The Schenectady Urban Farmers have been keeping busy during these chilly months. Yesterday, SiCM staff tried their hand at grinding blue corn into a fine cornmeal powder using an antique hand-crank grain grinder. It provided quite an arm workout.
Farmers have also been working to extend the life of their produce by making garlic powder and pepper spice blends. Here, you can see farmers working together inside the SiCM Community Kitchen to peel the garlic, chop it in half, and get it inside a glass mason jar to transport it to a dehydrator.
To make your own garlic powder simply remove the peels of garlic cloves, chop them in half, dehydrate the half-cloves until they are hard as a rock, then pop the cloves into a spice grinder until they are milled into a powder. You need a great deal of garlic, however, as it takes about 4 cups of fresh garlic to make approximately 1/4 cup of fresh garlic powder.
Farmer Leah created this pepper spice blend of cayenne pepper, serrano pepper, and jalapeño pepper. Creating your own pepper spice blends are a fun way to extend the life of your dried peppers. This pepper blend is perfect for sauces, queso, and even chili!
Learn all this and much more by joining Schenectady Urban Farms today!