We Have a God who Promised to be With Us

6:30 PM in a, Aqua, be, god, have, promised, to, us, we, who, with

Bishop Lawrence Reddick, senior bishop of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church and presiding prelate of the 8th Episcopal District, offers this New Years blessing and greeting for 2016. Bishop Reddick is a member of the Bread for the World board of directors.

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Compost with a Capital P

5:49 PM in a, Aqua, capital, compost, p, with

A last spring, we wrote about a few ways we reduce the water used by our toilet.  Unfortunately, most of those methods still result in the loss of the valuable nutrients in our urine.  Weve read a lot of anecdotes about using urine in a compost pile and how great it is for activating the pile (e.g., page 149 of the Rodale Book of Composting).  But the assumption always seems to be that there is already a pile to which the urine can be added.  What about all those budding homesteaders who might want to recover these nutrients, but dont have a place for a compost pile?  What about all those skinflints like us, who want to make use of all of the urine, not just enough to activate a compost pile?  What about especially territorial people with a compulsion to deter would-be compost thieves by marking their compost as theirs alone?

Its possible to dilute the urine and use it to water plants, but because of urines high nitrogen and salt content, weve got to be careful about using it that way too frequently, especially on potted plants.  (Although there is an interesting story about a sort of in situ urine composting experiment in Mexico City.) Similarly, if we had a fishless aquaponics setup, we could convert it to be pee-powered, but that would also be maxed out before long.  Its obviously possible to distribute it around the yard and count on rain to dilute it before we have to pee in the same place twice, but again, what about those poor blokes with an apartment and no yard?  (Dont apply the distribution principle to the back deck--your downstairs neighbors will not forgive you no matter how many plates of cookies you bring them.)

In the interest of full disclosure, we confess that we now have enough space for full-size compost bins.  Can you guess which side has some of the chicken leftovers in it?

That got us wondering what would be the minimum-size compost pile that is able to absorb 100% of our pee, or, alternatively, how frequently would we have to make a new pile for a given pile size (e.g., a five-gallon bucket).  And now that weve spent way too much time playing with engineering calculations (this post was originally going to come out on Sunday, but we got lost somewhere in Nerdland...), we figured it was time to wrap up our theoretical composting, summarize the results here, and start practicing.

It turns out that a human produces (normally) 0.8 - 2 liters per day, of which around 95% is water, and the other 5% is made up of nitrogenous waste products like urea and creatine, and some inorganic substances like potassium and phosphorus.  The C/N ratio is on the order of 0.8:1.  The very high moisture content and very low C/N ratio make it difficult to balance a compost pile with a high fraction of urine.

A proper compost pile will have a moisture level of 50-60% and a C/N ratio of around 30:1.  Higher moisture contents limit the access of air to the pile and can cause anaerobic conditions, which lead to stinkiness.  The organisms that turn the raw materials into finished compost need a C/N ratio of about 25:1--too much higher and the pile takes forever to break down (and doesnt get hot enough to kill weed seeds or plant pathogens), too much lower and the excess N lets the bacteria make the pile too hot and they die, which in turn also leads to anaerobic conditions and stinkiness.  Its worth noting that C/N ratios closer to 35:1 will preserve more of the N in the finished product.

So, the golden question remains: how much urine can I add to various materials to make an optimal compost pile?  The calculations we need to do can be found here, but we wanted to (potentially) check out a lot of different combinations and have the ratios automatically calculated. We needed a spreadsheet.

We took the most recent version of Cornell Universitys compost spreadsheet and tricked it out a little to make it more user friendly (in our minds, anyway).  We imported a table of different materials one might want to compost (also from Cornell), and filled in some of the missing data with other info from the Internets. (Urine wasnt in the table? Seriously?)  We also automated the section on the first sheet to select materials from a dropdown list based on the table we imported (except for a few odd materials like pharmaceutical waste--for those youre on your own), and the moisture, carbon, and nitrogen contents are automatically populated.

We also added a feature to specify the volume of the pile desired, and added an error box to let Excel numerically solve for the most optimal mixture of the ingredients selected.  So, even if its not possible to get exactly the target moisture content and C/N ratio with the ingredients selected, you can use Excels Solver function to see how close you can get. (One caveat is that you might have to try multiple starting points when optimizing because numerical solvers can get stuck at local minima--i.e., there can be more than one composition that minimizes the error.)  The spreadsheet can be downloaded here.

