This Week: The Food Is Aliiiive! (And Some Hiking)

This peacock lives down the road from us and we found him eating the fallen blossoms. (He is alive, but he is not food.)

"Week" is a pretty loose term around here, as you may have noticed, especially when I lose a few days to some sort of mild flu. As I sit here sniffling and listening to the sound of the rain, I have to shuffle through my photos to help me remember what's been going on since the last update. In short? A few outdoor activities, and lots of mad kitchen science.

Homemade tempeh. Tempeh is a soybean (or any other kind of bean) product made by introducing a particular kind of spore to the beans, which then forms into a janky-looking covering of fuzzy white mold, similar to bleu cheese. Tempeh making is much more temperamental than tofu, so I left the project up to Zach— hence the mad science. The tempeh has to incubate at a particular temperature for 12-24 hours, so Zach bought a temperature-controlling device, which hooks up to a crockpot full of water, which is covered with a pan with the tempeh on it, which is covered with a towel to keep the heat in. I'm sorry to say I didn't get a picture while it was going on, but I did snap some shots of the tempeh when I was cooking it. It doesn't hold together as well as it should (we think we need to cook the soybeans more prior to fermenting them), but after being marinated in a soy-sauce-maple-syrup-paprika-garlic-liquid-smoke sauce and then pan-fried, it was darn delicious. Zach is going to try making another batch tonight to refine his technique. I get to cook and eat his creations. Win-win.

A cross-section of the tempeh. See the white fungus on top?

Marinating...

Frying...

Ready to eat!

Incubating yogurt with the fancy new temperature control

Yogurt. I had made yogurt years ago, but had switched to kefir since it's much easier. However, Zach's love for yogurt inspired him to get me to try again. The first batch (my batch) utterly failed because the culture I used (some leftover kefir) wasn't strong enough (the thickened milk was used for buckwheat pancakes instead), but Zach tried again with a different starter (fancy yogurt from the produce store), and was successful (method here if you want to try it). He's been eating it by the pint. 

Mead. Zach started a batch of mead, with a little help from supplies bought at the local brewing shop. 

Miscellaneous ferments. We also made a big batch of sauerkraut, some hot pepper mash that will eventually become hot sauce, and homemade fermented mayonnaise, which is pretty delicious. It's a fermented food kind of week! Next we're going to try sourdough tortillas.

The Wildwood Trail. With the help of a car, a shuttle bus, and some running down a mountainside to catch the aforementioned bus, we managed to hike the last section of the 30.2-mile-long Wildwood Trail in Portland's Forest Park. We have previously hiked two other parts of it, but now we've officially section-hiked it! If you live anywhere near this incredible trail, you are missing out if you don't check it out. 

Lacamas Creek Trail. Located in Camas, WA (a bus ride away from where we live), this is another gorgeous trail tucked into the unassuming urban sprawl. We've hiked it twice in the past few weeks, winding through woods, along a picturesque creek and lake, and over a meadow with the last of the camas lilies blooming.

See the cormorant perched on a tiny log in the water?

Reading: This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate by Naomi Klein. I'm about halfway through this book, and holy schaMOLEY is it depressing. But I'm learning a lot, and I can feel my perspectives shifting as I more clearly and intentionally contemplate the crisis that humanity finds itself in today with our current economic system's effect on the changing climate. If you're into dense, depressing, but incredibly thought-provoking books about the environment, this is a good one. 

What have you been up to this week?

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