Pumpkin Spice Cream of Wheat

My kids were starting to get a little jealous of my homemade pumpkin spice latte habit. They kept asking if they could have one too, and while I try to be a pretty nice mom, I'm not nice enough to give them coffee first thing in the morning. (Or ever. Just to be clear on that.)

As they were staring longingly beside me as I whisked up the pumpkin and the spice and the cream, I had a little idea. And it was a good idea. One good enough that I think it's worth sharing.

Pumpkin Spice Cream of Wheat.

It's a super-fast, super-simple hot breakfast for a chilly fall day. And it helps with the guilt of those delicious lattes every morning. This recipe makes two servings, and takes about five minutes to prepare.

In a sauce pan, make your cream of wheat as directed. I actually use Bob's Red Mill wheat farina. It's 2 cups of water to 1/2 cup wheat, boiled for a minute or two. I usually add 1/4 tsp of salt to the cereal as it cooks.

When it's done, remove it from the heat and add:
1 Tbsp. butter
2 Tbsp. pumpkin puree
2-3 Tbsp. brown sugar
1/2 tsp. pumpkin pie spice


Mix it all together well. Spoon into bowls, then top with a bit of half & half and a sprinkle of nutmeg.

Okay, so I'm not a food photographer, and this doesn't look very pretty. But it's really, really good. I promise.

Rooster Beware

Remember that nasty, mean rooster I mentioned? He was awful - 'Ruler of the Roost' to the extreme. If any of the other roosters would even try to come out into 'his' yard, he was attack them, make them scream, pull out feathers, until they ran back for the indoor coop. They were all afraid to eat, or get any fresh air. It was getting ridiculous.

So we found a good place to re-home him, a place that made everyone much happier.

The crock pot.

Chicken and dumplings. Yep. A much better place for him.

Growing and Using Fresh Beets

I didn't have the pleasure of tasting fresh beets until I grew them in my own garden. Apparently not a lot of people buy and cook fresh beets... probably because (if they're anything like me) they don't know what to do with them. The only way I had beets as a kid was pickled, from a can. They weren't my favorite... though admittedly, no vegetable was my favorite as a kid. I'm not sure what was wrong with me. I'm glad I outgrew it.

Since then, beets have turned into one of my favorites. Who knew such sweetness could come from an ugly ol' root that you pull out of the ground?

And they're easy to grow. I don't think I've ever not had success growing beets. They're relatively insect-proof, they survive if you forget to water, and they can handle both hot and cold temps. Here's what I've learned about growing beets:

*The seed is actually a small pod. When it sprouts, it will likely produce five or six little sprouts. Pull out all but one.
*Plant early. March is good in most areas - about the same time you plant brassicas (broccoli, etc.) If you plant a row every two weeks, you'll have fresh beets all summer (though sprouting seeds is usually hard in the hot, dry months.) If you want to can beets for later use, plant a big patch all at the same time.
*You can eat beets at any size. Golf-ball sized beets are the most tender, but even as much as three inches across, you can roast them and they will still taste great.
*Beet greens are essentially the same thing as Swiss chard. Cut the leaves at any time - the beet root will still keep growing, so long as you leave a few leaves on each plant. Toss the greens with some olive oil and garlic and saute them a bit for a great side veggie. Or, if you're drowning in beet greens, freeze them as you would spinach. They're great in soups and casseroles.

Variety matters. Depending on what you're going to do with your beets, choose a variety that suits your plans. Here are my favorites (I believe all of these are available through Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, and many other places):

*Bull's Blood - a dark purple-red root, this one is easiest for peeling if you're going to be putting them up for winter. It also stains the worst though.
*Golden - these ones are great for serving raw or roasting. They are perfect for messy kids, since they don't stain like the red beets do. They are a bit hard to sprout, so plant a few extra. I think goldens are my favorite, in general.
*Chioggia (candy cane) - If you want to impress your kids, the novelty of having a red and white striped beet is fun. The colors do run together a bit when they're cooked, but that doesn't take away from how pretty they are.
*Detroit Dark Red - if you want a dark red roasting beet, this is a good one. Doesn't peel as easy as Bull's Blood though. It has an "earthy" flavor that some of the others lack, if you like that sort of thing. I love mixing the Detroits, Goldens, and Chioggias when I cook, so I grow plenty of each of them.
*Crosby Egyptian - these ones are neat because they grow very much on top of the soil. You can tell how big your beets are getting just by looking, instead of having to dig around them every so often.

Beets will store For. Ever. Well, not forever. But for a really long time.

*When storing, leave about an inch of the tops and leave the long tap root.
*You can put them in a plastic bag in the fridge for months. Don't seal the bag, they need to breathe or they will mold.
*Try storing them in a root cellar or basement, in a container filled with damp sand. Don't forget to let them breathe. When I tried this, I had fresh beets into February the next year.
*If your beets feel a little soft after storage, put them in the fridge in a bowl of water for a day or two. They will firm back up.
*Beets can be frozen or pickled and canned, too.
*To freeze or can beets, you want to peel them first. Do this by putting them in boiling water for about half an hour. The skins will slip of fairly easily (or very easily with Bull's Blood) and the beet will be fork tender. Then slice, chop, or whatever, and put them by however you choose.
*When canning, a pound of beets is about a pint preserved. A 5 sq. ft. beet bed will easily produce 30 pounds of beets or more, and more greens than you could ever eat. 

