Vanilla Chai Oatmeal

This morning I chose as my tea flavor of the day, Vanilla Bean Chai.  It's warm and robust with flavor, and no caffeine.  It's made by my new friend Michelle at Blooming with Joy Tea and contains  South African Rooibos, vanilla, ginger, cardamom, cloves, and cinnamon pieces. (If you click over and decide to buy something, I get a little bit for referring you.)

As is my habit, I was getting ready to brew a second mug of tea from the once used leaves when I realized that this tea flavor would work wonderfully as the cooking water for the pear oatmeal I was planning to make for breakfast.  Let me tell ya, this was no ordinary oatmeal!

My oldest son, who pretty much loves anything I prepare, but doesn't really like oatmeal, pronounced it to be good.  In this scenario, that says a lot.  My youngest son loves oatmeal and almost always wants seconds, this time seconds was a bigger portion than firsts.  I enjoyed the deep flavor the tea imparted, and the texture contrast between the pears and the oatmeal.  If you want to try this at home, please do!

Vaniila Bean Chai Oatmeal

Makes 4-6 servings

1 cup already been brewed once Vanilla Bean Chai Tea
3 cups water
3 cups organic oats (not quick cook)
2 firm, ripe pears, any variety (I had Bartlett, so that's what I used)
Approximately 1/4 cup sweetener of your choice
Butter

1. Bring tea and water to a boil.
2. Stir in oats and reduce heat to medium (we like our oatmeal thick).
3. Set timer for 3 minutes and dice pears into bite sized pieces.
4. Turn off heat when timer goes off, but leave pot on burner (I have an electric stove, if you use gas, leave the heat on for 5 minutes).
5. Stir in 1/4 cup organic evaporated cane juice and the pears.
6. Scoop into serving bowls and top with a bit of butter.

That's it!  Enjoy!

PS, if you like the tea pot in the picture, you can get one at Blooming With Joy Tea.  It has a handy little infuser that fits right into the pot for brewing loose leaf teas.

Where Our Food Comes From

I was asked a question today that I've been asked before and it's usually a long answer, and because it's one busy mom asking another busy mom, I don't usually get to give the longer, detailed answer.  So, I decided that I'd write about it here because I'm geekish that way.

Where do we shop for our groceries?  There have been times that my weekly "grocery" trip netted so few items in the cart that I got to use the express lane.  My only local grocery option is Basha's, and the 3 things we used to buy the most of there were bananas, bread and bottled club soda.  The 3 B's at B's.  Some of our friends work there, so we try to support them as much as possible, but this town isn't "organic" friendly, so there aren't too many things there we like.

My Local Grocery Store:

• Some produce.  We use the Dirty Dozen/Clean 15 app.  If it's in the top 20-25 cleanest, we'll risk non organic, but the rest of the list we buy organic.  My town is not into organic, clean, real food, so the options at this store are limited, but thankfully growing.  I can get organic celery and greens when I need them now, rather than having to plan ahead.
• Club soda.  I need the bubbles.
• Sometimes a loaf of sourdough bread, but I started baking our own recently and it's so much better and about one third of the cost.
• Wild caught fish and seafood.
• Organic milk when our goats are "dry".  Organic sour cream.
• Cereal and coffee for my husband.
• Some canned goods (salsa, tuna, green chilies)
• Blue Bunny vanilla ice cream.

Trader Joe's:

• Uncured hot dogs
• Bacon ends and pieces
• Organic whole chickens
• Some produce
• Some dairy-butter, heavy cream, yogurt and specialty cheeses-all organic
• Fun food.  Their commitment to not using artificial flavors, dyes or other chemicals, and no GMO's makes it easier on me to have crackers and similar snacks available.  I used to make them from scratch.

Azure Standard:

• Frozen berries and vegetables
• Pasta
• Canned salmon
• Bulk grains
• Herbs and spices
• In season produce
• Non -GMO cheddar, mozzarella and Parmesan cheeses.
• Orange dark chocolate
• Tomato products
• Nuts, coconut, and other "super food" type things
• Grade B, organic maple syrup
• Evaporated cane juice and other baking essentials

DIY:

• Beef
• Pork
• Lamb
• Milk
• Yogurt
• Goat cheese
• Chicken eggs
• Duck eggs
• Some produce-we haven't been too successful with our gardens.  :-(
• Sourdough bread

Miscellaneous:

• I recently tried Bountiful Baskets produce delivery again.  I have mixed feelings about it.
• CSA (community supported agriculture), I didn't like the reality of it as much as the idea behind it.
• Trades and barter, freebies whenever they arise.

That's the big stuff.  We used to rarely eat out after we changed our diet over to real food, but with our two new additions to the family, sometimes the need to end chaos outweighs the commitment to avoiding all the processed junk out there.  Thanks to several of you for asking the question and giving me a reason to really think about it again!

Fried Chicken

I love to eat it. Love the smell of it cooking. Don't like eating it when fried in vegetable oil. Or knowing the chicken ate GM feed. The solution? Render my own lard and buy an organic chicken! Smelled so good and tasted fabulous! Herbed cheesy biscuits went well with it.

Produce

Wow-my last post was in March!  Yes, I've been busy trying to settle in to our new home.  I had planned to do before and after pictures to share, but I couldn't find the camera.  When I did, it needed batteries, and well...they were at the old house still.  There's still a lot to be done, so maybe I'll still have a chance for some of the projects, but for now I wanted to share the bounty in our kitchen right now.

