Rebecca Norman

Marshall Ashworth wrote:
So i gather seed from pineapples and got a few tops from a farmer who was growing queen pineapples from the 60s when they used to import them with the tops

Wait, pineapple seeds? I've never seen pineapple seeds! How did you get pineapples with seeds? What are they like?

Pesto made of any greens with some kind of herbs or garlic.

I usually add:
- nuts (my favorites are walnuts or sunflower seeds)
- oil (I use olive oil but you use what you like, and I'm sure butter or animal fat would work just fine)
- optional garlic (I like to press with the garlic press first). Or any other allium.
- lemon or vinegar (lemon keeps the bright green color but is not required for flavor)
- salt
- I often find cheese unnecessary
Grind greens, nuts and oil in the blender until smooth, or grind until it's in small flakes but not smooth. Optionally reserve some nuts to grind at the end, leaving some chunky for texture. Add the lemon and salt at the end to taste.

Spring wild: in April in Cape Cod I found nettles and garlic-mustard growing together, so I pulled the garlic mustard and harvested the clean upper halves. I harvested the nettles by snapping off sprigs but leaving the roots in place. About 1 part garlic-mustard to 3 or 4 parts nettles made a pesto with a nice savory garlic-mustard flavor and only a slight edge of bitterness.

Summer anisey: Anise hyssop and fennel volunteer around the garden here, so I added tarragon and made this pesto several times last summer. Yum! I used garlic and lemon in this, and it was delicious. I made it again and again and was spreading it on toast as well as serving it to guests on vegetables or pasta. Everyone seemed to love it. I wasn't even impatient for the basil to come online!

Blake Lenoir wrote:Very yummy! Could we add those to lasagna or spaghetti? Could garlic mustard be regular mustard of its own?

Yes, yes, I use my random pestos on pasta. I also spread random pesto on bread, sometimes with cheese and lettuce, sometimes not. I've used some on fish.  I've thinned it out and used it as salad dressing.

About your question about using garlic mustard as regular mustard, do you mean mustard paste made from mustard seeds? Or do you mean mustard greens? I think the one time I've used garlic mustard, it was more bitter than most mustard greens I've grown, so I wouldn't use it alone as I do mustard greens.

I made pesto with garlic mustard and nettles yesterday! (Not dead nettles but stinging nettles). It is delicious!

My pesto wouldn't fulfil your plan of less oil and less salt, but you can make it how you like it. I just washed the nettles and garlic-mustard and dried them well in a salad spinner. Put them in the blender with olive oil, walnuts, salt, and a little lemon and puree till smooth. I intentionally didn't add garlic or cheese because it's my first time eating garlic mustard so I wanted to really see how it tastes. It's good! The second batch may have had a higher proportion of garlic-mustard, since it tasted slightly bitter, but once it's spread on pasta or bread I don't find it bitter at all, only delicious.

I think I used about 3 or 4 parts nettles to 1 part garlic-mustard.

I make similar purees all summer out of different greens as they come up. Last summer I went on a long jag of pesto made of tarragon, anise hyssop and fennel. My notes say I was adding garlic that's I pressed in the garlic press, sunflower seeds, olive oil, lemon juice and salt, but no cheese. It was delicious and I was also taking it to friends. The fennel had gone to seed previously so it was coming up everywhere and I had to pull up or cut down lots of it. The anise hyssop is profuse, and though I use a little in tea and salad, there's really a lot, so that was a good use too. The tarragon isn't so over abundant but was a nice addition.

I've made a similar one in the past with mostly cilantro, a little mint, peanuts freshly toasted on a pan, and a little fresh green chilli pepper. Good stuff!

Rusty Ford wrote:i might go against the trend here, but i think you may be better to deal with the outliers as they happen rather than trying to screen them out, and possibly push away others with intrusive questions. People are all different ...

