Sunshine

Today was another sunny and bright day here in Wisconsin. I love sunshine, and I really love this time of year when each day brings a new sign of spring.

Tonight when we got home from work we checked the box elder trees, and were thrilled to see that each of the three buckets had about 1/2 gallon of sap in it. The sap doesn't seem particularly tasty or even sweet, but I hope by the weekend we'll have enough to start boiling.

It was also nice today to dig up a few sunchokes from the garden and use the last of the over-wintered squash. I roasted them and put them on a pizza with some of the queso blanco I made yesterday. I hope it tastes o.k.!

Later: It must not taste too bad, as my husband asked "how much am I going to have to pay for this later tonight?", referring to the high inulin content of sunchokes, which makes them "low carb", but causes certain unpleasant side effects...

New things...

This has been a weekend of trying new things, although I'm trying to keep my expectations low! There is practically no sap in the buckets we put out yesterday (but some of the tubing had popped off at some point, so it's hard to know if there was anything to lose or not).

Today I tried to make some Mexican style cheese; it seemed to turn out well, and was easy to make. It is still draining, but the texture seems correct (unlike my last attempt at cheese, which required rennet, where the curds were very small and stuck to the cheesecloth). I also tried to make ricotta from the leftover whey, which seems to have worked, although my yield is quite low.

I'm also making ravioli. I have had a pasta machine for a long time, but I used it for polymer clay and hadn't thought of making pasta with it until my friend Liz inspired me with a recipe for sage cream pecan sauce... and I actually had some sage that was somewhat fresh still in the garden! I'm letting the ravioli dry now. We'll see how they turn out....

Box Elder Syrup

We live on 40 acres of land, and I grew up with a copy of "Stalking the Wild Asparagus" on the family bookshelf. I love trying to find culinary uses for wild plants, and have eaten a lot of odd weeds over the years.

In the early spring in Wisconsin, there is not much happening in the wild plant world, but we did plant a few maple trees a few years ago, with an idea that at some point we might be able to tap them and make syrup. The trees are doing well... but it will be a while before we can tap them.

However, we do have a lot of box elder trees, which grow like weeds. My husband has been trying to get rid of a lot of them as they are crowding the oaks and other nicer trees (and they burn pretty well, also, in the fireplace).

We took a "managing your woodlands" class this spring, and learned (to my surprise) that box elders are in the Acer genus, just as maple trees are. And people do tap them for sap to make syrup!

I quickly ordered some tree tapping supplies, and today we started tapping 3 trees. The sap (which flowed quickly from two of the trees) didn't have much flavor, but after boiling it should taste a little like maple syrup.

Well see how it turns out!

U-shaped Curves

I was reading recently about U-shaped toxicity curves (compounds that do not show a linear dose dependence for toxicity). Mechanistically, they don't seem to make sense, at least not at first... but then I have realized that I have a U-shaped preference for chocolate. I am not a chocolate fanatic like some people... but I do like sweet milk chocolate. I recently enjoyed a dessert wine/chocolate tasting, and I discovered that while I don't really like the standard "dark chocolate", I do like the super dark stuff.

Brave new world

This is my attempt at disciplined writing... and also, since I am a scientist by training, an experiment in the world of blogging. I'm not sure if this blog will eventually develop a focus, but the narcissist in me is interested in seeing if anyone will actually read what I write. I read a couple of blogs regularly, and am hooked in the same way that I was many years ago with Rex Morgan, MD, and Another World (did I actually watch a soap opera as a teenager? And not even a cool one?).