Keeping the Essential Foods Going Part II

[MaryN]

I have now had a chance to further investigate sugar beet, and the possibility of making your own sugar at home. Purloining a sugar beet from a large pile was easy (friendly farmer), and I hit the search button on Google. O.K., this is the process.

Sugar beets look a bit like large parsnips. They have the same tough, wrinkly skin and are just as exasperating to peel. A nice veggie peeler or very sharp nice will do the job. Peel the beet thoroughly, taking as little off as possible to expose the flesh. Chop (or shred if you have a very good grater) finely and lob into a saucepan. I did at this point try pressing the chopped flesh to extract any juice, but it wasn't particularly effective; actually about as effective a trying to squish an uncooked parsnip (try it!). I added enough cold water to cover the chopped flesh and gently simmered it. I've got to say the colour wasn't brilliant - sort of muddy grey/brown, but I persevered. When the beet was quite soft and I could mash it a bit, I drained it off. I did this with a fine sieve, but muslin or a teatowel would do it. I guess the objective is to get as much juice off as possible. Anyway, pressing on. The next step was to reduce the juice to a bit of a syrup - a bit like sugar syrup. So a gentle simmer; keeping an eye on it until I judged the reduction to be quite thick. I then took the liquid off the heat and set it aside to cool. The idea was to cool it right down and see what happened. Actually, as it cooled it did thicken and sort of granulate. The colour was still not brilliant, but there was a definite sugar hit there. I need to experiment more, but so far, all things considered, not bad. Tick.

The next little project was to investigate producing some form of cooking oil/fat. Now, there is always lard from cooked meat to consider. It does, however, require fairly rigorous straining to make it useable, and the more "bits" remain the more likely the fat will go of sooner. There is also the problem of keeping lard cool - not easy in hot weather. Lard, however, is pretty easy. Oil though is not. Good old Google threw up all sorts of ads for dinky little grinders and various exciting prospects for flavoured gourmet stuff. All I want is the possibility of oil - not necessarily masses of it - when I need it. Not just for cooking, but also potentially for medicinal purposes. I thought I would give it a try neolithic style, by just grinding a few sunflower seeds and seeping them in water. This did produce a smear of oil on the surface. The process of grinding seeds in a pestle and mortar was a pain though. I need to think this through, but I can see light at the end of the tunnel. I may need to invest in a better processing method. Sigh!