I brought three pumpkins back from Ontario, and two evenings ago, I baked one of them. As the fastest way to process a pumpkin is by baking it, I just cut it in half, scooped out the seeds and pulp, and put it in the oven with a little water. But the baking takes an hour and a half, and The Most Important Rule For Cooking that I learned as a child – which it floors me that more people don’t know – is… well, the first rule is, don’t use the oven in summertime, but…When You Use The Oven, Bake More Than One Thing.
In fact, bake three:
Meat loaf or chicken or quiche, scalloped potatoes, and custard
Squash, a casserole, and a cake
Pot roast, baked potatoes, and pie
With Pizza…
… well, that takes only 12-16 minutes to bake (in a hot oven!), but make a batch of cookie dough to have on hand for times like this. Cut the dough into portions you’d make at any one time and freeze the portions (i.e. if the recipe is for three dozen, cut it into sixths for six cookies each. You could also shape the cookies and freeze them on a tray, then keep them in a tupperware in the freezer ready to go). Thaw and shape the cookies and put them in with the pizza (but watch them; pizza heat is hotter than cookie heat; it’s better to undercook them and then put them in again to finish them off. Which is why they’re called biscuits: cooked twice). You could also add tarts, or store-bought rolls of any kind.
Two weeks ago, I went to Ontario for a little family/business/pleasure roadtrip. About 3 kilometers east of Fenelon Falls, I went to a farm where they had a table selling produce. I’m the special kind of stupid that forgets I’m a blogger, so I forgot to take pictures of the farm stand and the turkeys making a ruckus at the farm gate. So let me interrupt this blog post with an appreciation of turkeys and ducks:
A family of wild turkeys passes by the Discovery Shack at Gami’ing Nature Centre. They’re heading over into the farmer’s soybeans.
I managed to take pictures of the one lonesome Muscovy duck, Mamma, who belongs to the people I stayed with down the road. Mamma used to look after the chickens, and at nine years old, if she survives over the winter, she’ll do so again in the spring. She apparently likes to kick the hens off the eggs so she can hatch and look after the chicks. Though I wonder, with broody hens, if they’ll give up that easily.
They had to spend about an hour a day out in the garden, vacuuming the squash bugs off the leaves. They let me harvest purple beans from their box garden full of them. And even though obviously I’d found my camera, I forgot to take pictures of that, too. So instead, I can to show you the giant zucchini, the dozen corn, some tomatoes, and the cabbage I bought, with the basket of beans right here on my kitchen counter (look up: it’s the header image).
So, pickling!
Two nights ago, I took the last of the corn and transformed it into corn relish. The recipe was not the same as last year’s; it called for too much flour in the sauce, so I am afraid it’s too creamy. Still, corn relish is better than the green relish you get at the store. It’s homemade by me, which beats your random corn relish.
Yesterday’s efforts began with slicing cucumbers, peppers, and onions to make a batch of bread-and-butter pickles (7 jars). Cucumbers are surprisingly hard on your knives! I have a sharpening stone, for which the traditional lubricant is spit. I sharpened the big butcher knife twice, once with the stone and once with the pestle (ceramic also sharpens blades) from my mortar-and-pestle. Here they are, pre-salting.
And then I got ambitious enough to make a batch of sauerkraut with the very large head of cabbage featured above. I chopped up the whole head and salted it in this pickle crock.
A 3 gallon crock from Medicine Hat, Alberta
I used the instructions from Boing Boing, whose creator sounds like the kind of guy I’d get along with — he wrote a book about making everything. You can read all about it at the bottom of the “How to make sauerkraut” instructions.
But I had a problem: I have no 9-¾” wooden disk to push down or cover the contents of the crock. So I phoned Dad to ask him to cut me one, “and not out of plywood.” The old man actually sounded happy to have something to do, which is surprising because it was a favour for me and usually he’s like “I’ve got enough to do, make it yourself.” But in this case, I can’t. It requires a band saw or at least a jig saw, and a belt sander to smooth the edges.
So I tried to weigh down the cabbage with a plastic bag filled with water, but the bag leaked. Now I have more watery contents in the crock pot, but that’s OK because it helps keep the environment anaerobic. I added more salt. The plate I inverted keeps most stuff from floating. I have no “bloom” on my stuff yet, and that’s a good sign.
One week later, my sauerkraut-in-the-making still looks like this:
And short of jarring it, I’m all done. Unless some something like an excess of green tomatoes happens, the pickling is over for the year.
Ever since I moved here (six years ago at time of writing), I’ve had a skunk living under my deck. I’m quite fond of the beast, despite that it eats my day lilies when they bloom (but it also eats slugs!).
