All my life I’ve been “putting food by.” I first learned from my mother and grandfather; then from my mother-in-law, Margaret Etter. Sometimes it was simply a hobby, sometimes an essential part of our life-style. I remember my first year at university, seeking permission to pick the apples on my landlady’s tree, borrowing her apple-saucer and a dozen jars and making apple sauce—6 jars for her, 6 for me. And going down to the Co-op’s Vancouver dock for buckets of winter herring: eating as much as I could, giving quite a few away, and then salting the rest for pickling. All on a two-burner hot plate!
48 years later Thomas is still processing apples, but no longer alone.
This patch of wild chicken's feet (sea glasswort) is in its prime
Over the years I’ve developed some guidelines for putting food by. (1) Gather when abundant, when you can process a good quantity of food at one time.
Stinging nettles in abundance
(2) Develop simple systems. Keep notes and test over time. If a system is too complicated, I often don’t get around to doing it. (3) Essential to simple systems are simple recipes. This last summer, a number of people asked about recipes for this or that. Here they are: Thomas’ favourite recipes.
SPROUTING
We almost always have several jars of sprouts going on the boat: 0ne jar of small seeds: alfalfa, clover, mustard, etc.; one or two jars of a larger seed mixture: lentils, wheat or oats, adzuki beans, mung beans. Any organic seeds/beans/grains will sprout. A good internet source of seeds, reasonably priced, is Mumm’s Sprouting Seeds. Click here to visit their website:
http://www.sprouting.com/We use pint or 500 ml wide-mouth canning jars. Our lids came in a special sprouting set—plastic, screw-on: coarse, medium and fine. They’re hard to find these days, and expensive. You can make your own, however, out of the white plastic lids designed for canning jars. (Check the canning section of your grocery store.) Drill appropriately-sized holes.
In the fine-seeds jar I place 3 teaspoons of mixed seeds. Cover with water and let soak over night. Rinse daily thereafter, placing the jars upside down on a saucer to drain. Prop them up on something so they can breathe (you don’t want the seeds to sit in water.) Use when ready, depending on temperature and light: 4 to 8 days.
In the coarse-seeds jar I place 2 teaspoons of some form of grain, plus 2 teaspoons each of lentils (whole, not split), mung beans, daikon radish, and at least one other bean. Soak over 2 nights, then rinse daily as above.
We set our sprouting jars up by the galley sink and I do them every morning as part of the early morning chores (takes two minutes!) Simple. Delicious. Inexpensive. Good for you!
Homemade mayonnaise and pickled fish
MAYONNAISE
(adapted from The New York Times Natural Foods Cookbook, Jean Hewitt, 1971)
Put in blender 1 egg, ½ teaspoon sea salt, ½ teaspoon raw sugar, 2 teaspoons of any kind of prepared mustard (Keen’s powder also works well, but less of it), 8 teaspoons of apple cider vinegar (any vinegar will do, or lemon juice). I use the same teaspoon throughout, then lick it off after for a wake-me-up taste sensation!
Take one cup of safflower oil (or any lighter-type vegetable oil). Pour half in the blender with the other ingredients and blend. When well-blended, slowly add the other half cup of oil, blending as you go until nice and thick.
Remove mayonnaise with a rubber spatula into a jar. Makes about one and a half cups. Keeps well. (Note: I’ve tried doubling the recipe. It doesn’t work. Best to simply make two batches.)
Homemade yogurt with Crippen Cove blackcurrant jam
YOGURT AND SOFT CHEESE
(also from the NYT Natural Foods Cookbook)
Lacking refrigeration, we never use more than one litre of milk at a time. But it’s the first litre that costs the most. So we began buying two litres and making the second litre into yogurt. Then we began buying four litres and making the additional two into soft cheese. (After all, yogurt and cheese are simply traditional ways of “putting milk by.”)
We use two 500 ml insulated stainless steel jars. Wide-mouth thermoses would probably work, as would canning jars wrapped in a towel. A candy thermometer is very useful ($7 or $8 in the house-wares section of the grocery store).
Place a litre of milk in a pot, bring it to a simmer (180 degrees or so). Pour into the two containers. Cool to about 120 degrees. Spoon two or three tablespoons of commercial yogurt into each container, stir and put on the lid. Ready in about 8 hours.
Any commercial yogurt will do. We use whatever is on sale as long as it’s unsweetened (plain) and has “active bacterial culture.” You can use your old yogurt as starter for the next batch for three or four generations. Try to avoid “stirred” yogurt, however. By the third generation the yogurt begins to get goopy. One friend called it “snot-gurt!” (We thought that would be a wonderful title for a children’s book: Snot-gurt and Salmon Berries!)
Caraway cheese and sprouts
While the yogurt is cooling, pour two litres of milk into the pan. Bring to just under 200 degrees. Take it off the burner, add ¼ cup of lemon juice, stir and let sit for 20 minutes.
Line a colander with a double layer of cheese-cloth. (Check your first aid kit. A cloth arm sling makes a great cheese and/or jelly/juice bag.) Pour in curdled milk and let drain for a few minutes. Spoon into a jar or other container. Add salt and herbs to taste. Two of our favourite combos are lemon and dill and lemon and caraway. The cheese-cloth can be washed and reused several times.
rockfish and greenling
PICKLED FISH
(based on my dad’s pickled herring recipe)
Any fish will do as long as it’s firm-fleshed. (Pink salmon not so good; coho wonderful.
Coho salmon
Pacific cod and pollock not so good; rock fish, lingcod, greenling, sole and flounder wonderful).
Filet the fish and salt well in layers. The salt will draw out the juices and form a brine. If herring: clean, scale and salt whole fish, filleting before soaking out and pickling. Salted, the fish will keep in a cool place for up to a year. (Any coarse salt will do: pickling, kosher, or “fishermen’s” salt. Do not use table salt with iodine. Sea salt would probably work, though expensive.)