Ok, then.  What did we find?  Well, as we hinted above, we found that its very difficult to balance a compost pile with a high urine content because of its high moisture content and low C/N ratio.  We were most interested in balancing it with just dry leaves or just wood shavings, since those are the ingredients of which we currently have an abundance.  But, if we balance the C/N ratio, the moisture content is too high.  And if we balance the moisture content, the C/N ratio is too high.

The first look--attempting to balance compost ratios with just urine and a high-carbon ingredient.  The Actual moisture content and C/N ratios are the optimized compositions based on error minimization from Excels Solver function. Note that oat straw gets the closest of the high-carbon materials.  So to those folks advocating straw bale urinals (and here), we say, touché!  (Also, in hindsight, maybe labeling the second ingredient #2 wasnt such a good idea for this post...)

However, if we add urine, a high-carbon material, and some food scraps, like would normally be found in a standard backyard compost pile, we can get a pretty good balance.  With the two main high-carbon resources on our homestead, we can mix up a five-gallon bucket with about a half-gallon of urine.  If we had oat straw, we could get up to 0.66 gallons of urine per bucket.

Second attempt, with the third ingredient being food scraps.  All of the high-carbon materials will work for some combination.  (Fresh) grass clippings still dont work because theyre on the same side of the target C:N ratio as the urine and the food scraps. 

 
The upshot is that, if we wanted to keep a five-gallon bucket in the garage and do all our peeing there, wed need a fresh five-gallon bucket every 1-2 days.  If we do half our peeing away from the home (e.g., at work, on the neighbors bushes, etc.), we could extend that to 2-4 days, or about two buckets per week.  That would still add up quickly.  The other problem is that the compost wont get very hot (unless we insulate it really well) because a five-gallon bucket is too small.  That in turn means that the materials will take longer to break down, and we would rapidly amass a small army of five-gallon buckets full of ingredients about which our neighbors and guests probably wouldnt want to know, but would probably ask.  (Sorry for the bad news, apartment dwellers.)

On the other hand, if we had a compost bin at the recommended standard size of one cubic yard (202 gallons), we could handle 20 gallons of urine in the pile, which would keep us covered for 6-12 weeks. Thats the same time frame as experienced compost chefs say will be required for finished compost with biweekly instead of bi-daily turning of the pile.  Thus, in theory anyway, a regular-sized compost bin should be able to supply one person with all the pee absorption they need.

In reality, that size pile can probably do more than that for a couple reasons.  First, were adding the ingredients gradually over time, meaning that the early additions start breaking down and losing volume before the last batch is even a twinkle in our water bottles eye.

Second, we havent accounted for evaporation of water or nitrogen (as ammonia, NH₃), which can be significant.  The evaporation rate depends on a lot of things, including temperature, atmospheric pressure (to a small extent), relative humidity, wind speed, and surface area.  There are a number of models one can use to predict the evaporation rate for a given set of environmental conditions, but just for fun (nerd fun, anyway), we calculated the evaporation rate wed expect just by diffusion (based on Example 1.2-2 here), the simplified model developed by Irving Langmuir for a different purpose, and the model NOAA uses to estimate evaporation rates of chemical spills.

Of the three, the diffusion model goes too slow, the Irving model seems way too fast, and the NOAA model seems about right, based on our intuition and love for the baby bear in everything.  (The calculations are also included in the spreadsheet if you are interested in channeling your inner nerd and/or checking our work.)  From the NOAA model, we would expect to lose about 0.5 pounds of water every 10 days from a five-gallon bucket (at a temperature of 68 °F and 45% relative humidity).  By contrast, these same conditions would lose upwards of four pounds of water per day from a 3 x 3 x 3 cubic pile, if the five sides not facing the ground are all included.  That assumes a very modest wind speed of 0.7 m/s, which is in the range that one sees inside a house just from natural convection (e.g. near a cold window or warm radiator).  Also, 68 °F is a pretty modest temperature for a compost pile, so the actual water loss rate is probably even higher.  (Heavy evaporative losses are also common in industrial compost setups.)  Rain on the compost pile washes some of the urine away into the surrounding area, which spreads out the urine burden even more.