And by “it,” I’d better refer to it as “she.” I accommodate her passage to my back garden by leaving a gap under the fence on two sides. She has to pass through two other properties before she can get home; thankfully my immediate neighbours seem to feel the same way about her, and don’t freak out when their dog starts barking about the silent black-and-white intruder. (Yes, my dog once got sprayed. It’s a rite of passage for dogs!)
I took the above photo early one morning, when I saw her from my chair vantage by the patio door. She came in from her night of partying (foraging) and took a long, long, looooong drink at the dish. She was looking rather hour-glass shaped. She was going to need a place soon. She then trundled under the deck –yay!– and then, a minute later, waddled back out – uh oh. Was the space already occupied?
(This post has no other photos because I didn't think it was as brilliant an idea to blog about before I did it - but my technique worked so well, I have to share it.)
So you left the paint in the garage or in the cold cellar and it froze and now you have lumpy paint. Congratulations! Lumpy paint is a pain in the neck, and also fugly to take a picture of. (Bonus, if the lumps are pigment — mine were making nice blueberry smears until I mixed it properly and painted over them.)
You could roll that lumpy paint on the wall anyway, and use a putty knife to take the skins and lumps off while it’s still wet. Or, when it’s dry, use a wall sander (like you’re supposed to!) or a sanding block to knock the lumpy bits off. Don’t rub too hard, or you’ll mess up the otherwise smooth finish.
Still, I betcha don’t want to roll lumpy paint on the wall. You’d rather filter it, right? But you either don’t have a screen sieve of the right gauge, or you don’t want to use one from your kitchen. So here’s what you do:
All 10-pound potato sacks have a nylon screen window. If you don’t have a 10-lb bag of potatoes, go buy one or ask your friend or neighbour for the bag. Do it.
Cut the window out, leaving a good margin on the paper bag edges.
Take some packing/masking/duct tape and tape the window around the top edge of the paint can, on the pouring side, of course, not with the handle in the middle. Don’t tape it too hard because you might need to remove it after pouring. You don’t even have to tape it at all, but it helps.
Tuck the edges with tape or your fingers to cup the window screen slightly.
Mix the paint well! Make sure it’s consistent, lumps and all.
Pour the paint s l o w l y through the nylon screen into the paint tray.
If you’re not emptying the can, then as you upright the can, remove the screen and pinch the corners together. Place the screen on the lid of the can or support it above the can so that it can drip. You can use your brush to encourage the lumps to give up the last of their good paint.
At the end of painting, you can throw the screen out, finish the paint in the can, and recycle the can.
Here’s what happens to it in the environment:
In an aerobic environment, the paper biodegrades, and so will latex or linseed oil base paints — fungi and bacteria digest these. Even petro-chemical-derived paints biodegrade, but you can still find paints made in a traditional way.
However, not a lot of landfills are aerobic environments, so… I don’t know how they’ll decompose. Landfills produce methane – a harmful greenhouse gas, unless the landfill company harvests it for biogas fuel.
Then there’s the nylon screen, which is a little problematic. It will stick around for 30-40 years (less time than a plastic bag, but still). But it was manufactured for another purpose, and you just reused it…which is good.
The thing that worries me the most about nylon in the environment is that we have tons of “ghost” fishing gear abandoned in the oceans, tragically maiming and killing marine life. And in terrestrial ecosystems, we stake nylon nets to hold down mats of sod on slopes, to prevent the slope from eroding until the vegetation takes over to hold it in place. The sod that turns into a grassy, weedy hillside will be encased at the surface and root level by a nylon net. While it’s still strong, it will trap and maim a few field mice and other animals. Landscaping ought to be more ecological.
Recycle old paint
Keep in mind that biodegradation is a process that works on organic compounds; the minerals — like zinc and titanium — in the coatings and the pigments stick around. Even if there was no other way to use them again than in paint (whether they get recovered from paint to use elsewhere is doubtful), trace elements cannot be recovered from the environment. They can’t be mined again.
All of which is why it’s important to recycle old paint, and not throw it out. Particularly if you can’t be bothered dealing with lumpy paint!
This is a long-running “lifestyle” blog about the pleasures of living like a farm kid in an urban context. There’s a big focus on ecology and wildlife because this has brought me joy – and this is also the greatest potential we have of restoring some balance to nature where we live.
I write practical content for people to do little projects that basically make things beautiful, but also support climate readiness (energy efficiency, heat reduction, drought tolerance, flood prevention, and more). I’m a relentlless promoter of having a live-and-let-live attitude towards biodiversity.
Comments and questions are welcome! And if you’re anywhere near the Montreal region, you can also use my “Rewilding” service to landscape your property using native plants, convert to a green driveway, and prevent your windows from killing birds.