Also worth noting:

*Beets will dye things red. This is useful if you have a skein of handspun yarn that you want to be pink or red. This is not as useful if you have a four year old, who will also be dyed pink or red.
*If you're going to can and/or freeze beets, go buy a stack of black kitchen towels. Unless you want your favorite rooster-printed kitchen towels to have a permanent pink tinge to them. 

My favorite beet recipe:

Roasted Beets

Cut the tops and taproots off of enough beets to feed your family. Expect them to eat a lot, so plan accordingly. (Usually 2 medium sized beets per person is good. Or more. They'll probably keep eating them as long as they are on the table.)

Use a vegetable peeler to peel the raw beets. Then slice them into 1/4-1/2" wedges.

In a glass baking dish, toss the beet wedges with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, enough to coat them liberally. Sprinkle with dehydrated, granulated garlic (or garlic powder), dried oregano, and salt and pepper.
 
Roast uncovered in a 400 degree oven for 45 minutes to an hour. Check them every so often and give them a stir to make sure they cook evenly. They are done when they can be stabbed easily with a fork.

The tangy taste of the vinegar mixed with the sweetness of the beets is really impressive. My kids devour these sort of like candy.

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While it's harder to sprout beet seeds in the summer, August is the perfect time to plant if you want a fall beet harvest. Just so ya know. ;-)

Garden to Table Challenge: Venison Fiorentinis

"Girls, I'll be right back, gonna run out to the garden to get some food for dinner."

Oh man, I was starting to feel like I might never have the pleasure of uttering those words again. But alas, the time has finally come - we are starting to harvest little bits here and there, and the satisfaction of providing fresh vegetables for ourselves has returned. :::contented sigh::: Granted it's mostly spinach, and spinach isn't my favorite food, but right now, it tastes lovely!

And this means.... I finally have another post for the Garden to Table Challenge!

I have a deep, heartfelt love for hors d'ouevres and appetizers. I will happily read appetizer recipes in cook books, mark them and add them to my to-make list... and then realize we have no social life and I really have no reason to make fancy hors d'ouevres in real life. And then I decided there was no good reason not to be making them every so often for my family, just because they're good and we like them. Every so often, I'll make a plate of some kind of appetizer and serve it alongside baked potatoes or rice or salad. No one has complained yet, so I'm gonna keep doing it.

Tonight's dinner was just that - Venison Fiorentinis. The original recipe, which I changed quite a bit, came from The Colorado Farmer's Market Cookbook, one I suggest for anyone wanting to cook with fresh fruits and vegetables (and you don't have to be from Colorado to enjoy it.)

Venison Fiorentinis
1 lb venison steaks
4 cups fresh spinach
1/2 C grated parmesan cheese (the real stuff, not the powdery stuff.)
15 sheets phyllo dough
olive oil

Step one: fry the steaks in a bit of olive oil until medium rare. This takes about 8 minutes, turning once. Remove from pan and let cool a bit.

Step two: Chop the spinach into 1/2 inch bits. Toss it into a bowl with the parmesan cheese. Chop the steaks into tiny bits and mix those in as well. Season it with salt, pepper and garlic powder. This is your filling.

Step three: Fold a phyllo sheet in thirds, then cut this rectangle in half. You'll have two squares. Brush them with olive oil, then put a spoonful of filling on each square, fold it in half to make a triangle. Fill a baking sheet with these, then bake them at 400 degrees for 8 minutes or so, til the dough is golden.


No joke, these little things are pretty incredible. They even convince little girls to eat spinach without the slightest complaint. And as far as sinful appetizers go... well, there are more sinful things. If course, they're so little and cute that you don't feel guilty having "just one more"... several times.

If you don't have any venison steaks in your freezer, you could use regular beef steaks and they'd be just as amazing, I'm pretty certain.

I've never purchased or used phyllo dough before (I've lived a sheltered life.) It thrilled me more than it should have. As I was devouring these amazing bits of goodness, I was fantasizing about all the different things a girl could wrap in phyllo dough. The possibilities are endless. Go forth, my friends, and start wrapping things in phyllo. You will not be disappointed. Especially if it involves venison and cheese.

Garden to Table Challenge: Asparagus

It's Garden to Table Challenge day again! Wow, where did that week go? I wish I could tell you that I've got some great harvest to write about, but all I've got to show for my gardening efforts so far are some spinach seedlings and inch-high peas and onions. With the warm days we've been having, I am holding out hope that some day... perhaps in the distant future... I will produce some food from this new ground I'm working.

In the meantime, I'm still doing my best to make good use of what Mother Nature has to offer. This week: wild asparagus. Picking wild asparagus is an annual tradition around here, and with the warmer days a bit earlier this season, asparagus is already popping up along fence lines.

I've got a fridge full of asparagus spears standing in jars of water, waiting for canning tomorrow. Tonight's dinner was what I'm writing about today though - fish fillets poached in a wine/garlic/butter sauce with roasted parmesan wild asparagus spears alongside.

If I was cooler - and had planned ahead better, I'd have taken a picture. You'll have to use your imagination, but I promise, it was a beautiful meal.

For the asparagus:

Trim 1 lb (ish) asparagus spears. Place them in a shallow baking dish. Toss with a bit of olive oil to coat, sprinkle with salt and pepper. Then sprinkle on about 1/4c. parmesan*. Or a third of a cup... or a half of a cup. I love parmesan. Cover the dish with foil, bake at 400 degrees for about half an hour. Seriously, it's that easy, and it's so good.

*Don't use that grated powdery stuff that comes in the spaghetti aisle. Buy real, grated parmesan. (Or grate some yourself.) It's worth it. I promise.

