Pop goes the soda

I have to confess. I like pop (or soda for our friends south of the border). I grew up with Coke as my Uncle Al was a GM at Coke in Saskatchewan. To this day an ice cold Coke in a glass bottle reminds me of that sweet giant of a man who left us far too early.

One of the things I love about the way we live is the inventiveness of it. When looking at what we eat and drink to figure out if we can be more DIY with it, we often find people who have boldly gone there before.

Commercial soda pop is made with sugar, water, flavouring and carbon dioxide gas in water (carbonated water) . Once thought to be a healthy practice, the drinking of carbonated water now mainly occurs through commercial soda pops -- highly laced with sugar and other sweeteners and mostly artificial flavours.

So when reading through Rachel Kaplan and Ruby Blume's book "Urban Homesteading" (highly recommended!!) I was thrilled to find a way to make our own soda. This lacto-fermented treat is right up my alley (and literally the pop started is sitting on my counter next to the milk Kefir and the Kimchi -- both lacto-fermentations of different food types.) So I thought -- why not!?!

The recipe begins, as all fermentations do, with a starter culture. This starter consists fermenting ginger root and sugar in water. Starting with a tablespoon of finely grated ginger and two teaspoons of water, you then 3/4 fill a mason jar (1 gallon) with un-chlorinated water (actually I used a two-gallon mason jar and doubled the recipe). Put a lid on it, but not too tight. Over the course of the next seven days, continue to add two teaspoons of grated ginger and two teaspoons of sugar to the liquid. You will notice it will get quite active.

Once you have a nice lively starter, you simply mix 2 c of the starter (saving two cups to begin a new starter) with fruit juice, water, a1/2 tsp of salt, and 1 c of sweetener (honey, agave, or maple syrup). I put this into a 2 gallon jug with a fermentation lock. You want enough liquid in the jug to fill it to the neck. Once everything is mixed and you put the fermentation lock on, sit the jug in a warm spot for 3-4 days to get bubbly.

Once it is bubbly, you put the liquid into pressure bottles. I got some at the supermarket with some other drink inside and we used  a few that were beer bottles. Once bottled, store it in the fridge (or outside if it is winter) but make sure you relieve some of the pressure on the bottles every couple days. Lacto-fermented foods can pack quite a punch if allowed to build up too much.

The first batch I made I used the recipe in "Urban Homesteading" for Lemon-Grapefruit soda. I also put a bit more grated ginger into the jug for the final fermentation. It made it a bit too strong in the ginger department for me so I have omitted it in my next batch of apple, orange and mango soda.

Really the options are endless for experimentation with fruit juices. This method might also be nice using some vegetable juices that need a bit of a "lift' out of their often thick stodginess.

The result isn't even close to the cloyingly sweet concoctions you buy called soda and the ginger base may take a little getting used to, but this is a very refreshing and light drink. I am going to try it with the juice of some frozen blackberries that I have and maybe even some of the blueberries will find their way into a fruit syrup for this drink. 

If you give this a try, let me know how it goes for you. Would love to hear about your combinations.

Chris

Ruminations on a Fall Day

I took advantage of a beautiful break in the weather to put the bees to bed. As it was such a long dry fall with little nectar available, we decided in September to give them some feed so they had enough stores to last through winter.

Our feed consists of 2:1 sugar water that is poured into top feeders where the bees can access it as they desire.Three hives took everything we gave them and two left quite a bit.

Today putting them to bed meant I removed the last of the top feeders and took a quick look at the girls. I didn't open the hive as it was a cool day and I didn't want to let too much heat out.We shall see in the spring if they all had enough to survive the cold.

Neat Fact: Bees will maintain an internal hive temperature of 34 degrees Celsius (that's 94 degrees Farenheit!) no matter if it is 40 above or 40 below). Needless to say, keeping the hive that warm in winter requires a lot of caloric burn.

It was a truly glorious fall day and while I was removing the feeders a few bees flew around me checking me out. They quickly circled my head then went back inside. Too cold out to stay long. Bees really only like coming out of the hive if it is above about 12-15 degrees Celsius so at 11 degrees they were pushing it. The picture above is from earlier in the year and the dark orange "leg warmers" the bees seem to be wearing is plant pollen that has stuck to the bees while they were gorging on nectar.

Getting back home, I was also cooled by the northern push of the air. Perfect kind of day for a long slow roasting meal so I decided on braised lamb shanks

Improvising with what I had, here is the recipe I used (the amounts are guesstimates so use your good judgement):

2 Lamb shanks
1/4c flour
2 tsp paprika powder (grown and dried by my good friend Marilyn -- from whom I also got the lamb!!)
freshly ground pepper
1 onion sliced
2tbsp minced garlic (about 2-3 toes -- I like garlic!)
1tsp salt
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter
tbsp italian seasoning
marjoram
splash or two of Maggi
1/2c good red wine (I used a 2006 Manoustakis Nostos from Greece that my son, who works for a wine merchant, gave us-- I figured the Greeks have masterful lamb cuisine so greek wine should help me )
1c dried mushrooms (mine were a combination of white button and chanterelle that I had previously dried -- but you can also use fresh)
1c boiling water (poured over the mushrooms and saved)


Mix the flour, pepper, paprika in a dish. Coat the lamb shank with the flour mix. Using a heavy enamel-coated dutch oven, heat the olive oil and then brown the shanks in it. I did mine one at a time to make sure I got them each nice and brown. Remove the shanks and add the butter to the dutch oven. Add onions and stir til translucent then add garlic. This mixture should pick up all the brown bits created by lamb shanks.

Put lamb shanks back into pot. Pour in red wine, mushrooms and the water used to soak them, spice, Maggi and the salt. Another nice addition to this dish would have been tomato sauce -- which I had fully intended on putting in but forgot.

With the heavy lid on, put the dutch oven into a 300degree oven and leave for 2.5-3 hours. Serve with barley risotto, or rice, or boiled potatoes -- whatever strikes your fancy and some roasted root vegetables.  Will warm you up on any Fall day.

Chris