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After over a year of debating whether to give pumpkin soda a shot, I finally kegged a pretty good first batch. I learned in initial testing to use real, cooked sugar pumpkins instead of canned pumpkin (the canned pumpkin had a funky smell), and to lean a little on the spices and apple juice to give it a well rounded taste. The below recipe met with favorable reviews:

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.)

We turned over our garden recently – added $40 of compost, double dug the whole plot, weeded it (yes, the grass was moving in even this early), and formed true paths by “raising” beds using 2×6 boards acquired from ReSource. It all looks nice and accessible now, and just needs the drip irrigation rearranged and seeds to be planted!

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.

My brother and I meet at the thrift store halfway home from my work sometimes. We like to judge the couches (he likes long, ugly couches for their underdog factor and their ability to handle tall firefighters looking to take a nap); look at brightly colored clothes, and browse the home goods for various projects we like to do.

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.

A new season, and I’ve cleaned out the sticky, dark pulp from the Sparking Blackberry Lemonade in the soda keg. Now on tap for the autumn is a more traditional soda – a cream soda flavored with vanilla, brown sugar, raisins and honey.

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.

Looking good, Jana!

So here’s a mohawk question: let’s say I intend to be fewer than 200 miles from the Gulf Coast in three weeks, happily dispensing mohawks to those who ask. Do you think 10-20 mohawk leftovers would be enough to send to Gulf Coast relief efforts in which hair is being collected to make hair booms to help with the oil spill? Discuss.

Last late summer, I was in the market for a new bed. I have been sleeping on a very thick and sturdy futon that I have owned for the last 12 years. Before that, it had a long life as a bed for a friend who was coming out in San Francisco. (Who is now wanting to become a Catholic monk, but that’s another story). So, even if it is suitably thick, firm, and good for another decade, I think it’s time for a new bed.

The problem arose when in the maze that is Ikea in Utah; I was overwhelmed with choices, all of which I didn’t like. I could find a mattress I liked, a slat set I liked, box springs I liked, but all the beds were…well, if you’ve been there you’ve seen the homage to Swedish design that left me with lots of light or black wood designs that were all very low to the ground. I am ready for a grown-up bed, preferably one as high as a fancy hotel bed, with high thread count sheets to match. Luckily, my frustration was met with a suggestion from Sam: “Well, we could make our own bed.” I hadn’t considered this. I assumed it took knowledge only a carpenter with a pencil permanently mounted behind the ear could do. But turns out, beds can be made by people with an eye for measurement and knowledge of where to get high quality fasteners. (check and check).

Of course, after purchasing the slats and mattress, strapping them to the top of our solar trailer and bringing it back through the winds of Wyoming to home; the proposed September/October project is still in design phase. But here is what has been done so far:

• Picked out a baltic birch plywood that has “a large number of thin, void-free plys”
• Picked out and tested a dark stain
• Drawn up some preliminary designs, inspired by this box:
• Determined a bed height desired of 28-29 inches
• Used Sketch-Up and Illustrator to determine the cut pattern for the different pieces of the bed
• Tested these preliminary designs on the CNC Router “Findy“, to ensure a depth that allows the light wood to show through the stain but doesn’t weaken the wood

We’re not done, obviously, but we need to finish determining the pattern and putting it into software, since the order of assembly goes: stain, cut pattern, cut pieces, sand, polish, and assemble. But hopefully it is finished in next month or two, and I get my new bed. Project time…

It has been unusually rainy the past two months, which means that the lettuce and spinach in the garden didn’t bolt quite as quickly as most years. All the better to eat salads like the one here: multiple kinds of heirloom lettuce, topped with a nasturtium flower. Nasturtiums are edible flowers, with a spicy flavor. I have a large bush of them, meaning I’m not using even half of what’s there, unfortunately. But there are many bounties of the garden that I do get to take full advantage of: sugar snap peas, herbs of all kinds, collard greens, rainbow chard, onions, radishes, tomatoes (the walls of water from the smart and generous gardener Cynthia made a huge difference – we had ripe tomatoes weeks before most people we’ve talked to), and of course the crop that is like pure gold: basil. This recipe is my standby for pesto I can eat for weeks, it’s so good. Luckily, that is exactly what I’ve been doing after the first cutting – and there are probably two more batches out of what is still growing in the garden. This was exactly the plan for this year: 1 1/2 rows of basil, planted a couple weeks apart in both seed and seedlings, ensuring a summer full of pesto. It is that rare occasion where I got exactly what I wanted. And when I carry the bags full of the basil home on my bike, I cackle like a toothless miner, ready to trade in my gold for a good meal and a good time at the saloon.