And in case you're dying for a new, super fast and easy fish recipe:

Tilapia with Wine/Garlic sauce:

Place 6 partially thawed tilapia filets in a shallow baking dish. Put a thin pat of butter on each filet. Drizzle white wine over it all, then squeeze half a lemon over that. Sprinkle with sea salt, dehydrated garlic and dried parsley. Cover with foil, bake about 25 minutes, til it flakes.

So it takes a total of about ten minutes to have this all in the oven. Then you can walk away and feed the baby chickens and turkeys, hoe a row in the garden, and come in just in time to put it on the table with a loaf of bread. Easy peasy.

So there's my Garden to Table Challenge submission for the week. Again, sorry for the lack of pictures. A hungry family sitting down to the dinner table doesn't look kindly upon Mom insisting they all stop eating so she can photograph their plates. I decided to let them eat in peace.

Garden To Table Challenge: Dandy Bread

It's Garden To Table Challenge time again!

Alas, I now live in the mountains, where even if you have the nerve to get out and plant seeds before June, the weather isn't warm enough to make them sprout. And so... I got nothin'. At least as far as gardening goes. I have a sneaking suspicion I have no idea just how hard it will be to garden in this new climate.

However, I refuse to let our lack of homegrown spring veggies stand in the way of Wendy's fun blog challenge. While gardens up at our elevation might not be producing much, the weeds don't seem to mind the lack of warmth. We have a lawn full of dandelions right now (much to my husband's chagrin) and where there's a homesteading will, there's a way.

I happened to mention to my Littlest One that dandelions are, in fact, actually food. This prompted her to go outside, grab one, and eat it. Um, yeah. Not the best tasting thing she's had lately. I told her I'd read about making things like dandelion bread and dandelion muffins, and even dandelion wine.

"Oh! If I make dandelion wine, can I drink some?"

We opted for bread.

But first came the pleasure of 'harvesting' the dandelions.


Because picking dandelions is about the most fun you can have when you're four years old.


Eventually she enlisted the help of The Oldest.


It didn't take long before they had a basketful of dandelion blossoms.


Of course, it took twice that long to separate the petals from the sepals to actually use them in baking, but we managed.

And so, we baked our dandelion bread. The result? It really doesn't take much different from any other quick bread, but at least it's got pretty yellow specks in it. And when you're four, the novelty of eating flowers is worth all the effort.

This post is shared at Greenish Thumb's Garden To Table Challenge. Head on over to join in the fun!

Grinding Meat - Revisited

I've had a handful of messages from folks wanting to know more about grinding game meat into burger, so since we just did it this weekend, I thought I'd share the process. I did write a very similar post a couple of years ago on the subject, but I've learned some things since then that I'll add to this post.

As we butcher an elk or deer, all of the small scraps of meat and lower-quality meat cuts go into the "burger bucket." (We use a five gallon bucket lined with a clean plastic trash bag.) Wild game fat isn't the greatest tasting, so we trim most of the big fatty chunks off, but little bits left on aren't really a problem. When we're done processing the animal, we freeze the burger meat big freezer bags until we're ready to grind it. Yes, this means we refreeze our meat once. I'm not gonna recommend you do it too, but I can tell you that after spending a day (or two) cutting up and packaging an animal, the last thing I want to do is stand at the grinder for another few hours. I prefer procrastination. We've never noticed a problem with the taste and/or quality of our burger meat because of it.

So anyway. Thaw your meat if it's frozen, and round up some fat*. Pork and beef fat are equally suitable. Pork fat tends to be less "gummy", making less mess and not clogging the grinder as often. Beef fat is kosher, and we have kosher family that we like to have for dinner on occasion. Either way, you want a pound of fat for every four pounds of burger meat. This makes an 80/20 mixture, which makes great burgers, meat loaves, meatballs, etc. (I've done a 3:1 ration in the past, and it's good too, but the difference is minimal. 4:1 means you buy less fat.) Fat is cheap, about $2 a pound. Find a butcher shop that will sell you fresh fat, already ground. (We ground our own for the first two years, thinking that was the only way. All butcher shops are not equal - find a good one.)

Grind your meat on the coarse setting first. Then, mix four pounds of meat with one pound of fat. We mix by hand, wearing gloves.

When it's well mixed, run it through the grinder with a finer grind plate.

Then package it according to how you'll want to use it - we do one pound portions.

To package it, I put it in sandwich size ziploc bags, press out all the air and seal it, then wrap it in a layer of freezer paper.


This seems to work great - we'll still be eating this meat in August, until next hunting season, and freezer burn hasn't been an issue for us yet. Mark the package with the contents, and load up the freezer. From the deer we processed this fall, we ended up with 24 pounds of burger in addition to the steaks and roasts we kept out.



