Quinoa harvesting

Self Sufficient Life in East Palo Alto hosted a quinoa harvesting workshop, to provide education but also get some help with this time-consuming task. I sometimes use quinoa instead of (brown) rice for variety. I'd been pondering the feasibility of growing it myself to continue my own path toward self sufficiency.

Harvesting the seeds is easy but time and water intensive.

This is a quinoa plant that is almost ready to harvest - the plants ended up not being as dry as they should have been when the workshop rolled around.

You lay the plants out to dry further after cutting, then chop them into smaller pieces.

Grab a small handful of the pieces and roll your hands back and forth. The seeds and small plant matter will break away from the stems and leaves. A sieve will allow the seeds and small matter through. Toss the large pieces into the compost - no more use for them. This step is particularly time consuming and is better done with a group of friends.

This is what comes through the sieve.

 Place the seeds and plant matter into a bowl and fill with water. Mix with your hand. Most of the seeds will sink to the bottom and the plant matter stays at the top, to be skimmed off.

 Repeat a couple of times and you have what LOOKS like ready-to-eat quinoa. However the seeds are still covered by a coating of saponin, which makes them bitter.

The host said that he was taught to remove the saponin with repeated rinses, but it's inefficient. He found the best way to do it was by swirling the seeds with water at low speed in a blender.

 Very quickly the blender fills with the bitter foam!

 Rinse and repeat until you are not seeing foam come off the seeds.

After a final thorough rinse, we finally had beautiful, golden seeds!

I would like to try growing my own quinoa, but I will definitely have friends come over to help me harvest. Also during the demo the host let the rinse water soak into the ground but he said that it doesn't seem to harm plants, so I would catch and reuse the water.

Naturally Sweet Food In Jars workshop

Pollinate Farm & Garden hosted a workshop by Marisa McClellan of the blog Food In Jars and book by the same name. She also recently published the book Naturally Sweet Food in Jars. At the workshop she water bath canned a strawberry cocoa jam and talked about her methods. (See an interview and the recipe for the jam here.)

I signed up for the workshop as soon as I saw it on the schedule, because I was intending to, at some point in the future, buy a pressure canner (which can also be used as a water bath canner). Amazingly, my friend Rachel bought me one for my birthday! I have not yet used it because I am currently focusing my efforts on learning to use my other new toy, an Instant Pot (more on that in a future post).

Here are some things I learned:

• Sugar thickens jam, so if you're making a low sugar preserve, you need to use pectin. Marisa like's Pomona's Pectin the most, and the Ball brand is also good.
• Coconut sugar has an earthy taste and smell - I liked it. Agave and maple syrup are other examples of non-cane/beet sugar sweeteners.
• When canning, you can use fresh lemon juice for flavoring, but don't rely on it to increase the acid content of your preserve (and therefore make it safe for water bath canning). This is because fresh lemons vary widely in the amount of acid they contain. Instead, use bottled lemon juice, which is federally required to guarantee and minimum level of acid.
• You can use citric acid instead if you don't want to add extra liquid.
• Low sugar preserves will not last as long once opened, since sugar increases shelf life and preserves color (hence its use in so much processed food).
• Vanilla beans are worth buying in bulk; they're too expensive when you get the little packs. They last 12-18 months if tightly sealed up.
• Mix the pectin with your sugar/sweetener at the end and then add it to the hot jam a little at a time.
• Signs that the jam is done: you hear sizzling from the bottom of the pot, you can glimpse the bottom of the pot as you stir, and slow droplets fall from the spatula.
• The jars can take 24-48 hours to finish setting.
• You don't need to sterilize your jars before filling them IF you will be processing them for 10 minutes or more. (You still need to preheat them.)
• It's okay for the jars to touch each other within the pot, as long as you're using a trivet to keep them off the bottom. Marisa likes silicone trivets.
• Don't use metal utensils in your canning jars - they will cause micro damage when they scrape and your jar might someday explode.
• White vinegar prevents deposits from hard water on your jars/canner. Put "a couple good glugs" from the container into your canning water.
• When your processing time is up, turn off the heat but let the jars start to cool off in the pot for at least 10 minutes before removing them. If you pull one out and you hear hissing, put it back in for another 10 minutes.
• You can tweak the spices and flavors of recipes, but maintain the fruit to acid ratio for safety.
• Do not double recipes - it messes up the ratio of depth to surface area and will take a very long time to cook down, and may burn.

