As always, there's a lot of stuff going on here despite the fact that it's January, and it's 21 degrees outside. It's Sunday, so there's a whole lot of cooking going on.
First off, I'm making chili. This is what I've been waiting for since August: making chili on a cold winter day with tomatoes from my own garden. We made some salsa on New Year's Eve but it just wasn't the same as using fresh tomatoes, so we decided that all those jars in the pantry would be perfect for chili!
The thing that I'm most excited about with this chili is the pickled jalapeños. Naomi only put up 2 jars, but I'm sure that will be plenty! I first got into canning with jalapeños. I think they add the right amount of heat and flavor, but there's something about the way they combine with the vinegar that will light your ass on fire! It may just be that the capsaicin is mixed with the oil, which binds to the surface of your mouth. Whatever the reason, they're gonna make this chili really good.
Another thing I've been diligently working on is my bread starter(s). Over the holidays, I accidentally neglected my starter in the fridge. It had too much hooch on the top, and would barely rise at all when I fed or used it. I decided that it needed reviving, and after a few days, it seemed like I wasn't going to get anywhere. We were breadless, so I started a friendly competition. I continued to feed my old culture twice a day approximately 12 hours apart, and I started a new one, which takes about a week to get going full-tilt.
On the left, you can see the old starter, and on the right, the new one started that very evening. You can see some gas bubbles in the old starter, but alas, it is not fermentation of wild yeast, but rather some other organism because it smelled like wet paint, and tasted like it too. I kept feeding it. In some future post, I will get into breadmaking a bit more. Five days later, these two are neck and neck. They really got into the spirit of competition, and with 2 good starters, I don't know which I'll use. Neither are ready to morph into a loaf of bread yet, but we're getting there:
Again, on the left is the old, and the right is the new. Ol' Lefty has been puffing up pretty nicely and smelling like a breadcrust dropped in a beer bottle, but isn't getting quite the boost I'm waiting for. And the baby on the right is starting to get gassy, too. I think by Friday, I might be baking. With these two letting off their sweet smells, the chili cooking on the stove, and some apples in the dehydrator, the kitchen smells wonderful. I wish I could post smells, but you'll just have to imagine, or get some stuff bubbling in your own kitchen.
Finally, I saw an old and dear friend this last week. The day he left town, I came home to a special gift, and the first of our wedding gifts.
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