Notes and tips:
*Work quickly, and keep your meat cold.
*Have every large bowl in your kitchen clean and ready for use. You'll use them all, and wish you had more.
*Two people working is better than one. It makes the work go faster, and it's more fun that way.
*Get a small kitchen scale. Ours is a little digital that goes up to 10 pounds. You'll be surprised at the number of uses you'll find for it.
*We've used our Kitchen-Aid food grinder, and a Cabela's heavy duty meat grinder. The Cabela's one is about three times faster than the Kitchen-Aid, and doesn't have to be stopped periodically to prevent overheating. It was a worthwhile investment. If you're cooler than we are, you could also use an old fashioned hand-crank grinder. We've done it... well, we tried it. That's a whole lotta work.
*For self-sufficiency reasons, obviously purchased fat isn't absolutely necessary for making burger meat. But the taste is better, and added fat keeps the meat moist. A hamburger with no fat is going to be a dry, crumbly burger, and not very pleasant to eat.
*If you're going to make sausage, leave some of the ground meat out of the freezer, and plan to make the sausage soon. It's not a hard thing to do, and worth the extra effort.
*Clear your counters of everything you don't want blood splattered on. Then, consider using a bit of foil to create a sort of tent over the grind plate. Otherwise, your kitchen will resemble a massacre scene by the time you're finished. Grinding meat is messy work.
*Learn the "butcher wrap", or you'll be going through an insane amount of freezer paper and tape. Ignore the directions on the side of the freezer paper - you'll use twice as much. The trick is the work on the diagonal.
*Do buy freezer tape. It looks just like masking tape, but masking tape will come undone when it gets cold. Freezer tape won't.
*This process is the same for any kind of meat you want to grind. We made sausage out of last season's snow goose as well. Burger/sausage is fabulous for any meat you don't love the taste of (like snow goose) because you can easily cook it in a way that hides the gamey taste.
*The cost analysis: $10 for purchased fat, $20 for deer tag, $1.50 for a fourth of a roll of freezer paper and a bit of tape. $31.50 total. 24 pounds of meat at $31.50 equals $1.31 per pound for free range, grass fed hamburger after two hours of work. Not a bad deal.


This post is shared on Frugal Days, Sustainable Ways.

(Almost) Instant Homegrown Pizza Sauce

Pizza is a standard at our house - Saturday night dinners alternate between spaghetti and pizza. Everyone likes them both, and it seems to be a good lead-in to our "family night."

I make pizza sauce by the quart all summer long as the tomatoes are coming in, then freeze them in 1 cup portions. This works great, until I forget to take sauce out to thaw and dinner needs to be on the table in half an hour. So tonight, I improvised, and the result was so yummy I thought I'd share it.

Here's how to have "fresh" from the garden pizza sauce in less than five minutes.

Use half a quart of canned roma tomatoes. (Yes, half a quart is a pint. However, I can my tomatoes in quart jars, so I call it half a quart.) Squeeze most of the juice out. Put them in a bowl, cup, something that you can use your stick blender in.

To the tomatoes, add a couple cloves (or more) of garlic, a tablespoon or so of dehydrated onions, and a good bit of whatever Italian-ish spices grew successfully for you this year. I used dried basil, oregano, and rosemary.

Now mix away with your stick blender until it's pretty much smooth. If it's too thin (mine was) add a small handful of dried tomatoes to the mixture, and blend them in really well. It'll thicken right up, and add really rich flavor.



And that's that. Super simple, and super fast. I think I might actually like this more than the sauce I've been using for the past three years, it was that good.

An actual "recipe":
1 pint canned roma tomatoes, drained
2 cloves garlic
1 Tbsp dehydrated onions
2 Tbsp. mixed dried Italian herbs
1/4 c. dehydrated tomato slices

Blend all ingredients with an immersion blender until smooth.

Building habits

Each year, I try out a few new "homesteading" skills. Mostly just to see how it goes, learn something new, and stash any knowledge gained away for some day when I might actually need it. But some of the things I've learned over the past few years have become habit: homemade laundry detergent, homemade sausage and pepperoni, homemade noodles and bread, canned tomatoes and fruits and jams. These things have become habit, in the same way we form the habit of making our bed each morning or brushing our teeth, or fixing lunch.

Each year, I add a few new habits. Homemade dishwasher detergent is a new one in our home, and after trying out a few different recipes I'm finally satisfied. All it is is washing soda and borax (also ingredients in laundry detergent) and the secret ingredient: citric acid. Without the citric acid, dishes come out spotty and cloudy. I tried lemon juice and it helped, I tried white vinegar and that wasn't bad, but powdered citric acid turns out dishes that are beautiful and sparkly every time. I found that I can buy citric acid online in bulk for far less than what our local health food store carries it for, and citric acid is the same thing as Fruit Fresh, meaning I can also use it in my canned goods. Fancy. :o)

The chickens are another habit we formed this year: never again will I be able to imagine life without laying hens. No one ever could have convinced me I'd love having chickens as much as I do, but man are they great. Not just for the eggs they lay, but for the compost they produce, and for the fantastic entertainment value. When you don't watch TV, you learn to find amusement by watching other things... like Two Little Girls and the Adventures of the Four Chickens. Chickens take hardly any time at all to care for - five minutes a day to feed, water, and collect eggs, and an extra five or ten minutes a week to clean out the manure and compost it. Of course, this isn't including the hours that Two Little Girls spend outside holding and rocking and petting and combing their hens. But that part isn't necessary, it's just bonus. And even through winter, our girls are providing us with a couple of eggs a day still. We're already looking forward to brooding a new batch of chicks this spring.

On my list of things to try out next year (or some year thereafter):
*Making soap. I'd love to try it with elk or goose fat, just to see how it turns out. I also want to give castille soap a try, since it's the basis for so much everyday cleaning.
*Pressure canning, so I can put up more vegetables without having to worry about running out of freezer space.
*More homemade dairy. I've gotten pretty good at farmer's cheese and yogurt, but I'd love to try out some mozzarella or colby. I'd love it even more if the milk came from our own goats...
*Homemade oils and herbs for medicine. Feverfew was a success this year, and I know certain herbs and teas work great for different minor ailments. I'd love to have my own "medicine garden".

Any other homesteaders out there forming habits, or trying out new skills? I'd love to hear about them, so I can start adding to my list!

