Wednesday, April 8, 2020

A wonderful way to celebrate Spring is to make a Spring basket.  Try this as an optional assignment for gardening class.  A Spring basket makes a beautiful nature table decoration and a nice place for your decorated eggs.

Assignment 4 (optional): Make a Spring basket

Find a plastic container that fits into your Easter basket.  You can also use a plastic bag.  Poke holes in the container or bag and fill with potting soil.  Alternatively, you can fill an egg carton with soil in place of your Easter basket.  Seed the soil with a whole grain, grass seed, or sprouts.  Wheat berries are wonderful, but you can also use rice, millet, corn or sprouts, like alfalfa, lentil, mustard seed, chia, or sunflower.  Put in a single thick layer on top of the soil, then dust with a light blanket of soil over top. Set your seeds in a sunny location and water daily.  Mist gently. Do not flood.  You will have a nice green basket in time for Easter.  Here are pictures of the ones Cob-weaver and Mosquito started a week ago using wheat berries. 

Ant brought home some honeybees and more bins of wild honey and comb.  They were living in the walls of a house in Salinas.  He says they are the nicest bees he has ever met and they don't sting.  He is trying to get us to keep them.  We will see....  He has finished cleaning and jarring all of the eucalyptus honey from the last job and just in time because we have this new honey to strain.  I wonder what it will taste like.

Tonight I made soymilk.  I've been working on it since yesterday, since the beans need overnight soaking.  It's easy to make.

Soymilk

adapted from The New Farm Vegetarian Cookbook

1. Soak 1 part of soybeans overnight in water.  
2. Drain and grind the beans in a hand grinder (this way releases more protein), or add 2 parts water and blend.  If using the hand grind, you can add up to 13 parts of water.  
3. Put the slurry in a pot or double broiler and bring to a boil, making sure to watch carefully, as it will scald and boil over if you are not careful.  Once to a boil, then low boil for 20 minutes, keeping watch so it doesn't scald.  
4. To strain, pour over a colander lined with cloth.  Twist the cloth, or press with a spoon to squeeze out excess milk.  Rinse the pulp with water and squeeze again to strain out more milk.
5. Cool and store in the refrigerator for up to 5 days.  
6. Soymilk is not naturally sweet like animal milk, so you may like to add a sweetener, or vanilla, cocoa or salt. 
7. The leftover soy pulp still contains a lot of protein.  You can use it to replace rice in your recipes or in baked goods.  You must cook it longer, like you would brown rice, to make it digestible.

Farmer Ladybug 🐞