General
Cracked Pot Cider
Now that I’ve learned how to make mead, I’ve decided to finally try my hand at creating a quicker daily drink: hard apple cider.
Now let’s be really clear, I’m not talking about those sickening OK Springs “ciders” you get at the BCLS. I’m talking about a true English-style dry apple cider. Strongbow is the classic model you can find almost anywhere, but there are plenty of others that I think are better (see list below).
Here’s my great discovery: you can actually make dry apple cider at home very cheaply and with a minimum amount of effort. Cheers to the recession!
Take a trip to the local grocery store or better yet, a hippy store or farmer’s market. Look for a glass jug (with a handle) of natural apple cider. The key is to find one that has no preservatives (such as potassium sorbate) as it will prevent the juice from fermenting into boozy goodness. Citric acid is ok though. I would recommend trying to find one that has a blend of apples in it- ideally, a blend of sweet and tart apples to give the final drink some bite.
Note that there is a distinction between apple juice and apple cider- apple juice has been filtered to look like urine, while so-called “sweet” or “soft” apple cider is apple juice that is unfiltered and cloudy. This sediment adds a lovely apple flavour to the juice and greatly improves your final drink. I found a few different types that ranged from $6.99 to $12.99.
Next, make a trip to your local homebrew supplier. Here’s your shopping list to get started:
- bung- a rubber stopper with a small hole in the top. You’ll probably need either a #6.5 or a #8 depending on the width of the cider bottle mouth. If you’re using Santa Cruz apple cider, you’ll need a #8.
- bubbling airlock
- packet of dry Lavlin champagne yeast
- Sanitizing power (lots of different types- ask your brewmaster for a recommendation. I use diversol.)
- A siphoning hose (for later), or you can pick-up tubing from the hardware store
This should cost you no more than $10 with the siphoning hose, and you can reuse this equipment over and over.
Method:
When you get home, hydrate the yeast according to packet instructions. Sanitize your bung and airlock according to the instructions on the sanitizing powder (you just mix the powder with hot water and soak it). Open the bottle of apple cider, dump in the yeast once it’s ready, and fit the bung and airlock on top.
That’s it.
The Food Citizen
I recently had the pleasure of traveling between Vancouver and Victoria aboard a seaplane for work- my god those planes are tiny! With each pocket of air pressure and gust of wind we hit, the tail of the plane swished around like a bald tire’d Mazda on a sheet of black ice. To keep my mind off the erratically shifting horizon and white-capped ocean below, I leafed through my complimentary copy of Douglas, a business magazine based out of Victoria, B.C.
A feature article titled “Relationships: Victoria’s changing perspective on food and community” was just enough to hold my attention. After starting off with the usual discussion about local food production and the 100 mile diet, I stumbled upon a new concept: food citizenry.
Despite the fact that I’m a gardener and a grow-your-own evangelist, the article didn’t dive into the concept much and I had to ask myself:
What exactly does it mean to be a food citizen? Technically speaking, aren’t we all food consumers?
Of course, this question goes back to the consumer vs citizen argument from media and culture studies, which states that we are “continually shifting away from involving people in society as political citizens of nation states towards involving them as consumption units in a corporate world.” (Thanks, Habermas!).
It certainly doesn’t seem like a stretch to think of our food culture in this way. Since the beginning of the 20th century, we have increasingly shifted away from producing our own food to buying absolutely everything we eat, effectively reducing our relationship with food to simple consumer interactions. (I mean, have you seen those commercials for Uncle Ben’s rice with chicken and vegetables that you microwave in the plastic bag and eat in 2 minutes? Wow.) Food is just another part of our consumer culture, so what does it mean to become a food citizen?
100 Mile Mead
It’s thick, it’s green and it’s bubbling. Does it comfort you to know that’s it’s just my home made booze? Didn’t think so.
Bubble Bubble, toil and trouble. My mead making experiment is finally under way, but it didn’t start off quite so well. In fact, it was a complete gong show and went a little something like this:
- Go to Dan’s Homebrewing supply to get equipment kit, yeast and hops. Leave half the kit on the counter.
- Drive out to Chilliwack (1.5 hours each way) to buy locally produced honey direct from the grower. Get lost on the way, sample several types of honey, and end up with a basic clover honey.
- Get home, realize I still need to get blueberries and apple cider to pull off the recipe.
- Drive to three stores which are either closed or don’t have the right kind of apple cider. Give up for the night.
- Start drinking.
- Get up early the next morning, mitigate hangover, and drive to store to get apple cider. Forget to get blueberries. Get home, go back, buy blueberries.
- Get home. Realize I don’t have a pot large enough to fit everything on the stove. Drive to Chinatown to get extra large stainless steal stock pot.
- Get home, realize mistake from Dan’s Homebrewing supply, and curse because they are closed already.
- Sit on the kitchen floor while laughing head-off and wonder if this mead will ever get made. .
