Wine and Mead
Few things are more exciting and empowering than making homemade aphrodisiacs such as wine and mead. People are wildly impressed when they receive a bottle, whether it’s made from vintage grapes, dandelions, clover, or honey. While we wait for our fruit trees to grow at Holy Scrap, we’ve been learning about winemaking by using wine kits. Kits have taught us the process, showed us the ingredients and additives used, and helped us understand the things that affect the taste. Making kit wine requires one-time equipment purchases — things like a hydrometer (a tool that measures the amount of alcohol in liquids), a carboy (a large glass container), a plastic bucket, and a corker. All of these can be found at wine supply stores; some starter kits include them. Wine kits come with the grape juice needed to make wine. You can choose your favorite varieties: chardonnay, pinot noir, zinfandel, and others. Kits cost well under $100 and produce 30 bottles of wine. Wine bottles are easily obtained from local restaurants and can be reused over and over again.
Mead
Making mead is alchemy. For the cost of 3 pounds of honey and some of your time, you can produce a hundred dollars worth of wonderful mead, a sweet alcoholic beverage. Unlike most beer, mead is gluten-free and hard to find. It makes a special gift.
Ingredients
2 (1-gallon) glass jugs
approximately 1 gallon water
3 pounds plus 1⁄2 teaspoon honey
plastic airlock
yeast (Champagne yeast, for a relatively dry mead)
4 to 6 wine bottles and corks or 4 to 6 swingtop bottles
Instructions
1. Heat 1⁄2 gallon of water to 100°F and mix well with 3 pounds of honey in a 1-gallon jug. Put an airlock on the jug’s opening and let stand for 24 hours.
2. Add water up to the base of the neck of the jug.
3. Heat 1⁄2 cup of water to 100°F and mix with a 1⁄2 teaspoon honey. Sprinkle yeast on top of the water mixture to activate the yeast. Let yeast activate for 30 minutes before adding it to the honey–water mixture in the jug.
4. Return airlock to the jug’s opening and let sit for 3 weeks away from sunlight in a moderate temperature room in your home (78 to 82°F is ideal).
5. After 3 weeks, the mead is fermented. Dead yeast will have settled at the bottom of the jug. Remove the airlock and carefully pour the jug’s contents into a second 1-gallon jug, leaving the bottom layer of sediment behind.
6. Top off with water, this time filling the neck of the jug. Return airlock to the jug’s opening and let stand for 2 more weeks.
7. Pour the mead into wine bottles, leaving behind any sediment and leaving a little room for expansion. Seal each bottle with a cork or use swingtop bottles. When bottling, you can add flavor in the form of a fruit concentrate. Add concentrate one tablespoon at a time until the taste is to your liking. The added sugar in juice concentrate helps carbonate the mead and bring out its flavor.
Finishing and Storage: Aging is critical. Let the mead sit for at least 3 months after bottling. Temperature matters; to get a good carbonation during this anaerobic stage, store your mead in a place where it can maintain 72°F. To help the cause, consider wrapping the jug or setting it on a small electric heating pad.
Dairy
At Holy Scrap we make our own dairy products. We have found that unpasteurized milk and cheese made from raw milk is easier to digest than pasteurized dairy products. Because unpasteurized milk and cheese are illegal in most of the United States, we consume them at our own risk. To obtain raw milk, we tell the farmer who sells it to us that we are buying it to feed to our pets. Some states allow people to buy a share in a cow and consume that cow’s milk.
Each week we buy two gallons of fresh raw milk. We pour the cream at the top of each gallon into mason jars for coffee and sauces. The rest we transform into soft mozzarella cheese, cream cheese, butter, and a cheddar or aged hard Romano. We flavor soft cheeses with sundried tomatoes, roasted garlic, or chives — simply by blending it with these ingredients in a food processor pulsed a few times. The beautiful, richly textured, living cheeses we make have more flavor than any artisanal cheese we have been able to afford.
