The Good Life Lab
Page 16
We use a French press to filter beverages before storing in quart-sized, widemouthed mason jars.
Fruit Drinks
Seek out locally grown fruit. If you have land, grow your own fruit trees. If you are starting from saplings, consider dwarf fruit trees that produce fruit in just a couple of years. Many people who have fruit trees are inundated by the bounty they produce and are willing to share it, if you pick the fruit yourself. We attend an annual grape crush and show up with buckets to pick apples and cherries from friends’ orchards. Pomegranates grow well where we live and are favorites for homemade juice blends. Prickly pear cactus plants grow wild in the desert of southern New Mexico. Each year we wait for the plant to produce its tuna, a small, delicious purple fruit with medicinal properties. After a day of fruit picking, we immediately process our bounty, making and freezing juice and juice concentrate. We add juices to our homemade mead and kombucha to add complexity and sweetness to their flavor.
In the following recipes, substitute ingredients local to where you live. For example, prickly pear cactus can be swapped out for a local berry or cherry; chipotle can be swapped out for a pepper variety grown in your region.
Juice Concentrate Ice Cubes
Frozen juice concentrate can be used all winter long to make beverages. Also, a couple of cubes tossed into a blender with ice, a bit of honey, and a sprig of mint make a great fruit drink year-round. Through a process called fractional crystallization, you can freeze juice and then thaw it partway, releasing concentrated juice.
Instructions
1. Freeze fruit juice. We like to use gallon freezer bags because you can lay them flat (we always need more freezer space) and later reuse them.
2. Begin to thaw it. The first third of the mass to thaw is concentrated juice. Pour this off into ice cube trays and refreeze it for future use.
3. The remaining two-thirds is mostly water and can be consumed as a refreshing, mildly fruity drink.
Chilled Prickly Pear Punch
A hydrating, calming summer drink. Promotes perspiration and cleanses the skin.
Instructions
1. Fill blender with 2 quarts cold water and then add 3 ice cubes of frozen prickly pear juice concentrate, 1 tray of ice, 1 teaspoon chopped ginger, 8 fresh mint leaves (or 1 teaspoon dried), 4 finger-lengths lemongrass, juice of 2 limes, 3 tablespoons your favorite sweetener, and a pinch salt.
2. Blend, strain, and serve.
Prickly pear cactus fruits are also known as tunas. Harvest with tongs and gloves!
Teas
Tea can be made from a variety of easily grown garden plants, including hibiscus, holy basil (tulsi), mint, hyssop, anise, fennel, lemon balm, chamomile, edible lavender, strawberry and raspberry leaves, rose hips, bee balm, caraway, cinnamon, citrus peel, dandelion, echinacea, ginger root, horehound, kava, lemon grass, licorice, nettle, yarrow, sage, and verbena (to name a few).
We make a variety of medicinal teas from wildcrafted plants that grow in the Chihuahuan desert. We supplement with plants from our garden.
Our west-facing mint has reached a point where I can start harvesting reasonable amounts. Today I went easy on it, just picking enough for a single dehydrator tray.
Hot Maple Mint Cream Tea
Warming on chilly days. Relieves headache and bellyache.
Instructions
1. Boil a quart of water.
2. Add 1⁄4 cup (fresh, slightly less if dried) your favorite variety of mint.
3. Let steep for 10 minutes, then strain. Add 3 tablespoons maple syrup and 2 tablespoons cream before serving.
Hot Spicy Citrus Ginger Tea
Perfect during cold and flu season. Boosts the immune system, opens the sinuses, and relieves sore throat.
Instructions
1. Boil a quart of water.
2. Mince a thumb-sized piece of ginger and add along with 1⁄3 teaspoon powdered chipotle, juice of 1 lime, a pinch salt, 3 tablespoons honey, and stir.
3. Let steep for 10 minutes, then strain.
Perky tea
Vitamin C packed. A noncaffeine stimulant. Opens bronchial passages and soothes head- and bellyaches.
Instructions
1. Mix equal parts dried ephedra plant, hibiscus, and mint.
2. Let steep in boiling water for 10 minutes, then strain. Sweeten with honey to taste. Serve hot or over ice.
Note: Ephedra is a strong herb and should be used with caution. Do not use if you are sensitive to stimulants, have a heart condition or high blood pressure, or are pregnant. Not suitable for children.
Gravity-Free tea
Antioxidant tea revivifies the adrenals, clears the lungs, relieves headache, and contains vitamin C.
Instructions
1. Mix equal parts by volume holy basil, hibiscus, mullein, and mint.
2. Let steep in boiling water for 10 minutes, then strain.
Coffee
At Holy Scrap we enjoy heroic doses of caffeine. We are sticklers about our coffee’s taste and care about how it is roasted. Poorly roasted coffee tastes burned and contains acids that upset stomachs.
Roasted and ground coffee costs up to three times the price of green coffee beans. Home-roasted coffee is economical, can be fine-tuned to your tastes, and makes an excellent gift. A good roast takes finesse and a developed skill.