We got our first CSA share last Wednesday.  There's turnips, beets, spring onions, chard, two kinds of kale, lettuce, cilantro and basil.  Reading it, that doesn't sound like much, but it filled more than half of a large sized ice chest.  I had to rearrange the contents of the fridge to get it to fit!

We already had peaches, apricots, Brussels sprouts, beets, carrots, purple cabbage and a variety of greens from a U-pick farm we visited a few weeks ago.  My son has been eating the apricots now that they're in the fruit drawer instead of the paper bag they came in, on a higher shelf in the fridge.  He'll also eat the peaches if I'll keep some in the house (we have a 2nd fridge outside to hold milk and eggs).

In addition to all of that we're members of a produce rescue program that provides up to 60 pounds of produce weekly.  There's tomatoes, yellow squash, zucchini, cucumbers, grapefruit, peppers (hot and sweet), and melons.

Then my wonderful husband brought home baskets of strawberries and blackberries from a produce market in the Big City.  He's going to make pies for a gathering we're going to this week.  Don't forget the mulberry tree that's going crazy with fruit.  Or the food co-op where I buy frozen berries once a month, along with a supply of onions and potatoes, celery and oranges when the price is good.  I even bought a coconut last month.  Hubby has also made friends with the clerk at Circle K who gives him bags of overripe bananas every week.

If you have ideas for using it up, please share!  I've got a pot of this simmering in the slow cooker right now.


I also made kale chips, a turnip green frittata, marinated tomato salad and have a perpetual garden salad bowl in the fridge.

Stephanie at Keeper of the Home is hosting an Eat From the Pantry challenge.  I think I need to join!

Rescued Produce

Last week we learned of a program that rescues produce from being thrown away.  For $10 a person can get a box of produce that weighs up to 60 pounds!  Even better-for a $100 annual membership you're entitled to go each week for one of those boxes!  We bought the annual membership and even though distribution points are a bit over an hour away for us, we go to that area enough to make it worthwhile.  We'll use some for our own eating and feed the rest to our animals.  Hay is getting so expensive that we've got to find a better solution.  Hay was about $8 a bale 3 years ago when we got our first goats.  The last 6 bales Tony bought were over $20 each!  With a cow that eats 4 flakes a day, and 3 goats that eat 1 each per day, that's about $10 a day just to feed them!!  Moving to our new house will help-we have 2 pastures there that we can use for grazing, and they can rotate so that one doesn't get overly grazed, but even if we can start on that this week, it'll be 6 weeks minimum before either field is ready for animals.

Do you have any special programs in your area that make use of food that would otherwise be taken to the dump?  If you have farm animals, how do you keep feed costs manageable?

Books About Preserving Meat

The two that we're excited about right now and planning to purchase are Charcuterie and Pig:  King of the Southern Table.  Having recently butchered our first steer and knowing the pig's turn is soon, we've been looking at all the wonderful things we can do with the meat. 

I came across Pig a while back while exploring titles thru my Nook Color.  I downloaded the sample and just the first chapter piqued my interest.  I now have it from the library and am convinced we need to own it.  The only question is eBook or hardback.  The size of it says eBook, but there's just something about a physical book that I can't quite overcome.  Since the majority of the book is a how to and recipe book, we'll likely get it on the Nook.  The Nook works well in the kitchen-I open a cabinet and secure it behind the cabinet's center support, keeping it at eye level and away from spills.  This book will show us how to use just about every part of the pig available.  There are some things I can't wait to try (making our own bacon) and others that I'm sure I'd never miss (blood sausage).  According to the book, Southerner's make use of just about every part of the pig-the ears, jowls, hooves, feet, brains.  I think the eyes were the only part I haven't seen a use for!

This one is going to teach us a lot!  Everything from hot dogs to red wine salami to confit to pate (which I formally believed to simply be pureed liver) and everything in between.  Tony and I are both excited to work through these recipes and processes.  The challenge is going to be our small kitchen and lack of curing space.  However, Tony's already talking about building a smoke house!  I wonder if it could have a cheese cave basement below it?

This post is shared at the Homestead Barn Hop.

Limeade

We made some today.  Cranberry limeade too.  It was easy.  It's yummy!  1 qt is already gone.  Limes are on sale again.  Hmmm.  Here's what we did if you're interested:

• juiced all the limes we had in the juicer-cut into quarters first, but tossed in peel and all
• made a simple syrup of 1/2 cup evaporated cane juice to 1 cup water-I think I ended up doing this 3 times
• tossed 1 cup of cranberries into the first batch of syrup-they were frozen and that was a quick way to thaw, as well as cool the syrup
• ran the cranberry & syrup mixture in blender to chop them up

We ended up with about 3 cups of lime juice.  From that I made 2 qts of limeade by adding about a cup of juice, a cup of syrup and 2 cups of water to quart jars.

In another quart jar I put about 1 1/2 cups of the cranberry mixture and 1 cup of syrup with the rest filled with water.

I still have a full quart of cranberry limeade concentrate to use for more or to flavor club soda.  I love bubbly drinks and have grown used to straight club soda, but I sure enjoy it more with flavor!  Tonight we polished off a qt of the limeade mixing it with club soda.

This would have made a great festive punch for a Christmas party-a bowl of sparkling limeade (or even a pretty glass pitcher) with chopped cranberries floating in it.

Precursor to Monday Menu Plan

I just completed what I'm calling a Menu Framework.  It's a basic outline of what to serve daily so that I get all the nutrients I'm trying to get to heal from adrenal fatigue.  The Too Tired eCourse I've been studying has a list of various foods I need to eat every day.  Rather than wing it and hope that I've consumed all that I should, I made a plan.  Or an outline, more precisely.  Hopefully it's a broad scope of what to have when, with the flexibility to keep meals from becoming mundane.  It's structured enough to take the majority of the work out of the way so that I can just plug in favorite meals or even new recipes when I choose.

