Washingtonians

[blueducklings]

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WELCOME

from Redmond...
and Seattle if our family restaurant on Capitol Hil countsl.

 

[KMHunter]

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I am going tomorrow morning(not early). I was wondering if a few people would be showing some chickens. Any ideas?

 

[Stumpfarmer]

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The best tomato I've ever grown was an orange, not Kellog Breakfast (which is a very good variety) but Earl of something, I can't remember, a nice big smooth spherical fruit that managed somehow to be both juicy and not leaky and extremely flavorful, an heirloom of about 1750. It was one of Caroline Male's favorites, too. Roma is OK if you need bulk for sauce, but it's no Stupice- which is not a rare breed, and would be as appropriate for commerce as Roma except that large scale commercial production is as driven by habit as it is by profit.

There's a lot of heirloom varieties which are not innately superior on all axes (excluding commercial value), in my experience- some pink brandywines, for example, which are highly flavorful but need a great deal more catering to their precise needs to produce more than one or two fruits per plant than I had time for even when I was younger and healthier. And old commercial cultivars like Blue Lake pole beans were the standard for the industry for so long because they did, in fact, taste better and were more productive than their predecessors, but have been replaced by machine-harvestable varieties with little or no flavor, and the commercial seed lines have not been rogued sufficiently to maintain the perfect characteristics. One can grow heirloom haricot vert but to my taste they lack the pronounced umami that marked a proper Blue Lake and go to seed too fast for a canning/freezing garden variety.

 

[Stumpfarmer]

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Howdy! I have, over the years, spent a good deal of time in the Madison Valley with a good friend who used to have a MUCH TOO VIGOROUS climbing rose, now shaded out by her maple tree.

 

[VelvettFog]

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Another by-product of breeding for production and not flavor -- modern tomatoes have a lower acid content than heirloom (sp?) fruit. This lower acidic level is often the cause of food poisoning. Folks use "gram-ma's" recipe to can tomatoes or to make canned sauce and don't add enough of their own acid to get the ph correct for long term storage. Same issue for home-canned beats.

Dave

 

[Stumpfarmer]

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Another by-product of breeding for production and not flavor -- modern tomatoes have a lower acid content than heirloom (sp?) fruit. This lower acidic level is often the cause of food poisoning. Folks use "gram-ma's" recipe to can tomatoes or to make canned sauce and don't add enough of their own acid to get the ph correct for long term storage. Same issue for home-canned beats.

Dave

Well, beets have always been tricky to can. And now I'm struck with a craving for baby beets with beet greens inappropriate to the hour and my lack of beets.

What I bewail lately is the passing from the market of the good old fashioned seedy resinous tangerine (again, something I couldn't get today if they did exist, but I digress) in favor of the nasty bland sticky sweet seedless modern varieties. There has, in fact, been a drive to breed oranges and tangerines which taste almost totally of sugar and nothing sharp or sour, and the fires summer before last knocked out the last few old-fashioned tangerine groves in California. Ditto dessert grapes: there used to be a glorious late variety called Ribier, big and meaty and with four huge seeds and piquant black skin, that showed up in markets from Halloween to Christmas: nothing the like has been in the market for the past decade or so. It's especially annoying because the older varieties of citrus and grapes didn't drive up my blood glucose numbers, and now I'm basically stuck with nothing I can eat.

 

[Totalcolour]

Speaking of food and preserving, I just finished (yesterday) canning a big batch of duck stock. MGSU (most glorious spousal unit) and a friend had what he calls a "WHACK" day and after boning out the breasts and taking off the legs, I had a whole bunch of lovely carcasses ready for stock. If you like chicken stock, you would die for duck stock. Once it's chilled and the fat has solidified, I remove the fat and toss most of it, just keep a jar or two for sauteing.

We don't grow veggies, we use all the land for the chickens, ducks, rabbits and goats. A friend gives us veggies from their greenhouse (which is Huge).

Has anyone tried "sous-vide" (water bath) cooking yet? Got a machine for my birthday last year and it's the most wonderful thing to cook in. You can cook the toughest, cheapest cut of meat and it comes out like the tenderest, most flavourful filet, pork tenderloin, lamb (whatever kind of meat you are cooking). Best off all, once you set the correct temperature you can go away and leave it for hours, it simply WON"T overcook meat!

I love anything gadget that frees up my time to do the stuff I really want to do

 

[hallerlake]

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Welcome.

Just north of Northgate.

 

[Stumpfarmer]

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I will come get duck fat and trade for... well, apples, soon, if you like Thompkins King. Or other things at other times of the year. You're close to me (I'm in Union Mills, the old part, not the instasuburbs).

 

[blueducklings]

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What kind of ducks do you have???