Joan’s Chewy-Delicious Ginger Cookies

These ginger cookies are killer, but you will need to endure my story to get to the recipe, so sayeth my husband!

During a recent trip to visit family in Rhode Island, I took a detour and drove to my childhood home in Massachusetts. An hour later, I was sitting in the kitchen of a woman I had never met, eating the most delicious, chewy on the inside, crackly on the outside, flavor-FULL ginger cookie.

The welcoming woman’s name was Joan Sapir, and our room was once the kitchen of my aunt’s bustling summer house. This kitchen was a happening place when I was a kid, and I gathered from my brief visit with Joan it continues to be.

Like for many of us, when we decide to visit the place where we grew up, I was driven by an ache for that which was familiar — my childhood home, my beautiful mother,

my brothers,

my grandmother who lived down the road,

the beach community where sunbathing mothers sat on the jetty in aluminum foldup chairs knitting wool sweaters designed by local guru PS Straker, occasionally stopping to do mom things like rebait a child’s drop line. I can see my mom knitting my pink Candide cabled crewneck sweater– apparently, the same pattern my friend Suzy’s mom knit for her.

For old times’ sake, I walked the well-worn path around our hamlet, affectionately known as the “DONUT.” I was doing just that when I met Joan in front of her house. She said, Hello, and that was all the prompting I needed to tell her my childhood life story and how her house was once my second home. What could she do but invite me in? When I walked in and saw the narrow steps leading to the upstairs bedrooms, my eyes welled up. How often had my cousins and I run up and down those stairs?

After a lovely visit with Joan and a few more impromptu visits with former neighbors (Nina, Suzy, and Erin), I drove home. My heart was full; how affirming is it to be remembered and welcomed by old friends fifty years later? Crazy as it may sound, even the cottages, whose gabled roofs my brothers and I routinely climbed when the summer folk left, seemed to wink as I walked by.

The Cookie Recipe

Well, that is the story behind this ginger cookie. It is as much a story about the power of radical hospitality and returning to one’s roots as it is about a cookie

A few notes about the ingredients:

Molasses and Sorghum Syrup

You can use molasses or sorghum in this recipe. I tested both, plus blackstrap molasses, a medicinal-tasting syrup many cooks say not to use for baking. They were all good. A little research showed that three cycles of boiling and crystallization of sugar beets or cane are required to make refined sugar. With each stage of processing, more sugar is extracted and the molasses, a byproduct of sugar production, becomes a little less sweet. Regular molasses has been through two extractions and blackstrap has been through three, making it more minerally dense.

Sorghum syrup, on the other hand, is made by boiling down juice extracted from sorghum cane. It has an earthy taste and is delicious on biscuits. Check out Raising Sorghum Cane to Make Sorghum Syrup to learn how it is made. I have a friendly relationship with Kentucky farmers who grow, harvest, and cook sorghum. I prefer it to molasses and substitute it cup for cup.
 

Measuring Flour
I weigh flour for consistent baking results. Place a bowl on a kitchen scale, zero out the bowl’s weight, and pour in flour until the scale reads 1 pound, 6 ounces. It’s easy peasy.

Sifting Dry Ingredients Together
In the old days (when I was a kid), cooks used a mechanical sifter to mix dry ingredients. You don’t see sifters much anymore; nowadays, cooks place dry ingredients in a bowl and whisk them together.

Portioning out the Dough
Bakeries use cookie scoops to portion dough to achieve consistent baking results. I once took a deep dive into the world of cookie scoops and learned that each scoop has a tiny number engraved on it that tells a baker how many cookies they will get from one quart of dough (or of ice cream, their initial intended use). Here’s a link: Cookie Scoops as a Unit of Measure. Who knew?

Sugar Topping
The cookies are topped with coarse-grained sugar, giving them a beautiful finish. Joan introduced me to King Arthur’s Sparkling White Sugar. It’s a game changer for providing cookies that have that bakery look. The crystals do not dissolve while cooking. An alternative is turbinado or plain sugar.

Yield: 4 dozen, 3-inch cookies

Ingredients:

The recipe I have written is a doubled version of Joan’s. The cookies have a long shelf life, freeze well, and are happily received as gifts; it makes sense to double it and only mess up the kitchen once.

