February Skies

Members of the Cherokee nation refer to this month’s full moon as the Bone Moon.  This was a consequence of depleted food stores and the necessity of cracking-open bones to access the marrow for survival food.

My own people – the ancient Celts – remember this as the Moon of Ice as it is associated with the coldest month of the year.   

Colloquially, the February full moon is the Snow Moon.

Simultaneous moonset and sunrise this morning.  A doubler.

View east...

View west...

And when you live halfway between the equator and the North Pole it’s still dang cold….

 

How To Make Sourdough Rye

In my continued hiatus from the chaos that passes as news nowadays, on Sunday I performed an experimental bake.  Before bedtime on Saturday I mixed my flours, salt and a slurry of starter/water into a sticky dough. Stretched (not kneaded) and formed a ball. 

By sunrise I had a nicely-proofed dough.  Turned it out stretched it 8X and formed a ball to raise 4-5 hours while doggo and I did chores. 

 

Baked it an hour.

My first sourdough rye. 

If you like sourdough bread in a rye variation this turned-out amazing - and scary to get it right on the first try.  Needs Nueske's liver pate or Usinger's braunschweiger.  Naturally, raw beef and onions or pastrami works too.  

Sourdough Bread 

 

Starting the bread:

Start to finish about 12-16 hours - mostly overnight. Hands-on time is less than 1 hour.

385g water

90g starter

520g flour  (100g whole wheat or rye flour and 420g high protein bread flour = 520g total) 

                    I prefer King Arthur flours

12g table salt

For rye loaf - caraway seed to taste (optional) 

 

Mix water with starter to make a slurry. Whisk the two flours together with the salt and add the slurry. Mix everything by hand or a plastic dough spatula. Cover and allow to rest for 15 minutes.

 

Stretching the bread:

Stretch and fold eight times. Rest 15 minute intervals. Perform this three times over 45 minutes. Form a ball with your dough, place in a bowl, cover and let it rest overnight (8-10 hours) at room temperature until doubled in size. If it is warmer this may take only 6-8 hours. Wet hands are non-stick. Resist any impulse to fold and knead on the countertop. I like to finish this step before bedtime.

 

Forming the loaf:

I like to start this step after rising first thing in the morning. Dump the dough out onto a floured counter. Cover with a bowl and let it rest ½ hour. With wet hands stretch and fold the dough forming a round loaf. Place on a floured towel in a bowl seam side up. Cover and allow to rest for 1-4 hours.

 

Baking the loaf:

30 minutes before baking allow a cast iron pot and lid to preheat in a 450F oven. Tip the towel-lined loaf from the bowl into parchment paper-lined cast iron. Slash and bake covered for 40 minutes at a reduced 425F. At the 40 minute interval remove the lid and bake for an additional 20 minutes at 375F (uncovered). 

 

at 40 minute mark remove the cast iron pot

 

Total bake time is 60 minutes. Remove loaf to a wire rack and allow to rest at room temperature.

 

DO NOT give in to any urge to cut the loaf before it has cooled.

 

After it has cooled you can place the loaf cut side down on a cutting board for up to a day before bagging in plastic. Sourdough bread is naturally resistant to turning stale; if it lasts that long anyway.

 

Pro Tips: This sourdough bread is a very forgiving bake; don’t feel like you’re a slave to pinpoint timing. Nevertheless, weights and measures must be precise. Pull and fold your dough like taffy. Do not knead it on a countertop.

 

More photos and instructions here. Or type: sourdough in the search tool in the upper left corner of the home page.

The Red Rocket

Sunny with the temperature reaching a scorching high of 28F yesterday. 

Positively tropical!

 

Doggo and I ran the trail camera trap line; consequently she got a minimum 1 mile round-trip run under her collar.    Poor Pupper has had a bad case of cabin fever during the recent polar vortex with brief outside time to perform her business and occasionally get a quick dose of the zoomies.  

In case you’re wondering about all of the tracks in the snow; none of those belong to anyone in the household. We’ve been home bound for about a week on account of the extreme cold. Some of those trails look like woodland superhighways.  And they’re all critter tracks.  Mostly whitetail but also raccoon, possum, turkey, fox, weasel and coyote. Maybe a ditch tiger too. 

You’ll note Ruby taking a deliberate slide at the 28 second mark in the video. Not much escapes her nose and that’s to check some fresh coyote spoor. 

The video ends with big, fresh canine turd.  Didn’t look wild. Maybe from a local trailing hound?

Anyway, I’ve had an unusual spate of technical fails on the cameras lately. Will be interesting to see if they’ve been debugged and what, if anything, we got pics of. 

Stay-tuned….

Never Grab A Groundhog

Did you know that New Jersey is running out of groundhogs?  Ever since Milltown Mel passed-away, this New Jersey town has faced a groundhog crisis.  Now the governor has vetoed an effort to import out-of-state replacement rodents.  Not so in neighboring Pennsylvania.   

Groundhog Day is a big event every year on this day over in Gobbler's Knob.   

Someone provokes a hibernating woodchuck named Punxsutawney Phil to come out of his hole and predict the arrival of spring.

Even I can do that.  Provoked by the alarm clock I crawled out of a perfectly warm bed this morning at 5:30 AM, poured myself a steaming cuppa joe and browsed news feeds on my laptop. It was snowing.  I therefore concluded more winter before the arrival of spring.

