500 Year Vision » September

Nový Mlýn Dried Apples

admin — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 11:12:10 +0000

This year, we wasted not a single apple at Nový Mlýn. In terms of sustainable living, the two of us could probably live on apples alone as we have a vast number of trees here. Experiments in the past which failed included storing apples in the cellar wrapped individually in paper in 2007 (out of sight equalled out of mind, and we never got round to using them before they turned bad), cooking apple sauce for the freezer in 2008 (which is still in the freezer), cutting them up and putting them raw into vodka – which created great apple flavour vodka, but not so great vodka flavoured apples which we didn’t use. I tried adding apple to recipes such as West Country Stroganoff – however Mike wasn’t keen, and in general we don’t eat deserts – so though the Tabor Apple Bomb was nice, it wasn’t going to use up even a small percentage of apples.
The process of juicing the apples was really messy (especially before we had water here), and we need a device to crush the apples before putting them in the press. This is something we need to work on when we have a larger apple crop. We plan to make cider in the future – I do hope that the apples are of a good variety for this.
So, this year, as soon as apples started falling from the trees, I began to experiment with sun drying apples. At first I carefully cored each apple and sliced it using a kitchen mandolin from a Moseley jumble sale. It’s possible to prepare the apples really quickly – you need a very narrow sharp blade to cut out the core by cutting a circle the size of a ring around the stalk. As you slice the apple, you can pick off any bits of seed, and the fibrous flakes around the core are no problem as they are sliced so thinly.
Leaving them in the sun directly dried the very thin slices of apple out quickly, but was way too interesting for all sorts of flying insects – a layer of muslin above and below the apples solved the problem. I needed some kind of wire rack so that air could circulate underneath, and came across two wired bed bases in the attic – once we’d cleaned these up, they were perfect. We positioned them in the middle of the garden – for maximum sunlight and apples would dry out within a couple of hours on a hot day.
Once the apples were dry, I put them in large jars with a piece of fabric held in place with an elastic band as a lid. These were placed in the kitchen window so that they could continue to dry if necessary. They have been a great success. We put them out on the kitchen table as snack food in the evening, and they are quickly devoured. I’ve now labelled the jars with the month for consumption so that we can share them with visitors throughout of the year.
A note: the first apples were not so ripe and produced sour apple rings – which were good, but different from the sweet apple rings later in the season. We tried pear, however these dried rather differently – rather thin and lumpy – Rosie & Esther’s Pear Chutney was a far better use for them.

Mortgage problems – global economic meltdown and Czech bureaucracy combined for great effect

nicola — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 10:39:37 +0000

We thought we had it sorted… after a ridiculously long process we had agreed the mortgage and drawn down the first payment to cover the cost of the roof and rewiring… until a call today.

Apparently, we have some buildings missing. Because of this, the Czech government register of property will not enter our mortgage on the property register. Potentially this means that we are not meeting our side of the mortgage agreement. And this means… that the bank could ask for it back. After all, banks need money at the moment.

We’re totally stressed out at the moment, with George missing and the house in such a mess. Extra pressure is the last thing we need. With my doom-mongering head on, I think they’ll take the house off us and sell it.

The missing buildings have been gone for years – but somebody should have let officials know about it. Let’s hope we can get this sorted out, and quickly – unlike the water permit, which took 18 months. My positive motivation is nearly completely destroyed.

Project Management for beginners

nicola — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 11:41:45 +0000

We have been drifting. Drifting, and meeting new friends, and slowly figuring out how Nový Mlýn works, and appreciating our good fortune to be here and now, however, drifting. It’s time to take charge of our destiny & put the Nový Mlýn show on the road.

When I lived in London, I wanted to do an MBA (masters in business administration), but there was no way in hell that my employers would commit to this. Instead I researched the syllabus of a decent MBA & studied each area in turn, using resources such as the library system. I don’t have the kudos of the qualification, but what I learned has been incredibly useful.

So… I will employ the same technique to learning about project management. I’ve project managed before – market research, events & playschemes, but I’ve had an inkling that there must be more method to complex projects than a business plan and a Gantt chart.

I had a bit of a search around to look at various project management software, and discovered that there are massive numbers of such programs. And they can be massively complicated or simple enough to miss massively important details. I’m going to hold off on selection until I have a better understanding of what I’ll need it to do… but from my initial investigation some of them don’t even have budgets.

Likewise, there are plenty of websites purporting to be the industry standard in professional representation. One that I thought looked credible was the PMI – which has a qualification ‘Project Management Professional’. Lots of companies offer training towards this qualification, such as this 5 day course. Now, with the help of wikipedia, we can begin.

Eat local… but who’se heard of Cep mushrooms in Britain?

nicola — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 12:03:41 +0000

Something has happened in my brain… I seem to have lost the ability to hazard a guess at English pronunciation of unfamiliar words. My pronunciation has completely czechified, as a result, I shall now be teaching people here the Italian word for Hřib mushrooms: Porcini. I think that very few British people would know what Cep were, or that they are the very same thing as those very exclusive Porcini mushrooms:

Czech mushroom collection is an institution. We tried this for ourselves for the first time on Sunday and after an hour in the forest came back with a full basket. We were collecting the safest mushrooms – those from the Bolete family & I felt confident in identifying these. We fried them in oil, butter and garlic & they were very tasty. I continued to sort & chop our new food source and came across this…

I realised that it was unlike the other mushrooms we’d collected when the flesh turned from a pale yellow to a deep blue almost instantly (quicker than me putting the knife down and picking up the camera).

