Farmhouse Kitchen, What's On The Table Tonight

First course: Bacon on a plate.
Anyone helping prepare the meal, set the table, and catch up on dishes got to snack on bacon.
It is a pretty big motivator at our house, especially considering that we have been out of bacon for six weeks. I had to go to Piper's where we have inventory and buy it. Ha!

Second course: Lamb ribs with cider and crabapple honey glaze with spices, salt, and pepper, Snoop Dogs Mashed potatoes courtesy of Martha Stewart, and buttered corn. Pan fried beef ribeye was also on the table. I'll see if I can figure out where I wrote down the glaze and post it later this week.

I wanted to make African Pork Ribs, but we are so low on inventory that I was out of those too. Crazy.  I was worried that lamb ribs would be tiny and not meaty, but I was completely and utterly wrong about that.

Dessert: Peach Pie. Simple Peach Pie. I made a standard All American double crust, the speedy way in the food processor, took 3 pints of home canned peaches (two were brandied peaches), drained them, added 3 T of cornstarch, 2 T raw sugar,  mixed with peaches, cut out strips for a lazy lattice, and a sprinkle of cinnamon on top of the crust. Oven at 425 until bubbly and brown.

 

I realised that the thing that was off in my pies was the spice. These peaches have so much sweet and flavour that they do not need more sugar and do not need any spices to shine. Shine this pie does, simple, brightly flavoured, the Missouri peaches really brighten the farmhouse kitchen and THIS is why people drive from the coasts, weary, to rest at my table, fork in hand. The world needs more pie like this.

Recipe in detailed pictures to come. I'll have to make another pie. Maybe for Saturday's Apple Pressing party. Cheers!

Super Hero Soup (Hamhock and Beans in a French Pot)

 Little bit of a story first, my kids first looked at their bowls of bean soup with disdain and distrust. They like kidney beans, but all these funky beans, all in one pot? No way. So, I started eating one bean at a time, sharing the back story and the magic of each of the six beans.

1) The ability to sing like an opera star! Ahhhhhhh! LALALALALA! Figaro!
2) Jumping as high as a monkey!
3) Dancing forever!
4) The antidote to magic non stop dancing
5) The ability to sneak like a ninja
6) Super strength silly beans!


The carrots get eaten for night vision, the onion for stinky monster breath, the ham for protein and brain power and strong bones, celery for sonic hearing, and.....apples for good health (protection against monster sneezes).

The gobbled the soup. They asked for seconds. Dinner was hilarious. Easy. Frugal.

Without further ado, I present Super Hero Soup!!!!

 Start by running hot tap water, fill a bowl or pot, and cover the beans in the water by 3x the depth and then cover, set aside.

When they are ready to use they take up all of the water. I let them soak all day until an hour or two before the meal time.

In a separate pot, a crock pot or an oven roaster, place a hamhock and sprinkle with seasoning of choice. Salt, spices, and a bay leaf. Do not forget the bay leaf, it is very important.

 Add 3 stalks of chopped celery. I like to use the leafy greens of celery too. Next 3-4 large carrots chopped into bite size. 1 large onion, 2 medium tomatoes, and 1 gala apple. Any sourish apple will work, but I like gala or braeburn the best.

 Fill the pot with water and roast at 220 degrees Fahrenheit for 8 hours. Low on a crockpot, if that's what you are using.

A good hamhock will have a lot of good, deeply flavoured meat. It is hard to get to when making cuts, but falls of the bone when slow cooked.

 

This one had two full pounds of perfect, tender ham.

 

About 2 hours before meal time, drain, rinse, and then add the soaked beans.

Continue to cook until the beans are perfect and tender. 

This makes about sixteen servings. I freeze what our family of five doesn't eat. 

Recipe: Super Hero Soup

1 2lb hamhock

4 carrots

3 celery stalks

1 large onion

1 apple

2 tomatoes

water

2 cups of bean mix

seasoning and salt

bay leaf

Soak the beans while the meat and veggies simmer all day. 