Cheese making requires either a mesophilic or thermophilic culture and rennet. The type of culture depends on the type of cheese you are making. Buy a cheese-making book to guide you. As with wine making, you’ll need to make just a few one-time purchases, items that come in beginner starter kits.
Unprocessed cheese remains in a malleable state. When our homemade cream cheese or mozzarella starts to sour from sitting around too long, I fry it in oil to transform it into something similar to a fresh cheese common in South Asia called paneer.
Yogurt. When our kitchen is stocked up with homemade cheese, we use milk to make yogurt by inoculating a mason jar of fresh farm milk with a spoonful of yogurt. We place the activated mix in our homemade fermentation chamber and use the temperature controller that Mikey designed (see page 170) to hold the chamber at a temperature of 109°F. Twenty-four hours later, drain the excess fluid by straining over a cloth napkin in a colander. The end result is delicious yogurt full of healthful probiotics.
I also like to make my yogurt using a water bath technique. It’s quick (only about five hours), and the yogurt takes on a smooth texture that I love.
Whey. Making cheese produces a by-product called whey, a protein-rich liquid full of probiotics. We use kefir whey to make kimchi (see page 234) and feed our pets, and if ever I suspect that I have a vaginal yeast infection, I fill a douche with the whey. It balances out the yeast and bacteria in my body and adds good probiotic microorganisms to the body’s flora. Used in this way, it is a natural and inexpensive remedy with no negative side effects.
Protein
When wild game is available, we enjoy dishes made with animal protein. In between, our staple sources of protein are nuts, beans, mushrooms, and tempeh.
Mushrooms are fun to grow at home. An exotic variety of spores can be purchased on the Internet.
Tempeh
Tempeh is our favorite soy-based protein. Made of soybeans bound together by a fungus, it has a delicious, nutty flavor and makes a great meat substitute in dishes such as stir-fries. We also use it in sandwiches. Asian cultures call it the “meat of the fields” because it is a high-protein delight that can replace meat in many recipes. Because making tempeh is a long process with many steps, we make large batches and freeze it in meal-sized packages. Tempeh starters can be purchased on the Internet.
Ingredients
32 ounces dry soybeans
large metal pot
water
cooking thermometer
food processor
colander
tempeh starter
12 zippered sandwich bags
fermentation chamber (see page 255)
Instructions
1. Place the soybeans in a large metal pot. Fill the pot with water and soak overnight.
2. In the morning, pour off the water and refill with fresh water. Boil the beans on a stovetop or in a solar oven (at 300°F) for at least 1 hour, until tender.
3. Strain off the water again. Transfer the beans to a food processor and pulse three times.
4. Place the semichopped beans back into the metal pot and fill with water. Drain again, and rinse 5 times before pouring the beans into a colander to drain a last time. This process winnows the skins off the beans.
5. Transfer the skinless beans to the metal pot and heat to 90°F. Inoculate with 2 tablespoons of tempeh starter. Stir well.
6. Use a fork to make many small holes in the sandwich bags. Cover the bags in holes as though making a wallpaper pattern. Fill each bag 3⁄4 full with the inoculated tempeh mix and flatten out the bag so that the tempeh bricks are 1 inch thick. Place the bags in a fermentation chamber and set the temperature controller at 90°F for 24 hours.
7. After 24 hours, begin checking the tempeh. Look for a white fungus growing between the beans. The fungus will glue the beans togethe
r, forming a solid, bricklike mass. When the white fungus begins to show speckles of black, you know that your tempeh is ready. (This black tempeh fungus is not a sign of a problem.) Pull the tempeh bags from the fermentation chamber and freeze.
Serving: If you are adding tempeh to a stir-fry, try frying it until browned and crispy with chopped garlic, tamari, and honey. Then crumble or cut it into 1-inch lengths and serve over steamed veggies. Tempeh is wonderful on a sandwich with fresh greens, a slice of tomato, and your favorite dressing or condiment.
