Adventures with Beverages: Kvass, Carbonated Pickle Juice, and Ginger Ale

The bread kvass was a success, so my
experimentation with this beverage continues.

It’s Monday. We had some beautiful, warm days last week, but the weather has returned to gray and rainy. I don’t know about you, but my energy and mood tend to tank on gray, gloomy days. After the last couple of years of drought and terrible fires, I know we need the rain. My head knows, anyway, and I keep repeating the mantra: We need the rain. We need the rain. We need the rain. Still, I would rather have sunny, warm weather to make me feel cheerful and motivated.

My son doesn’t seem affected. He has been talking nonstop since first thing this morning—mostly energetic nonsense that feels more like noise than conversation. That alone makes me feel ready to crawl back into bed and pull the covers over my head.

I did promise I would report back on the bread kvass, though. I tested it last Tuesday and…

It. Was. Amazing.

I have to admit that I didn’t have really high hopes after tasting the carrot kvass, but the bread kvass exceeded my expectations. It was pleasantly sweet, but not overwhelmingly so, and the light carbonation gave it the perfect little sparkle. It’s actually something I might be tempted to overindulge in.

(There is a caveat here. My husband likes the bread kvass, and my son said, “I didn’t know bread juice could taste so good.” My daughters, however, think it’s nasty and refuse to drink it. Perhaps it’s an acquired taste.)

It was all about fermentation in our kitchen last week.
It was also deja vu all over again as we tried to find creative uses for the sourdough
starter discard--like sourdough pancakes and sourdough chocolate chip cookies.

Given the debatable success of the bread kvass, I tried to redeem my second batch of carrot kvass. Adding sugar and sourdough starter turned it into something slightly more drinkable, but it’s still too salty to be enjoyable. I left a small bottle out a day longer than the rest of it, just to see what happened. That bottle developed amazing carbonation but lost some sweetness, so it still tasted like carbonated pickle juice. I officially consider that carrot-ginger-orange kvass a failure.

Without a viable sourdough starter, yogurt and
baker's yeast will have to pinch-hit for the natural yeasts.

Since I had such success with the bread kvass, though, I decided to give it another go. It would have been more frugal and way more authentic to make my own rye sourdough starter and rye bread, but I was impatient, so I bought highly authentic dark rye bread at Walmart. The flaw in my plan turned out to be my sourdough starter. After tending it like a baby the first few days, I neglected it for a few more days. It had not only separated, which is normal, but had developed a gross and questionable film over the liquid. I dumped it and will have to begin again with my starter.

This jar of fermenting rye bread kvass looks like a hot mess,
but I'm hoping the result will be something wonderful.

Since I now lack a sourdough starter, I used a combination of plain yogurt and a pinch of yeast to replace it in the kvass recipe. I also used my own raw honey instead of sugar, boiled with water and orange peel. I combined all that with the toasted rye bread. Hopefully the result will be as tasty as the last batch of bread kvass.

Hopefully these ingredients are part of the recipe for success in 
homemade ginger ale.

Since I was already in the kitchen messing with fermentation, I also carried through with a promise I’d made to my youngest daughter. Several weeks ago, I had told her I would make homemade ginger ale. If you Google homemade ginger ale, you’ll find a variety of recipes, most requiring club soda or CO². I, however, was in search of the old-fashioned method to create the pop/soda version using yeast. I found it, of all places, on WikiHow. I used the traditional, non-cooked method requiring only sugar, yeast, ginger root, lemon, and water. We’ll see how it turns out.

Kvass and home-fermented ginger ale. Am I going too far?

Beyond that, I’m still finding it difficult to motivate myself for the day. The kiddos may be getting microwaved taquitos for lunch--with a side of kvass, of course.

Kvass, Take 2, and Sourdough Oatmeal Bread

I didn’t have any great desire to make bread first thing Monday morning. However, I’d started a sponge Saturday afternoon, and I was a day overdue making it into dough. (I’m not sure what I was thinking—between church and a six-hour round trip to the airport on Sunday, when exactly was I going to make bread?)

Even at the resting stage, this sourdough oatmeal dough looked promising.

