As the summer draws to a close, I thought I’d report on a very successful project I’ve been working on this summer. I call it Pickle Project: Seed to Sandwich. The idea was to make my own pickles, and I thought it would be fun to combine the cooking / pickling elements with some basic gardening. I’m a basic gardener.
The project began with a gift I received for Christmas a couple years ago, the EarthBox gardening system. I can’t recommend this enough to the novice gardner. It’s a planting box with a false bottom. The false bottom allows you to fill up a chamber of water under the soil and keep the soil moist without fear of overwatering. It’s simple, but it worked really well.

I got some cucumber seeds from Burpee and planted them indoors in a seed starter. This picture was taken on day 7 of the project. The seeds had sprouted and were looking healthy.

I set up the EarthBox on the same day, and planted the cucumber plants.

Day 29: Most of the plants survived and started growing big leaves.

I took the above picture on day 62. All I had been doing up until this point was keeping the EarthBox full of water. As you can see, the vines were really thriving at this point.

By day 70, there were flowers and tiny little cucumbers forming.

The first cucumbers were ready around day 91, so this was the day of the first harvest. The pickles were a bit bulbous and sometimes more on the yellow side rather than green. I had better shapes and colors as the project went on, but not always the shape of perfect pickles. Looking around the grocery store, I developed a theory that commercial cucumbers are selected for cutting based on their shapes. So bulbous cucumbers become slices, large cucumbers become spears, and perfect cucumbers are picked whole.

Here’s a picture of the first few cucumbers. This was enough to fill a pickle jar, or in my case, a plastic take-out container.

There are tons of pickling recipes online, with varying degrees of complexity. I chose a really simple “refrigerator” recipe that is basically just vinegar, water, garlic, spices, and a week or two in the fridge. I was at the grocery store finding all kinds of spices when I discovered “pickling spice”. It’s a mix of everything you need. The only drawback was the proportions weren’t quite right, or the allspice was sitting on the top, because there was a little too much allspice.

My pickles turned out great. They’re crisp, fresh, tangy, and a bit spicy. They go perfectly with a crusty grilled cheese sandwich. The above photo was taken on day 106, and I’m still harvesting and making more batches of pickles.

My year-long project to build a murphy bed in our second bedroom (soon to be baby-room) is now 100% complete. I used the Create-A-Bed system.

I’ve had an interest in baking for a long time, and have tried for a while to master the art and craft of baking bread. I think of bread as the backbone of the western diet. What is amazing about it, is that it’s frequently made from just a few ingredients, yet has infinitely variable outcomes depending on how those few ingredients are processed. Making a loaf of french bread allows the baker to interact with the ingredients in a much more developed way than, for example, grilling some chicken. In short, baking is all about the process.
My wife and I are celebrating our first anniversary this weekend, and we decided to head up to Vermont to take a half-day baguette class at King Arthur Flour. These classes sell out quickly, so this is something we’ve been planning for a long time. The class was almost exactly what I expected, rows of butcher-block workstations with an instructor in the front. We were the youngest people by about twenty years, with the exception of a mother and son baking team; I guess taking baking classes is not something the hip kids are doing these days, but rather, something that hippie grand parents do. Regardless, there is no substitute of learning the process and technique of bread making than actual live instruction. I would never have figured out the the wet dough kneading technique without seeing it and then trying it with critique. Our baguettes turned out perfectly.

I had a great time at the American Craft Brew Fest today. The fest took place in the World Trade Center Boston, which is the same location of the Massachusetts bar exam. The carpet was the same bright blue color, but by all other measures, the beer fest was better than the bar exam.

The fest had a great selection of beers, and the crowd seemed focused on certain craft brew leaders (or perhaps the bar tenders at certain booths were just slow to serve). Among the greats: Lagunitas, Dogfish Head (probably the most popular), Brooklyn Brewery, and Stone. Check out my blurry picture of Sam Calagione serving up Dogfish Head and Garrett Oliver serving up Brooklyn (note the cowboy shirt with hop vines and flowers).
There were a lot of quality lesser known beers too. Interestingly, Michelob had a large booth. Someone told me one of their beers was really good, but it looked like most were avoiding it.
The highlight of the fest for me was a presentation by Garrett Oliver, who is clearly an advocate for drinking better beer. Garrett had one point that I found particularly inspiring (paraphrased): Some of your best experiences in life with be sharing a meal with family and with friends; shouldn’t you be eating real food and the drink equivalent? His basic argument is that mainstream american beer is like wonderbread. It’s meant to synthesize the real thing, but it’s not made of real ingredients using a real process. (Maybe the word “honest” would convey this point better. Hopefully, you get the idea.)

I never did post a follow up here regarding the Apartment Therapy Fall Colors 2007 contest. We ended up winning second place in the east! I even made a video. Making videos is actually not that easy, even on a Mac.

My cousin is making yoga bags. Excellent holiday gifts – assuming your giftee has is interested in yoga.

I was moving around Halloween last year and I didn’t get a chance to make a jack-o-lantern. This year I bought a 40 lbs. pumpkin and gave it big cartoon-ish face.

See also, 2004 and 2005.

I’m really fascinated by this story of an artist who set up an apartment in some sort of utility area in a shopping mall parking garage: “Starting in 2003 I committed to the idea of creating a luxury apartment in the mall. Over the course of the years to come I systematically coordinated the movement of the core elements that start to define a home.”

Every year, DWR has a contest to design a tiny chair using only the cork, wire, and foil of a champagne bottle. I really like this idea – I even have a poster of the first year’s entries. There aren’t a lot of creative store-sponsored contests these days, and this one has simple rules, simple supplies, and great looking results.
This year, DWR is letting the public vote for the best designs. It’s unfortunate that you can’t vote without signing up for their mailing list. My least favorite entries are the ones that try to mimic real-life chairs, using standard or famous designs. Unfourtunately, that’s what we have to vote on this week, but I’m looking forward to the winners in the following weeks.

Josh Michtom announces his new project: Somerville Madonnas. “The Mission: Photograph all of the Madonnas and other religious statues in the yards of Somerville, Massachusetts.”
I attempted something similar last year, but on a much smaller scale.