What I ended up doing this quarter was quite a lot of cooking, So here’s my first haul from the Evergreen farm stand, a surprising amount of which will end up in this:The mole that I’ll basically spend all quarter making.While my two potential internships were up in the air, I went to the Northwest Tea Festival where I spent quite a bit of time with Whatcom Tea’s Tea Bar. We talked about aging tea here, and also with both Miro and Crimson Lotus. I’d been planning to make kombucha and was emboldened by the tea company that brought some along.Over the course of the quarter, I’ve ended making a theme of the living sauce, basically a live fermentation that can just keep going if you keep adding to it at the appropriate intervals, like this sourdough starter,This buttermilk that’s been the by-product of the cultured butter I’ve been making, which I’ve used to make soda bread and my quarter’s third batch of cultured butter,and kombucha, which is made with a specialized vinegar mother, can be kept indefinitely with the right temperature control and the proper ratio of ingredients you acclimatize it to. Mole is a living sauce in a similar way, and can be kept the way some keep various fish sauces.I worked with quite a bit offresh, local produce, I went to the Evergreen farm stead at least once a week, every week, as it was open, and ventured several times to the downtown farmers market to the point where I have a rapport with several vendors. I also spent quite a bit of time with Olympia Olive Oil and, though my internship collapsed there, Cascadia Home Brewing, where I got barley flour milled for me that I made two breads, a no-longer sourdough starter and my first batch of kombucha.I attended the Northwest Chocolate Festival for the second time, this time actually arriving at the head of one of the very long lines for the sake and Brazilian chocolate pairing, learning about the shelf stability of Grim Bros hot sauces and being left with the mystery of the very busy Malai Chocolates specially fermented bar.On the way to the Chocolate Festival, I pick up fellow student Cameron, who recommends a restaurant that specializes in pastry that I pretty much have to say was a highlight and made my morning that I had been awake since 3:00AM for.This is the second bread I made, which was very photogenic. It had slight fruityness and sharp, tart sour character. I’d made it with the sourdough starter I was keeping that I’d later learn through conversation with a home baker who swears by the book Tartine and a lot of experience that I actually, by what I’d been feeding it, been selecting for a very different set of microorganisms, but was encouraged to keep going with this starter to see what kind of bread might emerge.The closing event for my quarter was the Biodynamic Conference, where I went to a panel on microbiomes and learned about soil management via fermentation and selection.I also went to the Culinary Breeding Network panel, where I had the only food experience that highlighted what makes food grown biodynamically different and some very, very, very good honey.