So, first on my list today was the dough for Sourdough Oatmeal Bread. It’s another Bernard Clayton recipe, which I’ve made successfully before using the Amish Friendship Bread Starter. Since I had my doubts about this starter, I also had my doubts about how the bread would turn out this time. It’s rising as I type this, though, and I can hardly wait to try it warm from the oven after it’s baked.

A finished loaf of Sourdough Oatmeal Bread.
The smell in my house right now is heavenly.

I also promised myself I would start the week with another batch of kvass. Last week’s batch has settled into a nice pickle-juice flavor. Maybe my pickle-loving son will like it.

This time I’m using bread. It’s an entirely different approach from the carrot kvass I tried last week. This recipe from PracticalSelf Reliance calls for toasted bread, sourdough starter, water, and sweetener.

Toasting the bread is the first step in making the bread kvass.

I didn’t go completely authentic. I didn’t have any rye bread or rye sourdough starter on hand, but I did have a loaf of buttermilk bread that had received a less-than-enthusiastic response from my family. I diced that and toasted it, which gave me a little more than four cups of bread. I combined that with my honey sourdough starter and sugar water. Maple syrup or honey would have been better for this recipe—a.k.a., more authentic—but I had white sugar on hand, so I used that.

Into the jar the toasted bread goes.

A kitchen helper couldn't help photo-bombing the kvass, unbrushed hair and all.

Again, this recipe was amazingly simple to put together once I had the ingredients together, so I had it in the half-gallon jar in a jiffy. Now all that remains is to let it be so it can ferment for the next couple of days. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Within minutes, the toasted bread had expanded in the liquid.
Let's hope we have the same success with the fermentation.

Finally, my eldest has been 14 for a week, heaven help us all. Those birthday kittens are also a week old. Eyes not yet open, they seem to have doubled in size. The negotiations have started over which one, if any, our children will be allowed to keep. Good thing their father is in on the bargaining, or we’d have a lot of cats when we left the table.

Exactly who is supposed to resist these cuties?

Temperature-mental Ferments

After an explosive start, you might have expected a lot from my sourdough starter. However, the starter not only slowed down, but now seems downright dormant.

It could be operator error, but I blame the temperature in our house. Our oil heater broke, leaving us at the mercy of limited electric heat. Since the outside temperature has dropped back into the fifties, the temperature inside is several degrees cooler than normal. Whenever I’m tempted to complain about the cold—which is often—I remind myself that the heater was working when we got snow right before Easter. Things could have been worse.

On the bright side, the hose on our dryer vent is broken, and I keep forgetting to buy a new one. Whenever I run the dryer, it creates a warm, moist, spa-like atmosphere in the downstairs. It’s like our own little jungle. I even put my peace lily in the bathroom/laundry room to enhance the effect and soak up a little of the humidity. (I recently read this article on the 17 Best Houseplants for Your Bathroom. Spathiphyllum is on the list, so why not?)

I also overflowed a birthday cake in the oven Wednesday (yes, the second birthday in a week), which gave me a good excuse to run the self-clean on my oven. So, for at least a couple of hours, the kitchen was warm.

If it seems like I’m grasping hard for bright sides, it’s because I am. I feel gratitude is an essential part of life, and God is graciously giving me lots of opportunities to practice that attitude.

All that to say, fermentations are temperamental about temperature, so I’m not surprised if some of mine aren’t performing at their best.

The apple-scrap vinegar is an exception to that. At two weeks and three days, I was satisfied it had fermented enough. I strained out the apple scraps and bottled it. If the bottle doesn’t look fancy, that’s because it used to hold store-bought vinegar. It’s full of the homemade stuff, now, and I’m pretty satisfied with that.

The kvass still doesn’t taste like something I want to drink. The saltiness has decreased to a point of semi-drinkability, though, and I could detect the barest hint of carbonation. I decided to move on to step two. I strained out the carrots, orange peels and ginger, then placed them back in the jar with a cup of the kvass to start another fermentation. It will be weaker than the first, but that may be a good thing. I filled the jar with water, covered it with a coffee filter, and placed it back in the cupboard.

That left me about five cups of kvass, so I decided to put that through a second fermentation. I sweetened each jar with about a teaspoon of raw honey from my last honey harvest. The honey was well crystallized, but that won’t hurt anything. I sealed the jars and set them, yes, into a cupboard, to ferment for another day or three. I’ll check back and let you know how it turns out.