Bottom line is, a standard 3 x 3 x 3 compost pile is conservatively about the right size to handle all the urine from one person.  If you want to calculate for your own needs, scale from there according to volume, number of people, and personal risk tolerance.


Do you compost your own pee?  How big a compost pile do you use?  Whats your setup?  Let us know in the comments section below!

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Fruit Ice Cream with ≤ 2 ingredients

12:01 AM in ≤, 2, Aqua, cream, fruit, ice, ingredients, with

A few weeks back, Katie found a recipe for two-ingredient peanut butter-banana ice cream, with which we are currently infatuated (although theres no sign of this being just a phase).  This recipe is itself an adaption of the one-ingredient banana ice cream, which apparently has been known among strict herbivores for many years. (Can you guess what the one ingredient is?)  While both of these recipes would more appropriately be labeled sorbet (although they dont quite fit that label, either), they produce a frozen dessert that really does have the consistency and mouthfeel of ice cream.  So, what is it about bananas that makes them so special?  And more importantly, can we do something similar with the last of the incoming apples and plums from the yard, now that our jam coffers are full for the year?

The general recipe calls for cutting bananas of the appropriate ripeness into small pieces, freezing them, then mashing them (e.g., in a food processor or blender).  When the mash warms up a little, the grains coalesce, producing the ice cream.  How does it work?  The one-ingredient recipe linked above mentions that bananas work well because they are high in pectin.  But many other fruits are also high in pectin--would it work just as easily with them?  This article explains that its a little more nuanced than that--its not just pectin, but pectin, fiber, and sugar that work together to give the creamy texture. (From a physical chemistry perspective, the smaller the ice crystals in the product, the creamier it will feel.  The sugar and polysaccharides decrease waters ability to form and grow ice crystals by messing with waters hydrogen-bonding network.)

So, fruits that are high in pectin, fiber, and simple sugars should be able to make a nice creamy sorbet/ice cream (sorbeam?), too.  Time to compare some data!

Fruits with a lot of sugars, fiber, and pectin give a creamier texture in one-ingredient sorbeams.  Data sources are here, here, and the paper linked here.  A qualitative list of pectin levels in fruit can be found here (and many other places online).  Bananas are unique in their high content of available sugars, nearly twice as high as the other kinds of fruit for which we could find numbers.  So, in theory, it should work a lot better with bananas than almost any other fruit.  But hey, were experimentalists!  Why dont we try it with our apples and plums anyway, and see if we like it!  (After all, if if its not all that good, Jake will eat it anyway.)

At first, the frozen fruit (apples, here) makes sort of isolated granules.

As it starts to warm up, the granules start to stick together, but it stays kind of icy.  Its vaguely reminiscent frozen applesauce--not bad, but not what were shooting for.

But add bananas, and bam!  Creamy ice-cream-like texture.

Same thing for the plum as for the apple. (If you leave the peels on, they stay in the sorbeam as fun confetti sprinkles!)

You can scoop it into bowls and top it with dried apple slices and cinnamon, or whatever normal people put on ice cream.

The sorbeams made from either just apples or just plums were good, but not quite as creamy as weve grown accustomed to with the bananas.  So we wondered, what if we mixed these with banana sorbeam to improve the texture?  And it worked!  The table shows Katies response to each experiment.  Moreover, since the banana is a fairly subtle flavor, especially if the bananas arent overly ripe, the mixtures really tastes more like apple or plum with just a hint of banana. Also, mixing in some sugar with the solo apple sorbeam made it taste less like frozen applesauce and a little more creamy, consistent with our hypothesis that its the relatively low sugar content preventing the just-apple sorbet from being awesome. (We didnt try adding sugar to the plum.)

The amount of banana flavor depends on the ripeness of the bananas. (The creaminess of the texture, to some extent, too.)  While visiting family in July, we were introduced to a new term for bananas with brown spots: giraffey (adj.: having the appearance of giraffe).  Weve expanded the concept to develop an entire animal-themed scale of banana ripeness.  Further to the right gives more banana-ey flavor; too far to the left makes the sorbeam taste starchy and astringent.  We like somewhere between giraffe and black bear; those less fond of banana flavor could edge toward puffer fish, but definitely dont go all the way to hummingbird.  Photo credits for hummingbird, puffer fish, giraffe, black bear: Wikipedia.  Other sources for the green, yellow, spotty, and black bananas.

