Look what I ate!

I'm so excited. Two days ago I picked the first batch of MINI-mini carrots. The ones that were standing far too close. Yeah, I guess I should have done that like weeks ago, maybe even months, but I thought that spacing them was a waste of plants. Whatever. Now I got lots of tinys but I don't care!

Carrots. And carrot greens. And kale. And "Postelein".

Since it's less than three weeks until us on the boat my goal is to empty the pantry and the yard. No more store bought lettuce. And trying to cook off everything that's already there. My sister was of great help with that goal. We managed to rid a couple of jars. On top of eating that batch of eggplant. And on top of trying a lot of things that you gotta try when you come visit. Like tofurky sausages. Or ice cream.  Or that bunch of other delicious things that you can buy here but not there. You got the idea.

But as I said we still ate a lot from the pantry.

(On top you got some variation on tomato soup with the rest of home made sauerkraut and some vegan bologna topping. Underneath israeli couscous with carrot green - macadamia - kale pesto, tomatoes and postelein.

Aubergine overkill

I'm knee deep in eggplants and eggplant recipes. Actually I prefer the french name aubergine much better, thus I'm going to use it, as they do in germany and the UK.
Where did they come from?
My in laws found them. Four huge boxes filled with huge aubergines were sitting next to the free food building, up for grabs. I'm glad they took only one box since it contains already maybe 30 big pieces of eggplant. Oh yes. And since they don't eat a lot of fresh / don't cook much and Sisto doesn't either it's pretty much up to me to keep up with them.
Alas, aubergine it is. - No time to write, they are waiting for me in the kitchen...

Sourdough success

Yes.

Bread is done.

I adjusted the recipe a little bit: my starter had a weight of 660 g, so I increased the total amount of flour and water (proportional to mihl's recipe). And after one hour added a tiny bit of yeast to the dough (you can do that with a new sourdough) cause it hadn't risen at all.

I just tried my first piece of bread and it was so worth the effort. I'm so gonna start sourdoughing as soon as we're settled!

Little Challenges: Sourdough

6 days ago I started my first sour dough experience. Did you ever make sour dough? I didn't even think about it before I read >this<. But for the last half year every once in a while I came back to think about doing it.
The facts that made me try it right now were
 - my need to bake bread myself because I can't just go out and buy a nice loaf of "real bread"
 - the fact that they don't have fresh yeast which I really prefer for baking with yeast
 - the warm climate which should make it so easy peasy for the bacterias to grow.

So after nearly three months I got a big jar. And I got rye flour. In germany you get rye flour in every supermarket. I just saw it in some of the supermarkets in the organic section or at the health food store, so it was kind of expensive and whole grain, too. When I read a little bit more about sourdough yesterday I found out that whole grain flour is not the best one to start your culture with because there are some germs from the skin of the grain that make it harder for the desired bacterias to grow. So if you try it choose another type than whole grain for starting the sourdough if possible.

About my experience.. The first days were fine. The surface was bubbly. And it started to smell a bit sour. But after two days or so I really thought it might not work out. My dough wouldn't rise. There was some excessive fluid on the surface in the mornings. Yesterday was the last day of the process and I wanted to know if my dough was right or not. The internet did answer my question. It's ok if there's water on the surface. It's ok if it doesn't rise a lot. Your dough is ok as long as it doesn't start to mold, if it doesn't smell like you don't want to put your nose close to it again and if it doesn't start to be green or red or black. It is ok. I have a healthy and developing sourdough culture in my jar. And when I fed it for an additional time yesterday morning it would start to bubble nicely and had a gentle sour smell.

YEAH.
Today there's not a bit of water on the surface and I'm going to bake my first sourdough bread when I'm finished here. You wanna see a picture? Here you go:

Check out my bread >here<.