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2023-05-01
We were thinking today about food-crafts that seem simple enough to do as “hobbies” or passion projects to supplement and enrich the foods that we eat, given the — for now hypothetical — situation of having a home with a garden and ideally some land.
Note that by “simple” we're not refering to insta-success, labour-free hacks (those don't exist) but to crafts that have a relatively compact list of skills and tools required.
Those skills will still have to be learned, and mistakes will surely be made. I don't believe there is such a thing in gardening as instant gratification.
But enough of the disclaimers, here is a list of food crafts that — in theory — sound like each on their own will not become a full-time job and that would add homegrown food to our table.
We are already doing it. There are a bunch of recipes that yield tasty German-stle bread without preservatives or other artificial additives, and without hour-long preparation, planning and kneading.
Somehow we had stopped backing but I eat bread almost every day so since the Spain vacation I've started to bake again.
Growing mushrooms does require the right microclimate — two of them in fact — and some care / cleanliness in order not to contaminate the growth medium with other microorganisms that eat the food intended for the mycelium but otherwise seems to be relatively straight foward and hands-off.
There are commercially available mushroom grow kits… we should try one of those out to get an idea.
Fun experiment for you: The next time you buy those big button mushrooms, take the stem off of one of them and put the head flat onto a white sheet of paper for a day in an area without draft (normal printing paper will do). You might be surprised what you see once you take the mushroom off again. Enjoy!
Pickled sour gherkins, sliced carrots with dill, …yummy! I'm sure there is more to explore. Sour gherkins have recently become part of my almost daily diet and we've had amazingly good pickled carrot in Spain. Time to explore this old way of food preservation!
There is one closely-related aspect to pickling that makes it attractive for our long-termin life plan: Aside from a vegetable-patch we hope that we'll be lucky enough to have some fruit tree.
As any one with fruit trees will know: There is almost guaranteed to bee too much ripe fruit at one time. So pickling would provide a neat way to preserve the excess we can't eat immediatelly.
This leads us neatly to the next food-craft I'd like to learn:
Again, a way to preserve food. In my uninitiated mind this would be more suited to berries and fruits, where pickling is more for the vegetable-end of the garden produce sprectrum.
This is more dicey as it involves animals.
Having bee colonies makes sense to me as they help polinate the garden. I don't have a big habbit of enjoying sweet breakfast with honey but I don't dislike it either. So why not try. Surely one of my co-workers that have a few bee colonies will take me in as “apprentice” for some time.
We use a fair amount of eggs in our diet, so the thought of having a few chicken makes sense. But this seems even more advanced than bees and definitely needs a garden / patch of land.
Instead of throwing bio “waste” away, lets convert it into fertile soil for the garden. That's all the reasoning, really…
So yeah, time to get our hands dirty and start to learn what today's city folk — us definitely included — have forgotten.
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