The Night Crew

when the slower kitchen tasks are done

When my kids were little I used to tell them that once dinner was finished, the kitchen was ‘closed’. But this wasn’t really accurate….the kitchen wasn’t closing, it’s just that the ‘night crew’ was taking over.

Once I clean up after dinner, I move onto all the tasks that need to happen overnight. Last night I needed to dehydrate more apples, make chicken broth and allow the sourdough leaven and kefir milk to ferment. As you can see in the photo above, the kitchen isn’t ‘closed’ at all - there’s a lot happening.

The final steps of bottling fruits and veggies also generally occurs during the night shift - loading all the filled jars into the Vacola and allowing them to process. Running the bottling system in the evening works much better for me as I can just allow it to cool down overnight once the I have turned off the heat. In the morning, when it’s cool, I can remove the jars from the sterilizer easily.

Rhubarb and apple sauce after being processed in the Vacola (similar to bottling with Ball/mason jars in the US)

The ‘night crew’ is also responsible for slow-cooked meats and over-night oats during the cold months when the wood heater is going. I figure, as long as the heater is pumping out all that energy, I should find ways to utilize it! All of our water is boiled and meals are cooked on the wood heater when it’s going, too.

After dinner is a good time to make yogurt as well, especially because there is so much ‘hurry-up-and-wait’ involved in the yogurt-making process and I can get on with other tasks while the milk is heating, then cooling….

When I was a kid my grandmother was much the same. She would generally start a batch of pickled cucumbers after dinner - throwing sliced cuc’s in a massive blue enamel pot filled with pickling liquid, allowing them to sit until the following night. Or she would be rolling out pastry dough for our morning cinnamon rolls.

The night shift in the kitchen as quite a different feel for me - more relaxed and slow; a winding-down time. The kitchen is trandsformed from the more frantic, time-bound daytime activities to those with looser boundaries. I can listen to a book or podcast, chat with my daughter, process fiber or work on a project while passively watching the milk temperature or leisurely slicing apples. But in the morning things will ramp-up again!

N x