Homemade Chicken Soup - for Marcie

My sweet friend Marcie is "afraid of soup." Her words. I keep trying to imagine this chilly fall weather without the warmth of soups, but I just can't.

So Marcie, here's a good, standard chicken soup recipe. From scratch.

Start with a whole chicken. (Don't panic. You can so do this. Nothin' to it.) Open the packaging, remove the giblets (if it comes with them, they'll be in a plastic bag stuffed inside the chicken. If it doesn't come with them, don't worry about it.) Rinse the chicken with water inside and out, just to get the excess juice off.

Stick the chicken in the crock pot (I use a 5 qt crock pot, which leaves room for lots of broth.) Fill the crock pot with water. Put the lid on, turn the crock on high, and walk away. Thoroughly ignore your chicken for six hours.

An hour before dinner time, chop your veggies. Start with some kind of onion (or scallions. Or leeks.) Dice up the onion, and dice some kind of root vegetable. Carrots are good. Or parsnips. Or both. In a big soup pot on the stove, heat a drizzle of olive oil. When it's hot, add the root veggie and the onion. Stir and cook until it's soft. Expect about 10 minutes.

Now add some other yummy stuff: a cup of frozen corn, a chopped green bell pepper, some diced zucchini, handfuls of shredded greens, a couple of chopped tomatoes, some diced celery stalks. Whatever you have is great. You want about four cups of this stuff, but don't measure, and don't sweat it. Use up leftover bits of fresh veggies in the fridge or freezer. It'll be fine. Stir it all together and let it cook for another couple of minutes.

While that's cooking, go to your crock pot. Measure out six cups of the broth. Pour that into the pot with the veggies. Simmer it on medium high.

Using a slotted spoon, take out the chicken legs and thighs. Your chicken should be falling apart by now, so this shouldn't be hard. It's not an exact science. Put the legs and thighs on a plate and use two forks to sort out the meat from the bones. Put the meat in the pot with the veggies and broth. Toss the bones in the trash. Oh, and turn off your crock pot. You're done with it for now.

Let the soup simmer for the better part of an hour. Season it with salt and pepper, and whatever sounds good. I like thyme and basil and garlic powder. Taste and season, taste and season. You'll know when it's right.

When the veggies are just about soft, if you want to, add in some kind of grain. I love brown rice (already cooked, usually leftover from some other meal) or you can use a package of egg noodles if you want chicken noodle soup. Continue simmering until the noodles are soft, or until the rice is heated, about 15 minutes.

So it takes about an hour and a half, not including the time spent sticking the chicken in the crock pot. But you don't just have to stand there for an hour and a half. Check it every so often, stir a bit, and leave it again. It's really pretty simple, and you'll have plenty leftover to reheat.

This makes 6-8 hearty servings.

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After dinner, go back to your crock pot. Use your slotted spoon to remove the rest of the chicken carcass. You can pull the breasts off to use in another meal, and whatever other bits of meat you find. Put the rest of the carcass in the trash. You've gotten good use from it.

If you have a strainer, put it over a glass jar. Ladle the broth that's still in the crock pot into the glass jar. You should get about another quart of broth. Let it cool for a couple of hours, then stick it in the fridge. The next morning, skim off the solid fat. Now you have a quart of chicken broth to either use, or freeze for another time.

Coring Pears the Easy Way

Every once in awhile, I come across some utterly fabulous tip for making kitchen work easier. My friend Katie passed this one on to me, and I'm forever grateful!

If you've ever tried coring pears, you'll know that it's tedious work. Of course, it's not bad if you're only coring a pear or two, but if you happen to need to remove the cores from forty pounds of pears, it can be slow going.

Unless you've got a melon baller.

Just cut the pear in half and use the melon baller to scoop out the core. It makes for the prettiest pear halves you've ever seen, and it's about a million times faster than trying to use a knife.

Do feel free to share any other ingenious kitchen shortcuts here - I'm all ears! :-)

The End of the Canning Season

Happily, canning season is coming to an end. Aside from possibly one more box of apples, I've finished all I plan to do for the year. And oh man, is it satisfying to be able to say that!



I haven't written much about canning this year, mostly because it's all the same stuff I wrote last year, and the year before that. Nothing's changed much except that I can kick out jars of canned goodness much more quickly with each passing year.



Here's the list of what's in the "pantry" (read: shelves in the basement. Because I have no real pantry.)

Peaches: 16 quarts
Nectarines: 5 quarts
Apricots: 7 quarts
Pears: 10 quarts
Tomatoes: 15 quarts

Strawberry jam: 16 pints
Apricot jam: 3 half-pints
Apple jelly: 5 pints
Peach jam: 8 pints
Cherry preserves: 3 half-pints
Applesauce: 8 pints

Pear chutney: 13 half-pints
Salsa: 19 pints

Bread & butter pickles: 7 pints
Zucchini pickles: 3 pints
Dill pickles: 3 pints

Apple pie filling: 7 quarts
Apple cider: 4 quarts

I just added it up: 152 jars of food. Wow.

Since peach season in August, I've spent about four hours canning each week, usually a couple of hours on free afternoons, after school is finished and the girls are enjoying some free time (or hang-out-in-the-kitchen-with-Mom time.) It's tiring, but not overwhelming.

And I'm done! We'll have enough fruits, sauces, jams, jellies and pickles to last well into summer next year. Feasibly, all I'll have to buy is bananas. We can snack on canned fruits, have them for breakfasts and desserts all through the winter. I've got about 15 pints of dried fruits as well, which make for lovely snacks.



