A new Produce of My Estates challenge

[hrj]

As a “siege cooking” challenge, I’ve decided that every meal should include at least one ingredient from My Estates. The herb garden will make this trivially easy for dinners, but for breakfast today I used up my last little can of Pillsbury crescent roll dough and made chocolate-orange-walnut pinwheels, with the candied orange peel, orange syrup, and walnuts all from the Estate. I’m pondering the question of whether culturing my own yogurt (from store-bought milk) would count as home-grown.

Lunch was something I usually have as a work breakfast: yogurt and plum puree with raw rolled oats (actually 5-grain cereal) mixed in. I think dinner is going to be an old fashioned hamburger (since I have the meat thawed) with house-made dill pickles and tomato relish. I have some pumpernickel in the freezer for a bun. I’m working towards baking some bread by doing viability testing of the outdated yeast packets I found in the fridge.

In addition to all the preserved things, what do I have fresh on the estate currently? There are lemons aplenty, plus a couple remaining Seville oranges that were still green when I did the main harvest. The herb garden has savory, sage, marjoram, oregano, peppermint, fennel, and a few non-edibles like rue. Elsewhere in the yard I have rosemary and laurel. Since I don’t use pesticides on my roses, I could hypothetically use them in cooking as well. The gallica roses aren’t blooming yet but there are two bourbon roses that are going strong currently and quite fragrant. I should sort through my leftover seeds and see if I have leaf lettuce and radishes. Nothing else would produce in the near future.

I’m being virtuous in my social distancing: Denise and I had our regular Wednesday dinner via Google hangouts (with various technical glitches). The tree guy has confirmed he’s coming to do the work tomorrow, but that can be managed maintaining the prescribed 6-ft distance easily.

It was bright and sunny for the noon bike ride today, but now the clouds are moving in again, though no more rain is predicted until Sunday. I was hoping it might be warm enough to have dinner on the patio, but alas, probably not.

Comments

[hrj]

SDD9: temperature 97.7 again. I feel like I should calibrate my thermometer against something more reliable. I guess this is just my “normal”. Does that mean that if I ever come in at 98.6 I should worry about running a fever?

Lunchtime bike ride on the canal trail, no close proximity, no physical contact, no other excursions off the property.

[choirwoman]

My normal is 97.5 (if I'm doing the conversion right) and I call everything over 99 a fever.

[hrj]

I rarely have illnesses that involve fevers in the first place. So I think I should probably also count 99 and over a fever. But this is also a cheap electronic thermometer and while it does seem stable in terms of repeatability, I don't know if it's measuring "true" temperature with accuracy. I figure I can rely on it for comparative temperature.

[threadwalker]

I'm very impressed with your plans and your execution. Nicely done!

Do you have any lemons to spare? I think I need to make lemon curd to go with those scones I showed you.

[hrj]

I do! How many do you need for a lemon curd batch? I can drop them on your doorstep when I'm off on my lunchtime bike ride. (Assuming the tree guys are done by lunchtime. Otherwise later.)