Sourdough Starter is a Riddle Wrapped in an Enigma, Surrounded By Smelly Liquid and Maybe Bubbles?

I was sick a few weeks back. This allowed me to do two things. One, play video games for the first time in years. And boy are my thumbs tired! True story. Remember the Nintendo hand cramps you used to get as a kid? I had swollen thumb for a week! But I’ve found treasures, climbed chandeliers, and killed endless numbers of bad guys.  Sweeeet.  Any other slightly age inappropriate Seattle gamers out there, hit me up!  My mom will provide us with Capri Suns and fruit roll ups!

Two, being sick also allowed me ample time to begin and dutifully monitor my sourdough starter. As I mentioned, I’m blogging and challenging myself along with Grow It Cook It Can It and other bloggers, and the challenge this month is breadmaking.  Last month we made pasta, and I took it upon myself to make ramen.  Because I.m still a sucker for punishment, this time around I decided to try my hand at sourdough.  What was I thinking?

Sourdough starter recipes are like assholes, friends. Everyone’s got one. I did much research trying to come up with a starter recipe that seemed foolproof, as I had tried several times in the past to get a sourdough starter going. I usually stuck to really simple recipes. Flour and water and stir for a week or so. I never got the magic bubbles. So this time, I knew I needed to do something drastic and different, something to get that delicious sourdough taste.  So I researched.  And you know how that is in this age of the internet.  It’s hard to pick one recipe and stick with it for something like sourdough, when every blog promises great results complete with beautifully photographed pictures of fresh from the oven sourdough swaddled in vintage calico linens.  Oh, bloggers…

But I needed to make sourdough.  I have a soft spot for sourdough from way back. My dad and uncle were 80s midwestern foodies and my dad had a little crock of starter in the back of our fridge and baked sourdough loaves for years, in a bread machine. Do they still makes those? They seemed so magical to me back in the day. That’s where my love of this tangy bread originated.

Then, I remember when what I thought were real bagels came into my life as a child, at the St. Louis Bread Company. There was coffee, the fancy kind like cappuccinos! And bagels! And sourdough! And sandwiches with exotic things like sprouts and spicy mustard on them! It seemed so now. This was kinda awesome back in the early 90s in St. Louis. Their bagels were big fluffy things and I thought they were ah-mazing. Later, this St. Louis original became Panera Bread and now kids drink lattes in their carseats. But then, wow!

Sourdough! European and French breads! Ooh la la!

Friends…I finally made a successful starter! You don’t even understand how excited this made me! Ask Double S, who I kept demanding to come look at and/or smell the starter for weeks on end. Thanks Double S!

If you haven’t thought much about sourdough except that its flour and water, aww lawd you have a lot of catching up to do! Now there are schools of thought that advocate for adding grapes, raisin water, pineapple juice, or malt powder. For someone like me, this is rough ,as I usually like to read a lot of the ideas out there about how to make something and then combine what I find to be the best of them into a super recipe. But with sourdough you kinda just have to close your eyes and proceed with one recipe that feels right.

I decided to use the pineapple juice method. Why? Because it seemed the weirdest and most different than what I had tried in the past. Pineapple juice in bread? Whaaa? OK! I decided to go with it.

I found my technique several places, but first read about it on The Fresh Loaf, posted by the Sourdough Lady. What I liked about this recipe at first was a clear outlining of the pineapple juice method and the minimal amount of flour it used. I never liked all the flour you had to pour down the drain with regular starter recipes. Now I’ve changed my mind. You’ve gotta experiment to get this to work, millions spent on bread flour be damned! Also, I didn’t think about the fact that you have to have enough starter eventually to bake with. This starter didn’t work. But I think I know why! I didn’t have it in a warm enough place. I live in Seattle and it’s cold here, and Double S is Norwegian and Danish and they like their money in their wallets and their houses kept cold.  Believe you me.   I see that people recommended putting it in the oven with the light on. That didn’t work for me either. Maybe electric ovens don’t do this? Mine stayed cold even with the door closed and the light on.  I plodded on.

Next I put the starter in the basement on a seed starting heat mat and intermittently under grow lights for extra warmth. Still not good enough. Maybe because our basement is effing cold to begin with. It never rose. Your sourdough starter must rise and fall two times. If it doesn’t, consider it a failure.

