Easy and Cheap Week Night Dinner

Polenta cakes. I am sure I could have made actual cakes that were fancy and formed. Whatever. Mush up log polenta with a fork and mash in butter and shredded asiago cheese. Add a lot of salt. Polenta erases salt, so if you want kick, 1/2 t. of seasoned salt EACH. 350 in the oven for 20 minutes. Take out and let cool slightly.

 

 Start with a log of frozen pork sausage. Why frozen? I never think of this in time to thaw it. I have mastered the art of quick thaw while cooking it up. I use butter and cover the skillet with the lid, open it up and push off the cooked meat from the frozen stir it up and repeat until all thawed and all is cooking.

 Then I add bell pepper and onions. This part is totally optional and where you can play with seasonal vegetables. Add celery, carrots, even mushrooms. I like peppers and onions.

In season you may have your own canned up crushed tomatoes. I'm out. I've been out for 2 years. Last summer I didn't can anything at all. Not one single jar of anything. Anyway, I order organic online because it is delivered to my farmhouse door and I don't have to give the local grocer the stink eye when I am faced with no options and overpriced organic stuff shoved in a corner of the newly remodeled store. Grrr. I like Muir Glen. The flavour is bright and sassy. I like sassy. Add the can (the big can) to the browned sausage and veggies. Since there is more meat than tomato we call this ragu.

 

At this point I was looking at my little polenta cakes and small pan of sauce. 5 hungry people? I need something else too. I found a bunch of asperagus in the fridge. Lemon, salt, and olive oil. 10 minutes to table? Stick it in the broiler.  While I set the table and wrangled small children into washing their hands before helping me bring forks out to the plate, it was sizzling away.

And ta da! Fancy dining servings on tea saucers! Ha! 

 

Just kidding. Check this out. Fancy schmancy healthy dinner on the table in 30 minutes from frozen. I rock. Kid approved. Really really good. All three food catagories met (meat, green veg, starch) plus some extra. Gluten free (for fun, not because of diet).

 

Ingredients for 5 BIG servings:
Log polenta 4$
1 lb Italian sausage (pastured pork is good) $5 retail but $3.50 if you bought bulk from our farm
1 bell pepper $0.50
1 onion $0.50
1 can of organic crushed tomato $2.75
1 bundle of asperagus $3
6 T Irish butter $1

$16.75 for the meal for 5 people, 30 minutes
Way cheaper than eating out. 

Iced Coffee and Maple Syrup

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Recipe, 1/2 gallon jar
Fill half the jar with coffee, cooled
Add 1/4 cup real maple syrup
Fill almost the rest of the jar with whole milk, leave room for ice.
Top with ice
Put lid on jar and shake

ENJOY!

Red Chicken in a French Pot

Roasted Red Chicken in a Red Pot with Red Fire Peppers and Red Onions

That's what we call this recipe that I make in my red French Braiser oven. My husband got it for me for Valentine's Day/Birthday/ILoveYouAlwaysEveryDay.  We have a few, a very few poulet rouge chickens left in our freezer (translates Chicken Red Chicken). I love red onions best for cooking, had red potatoes and red bell peppers in the fridge, and nothing is complete without red cayenne and red/pink sea salt.  I also brine the chicken. I brine all poultry, always in sugar and salt water. Actually, this is how I thaw the frozen bird.

Put the chicken in and tuck quartered onions, potatoes, red bell pepper, and some butter all around. I also put in a few slices of citrus, this time it was clementine but lemon and blood orange work well too.  I put melted butter all over the bird and then sprinkled with salt and cayenne and white pepper. Sometimes I use our Swamp Fire mix, but your favourite seasoned salt will work. I have used the North African Berber seasoning from Pensey's and that is good too.

350 degrees until it is done. Usually 75 minutes, but this one was done in 45. Check. I start to check with the meat thermometer when it starts to smell good and brown on top. Always use a good meat thermometer. Always.

