Inundations and Dehydrations

Spring is springing here! Look at our trusty rhubarbs, coming up again for another year...

 Amy's mom adores rhubarb, but other rhubarb-lovers are thin on the ground around here. They really aren't good raw (lots of oxalic acid) and this time last year, I wasn't really eating cooked food. This time around, I may have to come up with some rhubarb goodness.

And here comes grass, poking green and acute through the tired, bleached blades of last year.

 It's tire-changing time too, and Phil decided that this muddy, overcast day would be a great one to get 'er done.
HUH??
Well, he wouldn't be grudging that he wasn't doing something else, something fun, on a crummy day like this.
OK...In every other respect, it might be the worst day you can imagine. All the ice deep in the ground is melting rapidly and the surface is awash--great day to roll around under a truck wrestling wheels (or not).

As it turns out, the lug nuts on the wheels were old and stripped, and they busted when he tried to undo them. None of the parts stores in town have any in stock! We might be able to drive again by Tuesday: for now, we have our very own junker truck blocking up the cul-de-sac. Thankfully, it's raining and we're catching water, so we won't be inconvenienced by not being able to go to town and fill our buckets.

As all this moisture seeps out of the ground and soaks down from the sky, synthesizing all these awesome fuses of green, I've been playing around with taking moisture out of baked goodies and playing with the texture, taste and general aesthetic caused by that.

As mentioned, I made a second batch of the carrot coconut bars, while the sun was still out, and left them to sit in the sunny window. They'll keep much better for our trip next week (if they last that long) but I definitely prefer them on the moister side.

I did make some onion bread as a savory version, as I said I would. Onions are a great food in so many respects. Rich in vitamin C, one of the best sources of quercitin, which is coming to prominence as an important antioxidant, lots of good sulfur compounds... But when I eat all-raw, I almost never eat them (on rare occasions, dehydrated). That pungency is just too much, especially that I can taste it for a day afterwards, and it tends to hurt my tummy too.  I've been enjoying them steamed and roasted lately, and it was interesting to see how they worked as a baked good. I was aiming for something like the raw dehydrated onion breads that are so popular.

 I skipped the maca and mesquite (although maca would have been good here too), added some coriander, cumin and cayenne. And I let them dry in the sun too.

 Again, I preferred them moister and softer, but they were great dry and crunchy too. There is one downside to all those beneficial sulfur compounds, though. The odor seems to pass through the gut unscathed and, if anything, enhanced.

Moving swiftly on...

I'm not a crackers person much, but Phil really is, so I've been making him more of those rice crackers, and some wheat thins too.

The rice ones, starting with well-cooked rice, blending it, adding seasonings, spreading thin on parchment paper, flip and dry, are so much more labor intensive than the wheat thins and take so much longer, but Phil greatly prefers them: that crispy, wafer-thin texture.

What is the secret to the overwhelming onslaught of green here? An inundation of water. And the secret to getting those crackers wafer-thin? Even, perfect removal of water: it's as though the water-soaked batter allows for thinner and crispier bonds. I'm beginning to think that this is another good reason to save for a dehydrator: an oven, especially a tiny one like ours, is not the best tool for 'even, perfect' water removal: you have to sit on top of it.

How's spring coming where you are? And do you love crackers or prefer the moister stage of goodness?
Happy Earth Day and Easter!