In a Pickle- Half Sour Pickles from the garden

Every summer I dally with pickling, usually cukes... though there was that period that I was obsessed with the perfect chow-chow... then there was the crabapple ketchup. This summer, I'm giving half sour pickles another go. My pickle muse and guide is a blog I have been following for a while called Nourishing Days. Shannon also blogs for Cultures for Health.

So I was inspired by Shannon to try half sours again. My last experiment started to scare me when the pickling liquids turned cloudy and formed a "scum". By the way, as a Southerner, I know about vinegar based pickling, which requires boiling water baths for canning- cloudy and scum equals tossing out food or becoming very sick. Historically half sours are not tackled in the south, because it is so hot that they "sour" quickly. But as the south is typically air conditioned indoors, I'm going with it.

I decided to keep the small batch (one jar) of pickles next to the air conditioning vent- cold and relatively dark. I am growing two kinds of cucumbers in the garden, so both are in the jar for the first harvest. You can find great recipes with measurements at Cultures for Health, so I will not need to reproduce their recipe here. I used the one that required tree leaves for crispness- I went with oak from the front yard and washed them carefully!

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Here is my pictorial essay of the pickling process. By the way, I tried them after about a week and they were delish. Thanks, Shannon!

Cukes, salt, dill, peeled garlic, peppercorns, red pepper flakes and some little oak leaves on my favorite cutting board.

Layering the herbs in the bottom of the quart jar.

Last layer. Topping the cukes with dill, oak leaves, peppercorns and red pepper flakes.

Pouring the brine.

Lovely jar of future pickles!

So, cucumbers, dill, and oak leaves from the yard/ garden, peppercorns and red pepper flakes from Penseys, garlic from the store... future crunchy pickles, indeed!

 

*** This post has been reposted from www.BergereChair.blogspot.com, my interior design and green living blog.

No claims are made about this, or any content, follows the exact tenants of the Paleo diet. Please use your own judgment when choosing the foods that follow your paleo diet and how you preserve foods. Please use the link about for cultures for health to find the full recipe and an explanation on why there are oak leaves in my jar of pickles!

Cheese biscuits- Paleo off day recipe

This is a Paleo "off day" recipe. Sunday morning is my "off the rails" breakfast day!

I do not understand why restaurants serve sweet cheese muffins and call them cheese biscuits. For me, biscuits are as much the shape, as they are the ingredients list with a grounding in the concept of a scone. I have long been a fan of the Cooking Light Ham and Cheese Scone recipe. In theory, this is a riff on that biscuit.

What I learned from that recipe is that the shortening in a biscuit does not have to be solid fat- Crisco, coconut oil, etc., but it can be a food with oil, like cheese.



Cheese Biscuits

serves 3-4
heat over to 400* or convection to 390*

2 cups sifted self rising flour (White Lily Brand flour, if you can find it.)
2 ounces of cheddar cheese (I used raw milk cheddar from Organic Valley)
milk
coconut oil to grease the pan

Grease cookie sheet and pre-heat oven.
Add the flour to your mixing bowl and grate the 2 ounces of cheddar into the flour.
Mix.
Add milk... and here is where you become the chef. The humidity in your house, thus your flour, will dictate the amount of milk you need. Also, what you want your biscuits to look like will dictate the amount of milk. I'm lazy and I prefer to make drop biscuits, so I mix in enough milk to that consistence. If I were to roll them out, I would use a bit less milk. If I use too much milk, I have what I call toaster biscuits- as in they are big and flat and can be reheated in the toaster.
Mix milk with flour mixture and drop onto the greased cookie sheet. About 8 biscuits should fit on a quarter sheet pan. The can touch and will rise a bit higher if they do touch.
Bake for 10-15 minutes until browned. Serve hot!

Though not Paleo, this recipe does exclude hydrogenated nut or seed oil and the flour is a low protein/ low gluten flour.

Variations on a theme~ add chopped ham, green onions, or garlic powder to taste!

 

This recipe has not been tested and makes to claims to the accuracy. Please test all recipes before trying them on friends. This is not a Paleo diet recipe.