Food: Picklepuss

One may be confused by my blog.  Was I not, just a few days ago, saying I was going to be eating more healthy foods?  Why then all the pickles?

Weighing cucumber slices.

It's true that modern, pre-processed commercial pickles can be problematic.  Commercial picklers add all kinds of additives to make them crisp and bright.  Their source veggies are of questionable quality.  You have to worry about sodium content, sugars, and any pesticides on the veggies.  However, even commercial pickles can have beneficial effects.  The pickled vegetable is usually high in fiber, which is good for the digestive tract.  Vinegar, often used in the pickling process, is a good source of magnesium, and has been shown to boost the body's fat-burning metabolism.

 
The cucumber, a favorite among American picklers, is not the most nutritious vegetable you could be pickling.  However, with proper recipes, well-chosen organic produce that's free of pesticides, and a variety of vegetables, you can have nutritious, guilt-free pickles in your pantry.

Bread and Butter pickles, with a few jars of dill pickles peeking out in the back.

Take the turnip.  Tiny little root vegetable with a copious, leafy top.  Their raw flavor and texture is not unlike a radish crossed with a carrot.  Pickled with a little cumin, and they are delicious and nutritious.  You can also blanch and freeze (or dare I say... pickle? Pickled greens = delicious) the tops for a very healthy serving of greens.

Turnip roots, quartered and sliced, being brined in salt water prior to being rinsed, and pickled.

Right now I'm loving a new canning cookbook I bought for the Kindle I will soon own (I have a Kindle Fire on pre-order, but there's a reader app for PCs and other devices like Android).  It's called "Canning for a New Generation" and it's split up by seasons, so whatever time of year you find yourself with a bumper crop of something, it's a great place to start.  Her choices are a bit limited though, so if you find yourself with, say, a bushel of Okra your neighbor gave you, you're going to have to find "The Ball Blue Book of Home Preserving" or "The Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving".  The first is out of print, which is a shame, because it was a more no-nonsense, comprehensive list of fruits and vegetables and how to preserve them the same way your grandmother did.  The "Complete" book has been updated to be more modern, and has recipes that are more... how do I say this?  More cosmopolitan.  Still a very good resource, and easier to get a hold of.

The healthiest, most nutritious pickled foods, however, are some of the Japanese pickles that are out there.  My next pickling session, I am definitely going to be getting something like a Tsukemono cookbook, full of healthful Japanese pickling recipes.

Emerald City is up!

Dusted off the very-lived-in new workbench this morning, and photo-taking commenced. Now I just have to wait for my weak camera battery pack (I really need to replace that thing) to recharge before I can get to the new stitch markers.



Didn't it turn out pretty?

I'm having trouble with white balance now that I'm not just plopping items on the scanner. On the plus side, my turquoise colors actually look like what they should.

Checking the My UPS page, I see that my new jewelry supplies are coming in today (yay!) but my new blank roving is not coming in until Thursday (boo!). I was pretty good over the weekend, spending-wise. I only broke down and bought one shiny new tool... a cordless dremel. And the only reason was we were in Walmart getting shop towels, and it was cheaper there than through Amazon.

The jewelry supplies not only include more wire sizes, but a butane torch for soldering at higher temperatures (and with a finer tip!) than I could manage with my old soldering iron from my stained-glass foray eight years ago. The tip on my old iron is HUGE. I'm a little nervous about the torch. It gets up to 2300 degrees F.

When I was a child, maybe seven or eight years old, I remember going to bible school on Sunday morning. We were doing some kind of craft thing. I don't remember what it was exactly, but I do know it involved candles, because I caught my hair on fire. I remember starting to take off running down the hall (possibly in search of my grandmother) in a blind panic, when my wise great-aunt Donna grabbed me by the arm and slapped the side of my head. A trim of the hair, and I was fine.

I've been in the Army, fired an M16, a rocket launcher, and worked with tools designed for tanks, but fire still makes me nervous. I don't care if it's the equivalent of a very hot lighter, I still have visions of it somehow blowing up and sending schrapnel everywhere. BUT... I'm still going to use it because it's the only way to do a proper job.

I will definitely be putting my hair up, though.