I cooked the chicken upside down. Not on purpose. I could not remember which way it was supposed to go.  We carve it up, leave the onions in the pot, put the bones back in, add carrots, celery, and vinegar. Fill pot with water and put back in the oven over night= 3-4 quarts of good bone broth.

The kids fight over the drum sticks and both girls eat all the meat off to the bone. Isaac gets a mini drum from the thigh. He eats it to bone too. The breast meat is tender and juicy and very deep in chicken flavour- that's the breed of chicken though, not the cooking method. Breed and feed matter, this hertiage bird is raised outside at our farm and fed goat milk whey. It takes a fabulous breed and makes it that much better. When we raise these to sell, we post on facebook and sell out 80 chickens in 20 minutes, with a waiting list. They are that good. They average 4-5 lbs each.

I had to hide my last 10 to keep them for our family. ;)

We do chicken at our house every 3 weeks or so. Each chicken will provide 4 meals. We don't waste any of it.

 

 

1 Whole Chicken, brined
8 small red potatoes or 4 large yellow potatoes quartered
1 red onion quartered
1 stick of butter
1-2 red bell peppers chopped into 2 inch chunks
salt, pepper, cayenne to taste (or seasoned salt)
1 orange or lemon (citrus)

350 degrees until done

Biscuits

Biscuits are easy:

Tell husband to go to the store and buy the pop can flaky homestyle kind.

Ha.

Seriously though, I don't actually make everything from scratch even though I can. Sometimes rolling out biscuits is just too much, too much time, too much mess, whatever. I grow and make enough of my own food that sometimes I get tired and take short cuts. I have stopped feeling ashamed of this, sometimes I also get coffee and pizza at the gas station (here in Iowa, that is actually some of the best pizza around!).

I do make biscuits though sometimes and they are good! Here is the recipe I use, from a book called "A Skillet Full- Lodge Cast Iron Recipes":

2 cups flour
2 t baking powder
1 t kosher salt
3 T lard and butter (2 T lard, 1 T butter or adjust how you like)
3/4 to 1 cup of WHOLE milk (don't cheat)

mix dry ingredients together
cut in fat either with a fork, a pastry cutter, or a food processor
when that mixture is "sandy" add milk until it is doughy, mix in with spoon
put on to a floured surface and roll out 3/4 inch thick

I use a cookie cutter or a mason jar to cut out shapes.

Bake at 450 degrees for about 15 minutes. Sometimes they take less time, sometimes more, just peek at them and when they are browning they are done.

My secret ingredient that is totally optional and not from the book? a 1/4 teaspoon of ground lemon peel. It really reacts to the baking powder and fluffs these puppies up.

Gravy, it is all about the gravy.

I decided to split up my post about biscuits and gravy into two posts because gravy has earned its very own place in my kitchen.

Gravy is easy.

No. Really it is.

Oh, I know those of you unbelievers are shaking your heads now and thinking about just grabbing a jar or packet of gravy from the grocer.

Don't.

Gravy is just a roux base. I know, the term roux is fancy sounding and scary.

So, to start, the gravy I make for chicken fried steak is the same sausage gravy I use for biscuits and gravy. The exact same.

1 lb ground sausage
1  Portabella mushroom
2 T butter
2 T flour
1 cup chicken broth/stock
1 cup milk
2 T sour cream
1 T seasoned salt w pinch of cayenne

Start with a good ground sausage. Pastured pigs make the best sausage. I have used green onion, breakfast, or Italian sausage- they all work. I like the breakfast blend the best though. Fry it up brown. When it is half done, add chopped mushrooms. Brown until cooked and crumbly. Add butter. Once the butter melts add the flour and sprinkle it all over everything. Stir fast. Be ready with the broth. Once all the flour is wet with the grease and butter, add the chicken broth and stir furiously. It will thicken quick, add the milk when it thickens, stir furiously and turn the heat to low/medium. Add the sour cream and seasoning to taste. Turn the heat off entirely once it is as thick as you like.

