Pumpkin Soda (5 gallons)

1. First carbonate 4 gallons of water in a clean and sanitized keg. Carbonate for 2-3 days.
2. Cut one 4-5 lb sugar pumpkin in half. Preheat the oven to 350F and start a teakettle full of water boiling. Clean out the pumpkin of seeds and loose flesh and place face down on a baking sheet in the oven. Save the seeds to roast. Add 1/2 inch of boiling water to the baking sheet, around the cut pumpkin, and let bake for 1 – 1.5 hours.
3. Let the cooked pumpkin cool in the oven overnight. All future steps should be performed with sterilized equipment only.
4. The next day, scoop out the pumpkin into a food processor. Process thoroughly, scraping with a spatula to make sure there are no lumps. Add 4-5 ground cinnamon sticks and ~20 cloves (use a spice grinder). You can add fresh nutmeg at this time as well.
5. Add 12 ounces of frozen apple juice concentrate. Continue to mix.
6. Strain mixture through a metal strainer into a pitcher, using the spatula to push the mixture through. If desired, strain a second time through a cheesecloth lined metal strainer (there may be grit from the spices or a little pulp from the pumpkin without the second step).
7. Add 900-950 grams of brown sugar to the pitcher and mix with the spatula.
8. Add the thick mixture to the 4 gallons of carbonated water in the keg. Add an additional 18 ounces of apple juice concentrate and mix by inverting the full keg.
9. Let carbonate one full day and serve.
10. (Optional: spike with rum or cinnamon schnapps.)

One treasure was finding that the carrots we had left in the ground all winter were truly kept as if in a root cellar. I stumbled upon this trick last year, when I forgot to pull up all of the carrots, and found some in the early spring that were tasty and perfectly preserved. Now that we have 7 lbs, 3 ounces of carrots in the kitchen, it’s time to make braised carrots. We’ve been in luck with the following recipe, inspired by the book “Fast, Fresh and Green” (an excellent vegetable cookbook):

Braised Carrots

1. Combine 1 tablespoon of cranberry or tangerine juice, 2 teaspoons of maple syrup, and 1 teaspoon of sherry vinegar in a small bowl and set aside. Cut 1/2 tablespoon of butter into four pieces and place in the fridge.

2. Heat 1 tablespoon of butter and 1 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil in a 10 inch straight sided saute pan at medium high until melted. Add 1 lb of carrots sliced into either medallions or thin sticks and 3/4 teaspoon of kosher salt and toss well. Place the carrots in as much of a single layer as you are able and cook, covered (no stirring) until the bottoms are slightly brown (about 5 minutes). Toss the carrots using tongs, until both sides are turned at least a little brown and the carrots are a little limp (another 5 minutes, the pan should be darker now).

3. Carefully pour 1/4 cup of vegetable broth in and quickly cover. Let the carrots cook until only 1-2 tablespoons of the liquid remains, about 1-2 minutes. Uncover and reduce the heat to medium low. Add the juice/syrup/vinegar mixture, as well as the cold 1/2 tablespoon of butter. Turn the carrots in the mixture gently with a silicone spatula. Scrap the brown bits off the pan and make sure the carrots are well coated with the mixture and the butter is all melted (3o sec to 1 minute). Remove the pan from the heat and add 2 teaspoons of finely chopped fresh tarragon. Serve warm.

A while back I picked up a santa suit – a not-great handmade one, made of an athletic jacket with fake fur stitched around the cuffs and edges. Along with some terrible red 80s pants, and a hat and boots at home, I was all set. The cashier was soooo excited. “Who’s going to be santa??” she sang in an excited voice. “I am,” I said, and she seemed taken aback (I’m not particularly santa-like in appearance). I smiled and paid.

I don’t think she wanted to know it was for a drunken parade full of santas. That is definitely not what she had in mind.

http://moonmustard.blogspot.com/

UPDATE: Moon did not pull through. There is a benefit planned for February, and we are doing what we can to financially and emotionally give support to her husband, Martin. Sad news for our cooperative.