I decided I needed a new mechanism to keep the starter warm.  In the past, if you’ve followed along, you’ve seen my attempts to hack coolers into fermentation vessels for things like kombucha.  Eureka!  It worked! I used an old cooler, a seed starting heat mat, and a kitchen towel to prop the lid from time to time.  And I got bubbles, yo!

Nah, not that Bubbles. Fermentation bubbles! Regardless, Bubs is the man!

I started over with a fresh starter batch.  I used organic no-sugar added pineapple juice and organic rye flour to start.

I upped the proportions from the recipe I previously used.  Here’s what I did.

Day One: 1/4 cup pineapple juice, 1/3 cup organic rye flour.

Mix the above two ingredients and put it in a vessel that you’ll feel comfortable dealing with for awhile.  Things can get up close and personal when you’re dealing with sourdough starters. You’ll laugh together, cry together, and so on.  I named mine Myrtle!  I’m like today’s hipster parents, with my purposefully retro name!

Stir well and cover with a towel or plastic wrap. I then put Myrtle in my souped up cooler to chill (heh) for 24 hours.

Note how I don’t have the jar sitting on top of the heating pad.  Direct heat would be too hot for it.  Just having the mild heating mat in there warms it up and the cooler keeps it warm.  Add a thermometer in there if need be, but it worked for me as is, in a house that’s typically 60-65 degrees in the winter.

Day two:1/4 cup bread flour, 2 Tsp pineapple juice

Add the above and do not discard any of your pre-existing starter yet.  The starter at this point won’t look much different than when you first stirred it.

Day two, before I made any additions.

After you add the day two additions, mark the side of the jar so you can see if the starter doubles in size by the next day.  Cover and put back in cooler.

Day three: 1/4 cup bread flour, 2 Tbsp water

When you open your starter on day three, if your environment is warm enough, you should see bubbles. I did!

Day three, before additions.

And as you can see from the marks on the jar, the starter just about doubled in size.  Yours should too.  This is a good sign!

More bubble porn...

View from above.

For your day three additions, stop using pineapple juice and switch to unchlorinated water. I was using bread flour as of day two, but you could use AP, wheat, or rye if you wish your starter to swing that way. First, stir the starter.  Your starter should also be starting to smell kinda sourdough-y at this point too.  Also a good sign!  Now, throw away half your starter.  Try not to cry.

Then add the above flour and water. Stir well and cover again.

Day four: 1/4 cup bread flour, 2 Tbsp unchlorinated water

Midway through my starter making process, I took Myrtle on a trip!  Double S and I were going over to Washington’s little Bavaria for some fun in the snow, but I certainly didn’t want to lose the progress I’d finally made on my starter.  Not a problem with my cooler hack!  I simply boiled some water, tossed it in an old school rubber hot water bottle, and used that to warm Myrtle during the two and half hour car ride.  Look at her go!

Then when we got there, I just switched back over to the seed heating mat.  No problemo!

On day four, your starter may have doubled.  If it hasn’t, it’s still ok as long as it doubles by day five.

Again, throw away half the starter, then add the flour and water listed above.  Stir, cover, and put back in your cooler.

Day five: 3/4 cup bread flour, 1/2 cup water.

On day five, your starter should have doubled, if it didn’t on day four. Mine doubled on day five!

Starter, day five. On day four I made the purple line. Success!

Celebrate good times, come on!

Now, discard all but 1/4 cup of the starter and add the above amounts of flour and water. Once your starter doubles again, you’re good to go!

You are now ready to bake with your starter.  For my inaugural batch, I followed the recipe for basic sourdough from The Breadmaker’s Apprentice by Peter Reinhart.  If you follow this recipe too, give yourself several days.  Yep, several days to make a loaf of a bread!  The dream of the 1890s is alive not just in Portland!

Reinhart calls first for making a barm, or a mother starter. I had never heard of the term barm, but it made me think of Nate’s famous “Narm!” from Six Feet Under.

(Spoiler alert!) RIP Nate!

The barm is the second step to making sourdough bread, according to Reinhart.  Once you make the barm, it’s good for breadmaking for three days.  But oooh boy, does this make a lot of barm.  So unless you are going to make like 8-10 loaves of bread over the course of three days, you may want to make only half of this amount of barm.

Barm, before it rose.

Barm, after it rose. People, this is a shit ton of barm.