See? Easy.

When making a chicken gravy, start with melted butter, add flour and stir until all the flour is wet, add 2 cups of broth and stir until it is as thick as you like. Season.

When making Alfredo type sauce: melt butter, add flour and stir until flour is wet, add 2 cups of milk and stir until it is as thick as you like, add 1 cup of cheese of your choice, gently stir off heat until cheese is melted, season. I like Asiago and Parmesan (Not the green can kind though, the real hard grate yourself kind, because I am a cheese snob. The green can stuff technically will work.)

Beef, lamb, chicken drippings, ect- all follow the same equation. Melted fat, add flour, add liquid of  your choice, stir furiously until thick and gravy.

Summer Soup

I had a LOT of things I didn't know what to do with in our CSA box this week. Eggplant for one. I always ruin eggplant. Shallots. Basil.

I had some items in the fridge that needed using up too. 1 lb of thawed hamburger. 3 quarts of homemade chicken broth. Baby carrots. 5 small red potatoes. I didn't have enough of any one thing to make it one its own.

So I made soup.

Basically I fried 3 large shallots chopped up in butter, added chopped potatoes (about 5 small red ones), a chopped up leek- fried until carmelized. Then added the chicken stock (3 pints.) and everything else chopped into bite sizes. Simmer for a couple hours.

5 red potatoes, skin on.
10 baby carrots
2 celery sticks
1 leek
3 shallots
1 lemon (juiced)
3 pints chicken stock
3 pints water
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 bunch of fresh basil chopped fine
1 cup of tiny ziti pasta (add at the very end)
2 eggplants (add at the very end)

Beef I made into bite size meatballs and fried in a skillet. Once browned I added them and their juice to the soup.

The in goes the eggplant and pasta. Cover and simmer for 30 minutes more. Serve with asiago cheese on top and a good chewy and crusty bread. Serves 8.

It was all eaten before I even thought to take pictures!

From Farm to Fork....

This year we decided to raise meat birds for customers and have them processed at a USDA butcher. We chose Poulet Rouge, naked neck chickens, which we got from a local hatchery, Foxhollow Poultry Farm. We raised the chicks in an old stock tank and when they were big enough they moved to a fenced pasture. 

This breed isn't pretty, kind of looks like a  dino/turkey cross. The processor called them Turckens.  Speaking of which, he said that these birds, unlike most heritage chickens he's processed, appeared to be firm and tender. He said it might actually be a good alternative to a cornish cross. Oh yeah. 

So basically, Chad wrangled up the chickens the night before and loaded them into our livestock trailer. The he got up at dawn, did chores and drove 3.5 hours to the Nebraska border with the chickens. Whoo! In a truck with a not working very well AC. The problematic AC is why we didn't go with him on a family adventure. 

So then he called and said everything was late and he would be an hour late to the drop. Some customers didn't  provide phone numbers and all I know them from is FACEBOOK! Ack! So I loaded up the kiddo and drove an hour and a half to the drop to meet people, take their addresses and promise home delivery. THEN Chad was held up even more by the storms and a massive traffic accident on I-80! Good thing I left when I did because I was 10 minutes late to the drop. 

We split the deliveries and I took central metro and Norwalk while he took Altoona. We sold out the day before just by posting on FaceBook.  When we got home we right away put one in the oven to roast. At 9pm we all sat down to dinner. Oh my was it amazing. Totally worth it. 

The whole experience really drives home to us why we have personal relationships with our customers. Why we meet them face to face and they can ask questions and we can answer them, share tips, and talk about our farm.

Talking about our farm reminds us of how good we really have it. Thank you all!