Baked Goods
You would think that making pasta, bread, crêpes, and other baked goods is hard to do because so few people do it. Baked goods are easy to make, inexpensive, and delicious. It’s amazing what you can do with time, flour, and an egg.
Make Your Own Flour
These days, many people are finding out that they are healthier cutting wheat flour out of their diets. Whether you’re a celiac or you’d just like to eat a more varied diet, flour is a good place to experiment with alternatives. Also, stored flours often contain molds that cause health problems. You can make your own nut, coconut, bean, and rice flours by grinding them in a blender or a coffee grinder. Find out if there is a plant that grows in your area that can be used as an alternative to wheat flour. Consider mixing this local flour into recipes. In southern New Mexico, mesquite trees are commonplace, so we grind mesquite bean pods to make a nutritious flour and add it in portions of one-third mesquite flour to two-thirds white flour in any recipe. This is a good ratio to use when mixing alternatives and wheat flour.
It’ll take some experimenting to come up with flours you love. Once you do, it’s easier than you might think to make your own breads, pasta, and pancakes. Once you start making your own doughs, a world of possibilities opens. Dumplings, egg rolls, phyllo, and ravioli dough; fancy breads like brioche; and rolls and baked treats like muffins, cakes, and cookies are variations of the same basic theme of flour and egg. To add extra nutrition to baked goods, add the pulp left from juicing fruits and vegetables and making coconut and nut milks. Nut and coconut pulp can be spiced in a frying pan and used as a filling for vegan ravioli.
Vanilla Extract
Today it is harder than ever to find vanilla extract that actually comes from the vanilla bean. Products sold as vanilla extract are often composed of sugar and artificial flavoring. But vanilla extract is simple to make at home and inexpensive. You need only a glass bottle, vanilla beans, and vodka or another flavorless high-proof alcohol. Vanilla beans can be purchased online. Enough beans to make 50 bottles of real vanilla extract can be bought for the price of a few bottles of the mimic sold in the stores.
Making your own vanilla extract requires just a few vanilla beans, alcohol, and a jar.
Instructions
1. Split 6 vanilla beans in half along their length and remove the seeds by scraping them out with a butter knife. The seeds can be added as flavoring to other treats, such as ice cream or cashew cream.
2. Place deseeded beans in a lidded bottle or jar. Fill with flavorless alcohol. From time to time, shake it. As the alcohol extracts the vanilla flavor from the bean, it turns brown and darkens. The longer it sits, the stronger the extract will taste.
Storage. Mikey and I keep a bottle of alcohol and vanilla beans on the kitchen counter. As we use the extract in recipes, we simply add alcohol to make up for what was used. When the color of the liquid is no longer deep amber, we replace the vanilla beans.
Snacks
Store-bought snacks contain preservatives that allow them to hang around on the shelves for years. Few are made with nutrition in mind. Our homemade snacks are nutritional and hardly qualify as junk food, but they sure do satisfy the craving for it.
Spicy Popcorn
Friends who have tried our spicy popcorn usually find themselves apologizing for the lack of control that follows their first bite of this savory treat.
Instructions
1. Heat 1⁄4 cup olive oil in a frying pan on a high flame.
2. Add 1⁄2 cup popcorn and cover with an upside-down metal bowl the same diameter as the frying pan. Let the kernels pop until the sound of popping slows dramatically. Flip the frying pan to transfer the contents of the pan into the bowl that served as a lid.
3. To season, add in this order: several dashes hot sauce, 2 tablespoons nutritional yeast, and 3 pinches salt. Stir with your hands. Taste, and if necessary repeat with another sprinkle of hot sauce, nutritional yeast, and salt.
Lime Chipotle Pistachio Nuts
It’s hard to stop once you start eating these. We quit when the lime and spicy chipotle starts to sting our tongues.
I have been experimenting with making flavored nuts using our vacuum sealer. The vacuum seems to accelerate the absorption of the liquids into the nuts.