Cook meat and veggies and spices in a pot of water for about 8 hours at 220 degrees Fahrenheit or in  a crockpot on low. Add the soaked and drained beans 2 hours before serving and finish cooking.

Serve with a hearty French bread or cornbread.

Jump around and be super silly while eating dinner. Savour the smiles, laughter, and sweet joy of children.

All Dressed Up

 We have one whole closet dedicated to dress up clothing. I pick up retired dance recital gowns, old prom dresses, post Halloween clearance rack, and odds and ends to round out accessories.

So much of my kids' play requires costuming. I am cool with that. I encourage it. I find that by having a broad range and attire they are more able to explore who they are inside themselves. It is also a gateway to many other things too, like history, sewing, theatre, social norms, and the like.

A day in the life of our homeschooling usually involves mud, costumes, cooking, reading, games, puzzles, sunshine, and jumping and dancing and spinning and swinging. These kids are at the can't sit still stage. I am so glad I can homeschool them so they are not confined to a chair or desk and can learn through play. Some kids learn best sitting still and focusing on one task, mine do not. Mine learn best on the go.

I also let them wear their costumes all year round, out and about. Especially to the grocery store. They get the attention they crave, act like princesses and princes (or pumpkins), and I get the shopping done. Win, win.

Let There Be Heat

This year I grew cayenne peppers. Yes I did. I love them so much. A friend loaned me her dehydrator and it has been plugged in and going full of peppers ever since. When one batch finishes, I reload and process another. Chad bought me a set of gallon glass jars and one is already filled to the top.

Tonight, I got out the mortar and pestle and crushed 4 of the peppers to seed and powder. I was surprised actually at how almost instantly they powdered. I thought I would have to grind and work it, but they just disintegrated under light pressure. Three strokes and I was done. I added some salt and had an amazing salt rub for the pork loin I was cooking for dinner.

From the farm, our bounty nourishes us. Making my own spices was not something I thought I would ever, or for that matter, could ever do. I dried poblano peppers too. I am super excited to try to make Mole sauce.

Ribs and African Peanut Sauce

I have this recipe in my Better Homes and Gardens Cook Book that I go to whenever I feel nostalgic for my early days of eating.

It took about 4 years for my taste buds to start working again after a major health change. I started to actually taste food. Cheesecake. Curry. Coke in a glass bottle. Bacon. I fell in love with food. There were some things though that I could not get used to, like meat on a bone. Meat had to be breaded and boneless like bread. Yet, Chad insisted on buying a whole pig and then cooking it.

The first time I ever had ribs was this recipe. Of course I have changed it slightly, if you have the book you can find the original one easily. I embarrassed myself the first time I ate them. It was very cave lady like. Oh, and the sauce! I made the sauce for dipping egg rolls and pork chops in too, it is so very good. I never looked back. That is when the real change happened for me in how I looked at my food. Eating became enjoyable, I had reason to think cooking might someday too.

Place a rack of pork ribs bone side up and cook at 350 degrees F for 45 minutes, flip and cover in sauce, cook for another 30-45 minutes. Serve with extra sauce for dipping.

Sauce Recipe:
1 cup of peanut butter
1 cup of hot water
2 T lemon juice
1 t of Berbere seasoning from Pensey's or another curry type seasoning. Add more if you like.
Stir on low heat until smooth.

Mmmmm. Ribs. The kids gnawed on the bones after giving me a standing ovation. Every bone was licked clean. Even Isaac wanted more and more. I ate them with the same wild abandon as I did that first meal.

Just a Little Crabby Apple.....

Chad and Lily were walking in the woods and found.....CRAB APPLES! 

I put them in a paper bag for a week to ripen them and get them nice an pink. The flavour of these beauties is fantastic, sweet and sour all at once. I wanted jam but I didn't want to ruin the perfect sweet with too much sugar. I started with an apple butter recipe and added sugar until the taste was perfect. I canned according to the butter recipe, 15 minutes hot water boiling. It turned out PERFECT.

No spices, just cook crab apples simmered in half as much water until they break down, sugar added and cook down some more.