Coffee roasters are expensive, often several hundred dollars. Sticking to our ethic of living in the waste stream, Mikey and I roast green coffee beans in old popcorn makers that we find at thrift shops and garage sales. The poppers usually cost us between $1 and $3. Not all are appropriate for this task. The right popper must have two features: the cylinder (whose sides near the bottom must be perforated) and a solid (not perforated) base. The best-known and favored model for this task is the Poppery I.
Mikey was pretty happy with our eBay purchase of green coffee beans — an 8-pound bag of Guatemala Prime.
Roasting Coffee Beans
Always roast coffee beans outdoors to release the CO2 the process generates.
Instructions
1. Place 2⁄3 cup of green coffee beans in the popcorn maker’s cylinder and run the machine until the beans are properly roasted. You will know the beans are ready when they turn dark and are oil-coated, and you hear a frequent crackling sound. It takes approximately 8 minutes to roast the first batch. (If you roast another batch, that and any subsequent batches will probably take half the time, because the metal cylinder in the popcorn maker is already warm.) We picked up this Poppery II for $1 at a yard sale.
2. When the beans are done, immediately put them in a metal strainer to cool, or they will taste burned.
3. Keep the beans in the strainer (or an open container) for 48 hours so that they off-gas the CO2 produced. Otherwise, it will be reabsorbed by the beans and make an acidic coffee that will hurt your belly.
Tip: A pinch of cardamom added to a hot cup of coffee reduces its acidity.
Milks and Smoothies
Milk does not always require a cow! Nut milks and creams are high in protein and delicious. Here are a few of our favorite nondairy milk and cream recipes.
Nut Milk
Coconut and nut milks are simple to make and lovely alternatives to animal milks. Like animal milks, nut milks contain protein. Try choosing a local nut. Where we live, pecans and pine nuts are easily obtained during harvest season, though our favorite sweet nut milks come from cashews and almonds.
Instructions
1. Fill 1⁄3 of a lidded glass jar with raw nuts or coconut shavings. Fill the rest of the jar with water and place the lid on.
2. Soak the nuts or shavings overnight.
3. In the morning, strain and discard the water they soaked in. Rinse the nuts a few times with fresh water.
4. Mix the nuts or shavings with hot water so that the ratio is 1 part nuts or shavings to 2 parts water. Blend in a blender on high; strain; store in the refrigerator.
Note: Instead of throwing away the strained coconut or nut pulp, tr
y spicing it in a frying pan and using it to replace cheese and meat filling in raviolis.
Dessert Cream
This is similar to whipped cream, but far more nutritional. Try this rich cream over berries with shavings of cacao bean and hazelnut.
Instructions
1. Soak raw cashews overnight.
2. Drain and discard the water they soaked in. Rinse the nuts a few times with fresh water.
3. Whip the hydrated nuts in a blender with a bit of honey.
4. Add a bit of water if necessary to obtain desired texture.
Date Almond Vanilla Yogurt Smoothie
This substantial high-protein beverage can replace a meal. It tastes like autumn smells.
Protein-rich cashew cream is yummy over berries, especially with cacao shavings on top.
Instructions
1. Soak 1⁄2 cup raw almonds overnight.
2. In the morning drain the water and rinse a few times.
3. Puree the nuts in a blender.
4. Add 2 cups yogurt, 1 cup cream or milk, 1 tray ice cubes, 4 pitted dates, 1⁄4 teaspoon vanilla, a sprinkle of nutmeg and/or cinnamon, and blend until smooth.
Beverage Storage
Corkers and cappers are inexpensive tools that help preserve homemade beverages. An oxygenator is an appliance that creates oxygenated water that can be used to clean the difficult-to-access interiors of reused bottles obtained for free from local restaurants or saved from previous wine purchases. All you need is a few sprays of oxygenated water swished around inside the bottle and then poured out.
Bottled homemade drinks are impressive gifts to bring to parties and potlucks. Customize the bottles with your own labels.
Last week we bottled our second batch of homemade wine, a shiraz. For this label I hand-drew the image because I really wanted it to look like our cat.
Living and Fermented Foods
Mikey and I are fans of author and fermentation fetishist Sandor Ellix Katz. He has written great books on home fermentation: Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods and The Art of Fermentation. In his books, Sandor advocates eating foods that have active bacteria and contain enzymes symbiotic to our body’s flora. Sandor describes some of the benefits of living foods as follows:
Digestion: microorganisms break down nutrients into more digestible forms
Nutrition: microbial cultures create vitamins through conversion
Protection: many organisms protect us from more harmful organisms and substances
Preservative: they produce alcohol and lactic and acidic acids
Fermented and living foods are often impossible to find in stores. Laws that require foods to be pasteurized (heated to temperatures that kill bacteria and make enzymes inactive) make some live foods illegal. Unpasteurized milk, for example, is illegal in most states. If you want to eat living foods, it is best to raise your own cultures. If you are new to fermentation, be sure to grab a good guidebook for tips on how to work safely in the world of microorganisms.