Sausage and Duck Gumbo

couple slices of bacon
1/2 cup of butter and flour (for roux)
Andouille sausage (1 lb), cut into bite size pieces
1 onion, chopped smaller than bite size
3 stalks of celery, chopped bite size
1 green bell pepper, chopped bite size
1 clove or garlic crushed and minced (or 1 tsp of garlic powder)
1 Tbs of seasoning salt (like Swamp Fire or Slap Yo Mama)
1 Tbs of dried parsley
2 quarts (1/2 gallon) of duck (or chicken) broth
3 bay leaves

Fry bacon slices and sausage
Add celery, crushed garlic, bell pepper, and onions
When everything is fried up and spattering, add the broth
Bring to a boil and then simmer.
Add bay leaves and season to taste
Make roux with melted butter and flour, add to soup to thicken.

I used Jasmine rice to serve it over, but traditionally long grain is used.

Later, I served it over rice noodles and the girls actually licked their bowls clean. THAT is a rare occasion. They had seconds and ate until all the gumbo was gone.

That meant that the recipe above made enough for two full meals for a very hungry family of four.

Pumpkin into Food for Now and Later

This is how we roast pumpkin to make pumpkin puree for pies and soups. Under each half is a tablespoon of salted butter. This variety is small sugar pumpkin. I like it for processing this way the best of all the pumpkins recommended for pies and soups mostly because I can do three at a time, the vine produces quite a few and they ripen before the vine gets mildew or attacked by stink bugs. They store well too. All around a great pumpkin.

I remove from the oven (set at 350-400 degrees F) after about an hour or when I start to see the skin split.

I let cool until I can easily touch them without being burned. Then the skins will have started to curl off, and they easily peel off by pulling with my finger or prodded with a butter knife. I turn them over and scrape the seeds out of the center, but I leave the stringy part mostly. It all goes into the food processor and gets pureed, why waste it?

After whirring a bit in the processor (a blender works too), I scoop into freezer bags or jars in about 2 cup (16 oz) amounts. That's what most recipes call for. From there I can make mashed pumpkin (like mashed potatoes with more nutrients, pumpkin soup, pumpkin bread, or pie filling.

For pie filling I actually cook the pumpkin goo for a little bit on the stove top with butter and cream and seasonings (I like cinnamon and nutmeg), puree it again to get the texture just right and then use whatever recipe calls for a "can of pumpkin" but this way it's free of preservatives and can stuff.

See? Pumpkin IS food and not just porch decoration. ;)

Tootalini A La Aunt J.'s Grandma Bartoletti

Sometimes taking a long time to do something complicated is the way to simplify.

This week I met my sister in law. She's been married to my brother for six years, I think. I am not close to my brother and don't know him or his family well, but last month he deployed to serve in Afghanistan with the Iowa National Guard. Being a soldier was his dream from as far back as I remember him playing GI Joe in the sandbox. We lost touch in adulthood, seeing each other at funerals or running into each other at the local coffee house. But I am so proud of the duty he doing for our country and for the sacrifice he has made to his family. His wife and little girl are hanging on, worried about him, and over a year left to go.

I had become familiar and comfortable with not knowing them, and suddenly my heart hurt. I may never see my little brother again. What if I never get to know his family? What could I possibly do for him or them during this incredibly enormously difficult time in their lives. They are living something I can not even begin to imagine. My husband comes home every night, they go weeks without contact. There is nothing I can do to make any of that better.

Then my brother called me. He's not ever done that, not even when we were growing up. He's never called me, not even to return a call. Ever. And then he did. His request was simple. Just be there for them. Get to know them. Tell them stories about us growing up, the nice ones.

So I reached out. And J. and Miss J. came to stay at our farm for a "weekend".  She brought with her a recipe for "Tootalini" that was her grandmother's, and that she made growing up for family holidays.

It was a full day long project to make the broth from beef neck bones, make and knead the pasta, roll it out, make the filling, and stuff and shape the noodles. In doing so, we got to talk, to get to know each other, share family histories, and talk about our children. She is a lovely lady and a very caring mother and my brother is one lucky guy.  Making and eating food together is an incredibly old and ancient bonding.

