Garden Redux, Part 1

April showers are on their way, so I figured it was time to finally build the raised bed boxes in the garden that I've been meaning to build for quite a while now.

First, a little about the garden: It's teeny tiny and only a very small part of it (about 80 square feet) gets decent sun. And that's in the middle of the walkway, so even that small space isn't plantable. So I dug up the existing pineapple sage bush and made way to build a raised bed in the small corner of the garden that is usable.

Here's the before and after pictures of the project.



I planted:
* Cherry Tomatoes
* Early Girl Tomatoes
* Brussels Sprouts
* Snap Peas
* Sage
* Mesculin
* Lettuce
* Spinach
* Strawberries

It's probably too many plants for such a small box, but we'll see what happens. . .

Oh, and also, the Meyer lemon tree has a ton of new blossoms since we got back from India. And I noticed today that it has a kumquat-sized lemon growing. (This is the biggest fruit it's had, so hopefully it's happy.)

Pizza Pizza

For about the last five years, I've been working on trying to master the art of pizza dough. I'm still working on it, but I think I've worked out a pretty good recipe.

The most important thing about cooking pizza is heat. You want to get the oven as hot as you can. Mine only goes to 550 F, but if you can get yours to go higher, that's better. Turn the oven on an hour before baking. It sounds like a lot, but you want to get the over REALLY hot before putting the pizza in. A pizza stone helps to retain heat, distribute the heat, and pull moisture from the crust. If you're going to make pizza with any regularity, get a stone. (Be careful you don't spill anything on your stone. Otherwise it will stink up your whole house when you turn the oven on. Trust me, I've been there and it's not pleasant.)

One hurdle to cooking pizza is sliding the pizza off the peel on to the stone. Because the dough is sticky, it will stick to the wooden peel. This can result in a mess in the oven when the pizza toppings spill off the dough as you're trying to slide it in. (As you can probably tell, this has happened to me.) My solution to this dilemma is to use parchment paper. (At the store, it's with plastic wraps and aluminum foil.) I put the parchment paper on the peel and put the flattened dough on top of that and then top the pizza. The parchment paper will slide easily on to the pizza stone and carry the pizza along with it. If you want, you can pull out the parchment paper after about a minute of cooking. To save paper, I reuse the paper from the first pizza for the second pizza.

Now for the recipe:

1.5 cups Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
1 teaspoon instant yeast (or 1.5 teaspoon active dry yeast)
1/4 cup crumbled Parmesan cheese
2/3 cup warm water
1-2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon salt (optional, you can use less or none at all to make it healthier)
1 teaspoon sugar

Mix the flour, yeast and Parmesan thoroughly with a whisk in a large bowl. Add sugar and salt. Add water and oil and mix until its smooth and soft. I usually let the MixMaster run for about 5 minutes to for a strong gluten. If you like a more light flaky pizza dough, mix it less. Keep adding flour until the dough is soft and smooth. Think: your ear lobe. It should be a little sticky, but shouldn't stick to your fingers like glue. Place in a glass bowl sprayed with olive oil and cover lightly with plastic wrap sprayed with oil. Let rise.

Because San Francisco is cold almost all year, I usually rise my quick breads in the microwave. No, DON'T microwave the dough! Instead, boil water in a large mug and then place the dough in the microwave with the hot water. Leave the door cracked open for the first few minutes and then close it. Using this method, the pizza dough should rise well in about an hour or so. But if you have the time, a slower rise in a cooler environment produces a better taste.

Sourdough Alternative
If you have sourdough starter (if you want some, just ask me) you can make an even better pizza dough. I use the recipe above, but add about 1/4 cup of sourdough starter and decrease the yeast to about 1/2 teaspoon instant or 3/4 teaspoon active dry. I dissolve the the starter and yeast in the warm water and then add the flour, Parmesan, sugar, and salt mixture on top and then mix it up. I usually let the sourdough dough rise for a little longer, but if you're short on time you can add a little more yeast and you'll be fine with about an hour of rise time using the microwave method.

Toppings
This is where you can get really creative. I usually start with a basic homemade tomato sauce base. My favorite pizzas are: (1) sun-dried tomatoes, fresh basil, mozarella, (2) mozarella, basil, buffalo mozarella chunks, and fresh heirloom tomatoes, (3) salami, mozarella, blue cheese. But you can use pretty much anything.

The First Rule of Soapmaking . . .

Remember in the movie Fight Club where Tyler Durden hunted through the dumpsters at hospitals for the bags of fat that were sucked out of old ladies' thighs so he could use it to make soap? That's always been my fantasy. Well, maybe not exactly. I like to think of myself as being above dumpster-diving and I prefer vegetarian oils to human fat. But I have always wanted to make soap. Maybe it's part of my ongoing desire to emulate the neo-Luddite, anarcho-primitivist, and really, really good looking Tyler Durden. Or maybe I'm just a nerd.