½  cup coarse-grained sugar
5 cups (22 ounces) all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
4 teaspoons ground ginger
1½ teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1½ cups (3 sticks) butter at room temperature
2 cups granulated sugar
½ cup sorghum or unsulfured molasses
2 large eggs

Mise en Place

Instructions
Preheat oven to 350º.
Use 3 ungreased cookie sheets.

Place the ½ cup of coarse-grained sugar for sprinkles in a shallow bowl and set aside.

Mix flour, baking soda, salt, ginger, cinnamon, and cloves in a medium bowl. Use a whisk to thoroughly mix. Set aside.

Beat butter and sugar in a large bowl until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Be sure to pause and scrape sides and bottom of bowl with a spatula.

Add sorghum (or molasses) and eggs. Beat until well-blended, about one minute.

Add flour mixture. Mix slowly until white flour streaks disappear, about 30 seconds. At this point, you could cover dough and put in fridge and bake later.

Portion dough using a #40 cookie scoop, about a heaping teaspoon. Each 3-inch cookie weighs ~1 ounce. For ease, I portion out all the dough at once and then roll each into smooth balls.

Dunk each ball’s top half into the sugar bowl and arrange on a cookie sheet about 2-inches apart.

Bake in a preheated oven until cookies are golden, have puffed up, cracked on top, and started to deflate; about 12-15 minutes. You may have to fool around with the cooking time. Reposition pans in oven halfway through cooking. Do not overbake. Remove from oven, let stand for two minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool. I think the cookies taste best a few hours after baking.

Related Posts from Bay View Neighbors:

My aunt, who lived in Joan’s house, is famous for Auntie’s Italian Fried Cauliflower.

Another of my aunts from Bay View makes this delicious entrée, Rachelle’s Italian Sausage, Onions, and Peppers.

My cousin is famous for Marion’s Crazy Good Pumpkin Bread with Chocolate Chips.

Erin McHugh, author of Pickleball, is Lifeis featured in this Thanksgiving favorite, Mrs. Walker’s Cranberry Nut Pie.

My husband, The Biscuit King, is famous for his step-by-step biscuit-making recipe the results of which are best slathered in butter and sorghum.

Follow Judy’s Chickens on Instagram and Pinterest @JudysChickens.

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© 2014-2022 Judy Wright. All rights reserved. Photos, videos, and text may not be reproduced without the written consent of Judy Wright.

The Soil Your Undies Challenge- A Simple Home DIY Test for Soil Health

A few weeks ago, I sent my grandchildren a package with two pairs of new XL men’s cotton briefs and a batch of their favorite Italian cookies. After the box arrived, their mom Facetimed so the kids could say, “Thank You.” My grandchildren, who have been gardening with me for years, asked why I had sent them such huge undies. In my most enthusiastic voice, I explained that we were going to plant them in their new garden, and it was going to be a science experiment! My six-year-old grandson brought the phone close to his face, looked me in the eye, and in a serious yet tender voice said, “YaYa, you can’t grow underwear.”

The Soil Your Undies Challenge

 

Last fall, I participated in a whimsical citizen science experiment called the Soil Your Undies Challenge. I “planted” new cotton briefs in one of my raised garden beds on Labor Day and “harvested” them sixty days later. The Challenge is simple: if your soil is healthy, soil-dwelling organisms will dine on the cotton until it is gone. The degree of cotton deterioration is directly related to how much microbial activity is going on. The more activity, the more “alive” and healthy your soil and the healthier your plants will be. Healthy plants resist the stress caused by drought, pests, and disease.

Here is the BEFORE photo:

Here is the AFTER photo:

You can imagine my astonishment when I found the cotton had fully disappeared! Only the polycotton seams and waistband remained.

What is Soil Health?

Healthy soil is dark and crumbly, is full of nutrients, and has macroorganisms you can see like earthworms and insects, and billions of microorganisms (aka microbes) like bacteria and fungi that can only be seen under a microscope. These organisms feast on organic material like mulched leaves, grass clippings, dead plants, food scraps from the compost bucket, and sometimes buried cotton undies. Microbes rule the soil. They constantly break down organic matter creating a biological environment that allows for the absorption of nutrients by a plant’s roots. Microbial activity helps make soil porous and better able to retain water, air, and nutrients. 

