Harvest Monday, 26 January 2015

I'm gone on vacation right now, so you all will have to have fun yourselves. It isn't unusual for me to go on vacation sometime in the late winter or spring. Usually my townhouse mates get stuck caring for my onion seedlings. Since I ordered plants instead of seeds this year, they are free from that. But they still get to care for the sweet potatoes. I like the Garnet variety, but it takes forever to come out of dormancy and make slips. So I start trying in January. Luckily I don't have to worry much about them. I do want them to check on the water level, but to be honest even if they never looked at it, it would probably be fine. The water doesn't change much without any roots in there.

As for harvests I'm going to talk about something that uses my preserved harvest, but in a small way. Usually you see the big things like my vegetables heaped on my plate but today is about the small things I use from my garden. Today is all about mayonnaise.

As many of you know I can't eat a lot of things. The problem with mayo for me is paprika and soy lethicin. Most of the mayonnaises on the market have one or the other in them. There are some without, but I find them rather tasteless. So began the experiment with making mayonnaise myself. I didn't want to use eggs as pasteurizing them is a real pain. If I had a sous vide machine I'd be all set, but I don't. So I decided to go vegan instead. Eggs are useful in mayo not just for their flavor but because they are emulsifiers. They keep oil and water mixed. Flax seed does the same thing. A typical vegan egg substitute is a tablespoon of ground flax seed and three tablespoons of water. It works pretty well. Yes the flavor is different, but I was OK with that. I like eggs, but I was going to use the oils and additions to make the mayo taste good.

The oils I used were a mix of coconut oil, olive oil, sesame seed oil, and a bland oil. I found you can only use about one tablespoon of coconut oil in a half cup of oil, otherwise when it is refrigerated it gets too hard. But that one tablespoon adds a lot of flavor.

From the garden I used two ingredients. Ground mustard seeds and garlic powder.

Daphne's Mayo

• 1 T flax seed
• 3 T hot water
• 1 T lemon juice
• 1 T white balsamic vinegar
• 1/2 t salt
• 1 t ground mustard
• pinch of garlic powder
• 1/2 t honey
• 1/16-1/8 t sesame seed oil
• 1 T melted coconut oil
• 3 T EVOO
• 1/4 c neutral oil (I typically use canola)

Mix the hot water and flax seed together until it is gelatinous. Add all the ingredients except the last two together. Mix with an immersion blender until well blended (mix in the container the blender came with as there isn't a lot of volume). Add the last two oils one tablespoon at a time, blending until well incorporated between each addition. Alternatively you can add the oils very very slowly in a thin stream. I find that I make quite a mess that way, so I like to do it in discrete portions more.

Harvest Monday is a day to show off your harvests, how you are saving your harvest, or how you are using your harvest. If you have a harvest you want to show off, add your name and link to Mr Linky below.