I'm in the mood for a bit of math. Let's see how much all this food costs to put by. Because math is cool, right?

Peaches - 4 boxes @ $10
Nectarines - 1 box @ $5
Tomatoes - 4 boxes @ 5.50
Pears - 2 boxes @ $8
Apples - 2 boxes @8
Strawberries - 8 pints @ $2
Cherries - 2 lbs @ 1.50
Apricots - free from a neighbor's tree

So about $118 in fruit. All the vegetables I grew in the garden. The costs of the other ingredients I'll estimate at about $50, which seems high except that I use organic raw cane sugar for all the fruit and jellies. That also includes the boxes of pectin, and extra vegetables, spices and such for the salsa and chutney. Figure another $30 for lids for all the jars. So about $200, rounded up, for 152 jars of mostly organic food, or approximately $1.30 per jar.

A jar of organic jam costs $4. Half-pints of chutney sell at farmer's market for $6. A quart of organic canned fruit is almost $5.

I have no desire to do *that much math. But clearly, I'm saving money. A lot of it.

And this food is local! Well, most of it is, anyway. I've talked to the farmers, I know many of them by name. I can ask them whether they spray their crops, or use chemical fertilizers. There's the proof that eating organic and local really is possible, and doesn't have to be that expensive. Is it a lot of work? Well, yes... but it's enjoyable work. It's work that allows for time spent chatting and singing with my daughters or friends in the kitchen, and enjoying the feeling of accomplishment that comes from knowing I'm feeding my family well. And it rarely actually feels like work.

More and more moms my age are canning every year it seems, and I love hearing about it! Wal-Mart sold out of their canning supplies this year, along with most other stores here in town. I think this whole canning/preserving thing is really taking off (for the second time around.)

Notes on Preserving: Frozen Eggs

Wanna see something gross?

Yum... egg cubes!

I realize how nasty this looks (and sounds) but chickens don't lay nearly as many eggs in the winter, and that's not too far off. So I'm trying to be proactive. I looked at many different articles about freezing eggs and settled on this one from Chickens In The Road. The technique is simple - crack the eggs into a colander, smash the yolks, and let the eggs drain through into a bowl. The resulting mixture is then poured into ice cube trays and frozen. Two cubes is about equal to one egg.

Note: eight year old little girls love cracking eggs. Two dozen eggs kept mine happily busy for half an hour.

I don't plan on cooking up a batch of scrambled eggs with these, but I figure they'll be useful in all the winter baking that we usually do.

I've also heard that you can just stick whole eggs in the freezer and then thaw and use them successfully. Has anyone tried that? What other methods for preserving eggs are there - I'm open to suggestions!

Experimenting in the Kitchen: Kefir

A fellow foodie friend recently gave me a wonderful gift: a small handful of kefir grains.

By now, most folks know at least that kefir is good for you. It resembles yogurt in taste, though it tends to be much runnier in consistency (unless you make it with cream.) It's filled with all the good probiotics that our bodies are void of, but desperately need to really be healthy.

You can buy kefir at the health food stores, and it does taste quite yummy, but if you look at the ingredients list you'll realize how much has been added to it. And what most people aren't yet aware of is that kefir is really, really easy to make.

I'm an occasional yogurt maker. If I have half a gallon of raw milk left at the end of the week, I'll turn it into yogurt before it spoils. Yogurt isn't inherently difficult, but it takes effort and time. Kefir doesn't. There's no heating to just the right temperature, no keeping it warm for 8 hours. It's really simple: pour milk over the the kefir grains in a glass mason jar. Cover the jar loosely (I use a tea towel) and set it on your counter overnight (or longer.) We seem to like about 18 hours of culturing time, but it's not an exact science. I usually start it in the afternoon and it's ready the next morning. (Try setting your phone alarm to remind you when it's finished. As much as I hate to admit it, technology does have it's upside.)

After 12-18 hours, you'll have a jar of mild-tasting kefir. I should admit to you right now that I can't stand the taste of it plain. But I also can't stand the taste of yogurt, nor can I even manage to stomach a glass of milk. Dairy products gross me out, with only a few exceptions. So the trick for me is to find ways to use the kefir, to gain benefit from it, without having to actually taste it.

I've been doing that in the form of kefir smoothies. To serve a mommy and two little girls use approximately:
2 bananas
1.5 cups of any other frozen fruit or berries
1/4 tsp stevia
1.5 cups kefir

There's also strawberry milk. My children, living in a world primarily devoid of red dye 40 and processed foods, have survived until now without strawberry milk. A sad thing, really, as I remember what a treat strawberry milk was when I was growing up. With kefir, I can still offer them the yummy treat:

1 cup kefir
1 Tbsp homemade strawberry jam
Blend with a hand blender and serve. Way better than Nestle Quick.

Kefir can be used as a substitute for buttermilk in just about any baking recipe. I've altered my grandma's buttermilk pancake recipe to use whole wheat pastry flour and kefir. Admittedly they're still not as light and fluffy as the ones made with white flour, but I was happy with the result. And kefir also makes a great base for creamy salad dressings. We had kefir mixed with salsa on top of a taco salad, and it was really fantastic.

So the learning curve isn't necessarily in learning to make kefir, which is easy as can be, but in learning to use it. We're managing though. Both of my girls will drink a glass plain if I offer it to them, though they'll also eat a bowl of plain yogurt quite happily. But finding tastier ways to offer it is a fun challenge, too.

Is anyone else out there using kefir? What are some of your favorite ways to add it to your family's meals?