It takes into account our commitments away from home so that meals will be simple for those times.  Tuesday night is a good example.  Goober Gus and I like to go to the library in the afternoon to spend time there, and afterwards we go walk with a friend.  That puts us home right at dinner time, with no allowance for prep time.  It's also a night that Tony goes to a men's Bible study.  Sometimes he's hungry before, but most of the time prefers to eat after.  So Tuesday night is soup night.  It can be simmering in the crockpot all day and ready to eat at any time.  It will be accompanied by a salad and either sourdough bread or sourdough crackers.

It reminds me to get more veggies into our diet and makes me think about how.  Our afternoon snack, which prior to now has been very hit or miss, but which I think is vital to consuming enough nutrients and helping to avoid the afternoon crash, is a veggie smoothie and sourdough breadsticks with an olive oil dip.  That came about for two reasons. 

1. I should get some olive oil every day.  Other than cooking with it on occasion, I don't really get much, so planning to have breadsticks to dip into an olive oil dip will take care of that. 
2. I need two servings of leafy green vegetables every single day.  I might get two every single month!  So-a veggie smoothie with leafy greens in it will cover one of those servings.

Hopefully it will also remind me of all the herbal remedies I have at my disposal for boosting health.  As I finished this rough framework I realized I could take it a step further and where beef is on the menu every Wednesday, one week could be a casserole, one a grill night, one a roast, or whatever new recipe I want to try calling for beef.  Same thing with Friday ethnic nights.  Our favorite is Mexican, but we could try others as well.  Saturday is pizza night, but that could be altered to be pizza or other Italian meal.  Sundays are leftovers and that serves 2 purposes.  It obviously uses up the leftovers, but also gives me a day off from cooking!

Another habit I want to develop is cooking once and eating twice or more-making a double batch of whatever I'm preparing and freezing the extra for another time.  You know, one of those days where nothing goes right and suddenly it's dinner time and there's nothing prepared (despite having a plan).  I will either be sure to use my glassware that can go from freezer to oven or perhaps buy some disposable aluminum pans for that purpose.  I haven't decided yet.  There's always the option to freeze it in the pan, using a liner of waxed paper, then take it out of the pan and wrap in plastic to return it to the freezer.  At least then the pan would be available to be used.

Now, can I get in the habit of eating a green salad every day?  Funny thing is, I like salads, I just rarely think to eat them!

How about you?  Do you have a plan in place for eating and getting all the good foods in you want to eat?  Do you have a green smoothie recipe you'd like to share?  I need ideas for those!

A Crazy Mixed-Up Day

It started off sanely enough.  No plans outside of the ordinary daily tasks.  Kinda felt a bit of freedom as a result.  Did I say it started off sanely?  Shows how crazy it's been-Tony slept in and I got up to let the chickens out.  I noticed that Sugar was out of the goat pen with Spice.  Spice gets out all the time, but it was odd to see Sugar out too.  Then I saw the rest of the goats were out and the gate was open.  That explains the noises that sounded similar to Goober Gus getting out of bed and stomping around in his room.  The hay bales are outside our bedroom, so we could hear them stealing food.  I grabbed Annie and Molly by the collar and Peaches tagged along and went back voluntarily.  Sugar and Spice did too.  That just left Cream and she eventually jumped in on her own.

Last night was the first time we took all the baby goats out-they're old enough to be weaned now, so they're in their own pen full time.  At milking time I got 158 ounces total from Annie and Molly.  That's a gallon and bit over a pint.  I left 2 quarts out for a new batch of yogurt that I'd decided I'd culture for 4 hours instead of 8 and see how that came out.  Some time during all this I decided I could bake crackers-oh, but we're trying to do all those things with sourdough and it should ferment overnight.  I figured I'd go ahead and start it and bake them after several hours instead of overnight.

Then I remembered that a friend of ours has a neighbor with overloaded peach trees and neither the friend nor the neighbor do any food preserving, so the trees were made available to us for picking.  Goober Gus and I got about 5 pounds the other day and I told the owner we'd be back when more ripened.  All 3 of us went today and returned with roughly 80 pounds, and you can hardly tell we took any!  Both days we picked up the bug eaten ones to bring to the chickens, so they're getting a treat too.  This is one branch and there are several trees, all loaded like this.

Sorry about the sideways shot...
On the way home we stopped at a farm stand to get more cherry tomatoes.  I bought half a pound the other day and GG ate them all before I could tell him to save some for dad.  We also got giant green bell peppers for .75¢ and this farmer doesn't use chemical herbicides or pesticides.  Organic peppers sell for $6 EACH at the grocery store.  These are so flavorful that you can smell them a yard away.  We also bought some very spicy salsa to snack on for lunch.  So spicy that I had to add tomatoes, green chilies and onions to thin it out some.  We made 2 trays of nachos and polished off another bag of our new favorite tortilla chips.

It was during lunch that I decided we could make lasagna for dinner, so I took out a package of ground pork sausage and tomato sauce from the freezer.  We've got 2 gallons of whey to make ricotta, so it was all set.  I also decided I better learn the process of lacto fermentation and be ready to start preserving these peaches.  Tony spent close to an hour placing them in apple boxes that this same friend had brought us when we thought we'd found a place to move to.  The inserts to separate fruit were still there, so they came in very handy.  We have 3 and a half boxes of peaches!