After making the barm, the I followed the recipe for Reinhart’s basic sourdough bread.  Again, plan your day accordingly.  For two large loaves of bread, you only need 2/3 cup of barm.  You use the barm to make your final firm starter.   To do so, first, you simply mix the barm with bread flour and water, then let ferment for four hours.  After four hours, let it chill in the fridge overnight.  The next day, take it out of the fridge an hour before you plan to make the dough.  Then cut your final starter into 10 pieces.

Final starter, ready to FINALLY be made into dough.

Make your dough.

Then let the dough ferment AGAIN in large oiled bowl for about 3-4 hours.

Cauliflower? Braaaaaains? Nope, sourdough! Speaking of brains, can you believe Shane turned into a zombie on the Walking Dead? RIP you crazy bastard!

After the dough has doubled, gently divide into two large rounds.  Then, let the dough proof for about 2-3 hours on bread pans prepared with cornmeal.  Didn’t I tell you this was a lengthy process?  At this point, all you will want to do is go to the bakery and buy your bread and never bake or look like this again.

Flour pretty much coated our house for 3-4 weeks.

But don’t!  You’re almost done!

After 3-4 hours of proofing, you’re ready to bake.  Score your loaves.  I used a razor blade–recommended!  Preheat your over to 500°, transfer your loaves to baking stones or leave it on your prepared trays and slide them into the oven.  Then, quickly pour one cup of hot water into a pan or skillet that you have already placed in the oven and quickly close the oven door.  After 30 seconds, spray the oven walls with water in spray bottle.  Do this again two more times every thirty seconds.  After that third spray, reduce the oven heat to 450° and bake for ten minutes.  Then rotate the loaves 180° and bake for another 10-20 minutes.

The bread is ready when it is a nice golden dark brown on the outside, and more importantly when it reaches an internal temperature of 205°.  Seriously, using a thermometer for bread worked wonders.  I’ve always had loaves that looked dark but were doughy on the inside.  Not with a thermometer.  Use it!

Success!

Success I tells ya!

And with all of this, I finally baked a loaf of sourdough bread!  And it was good!  The crust could have been better, as you can see, but I blame the lack of spray bottle.  I couldn’t mist my loaves because I was without a kitchen spray bottle.  So I kinda just lamely splashed some water with my hands, which I don’t think was the intent of the recipe. But the inside looked good and it tasted delish!

And there you have it.  If I can do it, anyone can!  Next month, we make butter!

What Have I Been Up To? Early Summer Preserving Update!

It’s July and the bounty is here, friends!  I was going to title this post something like “Prepping for Preserving,”  but then I realized I’ve probably pickled and dried and otherwise preserved more than most sane people do in a year.  Kinda like this commercial from my youth:

But with a little less tanks and guns, and a little more cukes and jams.  And just the same amount of  sweetass early 80s mustaches!

Anyway, July and August and September here in the Pacific Northwest bring strawberries, cherries, raspberries (We’re just eating the first off our bushes this year!), blackberries, tomatoes, cucumbers (mine are doing great so far!), peppers, apricots, peaches, nectarines, and apples.  And I’ve got plans for all of them!  So, before the truly busy(er) fruit and veggie months of August and September roll around, wanna see what I’ve been up to in May and June, preservation wise?

But first, see, I have a sort of game plan.   I evaluated what I did last year. I canned and pickled and fermented and otherwise preserved many things last year and blogged about most of them.  Duh doy if you were following along here on ohbriggsy!  So I evaluated my larder and freezer and shelves to see what was hot and what was not over the last year, to see what I want to try again and what I want to chalk up to a learning experience.

I checked my larder of canned items.  Wow, I canned a lot last year!  And a lot of it was a success and will be repeated.  Like my canned peaches.  They are a great snack, and also pretty sweet with greek yogurt.  And my pizza sauce.  My pizza sauce is the bomb, yos!  I also liked my dill pickle slices and dill relish.  More please! And my asparagus!  Great in a Saturday morning bloody mary!  And my pickled jalapenos and carrots!  These really grew on me.  Around here we toss a jar into our black beans for beans and rice, or top our nachos with them.  I can’t get enough of jalapenos in any of their forms.  So there will be more of them.  Oh and my concord grape jam (great on PB&Js!) and tomato soup (Wow.  I’ve gotta tell you about that tomato soup and jam!) that I didn’t blog about!  And my raspberry lemonade concentrate.  What still sits on the shelves collecting dust is my Salsa Criolla, rhubarb jam, strawberry jam, apricot jam. Get the pattern?  The jam was good, but we don’t eat a lot of jam.  It was a great item to gift during the holidays, but that took a lot of work when my ass could just go get a gift card.  So this year, no more jams.   Well except maybe a sour cherry jam, because I’m intrigued by cherries this year, as I did nothing with them last year and cherries are truly awesome.  And, well, I do bake much more bread now, so maybe some freezer jams?  See, I need professional help.