How do you prepare frozen fruit desserts?  Let us know in the comments section below!

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Feeding Bees with Bent Nails kind of

5:04 AM in Aqua, bees, bent, feeding, kind, nails, of, with

Were in the midst of a winter that isnt overly harsh, but that is following what apparently was an epically bad summer for honey production.  As a result, our bees went into the winter with less than one deep hive box, and were starting to look pretty hungry last weekend (judging by the weight of the hive).  We figured it was probably time to put some emergency rations out for them in the form of some no-cook candy.

We started making a candy board from the instructions here and here, but then realized our staple gun was out of staples!  Should we panic, run to the store and get some more staples?  Or should we practice a bit of whatchagotamology and make something to serve the same purpose, but thats even sturdier than those flimsy staples?  Wait--before you answer, consider this: weve also got a whole pile of bent-up nails, pulled out of free wood from Craigslist, that weve been itching to find a use for.  If you guessed the second option, congratulations.  Hooray for #2!

If wealth were measured in nails like this one, wed be rich!

We cut the head of the nail off, then the shank into two pieces.  Its possible to do this with just a pliers or wire cutter, but its a lot easier with a bolt cutter.  Also, the pieces dont go flying around as much with the bolt cutter, so if you go the pliers rout, wear safety glasses (and maybe a helmet).

We bent the two shank pieces into a generally parabolic shape using two pairs of pliers...

...then held onto each one with one pair of pliers and used the other to squeeze the parabola until the sides were parallel.  Sort of like taking a graph of a parabola and changing the independent-variable axis to a log scale.  Definitely use a pliers to hold the nail while squeezing.  If you use your fingers in place of the first pliers, they will force you to yell expletives when the second pliers slips off and squashes your fingers instead of the nail.

The resulting products are the head of the nail (any ideas for what to do with that?), and two beefy-looking staples that could be used to hold barbed wire onto a fencepost...

...or hardware cloth onto a candy board.

Heres what she looks like all together.  We smeared pollen on the top of the candy instead of making a proper patty like in the link above, mainly because we couldnt find the pollen until after we had the candy in the board.  It turns out one of those nonstick pie crust roller-outer mats is big enough to keep everything off the table while the candy dries, and also makes it pretty easy to unstick the candy board when dry.

This is the configuration on the hive: the candy board goes between the top deep box and the inner cover, hopefully right on top of the cluster. (But dont squash it!)  The moisture quilt is based off a design like this.

What is your setup for emergency bee feeding in the winter?  Let us know in the comments section below!

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Small Tomatoes with Large Taste and Free Seed Offer

2:44 PM in and, Aqua, free, large, offer, seed, small, taste, tomatoes, with

I just love small tomatoes!  They are perfect for sneaking a taste when working out in the gardens.  You can be hot and sweaty but that burst of juice in your mouth and the combination of sweet and acid on your tongue can be mighty refreshing.  Even when it comes in a very small package.

I read one time that there are about 10,000 varieties of tomatoes.  They fall into two categories:  determinate and indeterminate.  The determinate plants are a bush variety and grow until they set fruit (yes a tomato is a botanical fruit) on the terminal bud.  Then all fruit ripens over a 1 to 2 week period.

I like to grow indeterminate tomatoes.  For most of the country, this means that they will grow until killed by frost.  Since I live where we never have frost, we plant in the fall and our tomatoes grow until they are killed by the heat and moisture from our rainy season (sometime in May).

Most varieties of the smaller tomatoes are of the indeterminate variety.  This means you can enjoy their goodness all season long. 

Right now I am crazy for Yellow Pear and Everglades tomatoes.  Lets face it, who wouldnt be crazy about a tomato that has a waist? 

 

Just look at these little gems from the garden. Scarlett OHara herself would be green with envy of that small yellow waist!  And no corset was needed.  No pear has ever been as adorable as my yellow pear tomatoes.  They originated in Europe in the 1700s and fell out of fashion for a bit but have come back in a big way for such a small tomato.  While considered a "sweet" tomato, I think they are on the acidic side and taste tart.  They are yummy when tossed in salads, as a topping for frittatas, or simply enjoyed with a few leaves of basil, a pinch of salt, and a dash of oil and balsamic vinegar.