I agree with this. In my experience handling hundreds of volunteers over the course of 25 years, most were okay, a few were stellar, and a few were problems. The problems were very different each time, so I think it's impossible to predict or screen accurately.

I like the suggestion that you formally schedule a meeting 3 days in, to review both sides' expectations and issues. From the beginning of contact, keep it noted by both sides that this meeting is where it will be decided whether to go forward with the original plan.

I'm on team "plant the whole pit, shell and all."

In 2018 I planted a whole intact peach pit in a pot. After it sprouted, I moved it to a larger pot. In spring 2019 I planted it outside in its final spot. In 2021 or 22 (I forget) I got a harvest of about 15 delicious peaches. The next year, like a hundred. Since then, it sets huge amounts, and I thin before it gets overcrowded. One year, heavy snow in late spring during flowering thinned for me. Otherwise I've been getting over 100 juicy delicious fruits every year.

After the first success, I planted several more from other sources, and got good results again. Soon after eating the fruit and sucking the pits cleanish, I put the whole pits in a flowerpot of soil for the winter, in spot where it would go below freezing but not as hard frozen as outdoors in my location. I kept the soil damp over the winter. In early spring I prepared a garden bed and sowed the pits there as a nursery. The next year, I chose the ten best seedlings and planted them out. If I recall correctly, all the transplants succeeded.

I don't remember the percentage success of the seeds germinating, but it was high, without opening the hard shells.

Kevin Olson wrote:I tried 80% hydration by weight for this batch.  I never got really good gluten development - at least I think that's true, because, it was kind of "shaggy" and sticky, not ever becoming smooth as I'd expect.  This was with multiple kneading and resting sessions, and a temperature controlled proofing box.

Hi Kevin! I used to knead a lot, thinking it was necessary for gluten development. But in recent years a close friend convinced me to try the no-knead method, and wow, it results in much better gluten development and crumb structure! Like, MUCH better. Consider giving it a try.

I've been making sourdough regularly lately, and also yogurt, so here's a photo of my starters, stored in the fridge.

I'm including a photo of my most recent bread, one of my best so far in this location, and it's just water, salt, starter, and flour (mostly whole wheat). The No-knead method is giving me the best crumb structure.

For the starter, I don't measure it. I use a dollop when I'm baking a loaf (maybe 2 Tbs?), and don't feed it every time, just put it back in the fridge. When it gets low I add some whole wheat flour, add water to get the right consistency, mix well, leave it on the counter till bubbly, and then it goes back in the fridge.

Composting toilet cover material!

In my new house in 2018 I started by using up all the chips and shavings and sawdust that I had asked the builder to save for me. But when I emptied the composting toilet a couple years later, there was a lot of undecomposed chips and shavings. They'd turned orange or brown, but were not really ready to use in the soil.

Then I started getting free material from some woodshops in my area. It was a mix of sawdust and small shavings, and I took the trouble to remove larger pieces of woods before use. I watered the sacks of this material for a couple of months before use to make them a little better for the purpose (as per Joe Jenkins's advice in the Humanure Handbook). This also came out a couple years later as not being fully broken down, though much better than the first batch.

Then I started paying for fine sawdust from the woodshops, and getting free coffee grounds from the cafes in town, and mixing them together. I mix coffee grounds and sawdust in big sacks, removing unwanted bits as I layer the material. Then I water the whole mix. It heats up dramatically  within a week, and stays hot inside for a month or so. The cafes and woodshops are most active in summer, so I made several sacks, enough for the year. This cover material finally yielded good compost after two years in the toilet system, basically finished and only needing to be turned and left for a few more months.

Sabine Palumbo wrote:...This product is for the washer http://www.walmart.com/ip/5381195586?sid=bcc6a3a5-c9d0-4962-99af-2aad056285d6  they are silicone discs that remove a lot of the hair during the wasing cycle. Not 100% but works pretty well. And there are other brands of available. But I also own a dryer and have purchased dryer balls for it.

If you use those, where does the removed cat hair go?