The rush of big heirlooms and romas were processed in August, most dried in the solar unit out on the front (southside) deck. Weather’s back up into the ’70s during the day after a couple of nights of high-30s and frost warnings, looks like the peppers and grape tomatoes survived to finish up before Halloween – more sun-dried tomaisins! I keep making them, they keep disappearing faster than they’re coming in. I’ve found they’re not just great on crackers (with fresh basil, red bell peppers and feta cheese) and pizza, but add lots of zing to pasta and rice dishes as well. Mostly, though, the kids eat them as late-night snacks by the handful, right out of the jar.

As soon as it’s too cold to garden any longer, I’ll be using some of the dry-dried tomato that I’ve turned into powder to make tomato, basil and rosemary fettucini. Fresh pasta is fun to make and freezes very well, great to pull out and cook up quick when unexpected guests drop by. For the leathery half-dried tomatoes I had to go looking for recipes beyond “the usual” diced and tossed into/onto stuff. Discovered Valley Sun, a California company that specializes in sun-dried tomatoes. The linked page offers some general ideas about adding dried tomatoes to just about any recipe for meat, poultry, seafood and vegetables.

Dried Tomato Pesto Fettucini

• 2 cups half-dried tomato quarters
• 1/2 cup slivered or sliced almonds
• 3/4 cup chopped fresh basil
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 tbsp. olive oil
• 1/2 cup Parmesan, Reggiano or Gruyere cheese
• 1 pound fresh rosemary-basil fettucini

Dice tomato quarters, toss in oil with basil and garlic. Saute slowly in a cast iron pan over medium heat until garlic is soft and basil is well wilted. Toast almonds over medium heat stirring constantly to keep them from burning. Remove from pan when slightly brown and set aside. Boil the pasta according to directions and drain. Return to pot over low heat, add tomato pesto mixture and the grated cheese, toss well. When this is all well heated, add the almonds and toss. Serve immediately, garnished with fresh basil and extra cheese.

Clams with Tihuana Pepper and Dried Tomato Broth

• 2 tins oil-packed clams (or oysters)
• 1 cup Chardonnay
• 1 cup clear vegetable broth
• 1/4 cup salted butter
• 1/2 cup diced half-dried tomatoes
• 1/4 tsp. sea salt
• 1 tbsp. crushed red pepper
• Lemon wedges

Bring wine and broth to a boil in a covered sauce pan, add butter, tomatoes, salt and red pepper. Reduce heat and add clams, cover and simmer for 5 minutes. Serve in bowls over a slab of toasted home made whole wheat tarragon bread with lemon wedges on the side, to be squeezed into the soup as desired.

Sun-Dried Tomato Appetizers

• 1 cup half-dried tomato quarters
• 1/4 cup basil herbed wine vinegar
• 1/4 cup water
• 2 cloves minced garlic
• 2 tbsp. finely chopped fresh basil
• 2 tbsp. chopped fresh oregano
• 1/4 tsp. sea salt
• Dash of freshly milled black pepper

In a small sauce pan heat vinegar and water together over medium low heat until barely simmering. Remove from heat, add tomatoes and cover. Allow to stand for 1 hour. Mix fresh basil and oregano together with the pepper and minced garlic. When tomatoes have soaked for an hour, remove from marinade and place cut side up on a cookie sheet and brush with olive oil. Sprinkle the garlic, pepper and herbs onto the tomatoes and bake in a 200º oven for 4-6 hours until somewhat ‘dry’ to the touch. Cut in bite-size pieces (3 per quarter of an average roma), insert toothpicks and serve on a plate with crackers and Chevre goat cheese.

Sun-Dried Tomato Dip

• 1/2 cup half-dried tomatoes
• 4 ounces softened cream cheese
• 4 ounces soft Chevre goat cheese
• 1 tbsp. olive oil
• 3 cloves chopped garlic
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh basil, or 2 tsp. dried basil
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh chives

Put all ingredients except fresh basil and chives into a blender and process until smooth. Mix in fresh basil and refrigerate until ready to serve. Sprinkle dried tomato powder on top, serve with dried crackers and fresh vegetables or French bread baguettes.

Hope these recipes for sun-dried tomatoes sound as delicious to you as they do to me, and I absolutely MUST remember to plant more basil next spring. Dried tomatoes are great additions to vegetable soups, chili and bean dishes, added to the cooking water for rice and just about anything else you might feed your family over the coming long winter. Dried tomatoes retain more of the original nutrients than canned tomatoes do, something to consider as cold and flu season hits. Dried tomatoes also make excellent straight from the bag or jar snacks when the family is gathered around the kitchen table to play cards or board games, though for this those little bitty grape tomato tomaisins are neater.

