

The potatoes were tasty, but pasty, as expected.  The roasted veggies were…roasted veggies.  They were cooked through and not burned, so I’d call that a success.  The spinach rolls were a bit of a flop.  They were tasty, but they had to cook extra long because the filling was so liquidy, which caused a lot of the oil to leach out of the mayonnaise and the bottoms to burn a little bit.  The bread turned out really fantastic – smaller than I’d expected, but moist and flavorful.  I was really, really pleased with it.  The gravy was a hit, even with the wrong yeast – everyone loved the flavor.  I have to say, it was quite delicious.

The chickpea cutlets really stole the show, though.  They had a delicious flavor and wonderful, meaty consistency.  I found the recipe through the vegetarian (maybe?) blog PragmaticAttic, which described it as “highly praised,” and I have to agree it is highly praiseworthy.  They’re super easy to make, and if you’re looking for a vegan/vegetarian cutlet recipe, I highly recommend it.

Overall, lunch was a success.  It felt really good to put that meal together all by myself, figuring out what I could make with what I had available, finding substitutes and additions where I could, using skills I had just learned this week, and putting a tasty meal on the table that was plenty to feed all four of us.  I’m not ready to quit my day job just yet (wait – I already did that) but it was fun for a day.

TL;DR:  Puttin’ my newly acquired skillz to the test and dropping the mic on lunch.