And my family was blessed by her visit.

Here, with her permission, is her grandmother Bartoletti's recipe:

Pasta:
8 Cups of Flour
6 farm fresh eggs
1 cup (2 sticks) of salted butter
approx 2 cups of water - until dough is doughy.....

Filling:
3 lbs of ground sirloin
3 farm fresh eggs
parsley flakes
allspice (add to taste)
1/2 cup of butter
salt
grated Asiago cheese

Broth: (grass fed) beef neck bones, celery, onion, carrot, tomato (her recipe says tomato paste), and salt to taste. Boil then simmer for 8+ hours. Strain solids off for a clear delicious broth.

Then:

Roll out pieces of dough, thin.

Let babies play with bits and in the flour!

Cover main chunk of dough so it does not dry out.

Then take little bits of the filling and roll into balls. Place along the edge.

Roll up and over and pinch/press around each little lump.

Cut into squares.

Fold bottom under and top "flaps" over to look like little ladies with hoods/bonnets. You can make them sing and dance to entertain the littles too.

Place on tray and then freeze.

Later, pull them off the tray frozen and store in bags or place in boiling broth for a meal that is hearty, filling, and simple all at the same time. I sent home food with Aunt J, and filled a shelf of my freezer too. The broth is really versatile and I've made a mushroom and beef based rice noodle soup with it, cooked up ground beef with it, and just heated a cup for a snack. Good to have on hand.

Both my girls and little cousin J. flitted to and from the table, sometimes helping, sometimes playing. The recipe took a lot of the day, but at the end our tummies and hearts were full of joy. Sometimes life is simple when you actually take the time to do something as complicated as make Tootalini from scratch or get to know someone, you know?

Paneer Cheese

Indian Paneer is so super easy. Bring 10 cups of whole milk to almost a boil, add 6 Tblsp of lemon juice, turn heat off, strain through cheese cloth. Then press the whey out until cheeseball is firm. It is a very fresh, lemony, easy to slice or fry cheese. Plus I used some of the whey for a sour bread version of 5MAD. Oh, and this took about 10 minutes of effort.

Fresh 10 minute Salsa

My life has been made simple just by knowing that food is made from ingredients. Knowing that, I can put those ingredients together to make things my family loves and consumes at an alarming rate: like salsa.

Last night I brought in our first harvest of tomatoes and peppers. Throw in some garlic, onion, a squirt of lemon juice and a sprinkle of spices...ta da! Salsa! So good, I ate half a pint right there. A small bowl full of garden bounty yielded 10 minutes of work and 3.5 pints. If I'd wanted to, I could have hot water canned these, but they won't last the week in our house. I swear my five year old drinks salsa right out of the jar when I am not looking. Salsa, the good kind that doesn't use HFCS, can cost us 3-4$ for a pint at the store. Plus it seems like I am always out of it. It's a good healthy food and I want to have it on hand whenever they want it!

Recipe:
an 8 cup bowl full of fresh picked tomatoes, wash, cut off flaws if there are any, and leave skins on
4-5 medium peppers (also medium hot)
4 cloves of garlic (harvested in June)
squirt of lemon juice
1 medium onion (about 3/4 a cup worth....do not add too much onion....)
Season to taste. (I used 2 teaspoons of paprika and 1.5 tablespoons of a chili mix that had cayenne, cilantro, cumin, and oregano.....)

I used my food processor and chopped one ingredient at a time to the right size, mixed in a bowl, and added seasoning slowly. Yum. 

So join us for simple lives Thursday!

Sunshine Canned

This and this came from this....

And this.....

Came from this:

I think canned peaches and apricot jam are my new favourite foods EVER. Also I am pretty sure that our chicken eggs will taste like peaches this week. The pigs got a fair share too.