Garden to Table Challenge - Spicy Veggies & Noodles

Again with the raving about The Food Matters Cookbook - I don't think we've yet tried a recipe from it that wasn't great. And I love that I own a cookbook that includes recipes for everything I have coming out of the garden at any given time - currently spring onions, garlic, carrots, squash, green beans, and hot peppers. The veggies are stir fried, then tossed with brown rice noodles and a sauce made of coconut milk, peanut butter, honey and soy sauce. Seriously good, and I don't even like squash.

The best part of this book is the options he gives for substituting. If you don't have peanut butter, try almond butter, cashew butter or tahini. If you don't have zucchini and eggplant (as the original recipe called for) try any summer squash, green beans, etc. You never end up hunting for some strange ingredient at the store - most recipes can be created by the things any healthy eater already has in her pantry and fridge. Creative recipes using 'normal' foods. I like that.

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For dessert: remember the strawberry lemonade from last summer? It also makes really good popsicles.

Garden to Table Challenge - Tomatoes

Tomatoes are finally here! Well, not mine... my darn heirlooms are so slow this year it's almost painful. Lots of green ones, but none ripe yet except for a small handful of cherry tomatoes that never even made it into the house. So I bought a couple at farmer's market, and they were delicious.

Sometimes the most simple food is the best tasting. After a long, busy day, there wasn't time for a big, complicated dinner, but that was just fine: fresh summer tomatoes really don't need big and complicated. They just need a little basil.

The Summer Sandwich:

1 loaf of asiago and sundried tomato sourdough bread
garlic cloves
fresh basil leaves
slicing tomatoes
grated mozzarella
butter

Split open the garlic cloves, crush them slightly to release their juice, and rub them on one side of each slice of bread, then spread butter on one side of the bread.

Put the bread butter-side down in a large skillet and top with mozzarella cheese. Cover the skillet, then cook on medium until the cheese is melted and the bread is starting to toast.

Layer a couple of basil leaves (I used one green leaf and one purple leaf for each small sandwich) and a tomato slice on each piece of bread, top with more buttered bread, flip, and cook just until the bread is toasted on that side too. This method gets the cheese melted and the bread toasted, but keeps the tomato and basil from cooking too much.

And there you have it. The easiest summer sandwich in the world. So simple, so satisfying.

A chicken update

Just in case you're dying to know how the chicken situation is coming along...



See those? Those are cute little itty-bitty chicken eggs! Our girls are laying. I'm so proud of them.

Two Little Girls absolutely love checking for chicken eggs. Actually, they love anything to do with the chickens. They run out several times a day to see if anyone has laid an egg, and hearing, "Mom! There's another egg!" is music to my ears. A little girl rushing to the back door with a still-warm egg in her hands and a big smile on her face makes this whole project completely worthwhile.

And because I had eggs, and because I've recently figured out this whole pie crust thing, I made a quiche:



Fresh eggs, homegrown spinach, homegrown onions. Store-bought cheese because I was lazy, and bacon. It's really a shame I don't eat eggs. That's a lot of work for a dinner I won't even touch. But it did showcase the first fresh eggs nicely.

I thought the chickens would lose their novelty. Most of my friends have chickens, and all of their children are basically over them. But not mine. Still, every single day when school and chores are done, the question is, "Can we go out and play with the chickens?" They haven't figured out yet that chickens don't actually play. They truly love these chickens. Whoever said chickens aren't cuddly just never forced them to be. Most of them are tame enough that they don't run away, especially from my oldest. A few come running up to her, waiting for the love and affection she will inevitably shower them with.

However. Chickens are a pain! So much of this project I'm irritated and frustrated with.

For instance, you know that sweet picture painted by the stories in magazines like Organic Gardening, where they talk about how your chickens will eat the bugs from your garden and scratch the soil up and walk around fertilizing it for you? All of this is true... and for a few days, I was thrilled to see my chickens doing such useful work in my garden.

Until they ate my Swiss Chard. Glorious, huge rainbow chard stalks reduced to... well, rainbow colored stalks. They've eaten every bit of leaf on every single stalk. They ate the kale down to stumps, and have started in on the beets. They tore the lettuce apart completely while looking for earwigs to munch, leaving limp, rotting lettuce leaves in their wake. They've torn down the climbing beans, they take naps on the fluffy beds of carrot tops, and there are holes pecked in some of my green tomatoes. Chickens have voracious appetites, and they're not going to limit themselves to pesky bugs. They want those greens! The up side: my chickens must be the healthiest chickens in town for all the fresh, dark green leafies they're eating.

So last night, we built them a pen in the corner of the yard. More space to run around than in their coop, plenty of green grass, sunflowers, and weeds to eat. (It's truly a shame we can't teach chickens to identify weeds and eat only those, isn't it?) And now the girls get the job of chasing the chickens across the yard to their pen from the coop every morning. And when I'm out working in the garden in the evenings, the chickens are welcome to join me... but only for a short time, not long enough to decimate any other crops.

And the rooster. Oh, my sweet, pretty rooster. I love him. He's gorgeous, and he has such a personality. Except that he attacked my mother when she was trying to care for them while we were away. And now he's been chasing my three year old across the yard, sending her screaming up on top of the picnic table. He loves me. He loves Chloe. He realizes Andrew is a very large man and could do significant damage. But Cora isn't all that intimidating to him. I gave her a big sunflower stalk to use as a weapon, and gave her permission to smack him every time he runs at her. He's not very far from the stew pot, that one. It'll make me sad to eat our little friend, and not to hear his crows every morning... and afternoon, and night... but I won't have my kids afraid to play outside for fear of being chased by a rooster.