Next on tap for the non-alky spot in the warehouse’s kegerator? Hibiscus soda!

I love root beer, but the ingredients are expensive, and I’m still on the fence about adding caramel color to make it more appealing to the masses. So what other sodas can be kegged? Numerous ones – though I’m not a straight-up cola fan, and am generally not into fruit sodas either. However, our other brewer on the premises suggested a hibiscus soda – not unlike a common Mexican summer drink, oaxaca or sweet waters – made with jamaica (hibiscus), lime, cucumber, strawberries, or other summery ingredients. After checking out several recipes, I opted for the simplest: dried hibiscus blossoms, sugar and water. The test batch, completed Tuesday night came out with great color and flavor – even working with a recipe that listed “sugar: amount to taste”. I already liked hibiscus in herbal tea – this just brings it to an evening drink with the carbonation. It also competes with the trendy pomegranate drinks, since hibiscus is also high in Vitamin C.

The keg is carbonating for several days with 4 gallons of water – on Monday, I’ll make up what is essentially the hibiscus soda syrup in one gallon of water to be added to the keg and carbonated for an additional 3-4 days. That makes it ready to go for 4th of July weekend – and the following weekend’s art show. Here’s the basic recipe in case you feel like trying it – the non-keg, quick’n'dirty way to carbonate is to make it with half the water and top up with club soda:

Hibiscus Soda

2 quarts water

1 cup dried hibiscus blossoms (at groceries stores in the West, or in Mexican markets)

1/2 cup sugar

Boil the hibiscus blossoms in the water for ~4 minutes. Let steep another 10-15 minutes and strain. Add the sugar and mix thoroughly. Carbonate and pour over ice. Makes 2 quarts (duh).

The new garden is going pretty well – with lots of bare spots as I think carefully about what to fill up the remaining space with. There’s a section for herbs that includes some Iranian varieties gifted by a fellow gardener (because who would refuse Iranian tarragon?), peas twisting around the fence, a scattering of greens that is fighting off some determined insects, basil that can’t grow fast enough for my taste, potatoes, onions, brussel sprouts and nasturtiums doing quite well, and multiple types of peppers and tomatoes that are fighting the irritating flea beetles. Sometimes organic gardening rules feel like a serious handicap, although usually it feels like cutting out additional work.

This is mainly true as we consider whether to raise beans. Since the green bean in black bean sauce recipe has been perfected (to be posted soon), it’s a nice fantasy to imagine bringing home healthy green beans and garlic from the garden to be mixed with black bean sauce, other seasonings and served over Texmati rice (my stomach is growling already). But if there is one thing I am being warned away from planting, it’s beans. Specifically, the bean beetle (I suspect it is the Mexican Bean Beetle described here) is a terrible scourge – serious enough that some gardeners propose that everyone make a pact to not raise beans for one year, just to discourage the insect. Others recommend an intensive plan of covering the plants in a tent of red tulle (red, I am told, lasts longer in the UV rays than white tulle. No other colors were discussed.) that you must quickly and covertly enter when harvesting beans. Stories of dive bombing beetles, of beautiful beans that disappeared overnight, of a garden plot turned practically brown with the thick layer of bugs all have me thinking I may have to give up on beans in this plot.

My only hope at this point is a friend’s suggestion: why not find a beetle-resistant variety of bean? I suppose we’re not too picky: just something with the texture and general taste of a fresh green bean. But the internet isn’t yielding any answers – most research into producing beetle-resistant beans has been limited to soybean crops. But if I could find a good resistant bean, I’d be all set – though I’d probably try the red tulle plan too just to be sure.