A little research revealed it to be Boletus Luridus. A fantastic name for a mushroom with a chameleon’s range of colour. At least this threw up the possibility of poisonous mushrooms in the Bolete family – before we did. The other one which is dangerous is Boletus Satanus – you could guess from the name… however this is distinctive with a white cap and red stalk. Apparently none of the Bolete family can kill you, but at least I know that some can make you very, very ill.

An interesting wikipedia article about the Slavic mushroom picking traditions puts it quite succinctly… they think we’re being paranoid. A lovely American mushroom site is at pains to point out that the author (of the site and of the book 100 edible mushrooms), does not eat them at all.

We both spent the next few hours being rather too carefully observant of any physical sensations, and worrying ourselves into feeling slightly queasy. The power of suggestion. It was a lovely sensation the next morning, to know we’d just been typically Englishly paranoid.

Today it’s been raining, so I can’t wait to go out mushroom collecting again early tomorrow.

Eat Local: Tábor Apple Bomb* recipe (traditional custard cooked in an apple)

nicola — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 10:55:57 +0000

An easy & speedy dessert recipe which can be made for one person. The inspiration for this recipe is the English custard tarts I love and have not yet found in the Czech Republic. Using the apple itself for the casing means less cleaning, and incidentally produces a gluten free pudding.

*My mum used to make us apple bombs as children. It’s not the name she gave them, just the result of the occasional apple explosion.

Ingredients:

1 large apple
1 small egg
A splash of cream (or two dessert spoons if you’re measuring)
A drop of vanilla extract
7 large sultanas
1 dessert spoon of sugar
Cinnamon
Nutmeg (a generous sprinkling of freshly grated nutmeg is key to this recipe.)

Heat your oven to 175 0C.

Beat the egg and add the sugar, cream, sultanas, cinnamon & nutmeg. Chop off the top and bottom of the apple, forming a chunky cylinder, then, leaving no more than a cm of flesh attached to the skin, remove the core (a sharp, thin knife is useful for this). Cut a slice from the bottom of the removed core & put this back into the apple. Stand the apple on foil to stop any leakage sticking to your oven tray.

Pour the egg mixture into the hole, and cut wedges from the apple core into the mixture, until the apple is full. Finish with a sprinkle of sugar, nutmeg & cinnamon.

The apple will take half an hour to bake through – check the egg mixture in the centre is cooked all the way through using a blunt knife inserted into the custard. When it comes out clean, your Tábor Apple Bomb is cooked.

So… 4 apples down, three tonnes to go!

www.blackle.com – eco clever technology in action

nicola — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 10:59:26 +0000

www.blackle.com might be gimmicky – but it is a perfect example of the way that mass action can have massive reactions. In this case, using a search engine designed to use less energy in lighting up your computer screen, has so far saved 203,250.862 Watt hours. And if you set www.blackle.com as your home page, you’ll see the figure going up as well. I just wishe they’d bother to add all the other functionality you get with the higher energy version.

It’s a shame you can’t see a similar measure of energy saved by mass scale repetition, such as switching to low energy light bulbs, or making sure your electro equipment isn’t left on standby.

Tábor Meetings

nicola — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 06:10:14 +0000

Czech toys

nicola — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 11:20:02 +0000

The woman whose patterns I am looking into has a shop here:

http://eobchod.fekar.com/

They are really very typically Czech, by which I mean interesting and a little quirky. It reminds me of the work of Denisa Grimmova – who produced a beautiful series of scenes in old fashioned tv set boxes. Funny, very human, monsters sitting down to tea together. They were installed in a bar in Prague for a while, but the last time I went there, they were gone. Shame, as I don’t have any pictures of them even & haven’t found any info on the web yet.

I’ve just had a quick look on Ebay. Hand made soft toys are not selling at a premium there, probably because lots of people can make them. Though, if she is prepared to make some toys from reclaimed materials, I could try putting something through to see how it goes. I doubt they would sell for as high a prices as they are in her shop. The toy patterns are selling, however, especially those with a seasonal theme – so at the moment Halloween theme toy patterns have a lot of bids on them. It might worth a try?

To be continued

Apple mountain

nicola — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 13:59:49 +0000

Next autumn, when we have water, and heating, and a kitchen, I will make Cider. Nový Mlýn is host to dozens of apple trees, and I have been slow to get acquainted with them, almost too late in some cases.

My feeble excuse is that the garden was so overgrown that I couldn’t tell they were falling from the trees. Now, after a few days of hard graft the lawn (we call it jokingly) is a little more under control. I have not mastered the scythe but at least understand the principle. Our neighbour came round again today and demonstrated that it needs to be close to the ground at all times, not waved about like an oar. Now, I have uncovered a tonne of apples, and roughly sorted them into usable or compostable.

So… in the orchard we have

1 red apple tree – quite recently planted, the apples all went with the help of birds before I had a chance to take much notice of them.
2 green early summer apple trees. Juicy, firm apples (but will go floury if past it), which were all fallen from the tree by August 24th when Jana visited. They bruise easily and rot quickly on the ground.
2 trees with very large pale green apples, some turning red.
1 tree which produced a small crop of red and green stripy apples, which brown slowly but are rather bitter.
1 small red apple tree – very sweet little apples – but again they brown quickly. Now (first week of September) some of them are splitting open on the tree and it is hard to find one which is still firm enough to enjoy.
1 tree with huge green apples
1 pear tree – pears are currently crisp but sweet. I will wait and see with these.

Last night I started experimenting with using apples as a basic food group. I cooked West Country Stroganoff based on a recipe from the Guardian on Saturday. M said it was a bit too appley… not surprising given the quantity of apples I’d hidden in it.