The Soil Your Undies Challenge was created by a group of Oregon farmers as a way to build public awareness of how farming practices such as tillage affect soil health. Tillage disturbs soil microbes. The no-till strategy allows organisms to do their work to create more nutrient-dense soil and keeps sequestered carbon in the ground, which is healthier for the environment. Carbon that is released into the atmosphere contributes to climate change.

Nashville’s version of the Challenge was coordinated by Jeff Barrie, CEO of the Tennessee Environmental Council, and Dr. Chris Vanags, a soil scientist in the ASCEND Initiative at Vanderbilt University. They aim to help people make informed decisions when purchasing lawn and garden products like insecticides and herbicides or when performing common land management practices like mowing a lawn perhaps too frequently or tilling a garden bed.

Methodology

For standardized data comparisons, the coordinators mailed participants the same-size briefs and a video link on how to plant them. We planted undies vertically with the waistband exposed so we could locate them two months later. We mailed before and after photos to the researchers.

Below are photos of my adorable sister-in-law, Lesley, modeling for me how to plant undies. She and my brother started their raised beds with logs, sticks, and plant debris, a type of gardening known as hugelkultur. Their soil is gorgeous.

Why Use Cotton Fabric?

Cotton fibers are comprised of tens of thousands of seed hairs made of tasty carbohydrates (cellulose) that grow off of the seed coat. These hairs are present to facilitate wind dispersal of the seed for the purpose of reproduction.
 

Results

One week after we unearthed the undies and sent in our photos, we met the study coordinators, Jeff and Chris, in a Facebook Live presentation. They divided the 120 “after” pictures of undies into ten categories based on the degree of degradation.

I took this screenshot of the results. It turns out my undies fell in the number ten category. I’ll admit to a momentary feeling of pride in my hard work to keep my garden beds healthy.

Land management practices that contribute to soil health:

Grow cover crops:  Keep something growing in the garden year-round by planting cover crops between seasons. Cover crops nourish microbes and prevent soil erosion in the off-season. I plant a combination of buckwheat which suppresses weeds and whose blooms attract beneficial insects, a brassica like daikon radish or turnips whose roots drill down into the soil naturally breaking it up, and crimson clover, a legume that adds nitrogen to the ground through nitrogen fixation and whose red blossoms attract bees.

Start a compost pile. We throw food scraps, old bread and pasta, leaf litter, chicken poop, dead plants, and coffee grounds into our compost pile. We don’t add cooked food that might attract rodents. We spread composted mulch in our garden during the summer to keep moisture in and weeds out and to add nutrients to the soil,

Stop tilling in established beds. Tilling disrupts a garden’s microbial population. It exposes microorganisms to the elements where they dry out and die; it releases nutrients to rain run-off; and it releases sequestered carbon (in the form of carbon dioxide) into the atmosphere. Instead, jiggle a pitchfork or broadfork in the ground to aerate soil. I only use a tiller when creating a new bed and even then, only when the ground is too hard to break up on my own. When removing dead plants, I cut the stems at the ground level allowing the roots to decompose in situ. Check out this post to read more.

Create garden paths in your garden to discourage compaction by foot traffic. This will help keep the nooks and crannies in soil open to air and water in the garden beds. Check out How to Build a Raised Garden Bed

I don’t use herbicides or insecticides. I know it’s pathetic, but I only stopped using them in 2010 when I became a hen keeper — I didn’t want my free-ranging chickens to eat anything that had chemicals on it! Back then, I would joke that the chickens kept me honest.

I do not spray for mosquitos. Instead, I make mosquito bucket traps that contain a bacterium found in soil that acts as a larvacide for mosquitos.

Conclusion

This study has had a profound impact on the way I think about soil. I now imagine all the microbial activity going on underground, and I am more conscious of how my chosen garden practices affect my soil. Additionally, when I give a garden tour or teach people how to start a garden, I begin with a discussion about soil health, and then I pull out my scrappy undies…

For the past year, I have volunteered at a non-profit, teaching women how to grow food. I enrolled the ladies in this year’s Soil Your Undies Challenge. They planted undies in two garden beds. As they planted the undies vertically, they quickly learned that while the topsoil was loose, the deeper soil was hard and compacted. It took a lot of work to make a slit in the ground. We’ll need to use a broadfork or pitchfork to break that soil up once the fall crops are harvested.

I am grateful to my friend Maureen May, founder of the Second Sunday Gardeners, who created a place for curious gardeners to come together to learn sustainable land management practices. She and another member, Heidi, encouraged twenty people in our group to participate in this study.