In the meantime, spinach, the garden’s first crop in most years is ready to eat! After this weekend, we’ll be able to start having summer salads and use herbs too. I can’t wait to see the crazy brussel sprout stalks shoot up, and tomato flowers forming. A drip irrigation system is in the plans and if I can keep up with the volunteer sunflowers and other weeds there will be much to enjoy out of the garden this year. Having sunlight kicks ass.

There’s been a lot of action at the warehouse/Big Project lately. In 25 days, we erected a loft approx. 800 sq ft in size, including stairs and railings (well, most of the railings). We bought furniture, put up art, created a bar, and put out a spread worthy of the Queen. OK, so the Queen never showed for our NYE Open House. But it was still a pretty fantastic event, with about 150 people attending, demonstrations of the plasma cutter, fire performance, homebrew, good music, and champagne. We were extremely lucky that we were seen as a hot new event – and that those who attended were generous with donations to help cover our expenses and the cost of constructing a loft (wood = not cheap, even if our labor was “free”). Even the clean-up wasn’t too bad! All that being said, I think all of us are glad that we’re better known in the community and that everything went off without a hitch. Now it’s time to get to use our spaces as we intended – for projects we didn’t have space for before. Well, at least, after we paint the loft and stairs and put down grip tape on the steps and finish the railings and maybe improve the bathroom…

See that? That is the new Big Project. Despite whatever we did or did not learn from running a fire performance LLC, we decided to take on the larger project of organizing a group of people who want “project space”, and making that space possible. What you see to the left is the original bare bones set-up. While it looks a lot more like a workshop this week, it still has a long way to go: we have to balance our budget, we have to get rid of five pallets of cardboard, five exterior doors (old tenants love to leave behind junk), build a loft, and solve issues about what is expected of everyone so there is a strong culture of respect. Luckily, so far we have a truly excellent group of people. I was starting to give up on this city having people who are this high quality, but I’m glad to be proven wrong. Now if only we could find a taker for all those doors…in the meantime, I’ll try to post updates as the space comes together. The Big Project will hopefully allow me to brew root beer for incorporation into the multi-tap kegerator, do tie-dye without risking other people’s floors, and Sam and me to build our other Big Project: a paper incinerator that is also an art piece that is also easy to use and transport, that also meets particulate matter standards, etc. Hmm.

These wheeled structures are carrying 3 solar panels connected to 4 seriously sturdy batteries, an inverter, and some other stuff to create power for 40 people, nonstop, for 10 days. It could go longer, no problem, but eventually you want a shower. Bravo to Sam, Lohr, and that friendly red truck, Tuff Cherry, for making it all possible.

There’s a tradition in my family. One that depending on one’s age, or experience of the past year, each member either dreads or looks forward to. When a birthday rolls around, the family member being celebrated gets to pick a dessert they’d like for their birthday “cake”. However, they get NO say in what the cake looks like.

This is an important distinction, because ever since I can remember, the birthday dessert is sculpted, decorated, or manipulated into representing a significant aspect of whatever the given person has gone through for the last year. Some years it’s been a joke, about someone being obsessed with a new sport (a replica of a frisbee golf “hole” filled with chocolate chip cookie “discs”), or deciding a new career path (when I wanted to grow up to be president, it was a perfectly iced presidential seal), or when someone became politically involved in a local topic (complete with picketing lego people around a factory). These examples don’t even begin to cover the creative territory my mom can handle…but suffice it to say there are a great number of interesting scenarios that have been played out on top of desserts in my family.

So saying, when my brother got back from his latest fire fighting trip, he had a pretty good idea of what his birthday dessert might look like. After picking a favorite blueberry crumb cake, he figured it’d be something about his mad chainsawing skills, which have kept him and his crews safe for years now. But it was his descriptions of the scenery that stuck with the rest of us: fighting fires along the Pacific Coast, on steep coastal slopes that made chainsaw work dangerous, and under constant attack from poison oak. In fact, my poor brother came back from his three week stint covered in disgusting looking wounds and rashes from the poison oak, and tales of the necessary prednisone shots that tend to make a group of gruff, overworked and under-rested firefighters a little aggressive. I suppose we were all glad that these risks weren’t as fatal as the fire itself can be, but we did wish that he was given better protection from the issues he did face.