Years ago, raisins were the primary way to flavor sodas – and even wine in places in Mongolia. They add not only sweetness, but a fruity tone and if you are naturally carbonating your soda, can be a source for your yeast fermentation, since it is a great food source for yeast. In this recipe, I added honey since it is one of my preferred sweeteners, but I’d modify it next time to shift more of the sweetness to come from white sugar (both honey and brown sugar add flavors along with the sucrose).

Honey Cream Soda

1. Clean and sterilize your 5 gallon keg. Add 3 – 3.5 gallons clean water and carbonate for 2-3 days.
2. In a large pot, boil 1 gallon water. Add 0.56 cups chopped raisins, 2 cinnamon sticks, 1.75 cups white sugar, 1.75 cups honey and 6.5 cups brown sugar*.
3. Let cool. Use ice packs on the side of the pot if you want to (slightly) speed up this process. Once the mixture is close to room temperature, add 1.25 teaspoons cream of tartar and 0.75 cups vanilla. Stir and strain very well to remove all raisin and cinnamon pieces.
4. Add to the keg and mix with inversion. Add more clean water if needed. Carbonate for one more day.

*Next time, I’ll shift the balance of sugar more to white sugar to allow the other flavors to shine through: perhaps 4 cups sugar, 1.5 cups honey, 4.5 cups brown sugar.

The color is a light brown, just slightly darker than a commercial cream soda. Vegan friends have differed on whether this is a truly vegan recipe – depending on whether they choose to consume honey or not. Be sure to explain your ingredients to people so that they can make their own choices. The flavor is deliciously honeyed and barely spicy, and the raisins add a difficult to identify fruitiness.

I have hungered for good animation shorts ever since, and will join the hipster-ish cry for more independent pieces, things that reflect individual creators and concepts, instead of a future marketing plan. A short is a lovely way to explore a new art medium like animation and requires good storytelling for it to make it out into the world at large.

Lately, I’ve come across two animation bits that I really like. One old, one new – and both using stop-motion techniques, one of my favorite kinds of animation.

Cheburashka is an adorable “creature unknown to mankind” whose name comes from his tendency to “topple” over. Produced in the late 1960s and early 1970s as a handful of shorts starring him and his crocodile friend Gena, they get into adventures together that bring out the strange and adorable in Soviet Russia. It is surreal to watch Gena fix a corporation’s big oil leak into a river and Cheburashka pine for the opportunity to be a Pioneer (very similar to American Cub Scouts).

This youtube user has been kind enough to subtitle most of the episodes in English here.

The newer animation short is from a Canadian (yep, lots of animators up there it seems) who has been playing with his toys for a long time. This short in particular makes the anthropomorphization of a popular 1980s toy seamless. The music works well too – I look forward to other non-Transformers shorts from him.

It’s so nice to discover new animation bits. Post more in the comments if you’ve seen some neat ones lately.

Any alarms going off yet? Luckily for these two Russian girls, their friend did suspect something fishy – and even from a road trip through Wyoming, he called upon help at Metafilter to work on preventing what sounded like a textbook case of human trafficking.

The full thread of what happened is here. It’s pretty long, but a breathless read if you have the time. There’s a good summary from Mother Jones magazine, and it may still be unfolding as the authorities did get involved.

It blows my mind that even rational people in reach of good technology, transportation and friends can be lured into this trap. Slavery is more rampant now than it was 300 years ago, it is just couched in more convoluted terms of owing money for room and board, or being “taken care of” instead of being a burden to the family. From wikipedia,

“The organization Anti-Slavery International defines slavery as “forced labour.” By this definition there are approximately 27 million slaves in the world today, more than at any point in history and more than twice as many as all African slaves who survived being taken to the Americas in the Atlantic slave trade.”

It is relieving to see how in this case how many strangers worked together so quickly (over a 24 hour period, practically) to keep these girls from falling into a bad, bad situation. And knowing both what this looks like (job offers fall through, then once the targets arrive in the U.S., a meeting is set for a job that doesn’t seem like something that would need to recruit employees from abroad); and who are some helpful sources (Polaris Project is recommended here) is information I’m glad to pass along.