With my vinegar done and bottled, I have a half-gallon jar free for another culture. I’m already pondering more kvass. Should I try a fruit kvass or go way, way old school and make some out of rye bread? Send me your thoughts.

Have a good weekend!

Birthdays, Birth Days, and a Little Bit of Light

 I’m thinking about light today. I’m making my way through Cas Monaco’s Bible study on 1 John, Astonishing Love. It’s strange how you can read the same words over and over, but then one day they hit you – Bam! – in a new way.

First John is all about love and light. 1 John 1:7 says, “But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another….” I’ve always loved the imagery of light. When I read these and similar words, I picture myself in a circle of brilliant light surrounded by inky darkness. That light is a safe, comfortable place, full of warmth and, well, light.

What about the light source, though? I tend to picture it out of sight, up above somewhere, but the Bible tells us God is the light source (1 John 1:5). Moreover, Jesus Himself is the light.

“Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life’” (John 8:12).

God in Christ isn’t simply with me, walking in a circle of light cast by some outside source. He is the light. He will always be in the center of that circle of light, because it cannot exist without Him. He is the radiance dispelling the shadows and casting the light in which I walk.

But what does that mean for me? I’m reminded of Paul’s words in Galatians 2: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20).

Christ lives in me. Christ is the light. I am to walk in the light as He is in the light. So that means…

“You are the light of the world” (Matt. 5:14)

“…for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord” (Eph. 5:8a).

The simple birthday cake looked amazing until all the lemon slices slid off.

Whoa. Ponder that as you walk through your day.

On a more mundane, but still miraculous, note, remember the pregnant cat I mentioned in my post about my daughter’s birthday? Well, I should have waited to publish that post. While I was putting the finishing touches on my daughter’s cake, she called to me, “Autumn is acting strange. She meowing a lot and panting. I think she might be having the kittens.”

By the time my daughter's birthday dinner was ready,
our cat had presented us with three wiggly kittens.

Autumn, of course, is the cat. And yes, I did have to abandon the cake to help the first-time mother give birth. That may or may not have anything to do with the way the cake fell apart later. (Probably not, but we’ll say it did.) I’m sure it’s simply a sign of her inexperience that she chose to give birth not in a provided box or dark hidey-hole somewhere, but right in the middle of the foyer. Also, if you’ve never had to help a cat expel a placenta, it’s just as slimy as it sounds.

My children had various reactions to the wonder of birth. My eldest daughter, receiving such a marvelous birthday gift, said, “I know this is supposed to be the miracle of birth, but it’s kind of gross.”

My youngest daughter, who had been over the moon at the prospect of kittens, exclaimed, “That kitten is more ugly than cute. It’s terrifying!”

My 10-year-old son said, simply, “This is a big day for me.”

By the next morning, we had five newborn balls of fluff.

Sourdough Explosion

 Holy smokes, how is it Monday already? The weekend went way too quickly, am I right?

It's cloudy and breezy and threatening rain. I want nothing more than to curl up with one of my cats – either the cranky old cat or the hugely pregnant cat. They both like to snuggle.

It feels like a good day to snuggle with our very pregnant calico cat.

Despite my feelings, though, I stuck to business and spent much of my Monday morning doing PR and housekeeping for our local farmers market, which starts next month. I was more than a little irritated that our small town now requires park permits, but what can you do?

Otherwise, I feel like I’ve been in the kitchen all day. First, it’s my eldest’s 14^th birthday, so there was a special breakfast to be made. She’s been asking for Nutella-stuffed pancakes for a while now (that is, since I made them for her a couple of birthdays ago). Today seemed like a good day to do it. I’m not a morning person, though, and I’m especially tired today, so there are no pictures of those stunning creations.

Of course, there was a cake to be baked. Three layers made from cake mix, canned filling, and store-bought icing. Sometimes I go all-out. Often, I don’t.

I have yet to start the marinara sauce for her birthday dinner. Not how I planned it, but I’ll get there yet.

As for the sourdough…

It didn’t actually explode. Not quite. Let’s simply call it – energetic. I wanted to use a sourdough starter recipe I’ve never used before, so I went to my favorite bread source, Bernard Clayton’s New Complete Book of Breads. His honey starter looked simple and amazing, so I decided on that. It’s supposed to make three cups and fit in a quart jar to ferment.

