Homemade Slow-Me-Down Poppyseed Buckwheat Noodles

It's always handy to have mason jars of homemade soup stock in your fridge. I also like to make sure we have some miso paste, so that even if there is a stock shortage, you can whip up a miso veggie stock a la minute. Today is a Family Day holiday in B.C., so I decided to embark on a slow food project to wind down and enjoy a day with a gentle pace. To make these homemade noodles, you have to have deep patience and a delicate touch. You just can't make them if you are rushed because it will all end in tears.

This dough is so simple it doesn't even have eggs in it. You could make it gluten free by omitting the wheat flour. I used flours from New Life Organics in Saskatchewan. My folks brought them to Vancouver when they came to visit at Christmas. (I felt guilty when I realized how heavy a suitcase of flour is to lug through the airports.) You may need to add a little bit more water to the recipe, depending on the how finely milled your flours are. These are rustic noodles with a chewy mouthfeel that are fantastic in soups. You are using buckwheat and poppy seeds, two plants that nourish bees and humans. So slow down, enjoy the process and enjoy your noodles!

1 cup organic buckwheat flour--the one I used was quite finely ground
1 scant cup coarsely ground organic whole grain flour
2 tbs olive oil
1/2 cup tepid water
1/2 tsp salt

Mix dry ingredients in a large bowl, make a well and add the oil and water. Mix and knead with your hands until the dough is pliable. Divide dough in half. Roll out 1/2 the dough into a rectangle on a floured surface to 2 mm thick. Cut the dough lenthgthwise into 3 inch widths and then cut out each noodle, to between 1/4 and 1/2 inch widths. The dough shouldn't crumble, but it is delicate which is why you have to be slow. Pick up each noodle and put on a floured pan until you are ready to cook them. This also takes patience.

Set aside any noodles you'll be cooking in the soup. Just before you eat, pop the noodles in the soap and simmer until they rise to the top.

As for the noodles you won't be eating right away, cook only 1/2 the entire batch of noodles at one time. Put a pot of water on to boil with 1 tbs olive oil and 1/2 tsp salt. Put the noodles in the pot in the boiling water until they rise to the surface (about 2-3 min. or less). Drain and keep covered in the fridge. When you want to use them, just blanch to bring up to temp.

Things in Jars: A Citrus and Bee Herb Household Cleaner

My Grandma and Grandpa Clark lived in a mail order Eaton's House with a country kitchen and a big old fire-powered oven. Off to one side of the kitchen was a cool pantry with large cupboards for storing mason jars of preserves and my grandfather's own honey. As a source of never-ending sustenance, the pantry was a mysterious and magical place. A friend of mine told me when his family moved into a "previously owned" house they discovered a whole birthday cake high on a shelf in the pantry that someone had abandoned and forgotten. There's a story in that cake just begging to be told.

I have always had a fascination with things in mason jars, and so I have begun to collect recipes of things you can put in jars, forget about and then eat or use in some other practical way. When I read this blog entry from The Queen of Green, updating her cleaning recipes I read the comments with great interest. Lindsay asked for reader's cleaning tips and was flooded with replies. Several people wrote about adding citrus peels to vinegar to make a degreaser. Bingo! That sounds like a great idea! I filled a jar half full of white vinegar and added my breakfast grapefruit peels. Then I took out some dried lavender and rosemary from my storage tubs (not as romantic as a pantry) and added those. Attending the UBC Farm Symposium on Friday we were treated to Mighty Leaf teas. I chose jasmine tea and then kept the cloth tea bag and added the jasmine tea leaves to the vinegar mix. I left it infuse for four days and I decanted it this morning. So far I've used it to clean out the compost container and it works a treat. Now if I only had a pantry to line up my experiments . . . .