OK, so now I have cracker dough souring, 80+ pounds of peaches picked, plans for a fairly involved dinner and I'm looking thru my GNOWFGLINS courses for the one on lacto-fermented fruit.  Tony needed to go to the shop and work on a couple of cellos.  GG asked if he could go with because his bike tires are both flat and the air compressor is at the shop.  I reminded Tony that today was the last day of a pretty good sale at OfficeMax and asked if it was worth it for me to drive to Cottonwood to take advantage of it.  He suggested I drop them off at the shop, go to Cottonwood and pick them up on the way back.  I hate dislike it when he makes a logical suggestion that doesn't line up with what I was thinking. 

Alright, so instead of working on peaches and spending some time planning out the upcoming week-GG wants to study volcanoes-I drove to Cottonwood.  Did I mention that driving makes me drowsy?  Yeah, so when we got home a nap was definitely needed.  GG watched Prince of Egypt and we dozed.  Until I remembered I wanted to put the yogurt in the fridge at 130 and it was now after 4.  So much for a nap.

I went out to check all the animals and poor patches had his head stuck in the fence.  Reason enough to dehorn any horned animal, IMO.  We tried cauterizing the horn buds when all the babies were a few days old, but the boys' horns grew anyway.  Now they're banded, but haven't fallen off yet.  It was at this point that I remembered that I needed to check the mamas and see if they needed to be milked again.  We (I) normally only milk once a day, but with this being the first day of weaning, I figured they'd need a second go around.  Got all the feed and supplies ready and came out to find that Spice had jumped out and eaten the milking time treats, so had to start a new batch soaking.  "When am I going to be able to start dinner?"  I thought to myself.  GG and Tony were playing "bollyball" (that'd be volleyball for anyone over the age of 10) and it was a nice late afternoon outside.

The girls gave nearly another 3 quarts of milk, though we only got to keep about half that.  Molly promptly stepped into the bucket today and then kicked it about 15 feet behind her.  I retrieved the bucket and milked her anyway, giving it to the chickens, who probably suggested she kick the bucket in the first place.  I'm not sure what the chickens do to repay the goats for this, though.

OK, on to dinner.  Tony started cooking the sausage-I asked why he was slicing it instead of just crumbling it and he said it was venison.  What?  We don't have any venison.  He told me to look at the wrapper in the trash.  Sure enough, the inside packaging says venison.  I looked more closely at the butcher paper on the outside and the word I couldn't make out this morning was now obviously antelope.  I vaguely recall neighbors giving us this when they gave us some pork sausage to try.  OK, so the lasagna is going to be made with cubed antelope sausage.  I also decided to try a recipe I had seen for lasagna "cupcakes".  In the original recipe won-ton wraps are used to line muffin tins and hold all the filling.  I had 6 lasagna noodles left from the last time we made it and didn't want to buy another box, so we tried this method.  Oh, but first I have to tell you about the ricotta.  For something that's supposed to be easy, I've had more failure than success.

The method is simply bringing the whey to roughly 180° and then pouring it through a butter muslin lined colander.  The one success I can recall, I brought the whey to nearly boiling, so that was my aim tonight.  Didn't work.  No ricotta.  Zero, zilch, nada.  {Hmm, that rhymed, maybe I should write children's silly stories?}  OK, I'm not going to the store for ricotta when I've managed to find a suitable alternative for everything else.  We decided to use chevre and just added Italian seasoning, garlic and salt. 

Cutting the partially cooked noodles into the right size circles seemed easy enough until we realized the size that fits the top is too big for the bottom, so Tony used scissors and custom cut them.  I topped with tomato sauce, antelope sausage, chevre, more sauce, another noodle and mozzarella.  Did I mention it's about 7PM already?  Or that the sweet elderly man that brings yard and garden trimmings for the goats and books or toys for Goober Gus stopped by just before we started cutting noodles.  As the oven is warming up and we're about done filling muffin cups with lasagna goodness, I start smelling something close to burning.  We just put a new (freecycle find) oven in yesterday, but it was clean inside.  Oh no!!  I put the cracker dough in there to keep flies off it!  Fortunately it was in a large Pyrex bowl, so no breakage, and I don't think the heat was a problem for the fermenting process, but it actually could be now that I think about it.  So we get these things into the oven finally and I start washing dishes so the kitchen won't be a total disaster tomorrow.  Tony and GG clean off the table and empty the dishwasher-oh wait, they did that while we waited for the whey to boil.  I finish the bulk of the dishes and check the lasagna.  Why aren't they cooked more than that already?  In my rush to stop the burning smell, I turned the oven off.  Goodness!  Will the craziness never end today? 

Here's the steps to filling the tins:

I turned it back on and we waited about 10 minutes.  Tony read a chapter from Charlotte's Web to Gus.  We started it last night and it's our aim to read a few chapters each evening.  Dinner was a hit, despite the many obstacles.  The flavor was outstanding!  Tony ate 6, I had 5 and GG had 4!  I thought he'd be too full to eat because he ate all the partially cooked noodle pieces.  Fooled me!

By now it's nearly 830 and we are at least half an hour behind in our evening routine.  We went out to lock up the chickens and check the goats, then got teeth brushed, read one more book, took fish oil and put him to bed!  That was at 9, it's now 10 and all I've done since then is write this very long description of a crazy weird day!  If you've read this far, pat yourself on the back and grab a gold star, you deserve it!!

Making Meatballs

We just put about 110 meatballs in the oven. I wish I could say that we cranked 'em out, but it didn't go that fast. We had a glitch with the grinder (aka not following directions for proper assembly) but once that got fixed the grinding went quickly. I then mixed in the seasonings and eggs and had already decided to leave out the breadcrumbs based on past experience with meatballs that tasted too little like meat. Well guess what? No breadcrumbs means gooey wet mixture, so I stopped in the middle to go buy breadcrumbs.