Keep the fish in the salt for a least a week. When ready to pickle, soak out in several changes of fresh water over a three or four-hour period. Prepare a brine of two to one vinegar and water, with a bit of sugar and some pickling spice. Boil for a bit, then cool.
Sterilize jars; prepare lids. For pickles we reuse canning lids and rings as long as they are in decent shape. (For other canning, however, we always use new lids, though we often reuse the rings.)
Cut an onion in quarters and slice as fine as you can. Cut fish into bite-sized pieces. Layer in jars, onion – fish – onion – fish. Sometimes I add some chicken’s feet (sea asparagus) for colour, or sliced carrot. My dad always did some of his herring with lemon slices as well as onion.
Cover fish and onion with brine. Screw on lids. Ready in three or four days. If cool, will keep for several months.
La Sonrisa in islands of kelp
PICKLED KELP
(adapted from a recipe in Pacific Yachting, September 2005)
We use bull kelp, the long one attached to a rock on the bottom and extending up to a floating bulb on the surface with fronds. The kelp is best picked in the spring and early summer, when it is at it’s freshest. We use only the stalk, not the bulb or fronds, cutting off 2 to 3-foot pieces. The kelp can be stored in a bucket of salt water for a day to two until used.
Slice kelp stalks into thin rings or “sticks” (like carrot sticks). One ice-cream bucket full makes about 5 pints. Soak the sliced kelp for ½ hour in fresh water.
Prepare brine: one to one vinegar and water, a bit of sugar plus pickling spice, or dill and garlic, or hot pepper. When brine is boiling, add the kelp using a slotted spoon. Stir. Watch it turn brilliant green--though the colour soon fades.
Boil until the desired combination of tender yet still crisp is reached. Pack in hot jars. Cover with brine. Screw on lids. Keeps up to a year.
Kelp pickle
Chicken’s feet
CHICKEN’S FEET RELISH
(based on my mom’s zucchini relish recipe)
Chicken’s feet or sea glasswort (sea asparagus) is great raw in a salad. Add a can of kernel corn, sprouts if you have them, maybe some chopped carrot or celery or green or red pepper. Dress with oil, lemon juice and black pepper.
For relish, two ice-cream buckets of chicken’s feet makes about ten 250 ml jars.
Make the sauce by mixing 2 tablespoons of tumeric with one tablespoon dry mustard, 3 tablespoons dried celery leaf (half that if using commercial celery seed), one and half cups of sugar and 4 cups of vinegar. Add 6 tablespoons of cornstarch made into a paste with a bit of water.
Simmer the whole thing until it thickens, then add the chicken’s feet until tender. Don’t over cook! Hot pack in sterilized jars (see pickled fish recipe above re reusing lids and rings).
Seafood sauce & pickled ginger
SEAFOOD SAUCE
Mix ketchup (my dad used Heinz chili sauce) with horseradish to taste (2 to 1? depending on the strength of the horseradish). Creamed horseradish doesn’t work as well as plain. Add a liberal dash of Worchester sauce and another of lemon juice. Keeps for several weeks.
PICKLED GINGER
(son Eric got this one, years ago, off the internet)
A highlight of a trip on La Sonrisa is sushi night. A highlight of sushi night is home-made pickled ginger.
Peel ginger (you don’t have to be too particular) and slice as thin as possible. Toss with a tablespoon or two of coarse salt. The ginger will start to wilt, losing its juices. When limp and pliable, rinse in fresh water and then, a handful at a time, gently squeeze dry. Place in a bowl.
Prepare brine: 1¼ cup of rice vinegar (if you have it, otherwise any vinegar will do) to ½ cup of sugar and a pinch of salt. Bring to a boil to dissolve sugar. Cool. Pour over ginger, stirring so that all the ginger comes in contact with the brine. Pack in clean jars. Ready in 2 or 3 days.
Seafood harvest, buckets left to right: clams, prawns, crab, oysters
OYSTERS SONRISA
Steam oysters open, cool and shuck. Place oysters on the half shell on a cookie sheet (double up on the shells where you can). For Oysters Sonrisa Port, spoon on some salsa and sprinkle with grated cheese. For Oysters Sonrisa Starboard, spoon on some pesto and, again, sprinkle with grated cheese (feta is wonderful with pesto). Brown in oven until cheese melts.
Young nettles
For a make-your-own pesto out of nettles, chickweed, parsley, or whatever is abundant, see the link below. Walnuts can be substituted for pine nuts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1nD9aDNX-k&feature=relatedFLOUR-EGG-FLOUR OYSTERS OR FISH
Steam oysters open, cool and shuck. With frying pan on medium heat and a bit of oil, dip oysters in flour, then egg, then flour again. Fry till golden brown.
We use this recipe, also, for filets of any kind of white-fleshed fish, including halibut. Great with seafood sauce (above) or a dill-yogurt dressing (as follows).
DILL-YOGURT DRESSING
My favourite salad-dressing and/or dip. Mix yogurt with mayonnaise (maybe 2 to 1; wetter for a dressing, stiffer for a dip), add a dash of lemon juice and lots of dried dill. Even better made with yogurt that is getting a bit tart (i.e. old!)
This cole slaw with sprouts is dressed with dill-yogurt dressing.
Surge Narrows welcome for Alexandra Morton
Quadra Island open net fish farm
young protesters
Sailing to the narrows
All ages
All sorts
Filming thru Surge Narrows
Columbia III
Chief Frank Nelson welcomed us
Chief Bob Chamberlain of Gilford Village wears a lice tatoo
Alex listens
Victoria, May 8 - Be there if you can!!