The other tomato that I am crazy for this year is the native Everglades tomato.  This is the only tomato that is native to South Florida.  Not only is it indeterminate but it can stand up to the heat and torrential downpours of our rainy season.  I have Everglades tomato plants in an aquaponics flood and drain bed that are almost a year old!  They grow on sprawling vines and produce in clusters of 8 or 9 like a cherry tomato.  I dont think you can kill an Everglades tomato.

If you look at this photo, I set one Everglades tomato on a quarter so you would have perspective on the size of this mighty tasting tomato.  It might be a small tomato but it has more sweet taste than any large beefsteak

These are addictive when eaten in the garden. It really is hard for me to get them to the house.  But if they make it, they are perfect in a salad.  Or eaten out of hand.  Good thing I have them everywhere...which leads me to the free offer.

I want to see the Everglades tomato get the attention it deserves.  If you will email me at allergycheryl@gmail.com and in the email subject put "Free Seeds" I will email you back with my address.  You can send a self addressed stamped envelope and I will send you some free Florida Everglades tomato seeds.  Then you can enjoy this awesome small tomato with a very very large taste

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More Fun With Crab Apples

3:34 AM in apples, Aqua, crab, fun, more, with

As it turns out, we have a very prolific crab apple tree in our front yard.  It has approximately one bazillion crab apples on it.  That creates a challenging situation for folks like us who are busy with other homesteady things, but who hate to see any produce go to waste.  So we did the only thing we could think of: we made a plan to use all bazillion crab apples.  Most of them are still out on the tree, but at least weve got a plan.  Plus, weve already filled the fridge with sauce and juice, and Katie says we have to clear that out before we pick any more.

Weve laid out our plan below, in case anyone else reading this is in a similar situation and just needs a creative nudge.  Hopefully well be able to report back over the next several weeks about successful experiments, so stay tuned!

The source.  Loaded and really hard to mow under.

The first five gallons worth.  This didnt even get one branch out of the way for mowing.  Yikes!  It turns out theyre just like regular apples, except crabbier.

The sauce-making apparatus (aka, berry grinder), in case the strange-looking device in the next graphic is hard to decipher.

...And here she is: the master plan.  Twelve ideas for what to do with all those crab apples.  We posted about jam, pie filling, and liquid pectin earlier, but were now revisiting some of those recipes with a 100% crab apple version.  Also, preliminary tests suggest chickens like crab apples at any state of processing--from completely raw all the way to the screened-out leftovers.

What do you do with your crab apples?  Let us know in the comments below!

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250 liter aquaponics system Cycling with fish

6:37 AM in 250, Aqua, aquaponics, cycling, fish, liter, system, with

The new 250 liters Aquaponis system was in the making for a while and now its ready. This system was planned to reduce transportation and assembly time. The current system is a direct drain to the fish tank, where the growbed is directly on top of the fishtank.

The dimension of this system is 900 x 900 mm x 300 mm and the fish tank is a 300 liter capacity loft tank that is readily available in the market.

The wooden framework was developed keeping in mind the outdoor conditions and was treated with a PU coat (weather proof sealant).

Once the framework was assembled, the inside was lined with a pond liner.
The growmedia for this system was in two layers .. the lower half was filled with 25mm gravel and the remaining top half was filled with LECA.

For this system i started cycling with fish.
the formula i was following in the past was the same i used here. So what i did was once the system was fully plumbed and the water filled in the fishtank, i ran the system for three days without fish.
Then on the 4th day i added 5 goldfish, and did a water test. After the first week i added another 5 fish and every week gradually i started adding more fish.
The first few weeks you will notice the PH reducing and the ammonia level slowly building up .. once you see the ammonia building up .. its time to add some seeds so that there will be takers for the nitrate when the bacteria start converting the ammonia into nitrite and then nitrate.

Here are the results from the testing that was done in 8 weeks.
you can see the progress gradually.