I’m not sure what I did wrong, but it quickly overflowed my quart jar.

Quart jar? No.

I transferred it to an old, quart-and-a-half pickle jar. Surely that would be large enough.

Larger pickle jar? Nope.

Nope.

My final effort was a half-gallon canning jar. As of now it’s contained at a mere double the bulk I expected, so I’m hoping for the best. However, I can hear the fermentation gases leaking around the seal, so who knows?

This half-gallon canning jar rests on my kitchen windowsill.
The sourdough starter has already taken over three quarters of the jar.

Since I was in the fermentation mindset already, I checked on my two other fermentation projects. That’s right; I have three fermentations going in my kitchen right now. Don’t judge.

The apple-scrap vinegar from two weeks ago is almost there, but I will wait to bottle it until the flavor is sharper and less sweet. Right now it has a slightly fermented but mildly sweet flavor, with a hint of carbonation.

My kvass is a different story. I’d never seen a recipe for a fermented beverage that didn’t contain at least a little sugar or honey. Since this was my first time, though, I stuck with the recipe, which called only for salt. Since I didn’t have whey, I increased the salt content according to the recipe. Today is the three-day mark. It smells sweet and carroty, but it’s still, well, salty as heck. Between the vinegar and the kvass, I’d say the vinegar is the tastier at this point. I’ll follow through with the fermentation process, though, and see how it turns out. Either way, I plan to try it again, but next time with the traditional rye bread. If you beat me to that experiment, let me know how it goes.

On a seemingly unrelated note, I'm going to leave you with a quote from this morning's Bible study. In The MacArthur New Testament Commentary: 1 John, John MacArthur, Jr. writes:

"Our heavenly Father does not simply give us subsistent forgiveness that will barely cover our sins if we are careful not to overdo. We cannot sin beyond God's grace, because as wicked and extensive as our sins might be or become, they will never approach the greatness of His grace. His forgiveness is infinite, and He lavishes it without measure upon those who trust in His Son" (pg. 24).

His grace overflows. Kind of like sourdough starter in a quart jar. Happy Monday.

Kvass, Baklava, and Coffee

I may have mentioned before that I have a tendency to some undiagnosed ADHD. That’s why, with a to-do list full of practical, necessary chores, I found myself on a serious rabbit trail this morning,

I opened the cupboard to reach for the coffee, which led me to…

See the apple-scrap vinegar fermenting there, which made me…

Remember another fermentation project I wanted to try, which somehow had me…

Conducting a product photo shoot I’d promised my husband I would do.

That all, logically, led to a cup of coffee, some baklava, and this blog post.

Let’s backtrack to the fermentation, though.

I reached for the jar of apple-scrap vinegar that still sits fermenting in my corner cupboard. (It has a few days to go but is coming along nicely. Thanks for asking.) As I inhaled the tangy, slightly sweet aroma, I thought, This smells good enough to drink. I didn’t drink my half-fermented vinegar, but I did remember a fermented drink that’s been on my bucket list for a while now.

(My son just walked in and asked why the coffee carafe is on top of the fish tank. That’s a whole different discussion.)

Anyway, Kvass is an Eastern European fermented drink traditionally made from bread, or sometimes beets. I was leery of making a drink out of bread, and I didn’t have any beets, but I found a recipe for Orange-Ginger Carrot Kvass from Cultures for Health. I had a couple of oranges, a little ginger root, and some carrots, so I thought, Why not?

I only had a few small, store-bought carrots in my fridge, but my children discovered some carrots that had managed to overwinter in our garden, so I threw those into the mix. My carrots were small, so I used a couple more than the recipe called for. Whey is not one of my pantry staples, so I omitted it and went for the extra salt version. I shook it, covered it with a coffee filter, and stuck it in a cupboard to ferment. (Not the same dark cupboard as the vinegar. I don’t think I need to worry too much about cross-contamination, but I prefer to play it safe.) I’ll check it in a couple of days and report on its progress.

I know I’ve mentioned that I was raised on a farm. Growing up in a rural area with a tight budget, my family was inclined to use up what we had when we could rather than shopping for ingredients. I’ve lost some of that edge, but the tendency still remains. So, once I had my kvass fermenting, my next thought was how to use the few remaining scraps to create something else.