We got to taste the strawberry cocoa jam she made. I could definitely taste the earthy coconut sugar. I liked it, however it covered up the taste of the strawberries almost completely. I wouldn't have been able to tell what fruit was used. I probably won't make that particular recipe because it doesn't seem worth the amount of strawberries needed. However I did purchase her book and am excited to explore the other recipes!

Jackfruit seedlings

My jackfruit seedlings are less than a year old and already roughly 2 feet tall. One of them developed a kink and started to grow almost completely sideways, so I tied it to some PVC pipe to straighten it out.

Jeopardy! birthday party

I love puzzles and games. Two years ago I held a puzzle hunt to celebrate my birthday. (The posts about the party are here, here, and here.) This year I decided to host a Jeopardy game, with my guests rotating through as contestants, and myself playing the part of Alex Trebek. I even made myself a mustache.

(I called myself "Alexa Trebek.")

I already had a set of answer buzzers that made sound effects when pressed - I'd originally bought them as amusing props for dog training.

I created 24 categories with 5 questions each, for 4 rounds of Jeopardy. (Click to see a larger image pop up.)

My friend Rachel also created one round, so that I could be a contestant.

My set up was cheap - I just taped the cards to a giant piece of cardboard that I saved for future sheet mulching.

I crocheted extra mustaches and gave them as prizes. The winner of each round would get to pick theirs first.

(They're pinned up because I blocked them to reduce curling up. The long strands of yarn are for tying them around your head.)

The game was a hit even though some of the questions were too obscure for anyone to answer correctly. I may repeat this for a future party!

Tree pruning practice

After attending the Tree Pruning Workshop, I was eager to try my hand at pruning my parents' fruit trees. Their trees had never been pruned since planting around 10 years ago. They need a lot of shaping to be done, but I learned in the workshop that one should not trim off more than 30% of the branches at a time. Some trees need to be pruned over the course of 2 years. Unfortunately, once I started, I had a hard time stopping.

Apple tree before. It had a lot of crossing branches and water spouts.

After - problems removed, but I cut more than 30%!

Little lemon tree after (I forgot to take a before shot) - I stopped myself short of doing the entire tree this time.

Orange tree before - lots of dead branches, and all the branches are long and hanging down with the weight of leaves and fruit.

Orange tree after - still needs a lot of work next year.

New pullets

One of my friends has a large flock of chickens and offered me some pullets to bring my flock back up to six. I took her up on the offer - I certainly couldn't resist once I saw that she had a beautiful Red Sex Link and Blue Laced Wyandotte!

They stayed in a separate pen within the run for a few days, but are now running with the big girls. The Australorp will briefly chase them away from food, but they're able to sneak back to eat and are getting along fine.

Toilet tank

The toilet tank was filling very slowly, and I suspected there was a blockage in the little hose at the top. I went to the store and saw that replacing the entire assembly was only a little more expensive than replacing any one part of it. I decided to go ahead and replace it all.

I don't have much experience with even basic handiwork, so I'm proud of myself.

Swan pants

Today is my 30th birthday, and I celebrated by making time for sewing, something I enjoy but rarely prioritize. I finally got around to finishing a pair of pants I've been "working on" for months and months. They are based on the muslin I made at a "design your own pants pattern" class at Stonemountain last December.

I am super pleased with how they turned out. I will make some minor alterations to the pattern (widen the bottoms, raise the back of the waist) and then hopefully make more pants in a more timely manner.