This is where the rabbit trail starts. I don't recall ever buying breadcrumbs, so had no idea where to find them. My first hope was with the natural foods, so they'd be short on ingredients. Nope, none there. Baking aisle? Nope, not there either. Maybe with beans and rice? Unh-uh. Stuffing mix? Wrong again. I finally found them with the instant mashed potatoes. Have you ever read the ingredient list on breadcrumbs?? It was 4 inches long! I didn't even need to read each item to know that if it's that long there's surely at least 1 item in there that I don't want to put in my HOMEMADE MEATBALLS that I'm making to AVOID those ingredients.
Plan B. Wait, I don't have a Plan B. Crackers? Could I smash up crackers and end up with something like breadcrumbs? It'd be worth a try. Even in the natural foods section it was a challenge to find crackers without soy lecithin or corn starch. I did finally though, so I headed home and engaged my cracker smasher (5 yo son). One more round of running my hands thru all the gooey mess and then on to production!

I used the medium scooper from PC to size them and Tony rolled them into better balls. Ours were a bit bigger than the recipe called for, so we cooked them for 20 minutes, then switched to broil for a few minutes to really brown them up. Here's how they look:

They taste pretty good too!  We'll eat a few today, some Monday night for a spaghetti pot luck and freeze the rest for quick lunches, and maybe those nights when I just don't feel like cooking.

Mexican Tuna Salad and Then Some

Anyone ever had it?  I was making tuna salad for lunch and saw the can of diced green chiles and thought they might be good in it, so along with them I added onion powder and cumin.  It was quite tasty.  We all agreed though, that it'd be even better in a quesadilla with green onions!

I made deodorant this morning.  I used the recipe from Passionate Homemaking.  I won't need to try it until tomorrow morning, and then it'll take a day of activity to see how it works.  Oh, I added lemon and lavender essential oils, just to give it a nice fragrance.

Spring is here, but not the frost free time yet.  Farmer's Almanac online shows my area frost free after the 21st of this month, so we'll wait until next weekend to plant our seedlings.  A friend has also given us several sunflowers to plant and another thing I think he said was a red hyacinth, but I don't recall.  This friend is an older gentleman from church that is always working on the grounds there.  One day I felt the urge to offer him a dozen eggs each week, so I asked him.  He was grateful and I could sense that he longed for more interaction, so I mentioned it to Tony, who had been interested in helping maintain the grounds too.  They spent a couple of hours that afternoon hoeing weeds.  Tony could tell he was glad to have some help and some company.  A day or two later Don shows up with a truckload of tree saplings and trimmings for the goats, and a bag of grapefruit for us.  Two days after that he came by asking for goat manure.  Obviously we have plenty and shared with him, and I was intrigued once again by God's economy.  We simply gave a dozen eggs from our excess, and got a new friend that brings treats for the goats (he even saved a bag of watermelon rinds for them) and plants for us!  Don is 82ish and works part time at the hardware store and is always at church doing some kind of physical labor.  His motivation is that if people think the outside looks nice, they'll be more likely to try coming inside.  Can't argue that.  Now we want to pick a night to invite him to dinner to find out more about him and learn from his life experiences.  What a treasure we've been given, and all because we're overly blessed with eggs too!

Friday Favorites January 28th

My favorite thing this week?  The birth of our twin goats, of course!  Total cuteness, right here.  Our question now is-do we keep them, or plan to sell them?  Or sell any of the other goats?  Last summer, with just 2 really providing a large portion of our milk, we had more than we could handle.  This summer we will have 5 in full time production, plus more baby goats.  We currently have 8 does.  Yodelady seems to be stuck at her current size and we don't feel she's big enough to be bred.  Maybe we sell her as a pet?  What do we do with the kids that Annie, Molly and Peaches will have in May?  I could milk 5 does, and find an outlet for selling the milk and/or cheese, but I'll need to be prepared for the extra workload.  We just need to be thinking about how many we want in our herd.

This post is part of Fight Back Friday at Food Renegade.

As Real as it Gets

At least around here for now, anyway!  Just a glimpse into a few real food forays this week. 

These are the ingredients in Amy's Homemade Ranch Dressing.  We mixed up a few bags for Christmas gifts the other day.  It went into plastic baggies with one of these labels and the instructions from Amy's blog.

Tuesday night we had these yellow fin tuna steaks with this Japanse sauce.  I only made the sauce, didn't use the rest of that recipe.  It was so delicious!  We had a little bit of wasabe sauce to go with it too.  Mmmmm.  The recipe for the sauce was for  more tuna than we had, so I used the leftover to flavor a crockpot full of rice to eat for dinner tonight.  I added asparagus to it and that was good enough that my husband had seconds.

The only reason we even had tuna was because we saw it on sale Sunday when we stopped to buy cod for dinner.  Guess we're all in the mood for fish lately!  We baked the cod in lemon garlic butter, and once again had asparagus with it.  Another delightful dinner!

Before dinner tonight, I made this fermented cranberry-apple-orange relish from the GNOWFGLINS blog to take to my parents house for Christmas dinner-the day after.  I modified that a little too-I had tangerines, but no oranges.  It smells and looks fabulous!

