Potato mystery #2

How the heck are you supposed to cook hash brown potatoes?  

I've made some progress but I'm still not satisfied with the results.  I think I figured out the secret of having them not stick to the pan.  You need to preheat the pan on medium-low with a little oil in it.  After you add the potatoes, don't try to stir them right away.  Let them brown on the bottom for a minute then you can flip them over.

But so far, even when I can get the outside the right golden-brown color, my hash browns are coming out kind of dense, soggy, and gray on the inside, not light and fluffy like at the cafe.  What am I missing?  Do I have to peel them before I grate them?

Potato mystery #1

Today's food mystery is:  Why can't you home-can anything with dairy in it?  

Mom and I tried adapting a crock-pot recipe for Smashed Potato Soup to home pressure canning.  The crock-pot recipe basically has you cook the potatoes in stock for a long time, mash them slightly, and then add cream, sour cream, and cheese right at the end just before serving.

The pressure-canning instructions for potatoes were to cut them up, put them in the jars under salt water, and cook at 10 psi for 45 minutes.  There were recipes for chowder in the canning book but they leave out the dairy and have you make, for example, clam chowder "base", to which you add fresh dairy when it's to be eaten.  

The crock pot instructions have a general advice not to use fresh milk but only precooked milk such as powdered, condensed or evaporated.  In the potato soup recipe they do use fresh dairy but do not let it cook for long.  

We left out the dairy when we pressure-canned the potato soup, because we weren't sure if it was allowed.  These books don't explain what the problem would be with pressure-canning fresh dairy.  Does anyone know?  Is it possible to do this or to make evaporated milk at home?  It would be nice to be able to do so.  The Skipper told me that potatoes plus dairy (the Irish diet) is pretty complete nutritionally.

We followed the crock-pot recipe for the soup but only cooked it for about ten minutes before putting it in the pressure canner.

Potatonomics

The viral marketing department found a prospective customer for my potatoes, even though I didn't ask them to.  So I had to come up with a price.  The Natural Farms online catalog had organic potatoes for $0.80 to $1.30 a pound, delivered, so I set the higher price for the hand-sorted ones and the lower price for the "use me first" seconds.

The total amount of time I spent on potatoes over the season was probably about 120 hours for which I got 600 pounds.  That is 0.2 hours per pound.  If I could charge Natural Farms delivered prices at my garden gate, I would thus be working for $4.00 to $6.50 an hour.  Doesn't sound so great but I think not bad for a first try and considering I did almost everything by hand.  

It worked

There was a deer foraging in my deer forage plot this morning.  Guess what's for lunch? You're correct - potatoes it is.

Lamentably, the deer also already munched one of my unfenced bur oaks - the one closest to the house.  So, the hypothesis that a half-acre of tasty turnips would distract them from a couple of yukky bur oak seedlings, is scientifically disproved.  My new hypothesis is that they're mind readers bent on destroying every plant precious to humans.

Incredible progress on all fronts

The East Bur Oak Nucleus is mulched.

The West Bur Oak Nucleus is mulched and fenced.

Cobbing of the window and door frames has commenced, by the hands of Fancy.  I asked permission to photograph the work.  She said only if you help.  I meekly complied.  As we flang mud she explained the science.  The straw bales need to be coated with something breathable.  When the tiny clay particles get wet they expand and overlap, providing some sealing action.  When they dry, pores open up so that moisture can evaporate out.

The total potato haul was 600 pounds even.

I have a 3-point potato storage strategy:

1) Root cellaring in Flora's basement.
2) Root cellaring in Big Foamy out behind the cottage.
3) Home canned potato soup (Mom & I are working up a recipe.)

Mixing up Cob

In other exciting news, Redbeard and Fancy got a batch of cob hyomped up, for to reseal around the cottage windows on the outside.

The mixer is a custom unit of local manufacture.

It's basically a hopper with a big tapered screw auger in it.

The design was inspired by this Patz V360 large agricultural feed mixer.

Here's a closeup of the finished product.  Mmmm natural.

Potato harvest interim progress report

The September 9 freeze mostly killed my potato plants so I'm harvesting.  I'm digging by hand and keeping everything bigger than a nickel.  Here's what I've got so far.  That's 376 pounds.  Took me about two days and it's a little hard on the spine.  It will be a job sorting them out.  Supposedly you can root-cellar only whole perfect ones, any holes or cuts and they will rot.  So I will have to cook some right away.  You can't freeze raw ones either but I believe you can if they are partially cooked (as evidenced by the Ore-Ida section of your grocer's freezer.)

Here is the productivity data row by row.  I've dug 4 of the 5 rows in the west patch, average productivity 1.3 pounds per linear foot.  (Row 5 starts with Kennebecs (I don't remember if it's all Kennebecs (I think I alternated white and red (but I digress.))))  If the trend were to hold up in the east patch I would project 700 pounds total which would be close to my 750 pound goal.  Remember that was 1000 calories a day for 200 days.  But the east patch was more heavily munched by deer and bugs, so we'll see.

There was one Baby Jesus potato (so far.)

The little ones are good pan-fried in oil and onion and sprinkled with rib rub.

People keep telling about oh/yah you can go to the big potato farm in Park Rapids and they'll let you glean potatoes for free after the picker goes through.  Sure and I could dumpster-dive with the freegans but how resilient and sustainable is that?