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Advent Reflection God is Present with Our Neighbor

5:29 PM in advent, Aqua, god, is, neighbor, our, present, reflection, with

In todays text, (Luke 4: 14-30)  I hear Jesus telling the people whom he is physically with (God with us) that God is also present with our neighbor. I sense an invitation to consider that Gods abundance necessarily means that there is room for someone else, other than us, to also be blessed by God. Our willingness to accept the breadth of Gods abundance means that we can dispel our notions of scarcity that keep our fists clenched.   -Rev. Ruth T. West, San Francisco Theological Seminary   (from Advent Reflection, Blessings Just for Us?)

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More Fun With Crab Apples 2 The Sauce

3:40 AM in 2, apples, Aqua, crab, fun, more, sauce, the, with

A couple weeks ago we wrote about our plans for processing as many of our crab apples as we could before the deep freeze hit, and weve been busy experimenting ever since.  We had twelve ideas for what to do with the crab apples, which we wanted to break up into blog posts for fresh, liquid, and sauce.  (Two other ideas--put the raffinate in the compost and feed it to the chickens--are pretty self-explanatory and dont really need their own post.)  We didnt manage to get them all picked before freeze damage hit, so the fresh category will have to wait until next year.

But in the liquid and solid categories weve had some success (by our standards, at least), and so we wanted to post our results here as a baseline for other researchers to reproduce in their own labs and develop further.  First up: the solid portion! This is the sauce obtained after boiling the apples to soften, straining out the water, and passing them through a crank-style food strainer (we call it a berry grinder).

Idea #1: Applesauce.  Easy as that--eat it straight up.  Its pretty good, but tart.  We kind of settled on a ratio of 1 cup sugar to 6 cups sauce as the optimal balance of sweet and tart.  If were feeling really sassy, well add some cinnamon.

Idea #2: Crab apple butter.  We took four quarts of the sauce, added 2.5 cups sugar, and cooked it down to two quarts in the crock pot.  We also added some cinnamon and allspice (about two teaspoons each), and nutmeg (about 0.5 teaspoon).  Its thick, but easily spreads out onto lots of things.

...like this toast that just became 1000 times tastier!

Idea #3: Crab apple jam.  Kind of like our rhubarb-crab apple jam from a few weeks ago, but using only crab apples this time.  We used the liquid pectin that came from the same crab apples (of course!).  Eight cups crab apple sauce plus two cups liquid pectin equals ten cups total, which needs ten cups sugar (we used eight cups white plus two cups brown).

Looks pretty good, and it set right up! Weve got a lot of peanut butter sandwiches to eat before next summer.

Idea #4: Fruit leather (our favorite).  Cookie sheet, silicone baking mat, and a 1/8" thick layer of crab apple sauce (still mixed with sugar in a 6:1 volume ratio).  We set the oven to its lowest temperature (150 °F for us), and it took 9-10 hours to get to the right consistency.

And when it did, it was awesome.  Best fruit leather weve ever made (although thats admittedly a small sample size).  We tore off the left side like two hungry velociraptors fighting over a roast pheasant. (Dont laugh, weve seen it happen.)  We picked a whole nother bucket of crab apples just to make more fruit leather.

Hey, look! Its a crab apple fruit roll up!  Were not professionals, but that silicone baking mat is.  We also made a batch in the dehydrator, but it took longer to dry and stuck to the tray.  It was so beat up by the time we got it free that we had to eat it immediately, just to put it out of its misery.

Idea #5 (bonus!): We also happened to find out that a pretty mean crisp can be made with the sauce (plus 6/1 sugar).  It doesnt have large apple pieces, but it does have all the other essentials of an apple crisp: tangy apple flavor in a fruity fruit layer, crispy crisp topping on top, and an irresistible attraction to vanilla ice cream.  For the topping, use a ratio of one cup each whole rolled oats and brown sugar, 0.75 cups flour, and 0.5 cup butter, almost melted.  (That amount will be good for a thin layer on a 9" x 13" pan.)  Sauce goes in the pan first, topping patted down on top, and whole shebang baked at 350 °F until crispy and delicious.  Cant go wrong!

Stay tuned for some experiments with the liquid!  In the meantime, what do you do with your crab apples?  Let us know in the comments section below!