Either way, while Brian and I were in India, we met two wonderful people-Patti Flynn and Maurice Roche-who are organic soapmakers in Australia. We spent two days with them in the Thar desert. Hearing them talk about turning their passion of soapmaking into a business sparked my previous fantasy of trying out the hobby.

Like most of my fantastical ideas, this soapmaking idea faced a near-certain fate of fizzling and quickly being forgotten. But I was determined to not let that happen. So as soon as I got back, I ordered the book that Patti had suggested, The Soapmaker's Companion. I spent a couple weeks studying the book and then set out to buy my ingredients. I knew that once I had money invested, I would follow through.

It probably wasn't the most cost-conscious move, but I headed over to Rainbow, our local organic food co-op. The base oils that I selected are:

Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Coconut Oil
Red Palm Oil

I wanted a lavender-based scent, so I got essential oils of lavender spike, bergamot, lemon, and tangerine. I also decided to experiment a little, so I got some annatto seeds and steeped them in hot olive oil to extract the dark red color. I also got some dried marigold flowers, dried safflower, and dried lavender flowers. Cost-wise, it was the palm oil and the essential oils that killed me. ($14 for 5 ml (2 teaspoons) of lavender oil!) This is going to be some very pricey soap.

The process of making the soap is a little bit daunting only because you have to use a caustic chemical - lye (sodium hydroxide.) Remember in Fight Club when Tyler Durden poured the chemical on the narrator's hand and it burned like hell? That's lye. Lye will eat skin immediately upon contact. (You might also remember lye from its previous appearance in Drano.) Even though it's entirely natural and organic, when it's in a pure form, lye is nasty, nasty stuff. But when it's exposed to fats and oils, it sparks a chemical reaction that creates that magical thing we call soap.

Following the directions to the letter (something I rarely do with recipes) I mixed the lye with the water and watched it steam over like a middle-school volcano simulation. I did this in the backyard just in case there was a disaster. Heart racing, I went back inside to start the rest of the soap. After melting the fats and combining them with the oils, I went back downstairs to get the lye. This is where it happens (or where the ambulance is called.) I poured the lye into the oils and waited for the poof of smoke that (at least according to every sitcom I've seen about witchcraft) would tell me that magic just occurred. No poof. Instead, I watched as the mixer endlessly spun around a never-changing liquid.

The mixture needed to thicken. In soapmaker parlance (being the expert that I am now) this is called "trace." This just means that the mixture is thick enough so when you dribble a little, it leaves a trace behind. Think light cake batter. Unfortunately, my soap wasn't thickening as it should have. So, naturally, I started to panic. I got out the computer and started researching all the things I could have done wrong. Some people said that it can take a long time to get to trace, so I let it keep churning along. For over an hour.

But then . . . trace!! I quickly added my essential oils and my dried flowers and poured the mixture into a wood mold and covered it with a lid. Now it goes to sleep under a blanket (not kidding) for two days. Ever the pessimist, I was still convinced that I did something wrong. I fully expected to uncover in a soupy-and very expensive-mess.

On Tuesday morning, I woke the soap from its sleep. It seemed pretty hard, so I unmolded it from its box. Much to my surprise (and delight) it was a firm block of soap, just the way it should be. A miracle!

And now, the final product:



Patti warned me that this would be an addictive hobby. She was right. I'm already dreaming of my next batch of soap.

New Blog!

Spring is here. Last weekend, I bought the lumber to build raised beds in my teeny, tiny garden. My hope is to begin a year-round food garden. So I thought this would be a good time to start a blog to document my varied attempts to get back to nature.

Although I've always lived in cities, I think I'm an agrarian at heart. Strangely enough, I think a lot of it came from someone I didn't really know that well. While I was growing up in Palm Springs, our next door neighbor was Glen and his wife (whose name, sadly, I don't remember.) I remember Glen looking like Wilford Brimley and he was probably in his 60's or 70's (when you're a kid, anyone older than about 20 is just "really old.") He had a simple house that had a huge garden with corn, carrots, cabbage, and all sorts of other vegetables. He spent all day out in his garden tending to the crops and harvesting. We often got to reap the benefits of his work when he offered us some of his surplus harvest. Best of all, Glen has a chicken coop. Real, live chickens. (I didn't think this was odd at all, but looking back on it, a house located a few blocks away from "downtown" Palm Springs is an unusual place for a chicken farm.)

One day, Glen gave me and my sister Michelle each a baby chick. We loved and cared for our little chicks. Until, that is, my dog, Scruffy, killed both chicks. We had the chicks all of about 18 hours before Scruffy got to them. But ever since then, I've been fascinated with raising plants and animals. To this day, I dream about having a chicken coop and going out each morning to harvest the freshly-laid eggs for breakfast.

In general, I'm drawn to a natural and more simple life. I've found myself trying to find ways to make my own things rather than buy processed things. The first small step was making my own pasta rather than buying packaged pasta. I now make my own pizza dough, yogurt and am going to try to make some basic cheese recipes.

So that's what this blog will document: my (sometimes ridiculous) attempts to get back to the basics and make some things myself. If nothing else, it will be an adventure.