Confessions of a Food Hoarder

Cold weather and short days push everyone inside.  Being on duty on Sunday, usually a quiet day, I tackled the back room.  The animal room, the storage room, the miscellaneous room.  The back corner has a food storage shelf.  I found four bags of brown sugar as I sorted and organized.  You never know when you might have to bake 25 batches of chocolate chip cookies!  An unreasonable amount of canned tomato sauce was sorted and noted.  Time to make spaghetti!!  I am a food hoarder.  It is true. 

Then I cleaned the room.  Dog hair, cat hair, cat litter, and dust were wiped away, vacuumed away, and swept away.  The vacuum bag was stuffed and changed.  The floor got mopped.  Much better, thank  you.

Meanwhile, cooking ensued.  Two batches of really great lentil soup from my go-to Insta Pot site Lentil Soup Recipe which fed the Family at work on Monday.  Three loaves of sour dough bread as I continue my quest to conquer this bread type.  A loaf of bourbon banana bread from a great recipe go-to site  Food 52 Browned Butter Bourbon Banana Bread Recipe  This site is my unraveling for kitchen gadgets.  Mike noted the other day that I had every kitchen gadget made and although this is not 100% accurate, it is close!  My latest can be viewed here Coolest-Ever Spice Grinder

We hunted on Saturday.  This was before the cold snap swooped into Jackson Hole, shivering even the toughest hombre.  The day was comfortable, however, only elk tracks were found.  Still a great morning and a nice ride.  So nice we share this love for the outdoors.  And we have the truck and trailer and stock to make it happen. 

An unusually cold front is coming through the valley sending morning lows in the minus readings.  So much for planting any more bulbs in the ground!  Trick or treating will be cold come Thursday night.  And we all moan as we prepare to lose an hour on Sunday, turning our clocks back.  I always feel cheated that day.

Tuesday night after-work activities included un-crocking a variety of ferments made from my garden cabbage.  They have been bubbling away, turning into various flavors of deliciousness.  Here are the flavor combinations:

Johnny's Kraut.  Named after Johnny Robinson - who loves this recipe - this is green cabbage, dill, and thinly sliced lemons.  Tart and a bit bitter from the lemon rinds, this just tastes healthy!  Great on a burger.
Holiday Kraut:  Fresh cranberries come around this time of the year.  I was pretty sure it would flop when I created this recipe last year, but no, it is delicious!  Green cabbage and sliced cranberries make for a subtle flavored mild kraut.  Lovely in its color and delicious all on its own.
Baseball Kraut:  A bit of green cabbage and a lot of onions and red pepper, this kraut is a home run every time!  It's Mike's favorite.  Spiced with paprika and mustard seeds, it tastes and looks awesome on a brats! 
End of the Season Kraut:  This new recipe is my 2019 Winner of the Year!  I literally cleaned out the refrigerator on this one.  Cabbage, carrots, zucchini, red pepper, red onion, garlic, and caraway seeds.  Wow!  This one throws a pack of flavor and deliciousness.  I'll be making another batch soon!

Fermentation draws me these days.  Every week, I bottle a new batch of kambucha, fermenting away in half gallon mason jars in the bathroom, building their SCOBY (Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast) layer by layer until there are so many layers I have to throw them away.  My sourdough culture bubbles and brews almost jumping out of the container waiting to be folded into another loaf of sourdough bread or sourdough pancakes.  Here is my most favorite-ever recipe for pancakes; these things are amazing ever single time Best EVER Sourdough Pancakes    Am I going to make beer next with my prolific hop crop?  Probably not.  I doubt I will be making wine either.  Still, there are lots of multiplying bacteria in my life adding flavor and health benefits to those who partake. 

Handy Man

Here is how it usually works.....I find something so unbelievably cool at the ReStore, and well, I just can't leave without it.  It's usually very unique, but I know it will require The Handy Man's  some way or another.  I buy it anyway, with hesitation and consternation.  And then I wait until the Handy Man is in a relatively good mood...."hey, Darlin', I have a small project for you."  He huffs and puffs.  He has to make a zillion trips back and forth getting the right tools, things don't fit, pieces are needed; all the time, I'm feeling like a real imposition in the Handy Man's life.

These projects have included the hanging of many lights.  This one, is, by far, the most unique light I have ever seen!!  When the whole escapade was over, I think even the Handy Man was pleased!!

It was a relaxing weekend, for sure.  The weather was snotty.  Cold, rainy, windy then snow.  Nothing to do outside unless one wanted to be miserable.  Which is how the horses and mules looked as gale force winds threw sheets of stinging snow eastward bound.  We watched from the comfort of the inside, wood stove crackling. I always feel bad for our stock when winter arrives.

Saturday morning, just at daylight, Ruby growled.  We figured she was growling at the passing mules and horses.  We were up and about shortly after and there, in the hay field, just out from the house, were at least 100 grazing elk!  It was so cool!!  We snuck out on the deck and slipped into the hot tub watching them graze down the cut plants.  The horses grazed nearby.  And then a coyote came along hunting the pocket gophers.  What a treat!

Chlorine Gas

It doesn't take much chlorine gas to kill you; only 10 parts per million.  When we got called to respond to a gas leak at the Town of Jackson Public Works well house, the risk to mitigate the hazard increased exponentially when we learned that gas that was leaking was chlorine.

Thankfully, Teton County has a team of highly-trained hazard mitigation members and because they are local, they were able to respond quickly.  The tanks were turned off within two hours and the hazard abated.  No evacuations were required. 

This high risk, low frequency event reminded us, once again, the value of good training.  This team trained on a scenario just like this real-life event last year.  That training was put to good use yesterday and everyone has a happy-ending story. 

Well done, Team!!

The End of the Summer Season

Fall can be such a beautiful time of the year.  Lows in the teens, highs in the sixties; the days are blue skied and glorious. 

Time for bulb planting.  Thank you Friend Janet for the box full of bulbs.  They are nestled in the dirt waiting for spring.  Your generous gift makes me certain many will be a surprise when they poke their spring ware up out of the ground.  I did not map where I put these bulbs....!

This weekend, I planted another 50 cloves of garlic.  That is 150 cloves of garlic waiting to make full bulbs ready by next August.  A local gardening coop sells one head of garlic for $2.  With some luck - and some sacrifice to our personal garlic stock - another 50 will get planted this weekend and finish out the year.