Planning for a new camp cooking class

I've been asked to bring my camp cooking class back again this spring at our Shire's regular Friday gathering. This will be I think the 3rd year in a row that I've done the class (wow!) and I've been batting around what I think will be some really cool ideas:

• Title the class "Feeding Yourself While Camping." Emphasize that no matter how decide to do so, everybody has to eat!
  
• Talk about various styles briefly, then give more detail about how to eat more authentically.
  
• Set up my fire cooking gear and talk about it, basically like at a demo.
• Talk about where to get equipment (especially for fire cooking).
• Make the handout more resource-based rather than content-based.
• Give away stuff! This is still in the formative stages, but I'm envisioning having a small collection of low-cost items (most likely donated used things and a few cheaper ingredients) relevant to the theme. I think the way I'll do the giveaways is at the end of the class have people write down their name and a question they have on a slip of paper. Collect slips, draw names, give prizes, answer questions.
• Bring some better, more participatory teaching strategies (even kind of corny ones) into play rather than just lecturing.

That's what I have so far. I'm excited about this, and definitely planning to put more work into it and try to come up with something truly fabulous.

IT'S A CANDLEMAS MIRACLE! THE MQC IS NOT LOST!

I finally broke down tonight and took all my bottles of medlar-quince cyser into the shower to open them, let them pop, and dump them.

Bottle number one: BAM! fizzzzzzzzzzz...

Bottle number two: ...

NOTHING! IT DIDN'T POP!!!! All told two popped (neither as spectacularly as that one I opened before), but four didn't! I dumped the two that did back into a fermentation jar to see what happens after a week or so (perhaps racking and bottling again?), but just recapped the four that didn't and plan to save them for the summer!

I tasted the ones that popped, and OH MY STARS they are shaping up nicely. Really interesting mix of flavors! The mystery blob broke apart, which makes me more sure that it's pectin and not bacterial colony of death. If I'm dead by morning, though, you all know why.

So happy!

Cranberry Mead Update, again

I racked the cranberry mead yesterday. It's still pretty sweet, but definitely more fermented than it was before, so I'm hopeful that I may have struck the right balance. I think that if it ferments to dryness, it's going to be really nasty and bitter as the cranberry will become overwhelming. I'm going to keep an eye on it for a week, maybe more, then I'll decide if I want to rack it again (likely) or bottle it.

More experiments in plausibly Iron Age British/Celtic food

This subject has really excited me! I think I'm going to start looking for some better sources, ie books, on the subject, specifically on archeological evidence for foodstuffs and cooking methods. The more I learn the more interested I am!

Today I decided to make a simple glop in the crock pot. I actually think that a crock pot is a justifiable substitute for cooking in a clay pot all day over a slow fire, although I admit I have not done any field testing to compare the two.

The glop:

3 oz beef stew meat (pasture-raised), in chunks
1/2 slice Trader Joe's uncured applewood smoked bacon, cut into bits
1 pippen apple, well past its prime, cored and chopped
1/4 cup pearled barley
1 cup homemade hard apple cider (very dry!)

Cook in crock pot on high heat for 3 hours (or thereabouts) until everything is tender and all of the liquid is absorbed. Careful not to let it burn!

This was very, very good. Salinophiles may wish to add more salt.

I found another good article online, Life in an Iron Age Village from the BBC, that references a couple of books that I'm going to try to get a hold of. Also makes a nice mention of bread leavened with brewing by-products. I think I have both spelt and barley flour, and I have the dregs of my cider and that cranberry mead which I've mentioned here previously that I couldn't bring myself to throw out yesterday. Perhaps I'll try to keep them alive until the weekend and do some experimentation!

Neufchatel cheese after draining

Neufchatel cheese after draining
Originally uploaded by laurelfactorial

A long overdue post!

I just realized I never posted a finished picture of the basic soft cheese I made a while back, so here it is.

It was pretty good, although it started to taste kind of bitter after just a few days (from the buttermilk culture continuing to work?) -- definitely inspired to keep working on cheese!

Cranberry Mead Update

I started this cranberry mead back in November, then kept neglecting it and neglecting it. It's been in the primary fermenter since then (whoops). I finally found a spare moment, and took out a little bit to taste-test a few weeks ago. It was totally sweet, and clearly never really fermented all that much. This is most likely due to the pectin content of the cranberries and the fact that I only added a tiny bit of yeast (something I've wanted to test for a while, the differences between a large initial yeast inoculation and a small one).

I couldn't decide what to do about this, so I just let it sit. I actually bottled it this week (just a couple of days ago), but today I decided that this is really a terrible idea, so I decided to take a bit of a risk and transfer it from bottles back to a gallon jug. Most of the sediment is out (but not all, which is part of why I'm loth to leave this bottled until May after the MQC incident), so I think this is basically the equivalent of having racked the mead.

I am now adding another 1/4 tsp of yeast (which is currently rehydrating in a small amount of the must). We shall see what comes of this, possibly disaster or possibly awesomeness. I'm thinking another two weeks fermentation, then racking, letting it sit, and bottling.

As always, I will try to post updates as they happen.

BREW FAIL

I opened a bottle of the "MQC" (medlar-quince cyser) to do some more testing on the mystery blob...

...and BAM! MEAD FOUNTAIN!

Whee!

I've never had a bottle pop like that, it was pretty awesome and also terrifying.

Now I'm stuck. The smart part of me says dump it all down the drain! But the science part of me says "COOOOOOOOOOL!"