I’d been eyeing a package of steaks in the freezer, and a marinade sounded like a great idea. I chopped up the remaining ginger and some orange peel, then combined them with chopped garlic, sesame oil, soy sauce, and blue agave nectar. Now I have dinner marinating in the fridge, and that’s a load off my mind.

I ate the orange. Every other scrap went to the rabbit, the chickens, or the compost bin.

Since I had my camera out already, I decided it was a good day to take food photos with some of my husband's imported Italian ceramics. (If you’re interested, you can buy them here.) In the process, I apparently set the coffee carafe down on the lid of the fish tank. Why? I don’t know, so don't ask. It's back in its proper place now. 

Once I finished with the short photo shoot, it made perfect sense to drink the coffee and eat some baklava. The baklava was absolutely not homemade, by the way, but very tasty.

And that was how I ended up with coffee, baklava, and a blog post at ten on a Friday morning. No chores done—no laundry folded, dishes cleaned, or plants planted. Still, I feel pretty happy with my progress so far.

 Now, on to the garden....

Cracks in the Façade

 Have you ever had a day that went off the rails before it started?

I have them, all too frequently.

This one started at 1 a.m. this morning when my nine-year-old daughter appeared at my bedside and announced that she couldn’t sleep because her throat hurt. I dragged myself out of bed and trudged downstairs to give her some medicine. Then, remembering how I craved my own mother’s touch when I was sick as a child, I laid down on the couch and cradled her until she fell asleep.

Sorry, I just had to break up a fight. Where was I?

That’s right. Around 4 a.m. I woke from a doze to realize she had finally fallen asleep. I thought about simply getting up then and there since my alarm would go off at 5:30 anyway. Then again, I’d left my alarm by my bedside, and I wasn’t going back up those stairs. I lay down on the other couch section and, you guessed it, overslept.

I awoke to chaos. My two younger children had managed to unlock their tablets seven hours early and were playing a game together. My son’s frustration was already at the boiling point over too many losses. That was when my teenage daughter woke up, bringing with her a full load of teen irritability. Since her siblings are her favorite target at the best of times … ka-boom!

I instantly shut down my two screen bandits, which resulted in an even larger eruption from my overwrought son. He slammed into the office and could be heard raging and crying over the injustices of life. I braced myself and prayed for calm and the ability to discipline correctly if that door reopened to a mess of broken boxes and torn papers—or worse. Fortunately for both of us, when he eventually reopened the door and apologized, I could see that the rage had confined itself to verbal expression only.

To many of you, that will seem like over-the-top bad behavior, and it is. For me, though, the bad behavior is offset by the memory of how much worse he used to be, the memory of the physical threats and broken items. He is growing, however slowly. It is a blessing that his rage is only in words and that I can respond with calm and compassion. It wasn’t always like that.

There is a history there that I rarely show people. I thought I could write about it now, but maybe I can’t. Not yet.

I started to write this post not because I wanted pity for my hard day. First, because it’s not really that hard a day, but also because I wanted to be honest about what life really looks like. Too often, we show a façade of peace and productivity to the world around us, even to our closest friends, but never reveal what a hard day looks like. I value vulnerability and honesty, but I hesitate with this blog. How dark do I paint the gloom that sometimes hovers over our days? Shouldn’t I always have a positive, inspiring message? Shouldn’t I always be prepared with a silver lining? I want to be honest about life, but I also know there may be people who read these posts who don’t have my best interests at heart, who will take any cracks in my façade and pry them open into gaping wounds.

That’s scary.

I expressed that to a friend the other day, about the time gaps that happen in this blog because I don’t want to write through the hard times or express the darkness of our struggles. She gently reminded me that honesty of that kind might be what is drawing people to this little site. I felt like a hypocrite. I’d recently been pondering the need for vulnerability and accountability in my life, but I was afraid to be honest in the one platform I have. Why would I want to be that honest? Because maybe you’re in a place with a cracking façade, feeling alone, feeling that everyone else has their act together. I don’t want to encourage that feeling. Believe me, you’re not alone.