After dinner, I started a loaf of whole wheat bread in the bread machine.  Then the 3 of us made granola.  It's a recipe from Amy at Homestead Revival too.  Goober Gus and I have made it before and we love it!  Once that went into the oven the boys went to play and I made coconut/peppermint bark from GNOWFGLINS.  It's YUMMY and has the added benefit of being good for me!  I should have taken pictures, but I really just wanted to get it all done so I could sit down for a few minutes!  Is it bedtime yet?

Taking Stock

I've been in the kitchen this morning taking inventory of what food I have.  At the same time, I'm eliminating anything with artificial color or preservatives.  We think our son is affected by them, so we're trying a couple of weeks of focused effort on not letting him have any to verify the suspicion.

It's a testament to our almost two year old journey towards real food.  There's not much to toss or give away, and what's there just might be two years old or more.  [sigh]  Some chocolate graham crackers, old cereal bars, rancid macadamia nuts (the travesty!) and an assortment of cookie/cupckake sprinkles. 

Our original goal in this journey was real milk, healthy fats and homegrown eggs.  Then came the removal of all HFCS and any hydrogenated oils.  Seems that taking those out took out a lot of the dyes and chemicals too.  We're also trying to follow EWG's list of the most pesticide laden produce.  Living in a small town whose population doesn't care too much about that (or simply can't afford it) the options are very limited. 

Since the list has 49 items on it, we determined that the top 25 cleanest we would buy conventional and the rest had to be pesticide free.  Potatoes are in the lower 24, so now that the farmers markets are closed, we don't have access to organic potatoes.  I feel very restricted by this one alone, and there are 23 other items on that list!  It makes me question-do we go without fresh produce or do we eat the pesticides?

I'm almost done with the inventory.  I still need to go thru the fridge and freezer (mostly to list what we have for meal planning purposes) and one cabinet in my son's room that holds bulk items.  Then it'll be time to create healthy meals using these items.  Oh, and I want to plan carefully so that Monday's leftovers get used in Wednesday's soup (or whatever, you get the idea).

What's your feeling on chemicals in our food?  Whether they be pesticide residues on produce or added to boxed items-how do you handle it?

Some-things Cookin' Part Two

OK, so maybe the blog will be about cooking.  No, just when I think I've done something worth writing about.  I haven't felt like "cooking" for a few days, but don't want to fall into the trap of eating out either.  I get more rundown when that happens.  The ideal solution for me when this happens is crockpot meals, so today I dumped 3 containers of turkey stock into the pot and when they thawed, I added rice.  Voila-dinner is ready!  To make it more delectable, I made another loaf of french bread, which was a great device to soak up the yummy stock.  The stock is from the turkey we raised and butchered for Thanksgiving.  My husband thought it was a great meal, commenting that he really likes the bread, then adding that someday soon he'll also be saying that he likes the butter too.  We have the churn, we just need to try it out.  The added bonus of crockpot meals is that they're ready and waiting when we've finished evening chores.

This evening we helped a friend move her horse trailer.  The place it's being stored is along the Verde river and has been for sale for several years, several hundred thousand dollars out of our price range-still.  But it's GORGEOUS!  I was glad to have a chance to see it more than just from the road.  There was a large branch from a cottonwood tree broken off and I asked if we could haul it away for goat food.  That started a conversation and the homeowners seem interested in saving all of their tree trimmings for us!  They have a lot of trees too!  I gave them my card and I think Tony is going back Saturday to help cut up that branch and bring back a truckload full.  I love free feed for our animals!

I got some preliminary info regarding the selling of our eggs.  Apparently we can sell up 750 dozen (she wasn't sure if that was a lifetime limit or per year) from our home or farmer's market with no permit required.  If we want to sell to a restaurant or other retailer, we have to be inspected.  I have the phone number of the state agency I need to speak with and will call them tomorrow to see how much red tap and money is involved.

Oh, and I found 80 or so canning jars for sale on craigslist, but they are in a town an hour away.  Price is "make offer".  I need to call him back tomorrow too.

One last thing.  I printed the materials for the Fundamentals eCourse at GNOWFGLINS today and will pencil in times that I can take the various classes over the summer.  Did you know she changed the program to open enrollment and Donation Only for payments?  Check it out!  I'm going to start with the water kefir course.  I bought crystals last summer and tried it twice, both times failures.  I really want to learn to do it though because fizzy drinks are my weakness and if I can make one that is good for me then I can indulge freely!

Menu Plan Monday

I do more than plan the weeks' menu on Monday, but it has a nice ring to it.  I stole it from Jennifer at PJ Academy blog.  I also fill my son's snack drawers-1 in the fridge with fruit, cheese, boiled eggs, and small cans of V8; and another in the drawer where his cups, plates and bowls go with mixed nuts, dried fruit, and bunny crackers.  We also have a basket on the counter with fruit in it (he and I prefer it room temp).  He can choose snacks from any of these throughout the day, giving him independence and a bit of responsibility.
I also make more yogurt, buttermilk, cheese and any other dairy product I can come up with to reduce the qty of milk in the fridge.  Even after two weeks of having other avenues for milk consumption I have three and a half gallons of milk.  Two and a half qts of yogurt, a pint of buttermilk, and another half pint incubating along with another batch of chevre and ice cream round out the variety of our dairy products.  I write milk on our menu plan at each dinner, but that doesn't always translate into drinking it every night.  I also have smoothies down each morning, but the same thing applies.

I know that if I were drinking more of the milk I'd be better nourished and thus less fatigued.  It's hard to overcome 30 years of non milk drinking though.  I am getting better though.

Polly-we tried the chevre warmed and it was more creamy.  I took it to a BBQ and the hosts loved  it, so I'm making a batch for them.  I tell everyone that tries any of our dairy made concoctions that they won't hurt my feelings if they don't like it.  I think most have been honest, as I get a variety of responses.

