Retirement: the pioneering, hand-raised food version

Now that I am retired I have taken it into my head that I must know how things are made, and so I have launched a campaign to make things at home that can be conveniently picked up at the local supermarket for a fraction of the price.  But, obviously, my versions  are organic, delicious…hand raised.  You can’t put a price on that. 

Home made chocolate hazelnut spread.  Nothing can beat it.  It’s actually mostly nuts, unlike  certain commercial products I could name.  Granted, it costs over 30 dollars for two jars if you’re using organic hazelnuts, and the hazelnuts don’t come pre-peeled, so you have to spend 2 or 3 hours roasting them, and jostling and rubbing them to try to get the skins off.  At this juncture the age-old question: what are husbands actually for? is answered.  But it’s hard to beat the final product. Creamy, hazelnuty….hand raised.  

One year we were travelling in Napa Valley, and we stopped at a famous restaurant and I had my first “Buratta and Heirloom Tomatoes with Basil on Toast Points.”  It was 25$ a plate.   I had to replicate it at home.   It was a shock to discover that buratta costs 20$ for one small lump in the shops.  I knew I could make this cheese for a fraction of the price, and the internet didn’t let me down.  For the cost of a gallon of organic, grass fed cow milk, you can make 3 lumps of burrata.  A savings of 50$!   Granted, I had to drive to the next borough for the cheese making chemicals, and there was the cost of the organic, hand knitted cheese cloth, and the 4 hours of time I take to make it that could have been earmarked for something else: writing the Great Canadian Novel, for example.  I bet Margaret Atwood doesn’t fritter away her time making cheese.

And if you have managed to produce the burrata, it doesn’t end there; you must also have organic, hand-raised heirloom tomatoes, and the finest toast points.  I’ve never been able to hand raise a tomato, so I go to the local farmers market where, from the price of them, I assume they’ve been hand-raised by members of the royal family.  And I make, using a recipe from America’s Test Kitchen, “Authentic baguettes at home”.  A process that takes upward of 50 hours.  Now, mind you, you aren’t slaving during the entire 50 hours, though there are many hours of folding and setting aside for 30 minutes, and the purchase of specialized equipment; a couche for example,  into which you put the baguettes for their final rise.  This was unavailable in Canada, so I had to importune a nephew to get me one in the States, which he was obliged to drive 180 miles to deliver.  Taking all this into consideration, my buratta , heirloom tomatoes and basil salad on toast points now costs 30$ a serving.  But it’s deliciously hand raised.

What pioneering endeavor would be complete without ginger beer?  Aside from the drive across town to the one person who carries champagne yeast, and the sturdy bottles with ceramic and wire tops, ginger beer is easy and very inexpensive.  We’ve made it twice, with only minor injuries, and it makes excellent gin mules. 

A caveat on the ginger beer…this is a product that continues to fizz, and can build up a lethal explosive power.  Yesterday my husband opened a liter bottle, and the entire ceramic cap blew off, ripping the wires apart that hold it onto the bottle, and jettisoning all but one quarter of a cup of ginger beer with the force of a Mount. St. Helen, all the way up to our extremely high ceiling.  In a desperate attempt to curb its murderous effect, he tried to tip the bottle towards the sink, which deposited ginger beer along all the kitchen walls and the floor, and of course himself.

We spent the next 2 hours trying to clean up, and then on the way to wash the ginger beer off himself, he thought he’d pop along to check the drier.  Getting into the spirit of our new pioneering lifestyle, he had read that you can clean your feather pillows yourself by washing and drying them, saving the cost of a trip to the dry cleaners. He opened the dryer, just to check, and the entire feather contents of the pillow burst out and showered him with a cascade of duck down.  We are paying our cleaner to come in for an extra day, and are now in the line up at the drive-through at MacDonalds, contemplating dinner.  I have found a site where you can make your own hand raised bubble bath.  I’m quite excited about it, but for some reason, my husband doesn’t want to know.