Now… out to the porch to see how the latest batch is coming along.

In looking around for more information about edibles we can gather without having to grow them in our fields and gardens, I was again reminded of that voracious “Vine that Ate the South” – kudzu. We hear about how the leaves and tender vine ends are high-protein greens either for animal fodder (goats especially love it) or for pot likker greens you can make for dinner. There is usually a sort of side note whenever you read about kudzu that says the root starch is used in China and Japan as “food,” usually unspecified. Those of us who homestead in the south where kudzu has managed to claim millions of acres all for itself, should probably learn about all the ways this plant can be consumed. Not just greens, flower jelly and flower wine.

Originally planted as an ornamental, government and railroad workers planted it across the south in the 1930s for erosion control. It can grow up to 2 feet a day, cover everything in its path, and no known herbicide is ultimately effective against it. The roots can weigh as much as 200 pounds and extend underground to a depth of 10 feet, no topical herbicide is going to kill something like that. All parts of the plant except shallow, bark-covered smaller roots are edible, but it’s unlikely any homestead could consume enough spring shoots, vine ends, leaves or roots in a year to keep it from taking over valuable fields. A herd of goats is about the only thing known to actually keep it under control.

Kudzu has a long history in herbal medicine and shows some promise as a treatment for chronic alcoholism, high blood pressure and as a systemic alterative for colds and flu. But this doesn’t override its value as a wild food source. Roots are dug in the winter, after the kudzu has died back for the season. That annual die-back leads to a thick accumulation of fine compost that can be gathered at the same time and used as a garden amendment. Just be sure to sift first through a screen to remove seeds so you don’t introduce kudzu to your beds. Roots are best dug with a fork like potatoes. If you find a big one you may have dig out around it with a spade. You want the fat, deep roots. If all you can find are the tree root like shallow ones, remove the bark first and only use as powder.

Kudzu root can be used as a general root vegetable in soups and stews, stores well without drying in a good root cellar with your turnips and rutabagas. Or it can be sliced and dried, stored in jars like other dried produce. Once dry it is easily powdered in the usual manner to be used as a thickener for stews and soups, pies and quiches, or as a high protein vegetable-based flour.

It is the root flour that is most often used in Asia for a staple food item. In Korea and China it is mixed with arrowroot powder and made into pasta/noodles. Both the kudzu powder and arrowroot are starches, so cornstarch should work as well. The noodles are nearly transparent, highly nutritious and can be fortified with wheat or rice flour, potato or bean flour, etc.

Making your own pasta and noodles is quite the operation, but well worth it in the fall and winter when it’s not so hot and humid. My family likes home made herbed pastas, veggie pastas made with powdered dry tomatoes, greens, beets, etc. and such. Well dried home made pastas will keep just like store bought pasta, or can be frozen. This year I will be making noodles with kudzu as well.

“The Vine that Ate the South” offers us a highly nutritious staple food we should not overlook in our efforts to live self sufficiently off the land.

The picture at left is from Architectural Digest, which did a photo layout of one of John and Cindy McCain’s Arizona homes in 2005. Here is the full slide show. Nice place.

Not exactly like our homesteads, which more often look sort of spliced together from this and that as we attempt to grow our personal independence and self-sufficiency in an increasingly hostile economy. Heck, many of us dedicated homesteaders have had to invent some creative ways just to pay the mortgage, which does tend to bite into time for completing the goat barn or installing the solar panels or building the sluice for the water turbine or… well, suffice it to say that for most of us, our homesteads are a forever work-in-progress. We wouldn’t be doing it if “Home” were not the most important asset we have in the world, on which we lavish our time, toil and love unconditionally.

Thus it wasn’t a delighted laughter that greeted a clueless John McCain when he told an audience of evangelical ‘base’ Christians the other day that people can be considered “rich” if they bring home $5 million a year. Which makes his rival Barack Obama’s measly $4 million income last year positively middle class. The laughter was more along the lines of “…he said WHAT!!!???”

Then he ‘forgot’ how many houses he owns. Told Politico that he’d have to have his staff get back to you on that. The answer, in case you’re wondering, is somewhere between 7 and 12. Maybe more, but they’re condos so who’s counting? I admit to being floored, and wonder how it is that this guy has managed to stay within the margin of error with Democrat Obama in this year’s Presidential campaign. Are Americans really that scared? Since the entire Republican game plan is to keep people so scared of terrorists that they don’t dare vote for anyone who might be able to address real life problems like housing, health care, deficit spending, downsizing, etc., etc., etc. What ever happened to the “Home of the Brave” part of our national identity?

