Eat
Amazing Two Ingredient Ice Cream
26 February 2019 • Eat
I realize ice cream is not on the minds of many people this time of year. But I've been making and eating this like crazy the past few weeks so I thought I'd share. And it's so easy! I'd say it even tastes better than anything I was making in my ice cream machine (RIP).
For the base all you do is whip 2 1/2 cups of whipping cream and stir in one can of sweetened condensed milk. Cover the surface with plastic wrap and freeze. Yeah that's it.
I make it a bit "fancier" by first steeping a few Earl Grey tea bags and a tablespoon of dried lavender in the cream over lowish heat. After that I just chill the cream and strain out the tea bags and lavender and then whip it up before adding the condensed milk. I'm dying to stir some goat cheese and berry compote in the next batch. That may just be the baby hormones talking, but that sounds good right?!
I still find this a bit on the sweeter side, but hey it sure beats anything you can buy at the grocery store!
I've totally hopped on this DIY/crunchy lifestyle train lately. One of the things I've been wanting to try out is creating something from foraged plants in the neighbourhood. Maybe a little strange? Then I saw this blog post and thought "I can do that!" So a few weeks back Dave and I took the kids out for a pre-bedtime stroll around the block with a basket to collect a bunch of violets. We ended up finding about 3 cups worth of violets growing on people's boulevards and lawns. We stayed close to the sidewalk though and didn't venture too far up our neighbours' lawns. I mean, we're not that weird ;)
I should probably mention that I double checked in my edible plants book that what we had collected was indeed violets.
After that I just followed this recipe and made a basic simple syrup from them! The sugar I used was an organic raw sugar and wasn't totally white so my syrup wasn't a lovely purple colour I was hoping for. More like a green brown lol. Ah well. It tasted pretty great with some vodka and sparkling water!
It feels weird that this whole collecting things from nature is so new and exciting to me, yet it's what people did all the time until recently. Whenever I talk to my Oma about the things we're getting up to she always laughs because it's just what she had to do growing up.
Looking forward to scoping out some other edibles around the neighbourhood!
The (Future) Cob Oven!
7 May 2017 • Cob Oven, Eat, Make
Wanna hear about our next big project?
The COB OVEN!
What is a cob oven you ask? Pretty much an outdoor wood burning oven made out of cob. Cob = clay+sand+straw. Most people use these types of ovens for pizza but you can also make amazing bread and really anything you would make in a regular oven. I've heard of people who will make these in the morning and use them in the evening for a wedding or some sort of function. Or even kids who make their own tiny ones for a few cookies! Pretty intriguing right?!
A little while back I read an article in Taproot about a man who lived on a beach and made himself a cob oven. Every Friday he would host these pizza nights where he would make a giant batch of pizza dough and people would bring their own pizza toppings. He would spend the night popping these homemade pizzas into his homemade oven and the whole community would get together. So cool right? I love the idea of having something really functional in our backyard that we could share with friends, family and neighbours.
I've been wanting a cob oven in our backyard for a long while now and I recently went to a workshop that Little City Farm put on all about building cob ovens. It was so inspiring! Karin and Greg (of Little City Farm) made their cob oven (pictured above) for about $20. Crazy right?! Pretty much all of the materials can be repurposed or found with the only thing you really need to spend money on being the fire brick for the inside of the oven. The only catch is that cob needs to be somewhat protected by the elements so we would need to build some sort of roof/structure over it. That's the part that's rather daunting for me at this point.
At the workshop Karin and Greg said you could build the oven in about 2 weekends. With one weekend building the base which includes digging down 3-5 feet and filling it with urbanite, and the the brick "table" that it sits on. The second weekend would be used to build the oven part. Then you've got to keep the oven covered from the rain until you build a roof/structure over it.
I learned so much at the workshop in terms of the building materials, making the cob and the whole design process. I also just got this book (Build Your Own Earth Oven by Kiko Denzer) in the mail and oh man, it's so good! Denzer's book makes the whole process seem so easy and do-able! We had originally thought that building a cob oven would be a project that would have to wait till next summer, but after doing the workshop and some research we're thinking we'll try it out it the next few months! The great thing about cob is that even if we totally fail and the thing falls apart, you can just reuse the materials for next time. It's not like concrete where you use it once and it's done.
In the meantime though, I'm going to read up as much as I can and start collecting materials. This is definitely one of those projects I don't want to start until I've got everything gathered and I know exactly what I'm going to do. I'm excited to share the process here! Wish us luck!
p.s If you know of anywhere we could get some old bricks to repurpose, like a building being demolished, a (de)construction site, or anything like that, send us an email! theyoungnunn@gmail.com
Lacto-Fermenting Workshop!
18 February 2017 • Eat, Fermenting, Make, Pickles
Today I went to a really cool workshop at one of my favourite places in town, Little City Farm. LCF is one of our biggest inspirations when it comes to backyard homesteading and they run a variety of really interesting workshops there throughout the year. Everything from soap-making to chicken keeping for beginners (check out their website to see what else they're up to!). Today I went to "The Art of Fermentation: An Intro to Lacto-Fermenting." I am a huuuuge fan of all things pickled (it's practically all I ate when I was pregnant with Harvey) so I was pretty pumped to learn how to make fermented things without vinegar or that didn't require traditional canning methods - you know the kind where you sterilize a bunch of jars, heat them up and all that jazz.
So I'm not going to lie, initially the phrase "lacto-fermenting" sounded pretty odd ball to me. But turns out it's one of the original ways to preserve food and maintain almost all of the nutrients in the food. I personally always thought that pickled things had to be made with a vinegar, is that just me? Anyways, these don't use any vinegar (mind blown) but a sea salt brine and a "probiotic starter" which the instructor told us was just equal amounts of red cabbage and water blended together, strained, and then left to do its thing for a few days. These types of pickles are FULL of probiotics and are great for your gut. Nice!
A few key things I learned...
- don't make pickles with tap water! Tap water here (in Kitchener-Waterloo) has chlorine and fluoride in it, which kill most bacteria including the good bacteria you want to make pickles
- chop everything small so the bacteria can really get at the veggies
- use a cabbage leaf on the top to push down the veggies and keep everything submerged in the brine
- use organic veggies - most veggies and fruits have this almost powdery film on them (you can really see it on a red cabbage). This is called a bloom and it is where all the good bacteria live. You want this on your veggies and fruit!
We got to make and take home a giant jar of pickles that we made at the end of the class and I'm really excited to try them after they ferment for a few weeks on top of the fridge.
What a lovely way to spend a few hours this afternoon, in a sunny greenhouse making pickles with a bunch of ladies.
Now I really want to pick up this book and pretty much ferment all the contents of our fridge ;)
-Nat
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