Wild Yeast

March 31, 2019 by dizmixen

If you are making a wild yeast for (beer) brewing, be sure to start it about a week before you brew your beer.

Combine 1 part sugar to 4 parts (de-chlorinated) water. I like to use unpasteurized honey as it contains a lot of yeast.
Add some yeasty ingredients such as berries, flowers, leaves, bark—whatever you can find around your yard or kitchen.
Cover with a cheesecloth and put in a warm place. Stir at least 2-4 times a day until it becomes active.
After 2-5 days, bubbles and foam will appear at the top of your jar. Active fermentation has begun.

Cultural Revival

September 1, 2018 by dizmixen

Making fermented foods to preserve the harvest, while adding nutrients and zippy flavours

Monique Vassallo remembers asking her mom what Grandma Amirault had in the big crocks in the cellar. Under the wooden lid and heavy rock were vegetables: string beans and passe-pierre – wild Goose Tongue greens – that her Acadian grandmother had picked along the Petitcodiac River in Memramcook, New Brunswick.

How to Garden in January

January 15, 2018 by dizmixen

Harvesting vegetables from a winter garden takes a bit of planning: gardening in January really means doing the bulk of the gardening before January. That means planting the right veggies at the right time of year. It means paying attention to maturity dates and hours of sunlight each day. Once sunlight drops below 10 hours per day (usually around mid-November in Cape Breton until mid-February), everything stops growing. The trick is to get everything in the ground with some growth on before then.