Sprouts

I'm in my new apartment in Montana, a drastic move from Chicago-land. But it looks like we might be moving again soon. That's actually a good thing. So I'm trying to keep my new projects down to a minimum until my next move.
Today I started some broccoli sprouts. I've tried sprouting in the past and it was a dismal, inedible moldy failure. Last time, I purchased a large sprouting jar. It was a big glass jar with a mesh lid. Well unfortunately I grew some mold in addition to my sprouts. So that jar just didn't work for me. I gave up sprouting for a while.
So in the health food store yesterday, I saw a sprouting bag. Hrm. I recalled when I was a child, my mother grew some sprouts in a mason jar with some cheese cloth. I had some cheese cloth at home, so I bypassed the bag. I had an idea.

Now I'm testing that idea out.
Day 1: I found a plastic container. I think it used to have a hard drive in it. But it was shallow and clamshell. I lined it with cheese cloth, sprinkled seeds over it. I soaked the seeds overnight.
Day 2: This morning, I drained the water, rinsed the sprouts. I put it in a dark corner in my pantry to start sprouting.
We'll see how it goes.
Day 3: Yep, the sprouts are growing! I have my 3 year old daughter spray them daily with a fine mist water sprayer. She gets a kick out of her little "chore" and she loves to talk to the little sprouts.
Day 5: Moved sprouts to a sunny window so they can get some chlorophyll.
Day 6: They taste great. A bit of a spicy flavor to them, but my 3 year old and 15 year old daughter love them. We're eating them like crazy. And no mold so I would say it worked. Unfortunately, it is hard to get the sprouts out of the cheesecloth as the seedlings seem to have grown through the holes. We have to try to pick them out one by one. I don't think that would work if I actually wanted them in bulk for something like a sandwich, but it's fun to pick them and eat them one by one, sort of.

Directions I'm using:
http://www.sproutpeople.com/seed/broccoli.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broccoli_sprouts

A spicy mustard

I moved a good 1300 miles since my last post. I'm now mostly settled in my new apartment. One of the first things I did was make a batch of mustard. Hot stuff.
I mixed 1/4 cup yellow mustard seeds, 1/4 cup brown mustard seeds with equal amount of water. I let them sit a full 24 hours, topping off the water that evaporated when necessary. After the soak, I stuck the water/mustard seeds in the food processor and let it go for a while, adding a bit of additional water to keep it from being too dry. I let it sit for about 5-10 min then added some cider vinegar and red wine until it was the right consistancy. I also added some salt, pepper, onion powder, and garlic powder to taste. Then after relocating the mustard to a mason jar, I added about a 1/4 cup of honey.
I let this mix sit on the countertop for about a week. It was initially quite hot. As it aged, some of the heat dissipated. My husband would have had an instant heart attack with the heat as high as it was at first. Aging did help reduce some heat to levels edible to normal humans :)
My mother in law and father in law tried this batch of mustard and loved it. My husband actually liked it as well but my daughter Cassie found it too spicy.
I made a second mason jar full of a mild batch of mustard, using the recipe I used in my previous post. This is probably our regular mainstay as far as mustard goes.

We Have Mustard!

I've finished my very first test batch of homemade mustard, and it's good stuff. It's definitely hotter than anything I've ever purchased at a store. Just a little tickle in the nose, but not much at all.
So here's what I did. I had previously posted that I had soaked the following together:
- 1 tbsp of yellow mustard seeds
- 1 tbsp of brown mustard seeds
- 2 tbsp water
- 1 tbsp red wine
- 1 tbsp cider vinegar
I let this concoction soak at room temperature for 2 full days to let the seeds rehydrate. Today I threw the whole mix into my food processor and let that run for about 5 minutes. It took much longer than I thought. The seeds kept flying up and sticking to the top of the food processor, so I had to stop it a lot to push them back down again with a spatula. I finally had something that truly resembled mustard. I added some more stuff:
a dash of salt
- 1 tsp onion powder
- 1 tsp dried garlic powder
- 1 TBSP honey
I let that mix up some more and tasted it. Awesome. I really like it a lot. It would make for a good ham sandwich, or perhaps coating the top of a baked ham. Yummy stuff. Not as hot as I was orignally looking for, but my family (they have zero tolerance for hot/spicy food) would probably like it.


Yesterday I reviewed the pretzel episode of the cooking tv show Good Eats, which had a feature on mustard. Alton said that water and mustard combine together to produce isothiocyanates, the chemical responsible for the spicy heat of horseradish, wasabi, and mustard. He explained that the addition of acids acted to halt the isothiocyanate production.
He had a nifty bell curve chart that showed how isothiocyanate production (heat) varies by time. The longer mustard was in contact with water, the more heat was produced, up to a point, where the heat went back down again. Acids can be added at any point to halt it at that level.

In my test batch, I added acid and water at the same time. So that is what kept my heat level low. I could vary the heat in two ways. I could alter my water to acid ratio, or I could vary the point at which I add my acid. There are actually other possibilities. I could grind the whole dried mustard seeds into a powder, then add the water (and acid after a time) also.

