Go up this morning after a rather restless night. I could not stop my mind from racing. I sent off the following email to the waterloo Region's 100 mile blog site.
"I attended the 100 mile diet seminar and have committed to 60%. This is not because I do not want to try 100% but because I will be away and unable (and possibly unwilling) to maintain 100% while away. I have 1 suggestion and a couple of comments. Let me start with the comments.
Baking Soda is not a grown product but rather a chemical composition that is produced rather than grown. As such if you feel the need to find this locally I would think any good laboratory could produce a batch. I think it should not be consider a food but rather a food additive, sort of like adding red dye to make your cake look nice except this make the food rise. Baking power follows right behind it as it is a mixture of baking soda and a powdered acid, and has the added benefit of not requiring an acid in the food you are baking to be active. Again I personally think (although I am not the referee) that this also is a food additive and not a food.
Let's look at yeast now. This is a fungus and can be grown. I have done a little bit of research on it and think I have a viable solution to the problem. I will note that I have not seen this done and to this point have not tried it myself. I did some reading and many people making beer reuse yeast. My original thought (you can read it on my blog) was to reuse the yeast over and over keeping it in the freezer between uses. After reading I discovered that there would be a problem with this approach as apparently yeast will mutate over generations. Most everything I have read states that you can use from 4-20 generations without any problems.
So my solution is get some yeast from where ever you want to get yeast, spend some money and get good quality yeast. Next fill a measuring cup with enough warm (30 degree C) water to fill and ice cube tray, that was approx 640ml for me for a 16 cube tray, you will likely only need 10 cubes but better safe than sorry. To this add some honey (I am guessing 5-6 teaspoons would be more than enough) add your yeast put in a bit more than you need again I suspect you will want 5-6 individual packages of yeast and stir. Proof the yeast for 5 minutes (let it sit); if the water smells yeasty and bubbles are forming on the top it should be good.
Mix the yeast water well and pour it into an ice cube tray. Pop it into the freezer for 24 hours. Take the frozen yeast cubes out of the tray and put them into a freezer bag. Take one of the ice cubes and add it to enough water to fill an ice cube tray add honey as above and allow to proof. This is strictly a guess on my part but I think that 5 minutes might be good. Again this should smell yeasty when it is good. Freeze this mixture back into the ice cube tray. Again this could be removed from the ice cube tray after it is frozen. If you do that make sure you do not confuse these cubes with the original cubes.
Now each day you want to make a bread remove 1 cube and melt it in a quarter cup of warm water with a teaspoon on honey. Let this proof and then add it to your bread dough and proceed as normal. I think that you will need to reduce the amount of sweeter (honey/sugar/maple syrup) and water (by that 125ml in the yeast water) that the recipe calls for. Once you run out of cubes from the second tray, pull out a cube from the original batch and repeat.
Technically this should yield 256 loaves of bread (assuming a 16 cube tray, which mine is) which should be more than enough to last the 100 days. The only set back I can see to this is that maybe the frozen yeast will die. I read that it should be good for 3-4 months but that is based on reusing beer yeast not bread yeast.
A final note if you are trying this and using a bread maker does not use the delay function, the bread must be made immediately once the yeast is done proofing.
M"
I will wait and hopefully get a response.
Got up and headed down o the Kitchener Market. I do not do this every week but most. I really did not buy much as we have already spent quite a lot this week and have the loft box coming on Wednesday for vegetables. I did pick up some sweet potatoes (from Simcoe) and spoke with the poultry dealer that I like to deal with there. He is out of St George and he assured me that all the chicken, turkey and duck that he carries is definitely local. That is a good this as I use a fair amount of whole chickens and turkey breasts along with many other cuts. I thought I scored as I found a seller selling beans. I had seen then all winter and knew they sold beans but it had slipped my mind.
I bought the last of his beans and ask him where they were from. He told me he grow them himself, he was out of Burford. He also told me that the beans cook in about 2 hours, they look like pinto beans. Ten he told me that this was the last of the beans he would have for the year and would have more in the fall. Sure typical situation I find myself in a day late and a dollar short.
I headed from there to the STOP store. I really like my Soft shell taco shells and wanted to find out how much a taco press would cost me. They only have one size and that it 4" and the price was $28.99. I really wanted a 6 or 8" press and thought the price was just too high so I passed.
Thought I would take a quick look at the Guelph Market but by the time I got over there the market was closing. I thought they had longer hours than this but… I will be back to check it out later. There was a vendor there who sold sprouts that I am interested it.
It brings me back to the question I keep posing, when does something become local. If he buys mung bean seeds from where ever and sprouts them, are they a local crop. I guess I will ask these burning questions to the 100 mile blog before too long.
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