"A change in the weather ...

Hey There !

Dave from McElhoes Family Farm/Belmont here.

Well it finally rained. We had been in a drought, having only a trace amount maybe a month and a half ago, and a similar amount maybe a month before that. The entire summer was so dry we struggled for grass and feed for the animals, weights are down. So now it rains.

It is easy to complain (at least for me, I am really good at it), but really, the rain came just as Katie and I finished putting in around a thousand garlic cloves for next year. It watered them in just perfectly. Fingers crossed, and a quick prayer for next years crop.

"A change in the weather is sufficient to recreate the world and ourselves." ~ Proust

Our water tanks, too are filling up. Again just in the nick of time. We water our animals largely with rain water whenever possible, and I was quite literally down to the last day or two in the bottom of the last tank.

Some of our pullets have never actually seen rain. They panicked and sought safety on top of their coop, and couldn't figure out why they were getting wet. If you have ever heard the saying about "mad as a wet hen" rest assured it holds true for pullets too.

Now that all of the chickens are in the freezer, I can't help it, I am getting the urge to nest. For me that consists of cooking and baking, canning and just putting food into storage like a squirrel.

Of course, this is kind of a year round pursuit, Though sometimes I am better at it than others. In our cellar sits the various harvests, potatoes, onions squash, garlic. I did not get to making much wine this year, although there is a bit of apple brandy cordial in a bucket. Since we are light weights, we will still have enough from previous years. There are some jellies - especially the autumn olive jelly that has sort of become one of Katie's specialties. But the truth is, we don't use nearly as much of those things as we did when there more faces to fill.

Notably missing, are the pickles and relishes my mom and grandmothers would have made. I used to make a lot of bread and butter pickles which we would pack into lunches as buttered cheese and pickle sandwiches. A lot of them.

I will, however, be making adjika this week. There is a mountain of green peppers on the kitchen table right now, and this is one of the ways I hope to save them from waste. This is something I learned from a chef I once worked for. He was from the Republic of Georgia, and it was one of his favorite preparations for both seasoning and garnish. There was no real recipe. We made it in five gallon buckets with whatever fresh peppers came in the back door. I think it was supposed to be fiery hot, but he had toned it down for our customer's palates. Still, it varied from batch to batch, only approved by a taste from the chef. It could be green in color, from bell or jalapenos or it could be a reddish or a even a tannish brown from the mixing or ripe and unripe peppers. It consisted of peppers, cilantro, and garlic, ground to a wet paste with salt and lime juice. Salty, sour, spicy, floral, herbal and peppery, it was great on almost anything from meats to starches. It was better if it sat in the back of our walk in cooler and fermented in the bucket a bit, and, although we ate it that way, Chef did not allow us to serve it for fear our patrons might not be accustomed to such a thing. Opening the lid would bring tears to your eyes, and the next guy into the cooler knew you had had a snack.

I had kind of planned to give you a recipe for it, but I really don't have one. Just grind all of the things above with a stick blender or food processor and taste it. If you like it, it's good. I know, I hate when folks tell me that too, and I really shouldn't have brought it up I suppose... Sorry.

A good thing to serve it on is roasted meat or... wait for it... Roasted Chicken. You can get a good one of those here.

I reckon that was kind of shameless.

I'm going to go grind peppers now.

Thanks for Listening,

Dave