Related Stories:

Watch this excellent Nashville Public Television Volunteer Gardener clip: Soil Your Undies: How Healthy is Your Soilhosted by Julie Birbiglia, the education specialist for Metro Water Services. She and Dr. Chris Vanags dig up undies on the Vanderbilt campus and discuss the results.

Julie also did two stories for NPT’s Volunteer Gardener about gardening and raising chickens in my backyard. We talked about chicken coops, what chickens eat, keeping chickens safe, composting and cover crops. One video was a Volunteer Gardener episode called Chicken Chat and the other was a FaceTime live production.

Follow Judy’s Chickens on Instagram and Pinterest @JudysChickens.
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© 2014-2022 Judy Wright. All rights reserved. Photos, videos, and text may not be reproduced without the written consent of Judy Wright.

The Great Mosquito Hack of the Summer of ’22

Mosquitoes. Love. ME.

This post is for you if:

  • mosquitoes love you, too
  • you hate having to use Mosquito Joe to manage these pests because you suspect there is collateral damage to beneficial insects, but you hate mosquitoes more
  • you hate to wear bug spray and socks, a long-sleeve shirt, and pants in the middle of summer whenever you weed your garden
  • you worry about diseases spread by mosquitoes

I am very thankful for the day my delightful naturalist friend, Joanna Brichetto, posted a story on her blog, Sidewalk Nature, called The Mosquito Bucket of Doom. It is about a bee-friendly, vegetable garden-friendly, pet-friendly way to eliminate mosquitos in your yard.

I’m here to tell you Joanna’s mosquito control system really WORKS. I’m such a believer; I show everyone who visits my yard my buckets. And, now I’m showing YOU!

How to Make a Mosquito Bucket

Ingredients:
a  5-gallon bucket, a planter, or any container with a wide top
a few handfuls of grass clippings (leaves work but take longer to decompose)
water
a package of Mosquito Dunks® (a larvicide)

Instructions:
Add 3-4 handfuls of grass or other yard clippings to a container of your choice.
.

Half-fill the container with water. As the organic matter decomposes, it produces carbon dioxide, which attracts female mosquitoes. Add a Dunk® and place the bucket in a sunny location. Thirty days later, add a newDunk®. I buy packages that contain 20 Dunk®s online.

I have four buckets in my half-acre backyard. They are scattered among my vegetable garden beds, the chicken coop,

and one, prettier than the others, is located on the patio.

Testimonials
We hosted my son’s rehearsal dinner in our backyard in the middle of July with just four buckets for mosquito control and never saw a skeeter.

I volunteer at a community garden near a floodplain with many mosquitoes. I brought supplies to make two buckets and showed the residents how to set the system up. We placed the containers on opposite ends of the garden for adequate coverage. We inspected the yard for sources of standing water and removed them. Two weeks later, while working in the gardens, we happily realized the mosquitoes were GONE!.

How Does the Mosquito Bucket Work?

Mosquito Dunks® work by killing mosquito larvae, interrupting the insect’s reproduction cycle. It does not kill adult insects of any variety, just the larvae of mosquitoes using the bucket for their next generations’ production.

Joanna Brichetto is quick to point out that she learned about the buckets from famed etymologist Dr. Doug Tallamy. Here is a link to his short video explanation.

Mosquitoes need water to breed. They only need ¼-inch of standing water to successfully lay eggs. It takes a few days for the eggs to hatch into the little swimmers you see in the photo below. Joanna permitted me to use this photo because she is passionate about protecting the environment. “Yes, of course!” she replied when asked, “The more buckets, the better!”

Dr. Tallamy says the best way to control mosquitoes is to interrupt the growth cycle of their larvae. These swimmers eat a mosquito-specific toxin, B.t.i. (Bacillus thuringiensis subspecies israelensis) spore found in Dunks® that prevent them from maturing. Furthermore, Dr. Tallamy says broad spraying of insecticides kills only about 10% of adult mosquitoes and many other insects. Thus, the mosquito bucket method is more specific and effective.

If you came by my house this summer, chances are I sent you home with a Dunk® or two. Like my friend Joanna, I feel the more people who know about the mosquito buckets, the happier they will be outdoors, and the more beneficial insects will be available to do insect work, like pollinating flowers across the city.