The man in the picture above is a fool.  You should never grab a groundhog - especially if you are going to wave it around in the air over your head.

From the Algonquian wuchak.  Also known as the whistle pig – Marmota monax belongs to the vast squirrel family. They are big rodents.

They are also sinister-looking with their small ears, beady black eyes and very sharp teeth to go with all of their claws.  I wouldn’t grab a groundhog any sooner than I'd make a grab for a beaver or a porcupine. They are capable of biting through a human hand.  They are all much too dangerous.

Trust me.  I know this.

I have had to deal with multiple critters infestations under my barn. This includes everything from bunnies, to raccoons to kittens.  One year I had a groundhog.  And that bugger was burrowing furiously.

Groundhogs are well-adapted miners.  They have short but powerful legs and very sharp claws.  They are capable of excavating hundreds of pounds of dirt.   And this fella was chucking enough dirt that it wouldn’t be long before he seriously undermined the structural integrity of the barn foundation.

Shooting a woodchuck is against the law in Wisconsin. Yep. They’re protected – just like badgers and wolves.  Not wanting to draw the attention of the local game warden and pleading a landowner exception I opted for the old reliable method.

Mothballs.

I poured a box of mothballs down the woodchuck’s hole.  Oh sure, your barn will smell like grandma for awhile but critters cannot stand mothballs.  And it worked almost immediately for me.

I was puttering in the machine shed when old Phil (smelling strangely of naphthalene) waddled his way into the shed and gave me the hairy eyeball.  He was not happy.  Actually, he was angry to the point of provocation because he reared-up on his hind legs and gave me a nasty bark.

Taking a machete from the peg board I waved it menacingly and told him to get the heck out of my shed.

He scurried away retreating behind a sheet of plywood leaning against the wall.

I grabbed a garden rake and thrust it in his face.

He snorted and whistled and parried back with his claws. 

Claw for claw - back and forth we went. Parry and thrust. I was gaining the upper hand and Phil was losing ground.

Finally forced from the shed he scurried a safe distance from the crazy guy with the rake, turned and gave me a dirty look and waddled-off in the direction of a neighboring farm.

Nasty attitude the groundhog has.

Dangerous too.

 *This post was first published on the JSOnline WauwatosaNOW Gas Pains blog on February 2, 2010.

Winner, Winner...

...Salmon Dinner!

Cold weather and the over abundance of noise that passes for news nowadays has lately opened my world to a welcome retreat to the kitchen.

After group and the running of Friday errands I fed my sourdough starter children and made a third batch for a possible experimental bake over the weekend.

There was a dozen of my signature blueberry muffins to bake followed by our weekly imported salmon; pan-seared with rice pilaf and sautéed spinach.  Remind me to extol sometime about the virtues of browned butter sauté. 

A word about the muffins.

Growing-up, blueberries were a rare seasonal item and rarer still in our household. Likely a consequence of scarcity-induced pricing. 

In case you missed it, blueberries nowadays are available year-round as a result of advances in Peruvian agriculture. And these blueberries grown at altitude in the Andes are mutant things of fruity deliciousness..

Anyway, raising a toast to global supply chains and 2-3 extra minutes of daylight delivered with every sunrise. 

 

February Night Sky

Native Americans have long grown familiar with this moon.  Members of the Cherokee nation refer to this month’s full moon as the Bone Moon.  This was a consequence of depleted food stores and the necessity of cracking-open bones to access the marrow for survival food. 

NASA image

Those of the Kalapuya nation referred to this as the Out of Food Moon.   For others it was the Little Famine Moon or the Hunger Moon.  For the Cherokee the association with hunger and starvation also included a brush with death.  And the people use this as an opportunity to communicate with dead ancestors during the Bone Moon.   

Indeed, these ancient native tribes named this moon after the way trees cracked in the cold, or how people had to huddle around a fire for warmth.  My own people – the ancient Celts – remember this as the Moon of Ice as it is associated with the coldest month of the year.   
On a more upbeat note it is the Hopi tribe of the southwest who call this the Moon of Purification and renewal. 

This close association with the renewal that is marked by the arrival of spring is much more appealing to me than bones and death.  We have modern refrigeration, canning, grocers, central heat, wood stoves, Merlot and streaming television.  Starvation is rare and the entertainment possibilities are endless. Nevertheless, turning our eyes to the heavens hasn't changed in millennia.   

February's full Moon - called the Full Snow Moon - reaches peak fullness at 4:09 PM CST on Sunday, February 1.  For the best view of this Moon be sure to watch for it rising in the east at sunset.  Near midnight the moon will be high in the sky and cast shadows in the snow-covered landscape.  If you are an early riser be sure to look for it low above the western horizon before sunrise on February 2.  The moon will also appear full the evenings of Saturday and Monday - before and after.  Last, but not least, the moon will be closely associated with the brightest star in Leo  - Regulus.  You may have to use your hand to block out any moon glow to spot Regulus.

 

 

Happy viewing.   And fingers crossed for cold, clear winter sky gazing.....

Comical

If it wasn't such a serious subject the appearance of a comic book superhero before a city council would be comical.

Extra credit to Batman for drawing attention to a gravely serious subject.