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!

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!

Cracker Map

I was baking crackers yesterday.  A triple batch so we'd have enough to snack on this week with plenty left over for Goober Gus's birthday party Saturday.  As I was preparing to take the first batch off the tray, I noticed that it kinda looked like a map of the US.  Not that I was trying, but do you see it?

Before and After

I read a guest post today from Kitchen Stewardship that reminded me a lot of my own food journey so I thought I'd share my story.

If we look at life about two and a half years ago, meal planning consisted of thinking it'd be good to have fish once a week and trying not to have the same type of meat twice in a row-in other words beef, pork, chicken, lather, rinse, repeat.  We ate out several nights a week, as well as every Sunday after church.  Fast food was a regular part of our diet.  I tried to make sure we got a variety of foods but that was about the extent of making healthy choices.

Had you told me then that just about everything we eat would be made from scratch-by me-I would have laughed literally out loud.  Yeah, I enjoyed cooking and baking, but not to the point of making bread on a regular basis or homemade crackers.  I baked cookies when we were in the mood, not because it was a better choice health wise.  Probably the biggest reason for my disbelief would have been that I just don't have the energy to do all that cooking and baking.

In January of 2009 my chiropractor suggested that I have adrenal fatigue.  I'd never heard of it, but a bit of research lined everything up.  A bit more research and we started applying a few changes:

1. Bought baby chicks so we could have farm fresh eggs (then added two adults because we didn't want to wait!)
2. Discovered how expensive raw milk is and decided to buy a couple of goats to have our own fresh, raw, milk.
3. Learned to make yogurt and chevre with the raw milk.
4. Eliminated HFCS and hydrogenated fats.
5. Added coconut oil.
6. Reduced sugar intake (refined white).
7. Cut back on fast food consumption.
8. Started trying to buy non factory farmed meat.
9. Learned to milk a cow that didn't want to be milked.
10. Began following the Dirty Dozen/Clean 15 system for buying produce.
11. Began trying to avoid GMO's.
12. Discovered son was sensitive to food chemicals and started avoiding them.
13. Learned that I'd have to make a lot of things from scratch to keep from eating foods with chemicals.
1. Cookies
2. Ice cream
3. Crackers (wheat thin style)
4. Bread
5. Sour Cream
6. Buttermilk
7. Graham Crackers
8. Granola type bars
9. Marshmallows (who can give up s'mores??)
10. Meatballs
11. Bread crumbs
12. Mayo
13. Ketchup
14. Tomato sauce
15. Granola
16. Toothpaste
17. Mouthwash
18. Laundry soap
19. Deodorant
20. Dishwashing soap
21. Insect repellent
22. Household cleaners
14. Stopped enjoying eating out-the flavor just isn't there when you no longer eat processed foods all the time.
15. Realized that I've come a long way when I cringe at nearly everything available away from home and when others point out how much I do.

No wonder I'm still tired all the time!

Sourdough Week

This week I've been focusing on sourdough courses in my "summer school".  I started the week by making the sponge for bread, but it failed-the sponge that is.  That left me with a lot of starter to be used up so I made crepes Tuesday night.  Had no idea they were so easy to make!  I then made crackers, a new sponge for bread, English muffins and more crackers.  The 2nd sponge still wasn't quite right, but it was bubbly and domed, so I used it.  Made 4 loaves, actually.  20 minutes worth of kneading.  Know what that does to a person not used to using those muscles?  And the crackers-plenty of rolling that dough, have to get it very thin.  So I don't need PE with Goober Gus this week, but will go outside and play with him anyway.

The English muffins were great toasted with homemade apricot jam and strawberry jam.  The crackers are a hit with the boys, that's why I made another batch, and the crepes we good too.  The bread-good flavor, nice texture inside, but they just didn't rise much.  I think that's because the sponge didn't get gloppy, but that's just a guess on my part.

Freshly baked English muffins.

Herbed crackers.

This post is part of Real Food Wednesday hosted by Kelly the Kitchen Kop.

Summer School

I was thinking the other day...this would be a good time to get intentional about homeschooling.  "Is summer really a good time to start?" I asked myself.  Immediately I replied, "why not?"  We seem to be on the counter cultural side anyway, so why not start school when hordes of people have just stopped?  I even signed up for classes.

Last week I filled out some lists I'd won from ListPlanIt.  I made goals for what we'd like to accomplish by the end of August.  I took inventory of educational items we already have.  I made a schedule of activities for this week, I just didn't assign times to most of it.  Goober Gus is registered for VBS this week, so that is a set time, then I made a short list of items to discuss during lunch.  The rest I will need to be intentional about, but it doesn't need to happen all at once or at a certain time.  I may even post our goals and plans on his blog, but that might not be a good use of time.  We'll see.

I, on the other hand, will be taking advantage of the time he's at VBS to work through as many classes at GNOWFGLINS as I can.  First on the list is sourdough bread.  I reactivated my starter last week and it's in the fridge waiting.  I'm going to try completing the video portions of all the sourdough classes this week.  I may not get to try all the recipes, but I'm aiming for one per day.  That ought to give me a good foundation for working with sourdough-or at least that's my hope!

Ah, Fresh, Raw, Homemade Yogurt!

We sure missed this dietary staple the last month or so!  One of my pregnant and milking does was ready for her dry time before I could get the new mama into good production, so we've had an extended period of no milk.  Last summer I froze about 3 quarts in a gallon jar and we used that when we entered the "dry" period, but it only last a week.

Finally, the doeling of another goat was big enough to go to the buck, thus giving us the milk she refused to give up.  It's only been a week, and only about a pint at a time, but that finally went up to 24-26 ounces and I was able to accumulate enough to have 2 quarts for yogurt making.  mmmmmmmmmmmm

I used about 6 ounces of store-bought yogurt with active live cultures and this is one of the thickest batches we've ever had.  It's all Nubian/Boer cross milk which has a higher fat content than our Alpine milk.  We're back on probiotics!!  Thank you, Belle!

This is from last June, shortly after Yodelady was born.  She should have been weaned by October, but neither was willing to give it up and separating them didn't work, they always found a way to get back together.  She finally gained enough weight to go hang out with Boots the Buck, so we have raw milk again!

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!

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?

Lasagna

This morning I made my first successful batch of ricotta cheese from the whey left after making chevre.  I only got about 1/2 cup (little errors on my part) but was wondering what I'd do with it, so it wouldn't just sit in the fridge and spoil.  I decided we'd have lasagna for dinner, but 1/2 cup of ricotta wouldn't be enough.  So, I found out how to make ricotta straight from the milk rather than from whey.  We had Italian sausage from the 1/2 hog we bought a few months ago, but everything else would have to be store bought. 

This was the first time any of us assembled a lasagna and we were quite excited to take on this adventure together!  I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story.

Ricotta curds draining in butter muslin.

Goober Gus and Dad frying the sausage and beef.

A huge bag of fresh basil from a neighbor.  What else can I do with this?

Layering the ingredients.

Goober mixing the egg and seasoning into the ricotta.

More layering.  My artistic husband made sure it was very eye appealing.

The ricotta goes on...

Ready to go into the oven.

The mess!

More of the mess.

I even did the dishes after dinner-I hardly EVER do that!  Just ask my mom...

Goober cracking the egg...