So in future test batches, I will most likely play with these possibilities, sticking as close to my original recipe but altering my heat-production variables until I find a few mustard recipes to my liking. I would also be happy to find min/max in my experiments as well.

Now that's a spicy mustard

The epiphany came to me one day at a japanese restauraunt. I was eating my tonkatsu (breaded pork) nestled over a bed of shredded raw cabbage. There was mustard to the side, and some tonkatsu sauce in a bowl. The mustard was like horseradish. It seared my nostrils and singed my nose hairs. And I liked it.
Sure I've heard of "hot mustard", but all these years, I thought it was just a phrase. I've never had mustard like that. I've had that yellow crap that people put on hotdogs. I've had dijon and honey mustard. I am really fond of this stuff they sell in our supermarket called "dusseldorf". But none of it was exactly hot.
I later saw an episode on one of my favorite tv shows, Good Eats. Alton Brown made some pretzels, and to accompany them, some fresh mustard. I guess you can actually make that stuff.
So I set about my research on my new topic of interest: homemade mustard.

So far, I haven't found much information to my liking. Therefore, I shall have to come up with some experiments of my own. I have purchased 3 bags of mustard seeds from The Spice House. (No, I'm not an advertiser. It's just where I get my spices. I grew up in Milwaukee but they shipped to me now that I'm not there anymore). Not quite sure yet what I was going for other than a good kick in the nose (but not so much that I'm rendered unconscious).
I ordered some yellow, brown, and hot mustard seeds and they arrived in the mail today.

The first step is soaking the whole seeds in water and acid, and perhaps some alcohol if desired. I am making a mini tester batch. I am soaking 1 tbsp of yellow and 1 tbsp of brown mustard seeds in 2 tbsp water, 1 tbsp red wine, and 1 tbsp cider vinegar. I'll let that soak for a day or two and come back to this later.

Start

Today, I finished a knitting project and started a new one.
The project I finished is a scarf for my husband. I haven't taken a picture of it yet but I'll put it here once I do get a pic of it. The pattern I used for it was the Braided Cable Scarf. I enjoyed the pattern. There was one small typo on it, and it took me a while to master, but by the end I had the pattern memorized. I'd definitely try it again next time I need a scarf. Especially with the yarn I used (Cascade Eco +).

I received a shipment of yarn in the mail today! Woohoo! I was alerted to a sale on Cascade Eco + yarn and ordered some. It's usually about $15 a skein, but I got it for about $8 a skein. There is a TON of yarn per skein. $15 is already a good value but $8 is awesome. I've used this yarn in the past to make a Central Park Hoodie before, and it's my favorite sweater, so I decided to try it again. Problem is, I made the hoodie last year, and I guess I threw away all my notes. I know I encountered some errata, made some modifications, and stuff like that, so I really wish I did have those notes.
I guess that's why I am starting this blog. So I can sort of document my progress on my various projects, not just knitting. I have so many hobbies. It is sometimes a joke that I have a new hobby each week.

Introduction

When I was a kid, I had a recurring daydream for many many years. It's completely theoretical and fanciful, but with some of my reality smashed in there for good measure.
So I imagined that I was an involuntary time traveler, that I was instantly POOFed into 1700s England. However I was dressed, or whatever I had on me at that moment was transported with me, but that was all I had.
How would I survive? How would the people treat me? Even though we spoke the same language, the dialect and meaning of the words would be different so communication wouldn't be easy. Would they take an immediate disliking to my "unusual" clothing?
Survival in such a theoretical situation would entirely depend on my mind, and the knowledge contained within it.
I live in an awesome age, with wonderful technologies. But I don't exactly understand them all. Would I be able to explain electricity to a scientist of the 1700s? What would I say about television, radio, telephones? If they wanted me to show them anything, could I actually build a telephone to show them how it works? And what about the materials that a telephone is made from? They wouldn't be available, so I'd have to make those too.
This led me to view my world from a new perspective. I was no longer content to take modern conveniences for granted. I wanted to know HOW everything worked, and how everything was made.
1700-era citizens knowledge of food preparation smokes mine by a mile. I buy my chicken like everyone else does today: at the grocery store. I've never killed or dressed a chicken nor would I know how if someone handed a chicken to me. I have little clue where my can of beloved corned beef hash came from or how it went into that can. I bought some peaches; it's not peach season so they were imported from somewhere but I don't know where, nor how many hands it passed to get to me.

So these daydreams, they affected my outlook on the world and shaped who I am. I blame those youthful daydreams for my gazillion hobbies and projects, each an attempt to figure out how my world is put together. Often times, I find myself reinventing the wheel. But the wheel needs reinventing sometimes when we forget how it was put together in the first place.

Someone out there has clearly had the same daydream as me. I nearly choked when I came across this one day:
I wish I knew who had created this awesome poster! Sounds like someone I'd have a really cool conversation with.