Month: May 2022

It’s Berry Season

The best thing about planting a garden is all the fruits and vegetables. The worst thing is all the fruits and vegetables. Especially if you’re not really a Susie Homemaker that loves to can and freeze. Guilty. Pretty soon the horrible zucchini and tomato pandemic will begin, but right now I’m just trying to deal with some berry vines that I suspect are on steroids.

First it was the Loganberries. These little suckers are so fragile they pretty much turn to mush if you look at them cross eyed. I don’t really want to make berry jam, so my favorite use thus far has been to make a berry crumble. Pretty tasty topped with vanilla ice cream, or we actually prefer vanilla yogurt.

Following the loganberries were the early boysenberries. At least I can freeze them because they’re sturdy little berries. Being lazy as usual, I just baked some into a boysenberry galette . (It’s made just like the nectarine galette, just pile the crust full of berries instead.) I use store bought pie crust. You can judge me, but I don’t care. I’ll be sitting on my lazy butt, eating this with a smile on my face.

No telling what else I’ll have to make before I defeat these berries. And then the later ripening berries will kick in. The horror!

Einkorn Bread Revisited

I’ve been making Einkorn sourdough bread for quite a while now, but I decided there must be an easier way to make it than mixing, folding, letting it rise, folding, shaping, letting it rise again….. And guess what, there is!

Now I take Betty out of the fridge the day before and let her warm up. Betty’s my starter, named after a very old friend whose nickname was Bubbles. So named because she was a tiny little thing with ENORMOUS boobs. So when my starter started bubbling, I thought of Bubbles, who’s real name was Betty…..but I digress.

Anyway, I let Betty warm up for a while, feed her, and let her rest on her laurels all day.

The next morning I mix up my dough, no kneading required. I let it rise all day in a covered casserole dish until it’s doubled in size, then I transfer it to a second dish the same size that’s been heated in the oven. That’s it. No kneading, no second rise, and I can’t tell the difference in the taste or texture. Oh sure, you can shape a loaf, put slashes in the top, dust it with flour, make it look like it came from a bakery, and it will be pretty but won’t taste any better. So why work harder just to make it pretty. I’m not going to.

It does take a LONG time to rise, so you’ll have to start first thing in the morning to have bread by dinner time, but you don’t have to make much effort. I’ve amended my einkorn bread recipe if you want to check out the way a really lazy person makes it.