I wanna can new stuff too!  Like aforementioned sour cherry jam!  And cherry and apple pie fillings!  And more!

Anyway, all of that to say, here’s what I’ve been up to, preservation wise in the late spring/early summer.

First, I thought about what I like to do in the summer.  And, well, we like to sit on our deck and get our drink on around here.  So when rhubarb finally got red, I made it boozy.

I made the Tigress’s rhubeena, and rhubodka (Cheap vodka infused with rhubarb, with a complicated sounding yet whimsical name!) from here.

Rhubodka basically involved obtaining rhubarb, cleaning a large jar, and going to the liquor store to buy vodka. Then combine all three and let it sit in your basement for a month. Easy peezy!

I got a lot of rhubarb at the farmer’s market this year, but wasn’t much of a fan of anything I did with it last year.  I made a low sugar rhubarb jam last year that was pretty meh and decidedly not a hit here at the homestead, so this year I just experimented with rhubarb and alcohol.  Infusions are easy and quick, and you can infuse many of your favorite alcohols with many of your favorite fruits.  This year, I also made a traditionally Polish rhubarb cordial that I found here.

From left, Polish rhubarb cordial, rhubodka, and rhubeena.

I’m intrigued by the Polish cordial because first you let the rhubarb steep in vodka for a week.  After a week, separate the rhubarb from the vodka.  Let the newly infused rhubarb vodka sit in it’s own jar.  In a second jar, add sugar to the rhubarb chunks you just strained and let that marinate for a month.  After a month, combine both and strain out the rhubarb, and let that age for several months.  I’ll let you know how it turns out.

But that wasn’t all!  I also made David Lebovitz’s strawberry vodka.  You can’t go wrong with David Lebovitz.

I spent a lot of the holiday weekend rinsing, hulling, and slicing strawberries.

But making the vodka was a snap!

Pour a 750 ml bottle of vodka onto your cleaned, hulled and quartered pound and a quarter or so of berries...

Yep! Before the shake...

And after. Now let it sit for a week or so, strain and you're done!

Alcohol infusions are easy and fun.  I’ve also read about whiskey infused with cherries, and tequila infused with strawberries. I still have plans to buy these.  Man, the friendly folks at the Washington Liquor Control Board stores are gonna think I have a problem.  But, I’m making infusions, I’ll say!  Sure you are, they’ll say!   All of that to say, take a fruit you like and infuse its essence into the booze you like.  It’s just that easy!

Did I mention that Double S and I went strawberry picking again this year?  Yep!

We got Shuksans! But just for Double S's strawberry shortcake and for snacking...

Then we hit Remlinger Farms for some good ol’fashioned 3rd of July strawberry picking!

The field was crowded with camera and iphone toting strawberry pickers!

The berries were ripe and delicious. And according to the 15 year old weighing the berries, they were Rainiers. They were of really varying sizes and shapes due to the erratic weather of the NW spring of 2011.

4osomeodd pounds worth! See I told you, I can't help it!

You need to move with a quickness if you pick strawberries.  They are fragile and pretty much need to be processed within 24 hours.

Besides making strawberry libations, I also froze and dried strawberries.  Which reminds me of my game plan.   When planning for this summer, I inspected our dried fruit collection from last year, which was easy because that shit was gone long ago, minus a few stray leftover dried peaches.  All that to say, dried fruit was a big success at the homestead, and I plan to dry even more of it.   Last year, I dried so many apricots I thought we’d never run out, but we did by late winter.  Dried fruit proved to be an awesome snack, or “Nature’s Candy!” as I liked to wholesomely refer to it.  Plus, Double S discovered that it worked swimmingly in her incredible homemade granola.  Last year we dried apricots and peaches, a few cherries and made some strawberry fruit leather.  This year, I plan to drythe majority of apricots I can get my hands on, instead of the apricot jam that still sits on the shelf, and dry sliced strawberries to skip the hassle of fruit leather.  Nectarines are surprisingly good dried, but dried peaches I found to be a failure.  I think it was the peaches.  Drying fruit, just like canning it or eating it fresh, must be done with the best quality fruit you can find.  Bland fresh peaches will be even blander dried peaches.  But dang!  It’s hard to put an exceedingly juicy fresh peach in a dehydrator.  But this year, I will make the leap! Drying is easy.  We have several driers we scored at thrift stores.  Or you can dry fruit in a sunny window if you don’t live in Seattle, or in a 145 degree oven.  I’ve read that some people dry it on cookie sheets covered with wax paper in their cars on hot days!  No energy used at all, and you can dry a lot of fruit at once.  Color me intrigued.  When I finally fully accept my late 30s hippiedom, I’m gonna try this method.    You’ll be the first to know.  Well, my neighbors will be the first, watching me checking my car incessantly in my undies all August.  But you’ll be second.  Promise.