Today for MPM I even cleaned out the fridge and made an inventory of contents.  Then I planned meals around what I could make from those ingredients.  We bought a large bag of organic carrots a while back and I need to get them used up.  I used two for carrot raisin muffins this morning and will put a bunch in the crock pot tomorrow for pot roast.

Food, Inc

We just finished watching it and it has renewed our desire to grow/raise as much of our own food as possible!  God did not create livestock to be crammed into space barely larger than its body, eating food engineered to maximize growth and ignore basic health!  The consequences of these actions are being played out in each and every life of the persons eating these animals, and it wasn't even our direct choice to let this happen.

We do vote with our dollars though and we are going to focus our votes on healthy food.  It's not going to be easy though.  Or cheap.  I just agreed to buy half a pig at a cost of twice (maybe even more) of what we pay on average for pork at the grocery store.  One segment in this documentary dealt with Wal-Mart buyers and they stated they purchase what the consumer is willing to buy-and they're getting a large demand for organic food and hormone free milk.  The producer of the documentaty said that because of WM's size they can have a large, POSITIVE impact on what dairy producers do with their cattle. 

I also learned that the calf our cow just had in January won't be ready for the freezer for at least 18 months when feeding on grass.  That's longer than I thought, so we may be looking for grass fed beef to purchase too.  We've got a lot of work to do, but renewed intent and desire.  May God lead us to the best way to reduce and/or eliminate the industrialized stream of food entering our bodies!

Here are links to the resources we've learned the most from. 
Future of Food
Food, Inc
Eat Fat, Lose Fat
The Untold Story of Milk
Most of them link to amazon.com to show the image of the movie or book cover.  I'm not an affiliate though.

On a silly, unrelated note-I was thinking of organizing a group of seamstresses to make pj's and sell them online.  I'd call it pajamason.com.  What do you think?  ;-)

Economics of Keeping a Family Cow

I don’t know what got me thinking about this, but the more it runs through my mind the more I want to do the math and see what the bottom line is. For anyone that has the pasture for it, keeping a family milk cow just might be profitable. Where we live, Elsie can graze in the pasture with no supplemental feeding from at least April thru October, which is 7 months. We started supplementing her feed in November and will probably be able to let her graze with supplemental alfalfa in March. That leaves 3 months where we have to supply her whole feed ration from purchased hay. While she’s pregnant, she gets 5 flakes of hay per day, so a bale lasts 3 days. That’d be 10 bales a month times 3 months. For the two supplemental months let’s assume we provide 70% of the feed with hay and the other 30% is free pasture.


10 (bales per month) x 3 (months) = 30 bales
30 x 8.75 (cost per bale) = $262.50
7 (bales per month) x 2 (months) = 14 bales
14 x 8.75 = $122.50
Cost of hay per year = $385
Now, our two acres are bare, and to keep Elsie company we boarded 2 horses for 4 months of pasture, bringing in $720. So far we have a gain of $335. We paid $600 for Elsie, already pregnant. Running town water to the lot was $400 plus about $25 per month for the water (the $400 we’d pay after we built, so it’s not a cost specific to Elsie, but the monthly water cost is). We’ve been paying that since June, so about $175 for her to have water. [Side note, she’s now at our house with the goats and we’re on well water, but we still have the basic fee to pay to the water company.]

OK, so if we take our gain of $335 and subtract the other costs, we’re in the hole by $440. She’s due to give birth any day, but we won’t start milking right away so that the calf gets all the colostrum. Let’s assume that we start milking February 1st and get ONLY a gallon of milk per day. Let’s also assume that we could do all the things we’re going to do with her milk if we bought the same quantity of milk from the store (yeah right). In our area we probably average $2.50 for a gallon of milk. So that’s 334 days of milk for 2010 times 2.50 equals $835. We’re now ahead by $395. That’s a low figure too. She will likely give an average of 2 gallons of milk per day, and we all know that the dairy products made from milk are expensive, so the savings are even greater than the $2.50 per gallon of milk. The woman we bought Elsie from sells fresh cow milk for $8 a gallon. If we could sell 334 gallons of milk at $8 each, we’d bring in $2672!
Wow! Wait til Tony sees this! Just being ahead by $395 is awesome! The best part is that we’re doing this to improve our health, not make money. However, the savings over what we’d have to pay to get raw milk dairy products from a health food store is far greater even than what we could earn selling her milk. And we get a cute cow to love on in the whole deal! I didn’t even go into the cost to breed her annually vs what we would either A) sell the offspring for or B) save in not buying beef at the store any more. I’m so excited to see it on paper!

Did I mention that raw, pasture fed milk will be a great boost to restoring adrenal health?  Yeah, that's priceless.

Adrenal Fatigue

It's been a year since I learned of this malady and its affect on my life, maybe 9 or 10 months since I found good material to combat it, but only 7 or 8 since I started applying what I learned. I'd love to be able to say that I've followed all suggestions all the time and feel 100% better now, but I'd be lying, and that's against the Top 10. :-)

I'm feeling worn out right now, so probably won't go into too many details in this post, but the fact that I feel this way is the reason for making the post. I've really noticed that when I don't eat enough (even if it's the wrong stuff) I have absolutely no energy/drive and have fuzzier thinking. I'm not necessarily tired enough to go to sleep, but I don't feel like doing anything. So I started thinking about what I've eaten today-nothing since noon and that's not good!
I had my hot cocoa with coconut oil this morning, with half a banana, then had my MOPS meeting this morning and we always have something to eat there. Today was a yummy spicy chicken dip, and I ate a lot of it! Plenty of protein, not much in the way of carbs, so no blood sugar problems, but then I haven't eaten anything since then and I feel so flat! This happened earlier in the week too. I keep saying that I'm going to make a menu plan with all 3 daily meals on it, but haven't yet. I want to get the grocery store sales ad to go from and haven't picked it up yet.