Thank you, Joanna; you gave our family a mosquito-free summer without much fuss and chemicals.

Related Stories:
Joanna recently appeared in a Nashville Public Television Volunteer Gardener episode called Natives in Plain Sight. You can follow her on Instagram at jo_brichetto and on her blog, Sidewalk Nature.

Putting Your Garden to Bed with a Blanket of Cover Crops

How to Start Seeds in a Recycled Milk Jug

Edible Landscaping with Nashville Foodscapes

How to Build a 4 x 4 Raised Garden Bed

Follow Judy’s Chickens on Instagram and Pinterest @JudysChickens.
If you enjoyed this post, share it, and sign up to become a follower. If you do sign-up, press “confirm” on the follow-up letter sent to your email address. 

© 2014-2022 Judy Wright. All rights reserved. Photos, videos, and text may not be reproduced without the written consent of Judy Wright.

How to Make Pine Cone Flowers

I love a project that involves a group of folks sitting around the table chitchatting the time away while working with their hands to create something new and lovely. It feels good and hugely satisfying to make something that didn’t exist before.

Such was the creative environment when Herb Society of Nashville member, Larry Banner, gave fellow “Herbies” a workshop on making flowers out of dried pine cones. We worked in the barn of an HSN member. The barn doors were wide open and sheep were grazing in the field. It was a beautiful day.

When I arrived at the farm, I would not have imagined that this pile of dried pine cones and seed pods sitting on the table

would reveal delicate flowers from within through focused whittling.

Larry graciously showed us how to sculpt flowers using two tools, pointy cultivation scissors and ratcheting pruning shears.

We learned to make zinnias out of the large round pine cones on the table by cutting horizontally across the cone’s midsection and then snipping off a few scales (aka pine cone “leaves”) from the core to create a central disc similar to flowers found in the Asteraceae Family.

By the way, if you turn the zinnia over, you have a coneflower!

Larry glued a tiny seed head to the coneflower’s center for the finishing touch.

Next, we used short squatty pine cones to make roses. Larry had us cut off the tip of the cone and then snip each scale twice to create pointy rose petals.

He used the bottom portion of that cone to make button zinnias.

Larry painted his rose pink. He said there are hundreds of pine cone flower how-to videos online.

I found this pretty pine cone arrangement for sale here on Etsy.

We used the long thin cones to make the two-toned flowers. I love the variety of patterns, colors, and textures on the scales. Had I not taken this workshop, I doubt I would ever have paid attention to these subtleties of nature.

We cut a magnolia seed pod in half to make these flowers.

This is a video of how Larry cut the pod:

Larry began the workshop by showing us how to cut into pine cones. It takes work. Some pine cone artists, for ease, choose to use a grinder saw to cut off the bases.

Larry rotated the cone as he cut deeper and deeper into its core until the bottom finally fell off. It looks like you are butchering it, but the flowers come out fine.

Here is a video of Larry cutting a cone:

Create a Flower Arrangement
Once we had created our flowers, we arranged them on a base. To help us remember our position of flowers before gluing them down, Larry had us photograph our work. He likes to use the E6000 brand of quick-drying glue because it has a very thin nozzle.

Once the arrangement is set, spray with polyurethane (satin or gloss) to protect the flowers from moisture and make the colors pop.

Here are some of the pine cone varieties we used:

The Herb Society of Nashville is hosting the 2022 Herb Society of Nashville Plant Sale at the Nashville Fairgrounds, Expo Building 3, on Saturday, April 30. Doors open at 9:00 A.M.

Anyone interested in growing, using, or studying herbs is encouraged to apply for membership in The Herb Society of Nashville. The Membership Committee accepts applications year-round. Here is a link to an application.

Other Crafty Posts on Judy’s Chickens:
How to Make Plant-Based Dyes
How to Make Gorgeous Birdhouse Gourds
How to Make Indigo Blue Dye
How to Make Cork Bulletin Boards

How to Build a 4 x 4 Raised Garden Bed

Follow Judy’s Chickens on Instagram and Pinterest @JudysChickens.
If you enjoyed this post, sign up to become a follower. If you do sign-up, press “confirm” on the follow-up letter sent to your email address. And, feel free to share!!

© 2014-2022 Judy Wright. All rights reserved. Photos, videos, and text may not be reproduced without the written consent of Judy Wright.