When drying the fruit, make sure it’s dry when you put it into the oven/dehydrator, and that the fruit pieces are not touching one another.  Dipping the fruit in a solution of one juiced lemon to a few  cups water will help preserve the color.  Store bought dried fruit often contains sulfur dioxide to preserve color.  That shit is nasty, and it makes me wheeze.  Lemons are all you need!  The fruit is done when its chewy, not crispy or squishy.

With my excess of strawberries, I decided to dry some.  I sliced them in either halves or thirds, depending on the berry.

I arranged them on the trays of my dehydrator.

And the next day I had a bowl full of dried strawberries! These will have to be coveted, because, wow, a lot of berries turned into a medium-sized bowl of dried delicious orbs.

I also made jam.  But I decided it was too hot to can.  I guess I’m a true Seattleite.  80 degrees and I can’t bear the thought of my canning pot and it’s inherent steam. So I made freezer jam.  Why didn’t I know how easy freezer jam is?

I tossed this together after work in mere minutes!

First, I whirled enough berries in my food processor to makes 4 cups of puree.  Then I mixed one and a half cups of sugar with a package of freezer jam pectin.  You can also use Pomona’s pectin to avoid the preservatives.  I stirred that with the berries for several minutes to avoid clumps, then into those cute lil’ Ball plastic containers for freezer jam.  Easy and much lower in sugar.

Besides my canning and drying, I also pickled just about everything I could get my hands on. And I got my hands on a lot!  Backstory: Refrigerator pickles were a great success here at the homestead over the last year.  My ferments are long gone and I just finished the fridge pickles.  I made a big mistake with my refrigerator cucumber pickles though.  I made a shit ton of them, ended up loving them and all the while had a sense of dread because I didn’t write down my recipe.  By the time I made them, I was hella sick of preserving.  It was September and I was using all the cukes from my garden before they went bad.  Whatever I came up with was epic, but now I’ve gotta do that annoying thing where I try to recreate them but of course can’t recreate them perfectly so I’ll always compare them to last year’s.  All of that to say, write down your recipes or how you alternate from recipes!  You may think this is just some quick pickle you’re tossing together, but what if you love it?  What the eff will you do then?  Answer: Cry.  But keep trying!  This year, I keep a small notebook in the kitchen to memorialize my creations.

So a’pickling I went over the last few weeks.  I pickled anything I could find in my garden.  This is the first year I’ve grown garlic, and the most awesome surprise was the beautiful scape that grew at the top of each plant.  I saw them and marveled at their swirly beauty.  But I thought nothing of it. I walked by perfect bunches of them at the farmer’s market.  But I was just like…

Finally I realized that I can, nay, should pickle these bad boys.  I read a beautiful blog post about canning scapes, but I wanted that crisp crunch that only a ferment can provide, but I was scared (as I always am with fermenting) that I’d eff them up, so I made some scape fridge pickles as well.

Our garlic grew beautiful curly scapes!

And I supplemented them with bundles of scapes from the farmer's market, cuz I wanted to get creative!

If you grow garlic, and you plant it in the fall, May and June are the perfect months to harvest your scapes while they’re nice and tender.  Cutting the scapes also helps the plant focus it’s energy on making the bulb as big as possible.  Win, win.

I made garlic scape refrigerator pickles three ways.  I used the basic brine recipe of one cup vinegar to one cup water to one tablespoon kosher salt.  I made an Italian style garlic scape pickle, with red wine vinegar, and fresh basil and oregano from my garden.  Then I made more of an Asian inspired scape, with rice wine vinegar, a dash of soy sauce, toasted sesame seeds, chili flakes and a dash of sesame oil.  Finally, I made more of a traditional pickle scape with white wine vinegar and cider vinegar, fresh dill, and mustard and coriander seeds.