Some Simple Things I Do To Make Food More Nutritious

 Simple. I mean really simple. And the secret is chicken bone broth. Any time a savory recipe says add water, I add bone broth.

Wait...some of you may be asking, "What on earth is bone broth?" And once you find out some of you will be totally grossed out.

Chicken bone broth is like chicken stock, but simmered with veggies and a little vinegar acidity for 24 hours or more. The bones pretty much dissolve into the broth adding calcium and protein that is just so much more than just a 2 hour chicken stock. The nutrition is way different than plain stock too, as it has more minerals in it and if you use a lot of meat like I do, then there is more protein too, easily digestible protein at that.

Another thing I do is add vegetables when something calls for starch. Meatloaf needs crackers? Nah, how about pureed raw sweet potato? Throw in some steamed spinach to the tomato sauce, or even steamed Swiss chard.....I even add squash instead of flour to thicken pasta sauce sometimes. It's like taking the zucchini curse* in August to a whole new level.

Another thing we do is grow our own meat. We know what they eat. We don't raise beef yet but the beef we get is from someone I know and I know how their animals are cared for and fed. Simply choosing better fed animals to consume adds to the nutrition of our meals. Ah, maybe it is junk science, but the flavour is better and the meat cooks tender.....I feel awesome after eating it instead of sick. That's not junk science.

I can make quick work of smoothies from fresh milk and fruit from our own farm anytime my kiddos want a snack. Throw in some greens (even mint works here) and they get that extra bit of all the things that greens are good for.

I also make our own juice. Secret to making a natural wholesome kid juice that tastes JUST LIKE KOOLAID? Peach juice. I kid you not. The left over juice from canning peaches or even the syrup from the jar they are canned in, add some strawberries and BAM strawberry koolaid flavour. Weird. Sweeten with honey, cut with water and you have a juice that has no artificial dyes or unpronounceable preservatives that could even fool the neighbor kids. Makes great Popsicles too. Really. Peach juice.

These things are not hard to do. Way easier than driving to the store. Natural energy for the kids (both young and old).

*the zucchini curse where you have so many and can't give enough away and you might start adding it to everything from cake to soup to ice cream just to get in eaten and ease your guilt......is it just me?

SIMPLE LIVES THURSDAY!

What to do when your broccoli flowers....

Make broccoli flower soup!

3 potatoes chopped into bite size
3 fresh cloves of garlic, just harvested not cured
4 -6 cups of home made chicken bone broth
a pot full of flowered broccoli
salt to taste, serve with French Bread

I also mixed Greek yogurt into my serving to make it creamy. Yum yum yum.

Jam tarts and Pies.

Favourite recipes for use with amazing pie crust:

Jam tarts. I roll the dough into little balls, then roll them into little thin cookie circles. Place 1 spoon of your favourite jam in the center of each and top with another little thing cookie circle. Roll the edges up like pie crusts, glaze with cream and sprinkle with sugar.....and bake at 350 degrees on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper or or until golden. There are variations. You can roll the dough out in a big sheet and make them like raviolis. Or you could roll out a cookie circle and fold it over like a moon. Make them tiny, make them bigger. It's all good. I like served warm with ice cream best.

I love these best with strawberry jam, next best with red raspberry. They taste like pop tarts only way better.

Apple Pie:

Cut, core, and peel 7 cups worth of firm apples. I like Wealthy apples the very best of all, but Macintosh work too.
1/2 cup brown cane sugar.
1 T of fresh lemon juice
1/2 t fresh ground cinnamon
1/4 t fresh ground nutmeg
2 T cold salted butter

Mix all but the butter together in a  big bowl. Once mixed dump in pie crust, sprinkle filling with butter pieces, and top with more pie crust. Trim edges and press together. Bake at 400 for 30 minutes, 375 until the crust has browned to golden. Let cool for 1 hour before serving.