I guess Homesteaders are just a different sort of breed of American. People who actually do desire being as responsible for themselves and their families as they possibly can be. People who will go ahead and plant a few rows of wheat this fall just because they can and people are going hungry. People who don’t mind milking the goats or playing “find the eggs” from their free-range hens. People who know how to fix the water heater and patch the roof and build a greenhouse even though they work to pay the bills and barter for what they need. We’re not proud. We’ll buy second-hand, we’ll recycle someone else’s discarded roofing, we’ll drive that beat-up pickup truck every day and thank our lucky stars it still runs. Just so we can continue to live this way, on our beloved homesteads.

Maybe we should be proud-er. I’d lay odds right now that every single one of us who wears the label “Homesteader” knows right off the top of our heads exactly how many houses we own. And where they are. And why we own (or are paying for) them.

The economic situation is bad, getting worse. Our nation needs to start celebrating people who will embrace the realities of our existence in the 21st century, after “peak oil” and the absolute looting of our nation’s wealth. By people just like John McCain, who can’t remember how many homes he owns. Wow. Just… wow.

As we prepare to replace the fence posts and fencing around the garden, I’ve been considering a fenced area on the other side of the garden, or perhaps on the upper terraces, for a chicken coop, a little barn-shed and a couple of milk goats. It would be a big step for us to go into livestock (that’s not dogs, cats or doves), but with the food shortages expanding and the prices rising fast, it might be something that makes good sense.

The folks we bought this place from some 15 years ago raised goats and horses, also kept bees. I’d love to get some bee boxes, know right where to station them at the edge of the woods facing the garden. But we’ve plenty of wild bees and other insect pollinators for the fruit and vegetables and wildflowers. I’d be doing it for the honey! Chickens will have to be well protected from foxes (we have a couple of fox families on the property, and we don’t plan to kill them). We used to keep chickens in the fenced back yard of a house in town when I was a kid, they aren’t difficult if they’re protected.

My experience with goats hasn’t been so encouraging. Got our first goat in Virginia from a friend. She was half alpine, half Nubian, the cutest critter God ever made! All legs and full of energy. By the time she’d grown up enough to breed (yes, they have to be bred regularly in order to give milk), she was convinced she was a dog. Who ever heard of milking a dog? She made an great pet, but we never had her bred.

Toggenburg goats give the most milk per capita. Had a friend in New Mexico who got one in payment for a debt, gave 2 gallons a day! Since he didn’t like goat milk that much, we told him we’d take all the excess. He’d deliver a gallon daily, and my kids went through it fast. It’s naturally homogenized (you have to mechanically separate the cream), more easily digestible than cow’s milk, tastes sweet and creamy, and makes some of the best cheese on the planet. My family loves cheese, and that is way more expensive than milk at the store. Worse, they don’t label cheese as to whether it comes from rBST treated cows, and unless you can afford organic, it probably is.

If we do get goats, I’ll be making cheese. And goat cheese isn’t difficult to make if you know what you’re doing. You don’t have to separate the cream for cheese, but a separator does allow you to make butter. Heat the milk in a double boiler to 80º. Be precise, get a good long digital thermometer. Because we are vegetarian I’ll be using a mushroom-based rennet alternative. Rennet is produced from cow stomach lining. Testing for pH is also recommended for making hard cheeses.

Cheese flavoring is introduced with the lactobacillus, which you can get from buttermilk or purchase online along with the rennet or rennet substitute. At home a gardener can flavor fresh cheese with fresh herbs, too. A good herbed chevre (goat cheese) can go for $50-$60 a pound, if you can find it. Here’s a simple recipe for chevre:

5 quarts goat milk
1/2 cup cultured buttermilk
2 tablespoons diluted rennet (or vegetable rennet)

Warm milk to 80 degrees. Stir in buttermilk and mix well. Let sit a few hours. Add rennet. Stir at least one minute. Let sit at room temperature for 8-12 hours. Curd is ready to drain when it looks like thick yogurt. There may be a thin layer of whey floating on the top.

Ladle curd into muslin bag and allow to drain for 6-8 hours, or until it’s the consistency you like. Freeze, unseasoned, in Ziplock bags, or add salt and herbs to taste and put in a wooden cheese mold. When set, remove from mold, bag and freeze.

Check out some of the recipes at GourmetSleuth or surf around for others. Find out if anyone in your area offers cheese making classes (extension service sometimes has lists). You don’t have to have your own goats to make cheese. Just hook up with a dairy!

Links:

Cheese Making, Milk, Dairy Home
GourmetSleuth: How To Make Cheese
CheeseSupply: Cheese Making Supplies
Cheese Making Ingredients