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More Fun With Crab Apples 3 The Juice

2:21 AM in 3, apples, Aqua, crab, fun, juice, more, the, with

We continue our crab apple-themed posts (the original, part 1, and part 2 here) with some ideas for what to do with the juice part--the water the crab apples were boiled in, after straining out the apple solids.  Lets get to it!

Idea #1: Liquid pectin.  Its just the aforementioned liquid fraction. Boiling solublizes the pectin, so its essentially a hot water extraction of the crab apples.  Pretty easy!  Check if its strong enough by adding one teaspoon liquid pectin to one tablespoon high-proof alcohol (91% rubbing alcohol (isopropanol) or 95% ethanol), and waiting a minute.  If the gelatinous mass can be picked up with a fork (example in fourth photo here), its strong enough.  If not, boil the liquid pectin down some more and try again.  To use in jam, take one cup liquid pectin per four cups fruit pulp and five cups sugar.  Mix pectin and fruit pulp, bring to a boil, mix in sugar, return to full rolling boil.  Boil one minute, pour into hot, clean jars, and process in a hot water bath or pressure canner, or by whatever method you prefer.

Idea #2: Crab apple-ade.  We take the liquid, dilute it by half with water, and add a teaspoon of sugar per cup to sweeten it.  Sweet-tart and refreshing!

Idea #3: Crab apple wine.  There are a few recipes here and here, but were usually a little more cavalier about the process.  Well post more details on our home wine-making adventures in the future, but our general process is this: Measure the specific gravity of the juice (left), add enough sugar so that the yeast will make enough ethanol to kill themselves...

...add the yeast to a half cup of the sweetened juice and let it sit for a few minutes to proof...

...then put everything in a stainless steel pot with a bungee cord-secured towel to keep out fruit flies. (Or primary fermentation vessel if you want to sound legit.)  It stays here for about a week, then gets transferred to a carboy (or jug) with an airlock and left for several months while the yeast finish their magic.  When fermentation stops and the specific gravity shows sufficient alcohol to kill the yeast, we check the flavor and bottle it up! (Again, more details in a future post.)

Idea #4: Powdered pectin.  Remember the test to see if the liquid pectin solution is strong enough? Commercial powdered pectin is made by a similar process.  We tried to recreate that process on a kitchen scale.  We took one cup of the liquid pectin plus a half cup of 190 proof ethanol.  That precipitates a lot of the pectin as a gel...

...that can be filtered out of the liquid.  Dont throw away that liquid!  That would make for some very expensive pectin!  Instead, mix it with some Celestial Seasonings tea, and youll have a Colorado Iced Tea.  Whats up now, Long Island? (Note: the liquid has a very high alcohol content, so you dont need much to make a very potent drink.)

The filtered pectin gel can be collected...

...dried like fruit leather...

...baked at 150 °F until crispy, frozen, and ground with a mortar and pestle into a powdered pectin product. (In retrospect, it might be possible to skip the food dehydrator and freezing steps.) Our pectin is darker than the store-bought powdered stuff probably because we didnt do any of the washing steps that the commercial producers do before they dry and grind. This was a lot of work for a little pile of powder, but we were able to make it using only things we already had on hand.  It would also store longer and in less space than the liquid stuff, if we didnt have to use this whole batch right away to answer the critical question: does it work for jam?

 

We took some raspberries out of the freezer and made a mini-batch. (The sure-jell recipe called for one packet of pectin powder (about 0.25 cup) for 5 cups fruit and 7 cups sugar.  We ended up with about two teaspoons of our powder, so we cut the recipe to 1/6 scale.)  We also ran a control (without pectin; jar and toast on left in photo) to see if the jam would set on its own just from the sugar.  While both batches set, the one containing pectin is noticeably firmer (but still spreads easily). So, our powdered pectin made a difference! Yay!

Idea #5 (bonus!): Crab apple molasses.  In our first attempt to make powdered pectin, we tried just drying down the liquid pectin to a solid.  But instead of a light-colored substance to grind, we ended up with this dark-colored, gummy stuff.  So we tasted it.  Its good!  A lot like molasses, but with an apple flavor.  Time to make some crab apple molasses cookies!