So anyway, that's the chicken situation here on our little urban farmstead.

Summer Adventures 2011

Please forgive the neglected state of my blog - we've been too busy having blog-worthy adventures to write about them.

We just got home from the second of two back-to-back camping trips, first to Taylor Canyon and the Crested Butte area, and then to Ouray for the Independence Day celebration. We had so many 4x4/hiking/geocaching adventures I don't think I could ever tell you about all of them. But I'll post photos of some of the highlights of our trip over the next few days for the family and friends that are interested in seeing them. It'll take some time to go through all the pictures though, so bear with me.

In the meantime, I've got to share this one little success:



Dutch Oven cooking. Hooray, we figured it out! And its not actually that hard, though I was nervous to give it a try. We successfully made the enchiladas above, and the peach cobbler below, using a dutch oven and some hot charcoal. So. Cool. I'm in love with cast iron now, and want more.

That's it for now. I need to make a dent in the massive laundry pile on my bedroom floor before I sit for too long in front of the computer. It's good to be home, but it'll be better when all the chores and housework are caught up!

Garden to Table Challenge- Rhubarb Pie

It's no secret that I am a Pie Making Failure. There are a lot of domestic, housewife-y things I do a good job of, but making pies has never made it on that list.

But lo! What's this?



I've made a pie! A pretty one. And even better than being pretty... it tastes good, too.

I bought some rhubarb at the Farmer's Market, since it was about the only thing I could find that I hadn't already grown myself. I've only ever purchased rhubarb one other time, and the resulting cobbler wasn't all that good. But I gave it another go, and I'm glad I did.

I also (gasp) turned my back on the pie crust recipe my mother gave me, the same recipe every woman in my family uses to make incredible pies. It felt a bit like sacrilege, but I had to do it - mine just never turn out like hers do. This time I followed the recipe from my red and white checkered cookbook. The only change I made was using whole wheat flour. Which was probably pointless, considering the other main ingredient is Crisco. Pretty sure Crisco negates any health benefits of whole wheat flour. But whatever. It was really good.

The recipe:

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

Filling:
2 cups chopped rhubarb
2 cups sliced strawberries
1/4 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup raw cane sugar

Mix it all together until the fruit is well coated. Set aside.

Crumb topping:
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
3 Tbsp. butter

Cut together with a pastry blender until crumbly.

I'll let you find your own pie crust recipe... mostly because I can't remember exactly how much of everything I used, and also because pie crust recipes are easy to come by.

Press the crust into a pie plate. Dump in the fruit. Sprinkle with the topping. Cover the edges of the pie with foil, bake for 30 minutes. Take off the foil, bake for another 30 minutes. And there's your pie.

Garden to Table Challenge - Week 3

This week's recipe comes (again) from the Food Matters Cookbook. I'm starting to feel a little Julie & Julia-esque, except that I'm serving Mark Bittman recipes every night instead of Julia Child. I suppose I could rename these posts "Julie & Mark"... except that reminds me too much of my ex-husband, and that creeps me out.

So we'll stick with The Garden to Table Challenge.

In keeping with the Bacon Makes Everything Taste Better theme, I present to you:



Asparagus Gratin.

It's wild asparagus season again. We're lucky in that we can spend twenty minutes driving down a country road and come home with enough asparagus for two meals. Tonight's original meal plan was grilled snow-goose breast with wild rice and steamed asparagus, but after an afternoon spent thinning carrots and weeding in the hot sun, and Daddy not being home for dinner, I decided to go for something lighter and simpler.

Asparagus Gratin (I'm not copying this word for word because the book is in the other room and I'm lazy.)

1 1/2 lbs asparagus (I did about half a pound for the girls and I.)
3 Tbsp. olive oil
salt & pepper
2 slices bacon, chopped
1 Tbsp. minced garlic (I used fresh. Well, garlic from last year's garden, which isn't actually fresh, I suppose, but seems to be holding on pretty well after being stored for nearly a year.)
3/4 c homemade breadcrumbs

Roast the asparagus in a couple tablespoons of the olive oil and some salt and pepper. The book says 400 degrees, but I had potatoes in the oven at 350, so that's what I did and it worked. While the asparagus is roasting, cook the bacon in the last tablespoon of olive oil til crisp. Then add in the garlic and breadcrumbs and cook and stir until golden.
When the asparagus is tender, sprinkle the topping on it, then broil it for a couple of minutes until the topping is nice and toasted.

I served this with Parmesan Potato Rostis.



I'm not going to give you that recipe because it has absolutely nothing to do with local, seasonal food, and honestly I'm feeling a little bit funny sharing so many of Bittman's amazing recipes here on my blog. Once again, check out his book. I realize that rostis and asparagus gratin probably don't go together. But I promised The Oldest that I'd make rostis again sometime this week because they are her New Favorite Food.

And for dessert:



Homemade vanilla pudding with fresh fruit. In addition to it being strawberry season, raw milk is also in abundance at our house. Pudding uses it up nicely, and is a little more of a treat than plain yogurt. I had no idea how easy it really is to make pudding from scratch until I gave it a go. Try it. You'll give up Snak-Paks for good, I promise.

I used this recipe I found on allrecipes.com and was really happy with it. It doesn't involve egg yolks, which was a plus.

What are you cooking this week? If it's from your garden, or is local and seasonal, Wendy wants to hear about it at the Garden to Table challenge. Come join in the fun!