Scapes, ready for their brines!

From left, traditional pickle, Italian style pickle, Asian style pickle.

Also, I tried fermenting them!  I used the larger jar seen in the above picture, and I used a combo of spices that yielded much success with my fermented pickles last year.  My secret: I threw in some kombucha to get the fermentation process rolling.  It works!  Just add about a fourth of a cup or so to your ferments. You can also add whey or store bought cultures to do this, but kombucha is perfect and semi-vinagery for this purpose.  For this ferment, I used enough scapes to fill a one quart jar, 1/4 cup kombucha, 8 cups water and 4 Tablespoons kosher salt.  I then added pickling spices: juniper berries, fresh dill, mustard seeds, coriander seeds, and pink peppercorns.  I just checked them yesterday, after they have been fermenting one week.  They smell like garlic and they are delicious!  Check out the brine after one week!

That's the cloudy brine of success, pickle-wise!

Ferments are working well in the NW right now, because we’re actually having some summer weather, and warm (not hot) weather speeds up the fermentation process.  After you make your brine, sit the jar on your counter out of the sun for about a week.  Taste the brine and when you like it, put the jar in the fridge for additional aging.  Don’t be afraid of a little mold that you might find on top when you first check it.  Just skim it off.

The other major harvest so far in my garden have been sugar snap peas.  We planted ours late, but our harvest has been just as great.  We have grown these for the last 3 years and pretty much just snack on them.  This year, I needed something new.  After googling, I found this and they are AWESOME.

A new taste sensation. Speaking of... music break!

Gratuitous Arsenio Hall action.  Long live the dog pound!

Anyway, I followed the recipe pretty much exactly, but I added more garlic and a bit more tarragon fresh from my garden.  I made these Friday and as I write this they were already pretty near close to awesome and truly a new pickle taste sensation for yours truly.  If you perchance can still get snap peas, do try this!

But wait, there’s more!  Asparagus!  I didn’t grow it but I saw it everywhere, so you know I gotsta pickle it!  Asparagus is probably a distant memory for my more easterly friends now that it’s July , but here in the NW it’s still available.  Last year I canned pickled asparagus and it was a hit.  I made a basic brine, but in some jars I put a chipotle pepper with adobo.  In others, a few lemon slices.  And in others, fresh homemade horeseradish.  This year, again, I decided just to make refrigerator asparagus pickles.  They’re crunchier and just snappier, and they last a long time in the fridge.   As I said, my fridge pickles and ferments flew off the shelves, while many of my canned pickles still sit gathering dust.

So I pickled asparagus last week, which I adapted from here, minus the allspice cuz that’s just nasty, and with the addition of some new things like celery seeds, cumin, fennel seeds, and sumac.  As my dad used to say when we asked him for stuff, we’ll see!

I blanched them then dunked them in an ice bath. The resulting color was amazing.

Whadda green! Speaking of... next music break!

Finally, I even got a taste of my favorite kind of pickling of all.  Cucumbers!  Squeal!  I found my first of the season cukes at the Yakima Farmer’s Market two weekends ago whilst on a camping trip, and they were organic Japanese cukes to boot!

I gasped when I saw and tasted these gems!

Japanese cukes brought from Yakima to the homestead.

I made a quick pickle, and used ponzu for the first time.  I used 1.5 pounds of Japanese cukes, 1 1/2 cup seasoned rice wine vinegar, 3/4 cup ponzu, 4 garlic cloves, juice of 4 limes, cilantro sprigs, scallions, salt, soy sauce and chili garlic sauce.  Wowee zowee these are the shit a week and a half later!

The chili garlic sauce was a last minute addition, but again, how can you go wrong?

All pickled and ready to rest!

Finally, I scrounged for whatever is on sale and pickle that too.  I know jalapenos aren’t in season yet, but I found a stash in the dollar bin at my local fruit stand, and I made my favorite pickled jalapeno.  David Lebovitz…is there anything he can’t do?

Ok, now that I’ve got my spring training done, I’m ready for the majors.  Let’s go!  What have you pickled so far this year?  And if you haven’t, get ye to the vinegar aisle of your favorite store and go to town!