We took our favorite molasses cookie recipe (thanks, Grandma!) and swapped regular molasses for crab apple molasses straight up. A couple things we found out: our crab apple molasses is a lot harder than regular molasses, and doesnt mix with the cookie dough very well.  We heated it up, and that helped some, but there were still chunks.  Thats why it looks like we made craisin cookies in the photo.  In fact, Katie thought they were craisins at first! The chunks are chewy and sweet-tart, so it really is hard to tell a difference.  So far, 100% of household correspondents have concluded that the cookies are tasty.

What do you do with your crab apples?  Let us know in the comments section below!

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More Fun With Dandies How to Pull the Petals

9:26 PM in Aqua, dandies, fun, how, more, petals, pull, the, to, with

If youve been following this blog for any amount of time, you might have noticed that weve slowed down quite a bit with our posting schedule.  Its not for lack of things to post about, of that you can be sure.  Its mainly because weve got so much going on that we havent had a chance to sit down and write about all the fun weve been having!  Last week, our homestead population increased from 2 to 7,027 due to the arrival of a package of honey bees and 25 chickens.  (At this rate, well have to annex the neighbors yards by June!)  Weve also had significantly increased off-the-homestead responsibilities since the end of March.  But above all, the primary reason weve been so slow in posting is that weve been trying to use every dandelion flower in our yard. (We havent even come close, but maybe next year.)

In the course of making use of all these dandies, weve improved our technique for pulling the petals out of the flowers, so we wanted to do a quick post to let everyone know about our new technique, in case someone else might want to get out and try it before the dandelion production drops off this spring.

This is the part of the yard where they have to share with grass and other flowers.  Other parts they have all to themselves.  Clearly, if were going to get them all, weve got to move quickly. 

Most sources on collecting the flowers agree up to this point: keep just the flower head.

This is where our new technique diverges.  While others say to dig out the petals with your thumbnail, weve found its quicker and easier to split the flower head in half, but not go all the way through, like so.

Then we take the pad of our thumb and rub the petals from one half from the split outward.  Almost all should come at once, if not, the stragglers are easier to grab with the flower split open.  Sometimes a few of the green parts on the back side will break off also, but for the most part, its not a problem if they come along.  At the end of the day, weve usually got about 99% petals and 1% green stuff in the bowl.

Repeat with the other side, and were done!  After a while, we get in the zone and can run at about five seconds per flower, except for the most stubborn specimens.  Its close to the same time frame for processing strawberries or green beans or the like.  Also, weve noticed that from about four cups of flower heads, well end up with about three-and-a-half cups of petals if they dont get too packed down.

With the petals, you can make all kinds of stuff, like wine and jelly!  While the petals themselves dont have a lot of flavor, they definitely add something besides yellow color to the end product.  Its just the right amount of je ne sais quoi...

The jelly looks especially nice when sitting on a matching honey bee-themed hand towel and catching the afternoon sun through a washroom window.  Also, since we know youre wondering: yes, it goes great with peanut butter in a sandwich.

The wine is still going, so we probably shouldnt post a recipe until its done and we know its good, but heres the recipe for the jelly, based in part off of Kristinas recipe here:

4 cups dandelion petals
8 cups water

Boil the water and petals for ten minutes, strain out petals (we used an old t-shirt) to give a nice yellow dandelion petal tea.

4 cups of the dandelion petal "tea"
0.25 cups lemon juice
2 cups sugar
4 teaspoons Pomonas pectin + 4 teaspoons calcium water (from powdered CaCl₂ included in the pectin box)

Mix the sugar and pectin together well.  Mix "tea," lemon juice, and calcium water together, and bring to a boil.  Add sugar/pectin mix, stir vigorously to dissolve, bring to full rolling boil, keeping a close eye on the stove so the pot doesnt boil over and make a thick layer of dandelion fruit roll-up in the nether regions of your stove.  (Not that that would ever happen.)  Remove from heat.  Pour into clean canning jars and process according to preferred instructions. (We normally use the inversion method of turning the full jar upside down for 5-10 minutes, then flipping back upright, but food safety experts recommend at least a boiling water bath for a reliable seal.  General instructions are here; to apply to this recipe, replace every instance of chokecherry juice with dandelion petal tea.)


What are you using dandelion flowers for this spring?  Have you managed to pick all of the dandies in your yard? (Dont forget, today is mothers day, and mothers love flowers!)

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