This cake, however, topped a lot of previous efforts. It recreated the steep slope, with the crumbs standing in for the rough dirt and rocks. Instead of candles, my mom covered it with toothpicks, and carefully topped them with foliage made of crepe paper, making it a realistic depiction of a forest that WAS INDEED HIGHLY FLAMMABLE. She even cut up green gummi bears and scattered them around to look like poison oak. When presented with this bizarre cake, which went up quite like a California wildfire when it was lit, we prodded him to do what he does best; to put the fire out, fast. That he did, though bits of ash were still floating down when the cake was cut. Luckily for us, he put out yet another fire, and even more importantly, his weeks of firefighting gave him the healthy appetite required for the clean up.

About this time, spinach bolts, sugar snap plants turn yellow, and tomatoes finally start to show promise. And luckily, even our shady plot is doing the same – a few things refused to come up, but for the most part it has kept my gardening needs and tastebuds fulfilled. It is pretty funny to find a new volunteer sunflower each week – I can only guess the last caretakers loved their sunflowers through the end of the season. They’re tenacious, and take no prisoners when it comes to battling for sunlight. That means most of them have ended up in the compost pile, though I left a couple just for the hell of it.

I should point out, that the cilantro planted at Sam’s request (I completely dislike cilantro) has gone to seed without being used. (Strike that for next year’s plot!) It’s a weird sort of power to be the primary gardener and meal determiner, without having to be the cook. However, I’ll harvest a little coriander (the seeds of the cilantro plant), as they wouldn’t hurt for the occasional recipe that uses the spice.

The tomatoes are starting to turn red, though all the fruits are much smaller than at other plots in the garden. While I am tempted to blame this solely on the lack of sun, neighbors with walls-of-water have tomato plants and fruits of tremendous size. That may need to be a change for next year – Colorado’s shorter growing season requires more gardener intervention of garden conditions.

The shade, however, dominates the plot – meaning that we are getting the most of (and most out of) the greens I planted in huge amounts. We still have plenty of collard greens, but most of the rainbow chard and all of the spinach was recently used in our Spanakopita:

Spanakopita

2 lbs. fresh spinach leaves

½ cup chopped fresh parsley

½ cup chopped fresh dill

2 cups finely chopped green onions

1 ½ tsp. fine grey sea salt

¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil

3 cups chopped onion

¼ tsp. coarse ground black pepper

½ lb. feta cheese, crumbled (traditionally made from sheeps milk, goat is also good)

14 filo leaves (usually sold frozen, thaw thoroughly!)

¾ cup clarified butter (ghee), melted

1. Wash and clean the spinach. Discard the stems. Drain and cut the leaves into shreds.
2. Combine the spinach, parsley, dill, green onions, and grey sea salt in a bowl. Let stand for 15 minutes, then press out all of the liquid.
3. Heat the extra-virgin olive oil in a skillet and sauté the 3 cups of chopped onions until soft and transparent. Add the spinach mixture from step 2 and sauté for a few more minutes. Add the feta cheese and black pepper.
4. Place each of 7 filo leaves in a buttered 10” x 17” x 2” baking pan, brushing each leaf with melted clarified butter. Add the spinach mixture from step 3, spread into a thick layer then add remaining filo leaves, again brushing each leaf with melted clarified butter. Cut into 3” x 3” pieces with a sharp knife.
5. Bake at 375 degrees for 30 minutes or until golden brown. From greysalt.com

I should note a couple variations on this recipe…for one, we use regular kosher salt – and the washing, tearing, and salting of the greens takes a significant period of time. It’s OK to change the amount of dill, green onion, and use regular butter instead of ghee. However, finding a cooperative filo dough is a challenge. We have yet to find one that works well, although we crudely work with it before it is thoroughly thawed. (It probably would work better if you moved the filo dough to the top shelf of the fridge in the morning, and to the counter at the start of cooking). Be patient with it, and liberal with the butter – it doesn’t want to fold nicely into the dish like you might expect of other doughs.