Some people believe that harmful microorganisms exist only in food that is manufactured and processed by large-scale systems. Most of the food produced in America is manufactured in this way, and so pasteurization is an accepted standard and law for dairy products. Honey, fruit juice, cheese, and yogurt are commonly pasteurized, but there is no legal requirement to do so.
We’ve found it safe and enjoyable to live with microorganisms. We have obtained microorganisms —bacteria, yeast, and fungus — on the Internet, networked to get them from friends, and traded them. Cultures are part of our domestic economy. See the next spread for some of the microorganism we keep alive in our kitchen. Mesophilic organisims thrive at moderate tempratures, and thermophilic organisms thrive with heat.
Airlocks on the mason jars allow natural gases to leave without letting air in.
Three-Day Lacto-Fermented Kimchi
Our lacto-fermented kimchi cooks vegetables enzymatically. Imagine that the microorganisms work with the enzymes (a chemical catalyst) to predigest your food. While the traditional process of making kimchi takes months, our lacto-fermented kimchi is ready to eat in three days. It is full of healthy probiotics and high in vitamin C. And did I mention that it’s delicious and inexpensive?
Ingredients
1 head your favorite cabbage
1 pound carrots
8 cloves chopped garlic (garlic can be swapped for onion)
2 tablespoons minced ginger
2 tablespoons sesame oil (sesame oil can be swapped for fish oil)
2 teaspoons salt
1⁄2 teaspoon dry red pepper flakes
juice of 2 limes
approximately 1 pint kefir whey (see page 243)
Instructions
1. Shred cabbage and carrots and fill mason jars with the mix. Press them down with the back of a spoon to pack the jar tight.
2. Mince the garlic and ginger in a bowl with sesame oil, salt, red pepper flakes, lime juice, and kefir whey that has been inoculated with a spoonful of kefir culture. Any whey that contains a live culture will do. Live cultures can be obtained from yogurt, a live cheese, or kefir.
3. Pour the liquid mixture over the cabbage and carrots, being sure all the vegetables are covered in the liquid. Leave a little space at the top for expansion. Cap tightly and store at room temperature, away from sunlight.
4. After approximately 24 hours, the mason jar lid will pop up from pressure. When this happens the jars are ready to go into the refrigerator. Refrigeration slows down the fermentation process.
Finishing: After three days in the fridge, the culture has fermented the vegetables and spices in the jar, and your kimchi is ready to eat. Serve over rice.
Note: The liquid in the jar will bubble and carbonate. Open the jar slowly. Like a bottle of champagne, it can flow over.
Kombucha
We raise microorganisms that produce a nutritional drink commonly called kombucha. A kombucha culture, called a mother, looks like a round, slimy, rubbery disc, though actually it is made up of millions of symbiotic microorganisms. It’s also called SCOBY, which stands for symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast. Kombucha mothers convert sugar blended with tea into a naturally carbonated drink that contains probiotics, a bunch of B vitamins, and antioxidants. The best way to acquire a mother is to find someone who makes kombucha. Since each batch produces new mothers (they’re called daughters), makers of kombucha will have spares.
CAUTION: If your mother catches a mold, throw it and the kombucha batch away. If you are unsure, look at images on the web. Molds usually have a texture and color of their own, and they grow on top of the mother.
Kombucha
This recipe produces four 34-ounce bottles. If you drink one bottle a week, by the time you’ve consumed a batch, your next round of kombucha will be just about ready for bottling. Don’t forget to share the daughters.
Prickly pear kombucha. Oddly enough, this tastes exactly like a watermelon Jolly Rancher.
Instructions
1. Brew 4 quarts of black tea and add 4 cups of white sugar. Over low heat, stir until the sugar is completely dissolved.
2. Remove the tea from heat and let it cool.
3. Pour the room-temperature tea into a widemouthed glass container. This is where the sweetened tea will be transformed into the sparkling fermented drink that is kombucha. Add the mother. Cover the glass container’s opening with a cotton cloth held in place with a rubber band.
4. Store in a cool place out of direct sunlight. Wait 14 days and then check the taste. Always use a clean spoon and never double-dip, because your mouth’s bacteria can contaminate the mother. If the tea is too sweet, wait a few more days and taste it again.
5. When the tea has achieved a taste you like, it is ready to bottle. Take the mother out of the container and place it in a clean bowl. Just before bottling, add a juice concentrate of your choosing, to taste. Our favorite is prickly pear cactus juice concentrate. Second to prickly pear, we fa
vor local pomegranate juice.
6. Pour the kombucha tea into swingtop bottles to store it. Swingtop bottles are secure and will not pop open due to the release of CO2 that takes place during carbonation. As you are ready to drink the tea, move the bottles to the refrigerator.
7. If you wish to make vinegar, let the kombucha mother sit longer. When the sugar is completely eaten up, vinegar remains.
8. Immediately begin the cycle again, storing the kombucha mother in a tea-and-sugar blend.