I know I need to eat but don't even feel like getting up to fix anything! Maybe we'll meet Tony at Denny's and get fueled up. That gives me a good image to share-fueling up at Denny's is like putting low grade gas in your car. It's not what's best for your car, but it keeps it running! Tomorrow I will work on the high octane booster fuel!

Journey to Homesteading

Our journey to become homesteaders didn't start with a desire to "do it all on our own", but rather a discovery that perhaps my sleep issues are dietary related.  A trip to a new chiropractor last January revealed that perhaps I had adrenal fatigue.  What?  Never heard of it, what's that?  What causes it and what do I do about it?  Do I NEED to do anything about it?

I came home and searched for info online and found a couple of sites that explained it in more detail and revealed that yes, I probably do suffer from adrenal fatigue (AF).  Every health issue I've ever had can be traced to overworked, undersupported adrenal glands.  There's a test on the site listed above and it was quite interesting (OK, I like to take tests).  I ordered the nutritional supplements and found a book at the library.  The book went into more detail and I found myself nodding in agreement at what I was reading.  I had lots of "aha" moments that made all the puzzle pieces fall together.  The fat around my waist, the irritability, constantly feeling like I need a nap, sugar cravings, EVERYTHING that could be said was "wrong" with me could be linked with overworked adrenal glands.  Great, now that I know what's wrong, how do I fix it?

I shared the site and info with my friends, as it is one of those things that most of us as women suffer with unknowingly.  If I could help some one else get healthier I wanted to do that.  One of those friends said she just finished reading a book that mentioned AF, but wasn't really about that.  It's Eat Fat, Lose Fat by Dr Mary Enig and Sally Fallon.  Not a book I would choose to read without a recommendation.  I don't follow fad diets.  I picked that up at the library too and started reading.  WOW!  What an eye opener!  Everything we've been taught to believe about healthy foods is WRONG.  Misinterpreted data and the quest for wealth have caused the wrong information to be widely publicized, keeping us reliant upon pharmeceutical companies for our "health".  I don't like to take aspirin when I have a headache, I certainly don't want to depend on a daily cocktail of pills to take care of what ails me!

So based on info in the Eat Fat book I started looking for raw dairy products, farm fresh eggs, coconut oil, pasture fed beef and various other whole, raw foods that would give my body the nutrients it needs to re-establish good health.  Sticker shock quickly set in and while I wrestled with the "how much is good health worth" dilema I realized that I had the means to provide these foods for me and my family without going broke. 

We bought 4 baby chicks at the feed store so that we'd have fresh eggs as soon as they got old enough to lay.  Then we found a family of goats that needed a new home, 2 does that were first time fresheners, along with their new kids.  Alright, but I want raw cow milk and products too.  A trip to a chain health food store revealed that a gallon of raw cow milk was $14.69!  I'd been reading more farm books and knew that a family cow could provide at least a gallon of milk per day.  At that rate it wouldn't take long for an investment in a cow to pay off.  I'd only need 41 gallons to see a return on my purchase price.  We have 2 acres of pasture, so during the grass season there'd be no feed expense.  We rented that pasture to two horse owners and actually had an income in those months that exceeds what we're paying for feed in the winter.  Elsie is due to calf anytime in the next two weeks and then we'll have more raw milk than we have refrigerator space to store it!

Along the way we also acquired already laying hens and a few turkeys.  We've lost 5 chickens and 1 turkey to local predators, but cooked one of the turkeys for Thanksgiving.  The white meat was so moist I couldn't believe it was white meat!  We've had fresh eggs since last April, and have been using raw goat's milk since June.  Tony buys milk to have at work, but beyond that we haven't bought milk for 6 months.

I bought a case of coconut oil and have tried to follow the recommended guidelines for consumption.  I should take a tablespoon 3 times daily, 20 minutes before each meal.  I have been consistent in drinking it in my morning beverage, but haven't succeeded at getting 3 servings every day.  It's a goal I'm still working on.

I've also stopped buying anything with high fructose corn syrup and any form of hydrogenated fat.  The hardest part for me is soda.  I LOVE the bubbles.  I've switched to Hansen's, that doesn't have the HFCS, but when we're out, I don't have that choice.  We still eat out (not as much as we used to) and I'm sure my choices there include these things.  I can't say that I've noticed a huge difference yet, but then I'm not doing everything that I should.  I have noticed two things that can be traced to the coconut oil though.  The sugar cravings in the afternoon have diminished.  I still have the habit, and so go searching, but nothing sounds good and if I do take a bite of some sweet, it's not enjoyable.  The other is an improvement in my dental health.  My first cleaning of 2009 revealed many 3's and 4's in the periodontal exam, with several 5's and a couple of 6's.  The goal is 0 or 1.  My second trip showed mostly 2's and 3's, with no 6's and I think there was one 5.  So my gums are healthier.

Life happens, things distract me, and before I know it, months have passed without any progress on the dietary goals.  I'm refocused again and want to see great gains in my health this year.  That's how we began our journey to homestead.  Right now it's mostly supplying some of our own food so that we know what went into it and what we can expect out of it.  If I decide to leave this as one long post, the next will be about this year's goals.  If you have and questions about AF, I'd like to help you!