And I’m really not exaggerating. The good news is, the rest of the process went off without a hitch. The recipe I used is called “Crazy Good Mead”- it’s a blueberry melomel with hops, courtesy of Dave’s picks. I think I’m going to call my batch the 100 mile mead- not just because all of the ingredients were grown within 100 miles of my home, but because I probably drove that far to get everything in the end.
The basic process is frighteningly simple- boil everything, let it cool, add the yeast and wait (and wait and wait and wait). It’s so easy, even a Viking could do it.
100 Mile Mead (Blueberry Melomel)
- 10 lbs honey(clover honey)
- 1 oz Saaz hops
- 2 lbs frozen blueberries(mine are from the Fraser Valley)
- 1 gallon apple cider (all natural, no-preservatives, non-alcoholic)
- 1 pack champagne yeast (I used Sweet Mead Yeast, as recommended by Dan’s Homebrewin
Process:
Bring about 3 gallons of water to a boil in a really large stock pot. Add the honey, and stir until it’s dissolved. Bring the must back to a boil, being careful not to boil it over. You can do this by stirring it. If it starts to boil over, turn down the heat. Add 1/2 oz hops. At this point, the must begins to look like something out of a witch’s cauldron, and it smells warm and sticky sweet.
DIY Seed Trays
I’m such a cheap bastard sometimes. I don’t event want to pay for those fancy little seed trays if I can help it, even though they only cost me like $2-3 each.
I’ve tried the re-usable plastic ones but they fall apart the first year you use them. I’ve tried the biodegradable cardboard ones that you can just plunk right into the ground but those cost more like $0.50 per pod, so multiply that by 24 in a tray, then multiply by 8? And with two or three crops a year?
Dude, if I had that kind of money on my hands I’d have my own Guatemalan boy-toy gardener named Eduardo.
The good news is that you can DIY and save your dough for more important things like booze, red licorice, and boy-toy gardeners. So if you can’t reuse from last year, or maybe you just want to get a little creative, here’s the low-down on some cheap DIY options:
Easiest method: Buy eggs that come in a cardboard box. Check it out! Those little egg pods are perfect for holding seeding soil and seeds until they sprout. Then you can just cut the seams with scissors and plunk them in the ground. Sweet! The egg carton seed tray.
Can’t find cardboard cartons at the store? If you wind up with Styrofoam egg cartons on your hands you can still do the same thing, but you’ll need to carefully pop the seedlings out before planting and keep re-using the tray. If the tray breaks, bust it up and put it in the bottom of your planter for better drainage instead of rocks. Done.
Funniest Method: So maybe not everyone eats eggs. Fair enough. You’ve still got the funniest method to fall back on. Everybody shits right? Well save those toilet paper tubes for a rainy day, girl. You can take your tube collection and bust it up into little seed pods.
Go get a 2-4 flat from the liquor store (as if you don’t have a few kicking around already, right?). Stand your cardboard tubes on end in the flat and then cut them in half at the waist to double your capacity. Fill each tube with dirt, apply seeds, water and wait. Just be sure they’re not too deep in the tubes so they can get light.
Voila- the toilet paper seed tray.
Warning: you’ll need to be careful not to jostle the tubes around and spill the contents, so if you want to get fancy, you can create little bottoms for each tube. To keep it eco, chop up your unbleached coffee filter collection instead. Flat bottom filters work best.
Stand each tube up in the filter, pull up the sides, wrap a band around the tube to secure it and add dirt. This is a great option if you have a wad of free coffee filters at your disposal from your crappy minimum wage job.
Either way, these suckers can go directly into the ground once the seedlings start. And won’t it be great to know that your garden is just chock-full of toilet paper tubes?
Saddest Method: We’ve all be down and out before. Hit rock bottom. Life’s in the gutter. That’s where this method finds its inspiration. The gutter seed tray.
If you’re feeling pent-up and destructive, go tear a downspout or gutter off your house. If it’s a downspout, cut it in half on the long side. Cap the ends off with whatever works- a piece of cardboard, a stone, piece of wood, plastic cap. Fill it with dirt and plant your seedlings in a nice little row, then place a long piece of saran wrap over the top to keep it warm and moist while it sprouts.
This is the best method if you’re planting something in rows because once it’s ready to go in the ground. Here’s the cool part: just dig your little trench, lay the gutter inside, take off an end cap and gently- I said GENTLY- slide the tube out from under the dirt so everything lands as it is in a neat little row, ready to go. So slick.
Got a better method? Leave a comment.
A new look for The Cracked Pot
The Cracked Pot has a new look! Just launched this week, we’re going a little more rock n’ roll this time around.
My good friend from Karyo Edelman over at kevinbroome.com hooked me up with the logo and design- thanks Kev! And a huge thanks to Leigh, also at Karyo Edelman and justafrog.net for the refinements and programming to make it all happen. Clear your balcony railing girl- you’re getting a cracked pot planter full of goodies!