So here’s how the rest of my morning went. My teen withdrew to sketch for a while. My youngest remains on the couch, still sniffly but well enough to complain about being bored (and yet claim to be too sick to do schoolwork). My son, perfectly cheerful again, has been talking to me nonstop for the last two hours. I scrambled to maintain my priorities, focusing on Bible and prayer, but feeling so OCD that I had to search the house for a black pen because I couldn’t handle changing ink colors in the middle of my prayer journal. Then I began writing this post, only to have to deal with the fact that my son thoughtlessly barged in on my teen daughter’s quiet time and received an elbow in the stomach. Her defense? “I didn’t mean to elbow him that hard.”

This is our life. Perfection? Not quite. Progress? Believe it or not, yes. And that’s where I have to focus, on those cracks in the façade that show our progress from deep black to dark gray. Because that’s real. That’s honest. Some days are apple dapple cake and homesteading. Other days are rage and tears and depression.

And because I like silver linings, here is a whole silver cloud. God is always there. He is there in the days with the dapples of sunlight and purring kittens, and in the days of rain clouds and chaos. He is there when you think you have your act together and the days when you know you don’t.

In my journal today—the one that necessitated black ink—the Scripture quote was from Psalm 51.

“Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me” (Psalm 51:10).

The Psalm continues, “Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit” (Ps. 51:11-12 ESV).

I’d encourage you to read the whole Psalm. King David went through many dark times in his life, but this song was written during a dark time of his own making, when he’d compounded the sin of adultery with the sin of murder. Still, David broke down his façade, was honest about his sin, and knew that God would be with him in that darkness, too.

“For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it;

you will not be pleased with a burnt offering.

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;

a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (Ps. 51:16-17).

 

When Life Gives You Apples…

The past year has been a season of waiting for our family. If we’re not waiting for one thing, we’re waiting for another—a job, a house, a car, a diagnosis, an answer. This is obviously a lesson God has to teach us right now, so we’re doing our best to enjoy the ride suspended in midair between the past and the future.

One thing that hasn’t been slowing down, though, is prices. At the gas pump, at the grocery store, at the mall, and even on the real estate market, the prices seem to be creeping up daily. (That’s part of our waiting. If you know anyone looking to part with a decent four-bedroom home for less that $300K, hook me up, please!)

I’d let my homemade cooking habits slide during a season of hectic activity—think soccer mom, except not soccer. More of a track-4-H-tumbling-piano-AWANA mom. An easing schedule and rising prices have driven me back to cooking with basic ingredients and things I have on hand.

A few weeks ago, I bought some pre-bagged apples at the grocery store. I don’t blame my family for not wanting to eat them. During this off season they’re colorless, tasteless, and completely inglorious in every way. I don’t want to waste them, though. Grocery budget, remember? With those apples in mind, I’ve been eyeing my dwindling supply of apple-scrap vinegar.

Apple-scrap vinegar, by the way, should not be confused with apple cider vinegar, and really shouldn’t be used for canning. It’s wonderful, though, for cooking and cleaning. It has a heady, wine-like aroma. I know my husband has been mildly concerned on the occasions he’s walked into the kitchen to find me breathing in the scent from the vinegar bottle.

Uneaten apples gave me the opportunity to replenish my
vinegar supply and make a tasty treat for my family.

The only problem with apple-scrap vinegar is that you actually need the apple scraps—cores and peels—to make it. My frugal soul won’t let me simply cut up those bland apples and dump them in a jar. That, of course, brings me back to using basic ingredients and things I have on hand.

Does your family like cake? My family likes cake. That’s why I zeroed in on the recipe for Apple Dapple Cake from Wanda E. Brunstetter’s Amish Friends Harvest Cookbook. Three cups of shredded apples for the cake yielded several nice apple cores for the vinegar. (I would absolutely share the recipe, but I don’t want to be sued for copyright infringement, so you may need to buy your own copy of the cookbook from Shiloh Run Press.)

All the ingredients for success.

After popping that cake in the oven, I covered the apple scraps with a blend of water and sugar according to the Prairie Homestead’s Apple Scrap Cider recipe. Then I covered the jar and put it in a cupboard to ferment in peace. Such a small amount of effort for the pleasure of knowing I’ve used the most basic ingredients to feed and take care of my family.

Ready to ferment.

Of course, I now have to wait a few weeks for that cider to ferment. That’s okay. I’m getting used to waiting.

 At least we didn't have to wait long for the cake. Ready to be eaten!