Instructions
1. Mix 1⁄2 cup shelled pistachios with juice of 1 lime, 2 pinches chipotle powder, and 4 pinches salt.
2. Swish and serve right away.
Lime Chipotle Kale Chips
Time and time again friends look at us like we’re crazy when we pull out a bag of these funny-looking green chips. After the first bite they’re begging for a recipe and seeds to grow kale.
Instructions
1. Make a marinade: juice of 2 limes, 2 pinches chipotle, 4 pinches salt, and 1 tablespoon powdered onion.
2. Soak each kale leaf in the marinade.
3. Place on dehydrator tray. Dehydrate at 135°F for 4 hours. Season with chopped Brazil nuts for a cheesy taste.
Plant Medicine
There are many good reasons to get off of a dependence on pharmaceuticals. Pharmaceuticals require trips to doctors, are expensive, and can have serious side effects. Nature is wise, free, and often simple. Plants indigenous to a region tend to contain remedies commonly needed by those who live in that geographic area. In the dry desert of southern New Mexico, many plants aid the body in maintaining hydration. Our drinking water is highly mineralized, which can cause a buildup of uric acid, and some local plants counter that, helping prevent kidney stones. In the desert, where plants are thorny, and scrapes and punctures common, many local plants have astringent and disinfectant properties. We use the pith of the ocotillo plant to make a remedy for bellyaches and gas, yerba mansa for inflammation, scouring rush for a diuretic, ephedra for a stimulant and bronchial opener, osha for toothache and fever, mullein for an expectorant, and horehound for sore throats.
To determine which local plant remedies you need, list the most common ailments in your household. Using a local medicinal plant book, match each ailment to a medicinal plant that contains the needed remedy. Look up the times of year that the plant is best harvested and the parts of the plant that contain the medicinal alkaloids. Then set out with your wildcrafting tool kit to find it.
Tips
Never consume a plant if you are uncertain about what it is.
Check your plant guide to know which parts of a plant to use: leaf, bark, flower, seed, root, sap.
Avoid plants by roadsides and ditches or near any kind of contamination or waste.
Always collect where the plant is abundant, and never collect more than 20 percent of the amount visible to you.
Never collect in national forests or wildlife reserves.
Wildcrafting Tool Kit
small sharp knife
small shovel
small pruner/clipper
gloves
a sack or backpack to carry samples
paper bags to separate plant samples
a marker for labeling
a 20× zoom loupe for viewing the very tiny (Bausch & Lomb makes a great keychain loupe)
a guidebook
Storage
Most plants can be dried in a paper bag tacked to the wall and left alone for a week or two. I use baling wire tied to two screws at two ends of a window to make a simple line for hanging bags filled with harvested plants. The plants can also be dried out in the sun in a screened-in box. Steeping in alcohol
or honey extracts a plant’s medicinal properties while also preserving it for future use.
Before we built an outdoor dehydrator, I dried plants in paper bags.
Tinctures
Most plants give up their medicinal properties to a combination of water and alcohol. Some plants require more water, and others more alcohol. Local medicinal plant books give exact ratios for each tincture. Simple extractions can be achieved with the broad rule of 50 percent water and 50 percent alcohol.
Begin by filling any size mason jar with chopped fresh plant. Your medicinal plant book is a reference for the part of the plant to use: root, leaf, seed, or flower. A pint size is sufficient for a few ounces of tincture. To make a solvent, or menstruum, to extract compounds from plant tissue, mix together 50 percent high-proof grain alcohol (190 or higher) and 50 percent distilled water. Everclear, a 190 proof alcohol, can be purchased where liquor is sold and is suitable for making menstruum. Be sure the menstruum covers all the plant material in the jar and then screw on the lid. Shake the jar daily for two or three weeks, strain, and store. Test the potency of your tincture by sampling a few drops.
The Good Life Lab Page 17