To commemorate the launch, I put the Cracked Pot logo to good use and carved a stencil out of cardboard. Armed with a can of black spray paint, I tagged a couple of flagstones to mark my front and back garden patches at home. So now it’s official. It’s a Cracked Pot Garden.
My next plan is to create a similar, but larger stencil out of plastic card and employ the moss graffiti eco-tagging method from over at heavypetal.ca to start spreading the love around, starting with my cement retaining wall at home. Hey, it just power-washes off right?
Tip for clean lines when tagging with a stencil on cement: put a bit of spray adhesive on the back of the stencil to get a tight connection with the surface before spraying. I’m a professional hoodlum now.
Go get your inner green guerrilla on- it’s Earth Day!
What’s growing now: daffodils and hyacinth
It’s late, but better late than never. My hyacinth and daffodils have finally bloomed after our weekend of sunshine. The cherry blossoms on my street are finally starting to peek open and there are signs of life everywhere in the flower garden. My lilac has started budding and my bleeding heart bush is growing taller by the hour.
I also got a pleasant surprise this spring. The garlic bulbs that I tried to force last year didn’t do so hot. A few of them amounted to small heads, but the rest of the cloves that I planted seemed to disappear into nothing. This year, in their place, I found multiple stands of gorgeous little garlic growing in the cool spring weather. I’ve got them all planted in my borders around the rose bushes, as they are good companion plants. Fingers crossed, I’ll actually have a good garlic crop this year!
Raised Cedar Flower beds: Part 3
Spring has sprung in Vancouver!
We finally got our first weekend of nice weather so I logged a solid 12 hours in the garden and finished up my rasied cedar flower bed project.
After waveing the white flag and roping Angus into the project with me (poor sod didn’t know what he was getting into) we borrowed a second power drill from our buddy and started screwing my boxes together (tee hee). After lining them up with one another in the yard with a string and some chopsticks, we jumped up and down on the posts to drive the re-used picket stakes into the ground and install them (see part two).
When to plant…
I tend to over do it every year and plant at least 20 things all at once. Then I forget when to plant my summer crops, and things are late and nothing goes right.
One of the handiest tools I’ve ever come across to help keep the garden on track is the West Coast Seed catalogue. Their yearly seed catalogue is free at any store that sells their seeds, or you can go onto their website and order one for free. It has all of the tips you will ever need to grow your own food organically, and their yearly planting calendar is a life saver. It clearly shows what needs to be planted and when, all at a glance.
I’ve taken the liberty of scanning a copy here, but be sure to grab a copy of their catalogue or view the online version. This is all timed for our funny west coast weather.
A word about that. We are experiencing some very cold weather for this time of year in Vancouver- in fact, it snowed a bit today (no April fools joke, my friends). I would say we are about two weeks behind where we normally are and my spring bulbs are just barely starting to peek open right now. So if you’re a bit late according to this schedule, don’t sweat it. I just started my broccoli, cauliflower and leeks… oops.
Raised flower bed showdown: Part 2
After I hauled all of my oh-so-sustainable cedar lumber home from Gabriola to build my raised cedar flower beds, I decided I needed to build a fifth box in the front yard to make the most of the sunniest spot in my yard.
Time for a trip to Hell Depot.
Despite the fact that Angus (my partner) insisted I could use a jigsaw to cut through 4×4 cedar posts, I decided to buy a proper skill saw to do the task, and left him at home because he clearly has NO CLUE.
When I arrived, I encountered some good ol’ sexism on the loose: smirks and jeers as I ferried my new skill saw through the lumber section, and a weak-ass attempt at unloading the WORST pieces of lumber in the entire lot onto me. After the Home Depot guy insisted on helping me pull out the pieces, I picked up a board, held it level to my eye and said, “This board is more crooked than a mountain road! Is that the best one in the pile? Look! It’s full of knots!” Then he backed off and decided that, despite being female, perhaps I had some credibility after all.
I digress…
Triumphant, I got the shipment home, assembled my saw horses and started measuring and cutting the new boards with a little Led Zep on. I got the old man to help with this task of course, because I needed someone to catch the boards (you didn’t actually think I’d let him near the saw, did you?)
Fundraising with flower bulbs
Vessey’s in PEI has a fundraising program available this Spring- sell Vessey’s spring bulbs and earn 50% of the funds for your fundraiser. Soooo… sell $100 worth of bulbs and get $50. Plus for every $150 you bring in, Vessey’s dontates 10 Asiatic Lilies on the house.
While bulbs aren’t a particularly sustainable crop, they are lovely and very popular and I’m certainly not one to judge any kind of growing operation. Ahem.
Thought this could be a great opportunity for a community garden (or other green group) to raise money by spreading the Spring love.
This also gave me a great idea for a kids gardening fundraiser- help kids start their own seedlings and sell them to raise money for a gardening project. Awwww. Warm fuzzies.
Vessey’s is a Canadian company.For more deets, check out Vesseys.com.
Cracked Pot Pix