Strawberry pie. That one I have to still work into a recipe. Basically my success has been heating up strawberry jam, adding fresh cut strawberries, pouring into a pre-baked pie crust and topping with a really thing layer of top crust, glazed and sugared. That doesn't sound recipe ish though. I will make it tomorrow and try and document it better.

Amazing Pie Crust

I know, my Dearest will say, "For Humble Pie?" Indeed. This crust changed things for me. Making this crust made my first successful apple pie. That gave me the confidence to keep going.

Use a food processor. Not kidding, this makes crust making easy as pie.

3 cups of all purpose unbleached flour. I use Bob's Red Mill or the local Paul's Grains High Gluten. Either one works well.

3 tablespoons of raw cane sugar. You can use brown pure cane sugar if you can't find "turbinado" or Sugar in the raw. Cane sugar is key.

3/4 cup SALTED sweet cream butter frozen and then cut into 1/4 inch pieces. I prefer to make my own butter BUT there is no noticible differnce between that and store bought in this recipe.

1/4 cup of frozen lard. Pig lard. I'm not kidding. Use local, pastured pig lard if you can. HUGE difference. (If any of you local ladies want to try it let me know and I'll share a bit.) Cut into pieces.

1/2 cup of very cold water.

Put the dry ingredients in the food processor and pulse to blend. Then add the butter and lard. Pulse until mixture is crumbly. Fluff the mixture if needed. Add the water slowly while pulsing and stop once the mixture starts clumping like course crumbs.

Take mixture out and knead with your hands on floured parchment paper. Form into two balls and squish into disks. Wrap in plastic or paper and stick in the fridge.

(Make your pie filling)

When you are ready to roll out the dough (I use a chilled marble rolling pin, but that's just me being fancy pants), do so carefully and intentionally. Line your pan with one and top the filling with the other.

But wait, there's more. You want flaky crisp top crust? Use WHOLE CREAM and brush on a glaze over the entire top. I cut my slits after the glaze. Then sprinkle generously with more raw sugar. That adds just the right amount of sparkle. I also take the edge trimmings and make them into pretty shapes to top the crust. That's just fun.

I'll post fillings in just a bit.

Crawfish Boil

We had set a pair of crawfish traps out by the dock last fall and left them over the winter. 

Of course they were full of crawfish once the ice melted! Lil'Bug always checks them when she gets to the dock. Sometimes she's found crawfish or fish or even a turtle trying to bite at the trap (she says).

So Lil'Bug collected them, Dearest threw back the smaller, and these six little mudbugs came home for dinner. Well, snack really. 

I didn't find much as far as recipes go, (and all the recipes called for 45 POUND sacks of crawfish. WOW! Yeah, not exactly what I had here) basically make some stock, boil some vegetables in it, season it well, bring to rolling boil, drop critters (alive!) into boiling water and cover. Boil hard for two minutes, turn off heat and leaved covered for 25 minutes. Done. I didn't want to fill a stock pot full of veggies just for 5 little crawfish (one was almost dead once we got ready to cook, so he got tossed....)....so I used 4 cups of salted water, 4 cups of my chicken bone broth, and a lot of Mama Podkayne's Swamp Fire Cajun Seasoning. Oh, it was good broth on its own, that's for true! 

So in the pot they went, and yes, they screamed a little. That part is freaky and Dearest insists that I was imagining it. Hmph.

Honestly, I boiled hard for 4 minutes. I know it was overkill. Lil'Bug gobbled them up. She was a pro at cracking them open and pulling out the little bit of meat. Dearest said the taste was delicate, not muddy or fishy like at the dinner places we've had them at. I think it was that I used chicken broth instead of fish stock and I kept them in constantly changed out clean water for 2 days.

Baby Blueberry didn't have any. This is her expression as she looked on. I can't quite figure out if she was grossed out or mad that she wasn't getting a taste? She's a hard girl to read sometimes.

Me? I want to like them, I just held back a little. I mean, everything is better with Swamp Fire! Maybe next time?