What is more interesting to me than this simple canning recipe is that these fruits were in our back yard and we never even noticed. Folks had told us about the hidden apple tree back there, but the last 3 years weather has been strange. We have plums this year ripening too. Chokecherries. Wild grape. Elderberry. Mulberry. Wild raspberry. Gooseberry. All right here.

I don't strip the plants down though. I leave enough for the wildlife and for reseeding. That equates to harvesting maybe 1/3 at most of what is there, if even that. Because of the strange weather, there hasn't been a lot of fruit which means there hasn't been food for animals and birds and the plant couldn't reseed. Not a lot of folks talk about that aspect, just the flowering and the bees. We are trying to maintain a real balance here, as well as feed our family, be good stewards of the land and animals we care for. That is a complex system that involves plants, soil, animals, ground water, insects, and us. We have 40 acres here and we raise meat animals. Creating a balance is difficult, but not impossible.

From the fruits of our labour, we dine on crab apple butter/jam.

Today in the Kitchen

More peaches. Today we skinned and sliced, tomorrow they'll get canned. Then for dinner I pulled out one of the last Poulet Rouge chickens out of the freezer. Isaac saw it and clapped and screamed excitedly! He signed chicken and wanted to eat right away. Sorry kiddo, it takes 2 hours to table. :)

I pulled out my red French Oven, a cast iron enamelled lovely pot. In it went halved mushrooms, a chopped leek, a yellow onion, celery, and red bell pepper. I placed the chicken on top of that, smeared it with Irish butter and Tickle a spice from The Spice Shed, sprinkled with course salt and then tiny potatoes from our garden tucked in around it.

I first broiled the chicken on high for 10 minutes and then turned the heat down to 350 degrees F. to cook the rest of the way. It took about 2 hours, but I don't trust timers. I always take the internal temperature with a meat thermometer.

Oh, this chicken was fantastic. The mushrooms and leek and the spices were just perfect and the carcass and leftover veggies are now back in pot with some carrots, more celery, and water filled to the top. That will simmer in the oven, covered, at 225 degrees over night. That is how I do stock in the summer, in the winter it sits covered on the wood burning stove.

I was really happy with how this turned out. 10 minutes of chopping prep is so very easy. We'll get three meals or more from this one bird.  I love our farm chicken so much.

Making a meal like this isn't actually hard. For my whole life I thought it was some magical feat to make nourishing food and that it would take all day to make it. Years of attempting and failing left me discouraged.

It wasn't until I stumbled on some historical fiction about French peasant women baking bread and soup that I realized that for centuries people made good food with only what was in their region, usually in season. Sometimes only with one pot, did they accomplish hearty meals. I started paying attention to food in historical accounts, living history museums, simple recipes.

That's where the change came, the heart of it. I studied the chemistry and the layering of ingredients and recipe equations, but the heart of food isn't the math and science..... it is something else. The joy I have in my simple kitchen, the fresh food from my farm, the joy on my child's face when he sees me pull out the red pot and chicken. It is the thankful gratitude my children share at the beginning our our meal together. The random exclamation in the middle of the day or the overheard conversation where they declare that I am the best at making food and it is always yummy, my husband sharing his delight at a simple meal with friends on social media, the intensity of centerdness that I get with my spoon swirling broth in the pot, breathing in the aroma of herbs and fresh meat are the heart of my kitchen. That isn't something in a book or a classroom that can be taught, it is something you experience in the moment. It is something that only simple food has given me.

Recipe for Summer French Pot Chicken:

1 leek, chopped
1 pint of mushrooms, chopped into bite size
1 yellow onion
1 red bell pepper
1 cup of chopped celery
seasoning and salt
handful of potatoes
1 run of the farm raised 3-4 lb chicken
4 T. grass fed butter

Broil for 10 minutes
350 until internal temperature reaches the safe temp for poultry


For the Bone Broth/Stock

Throw the bones back in after the meal, fill the pot with water, leftover veg, add carrots, bay leaf (optional), apple cider vinegar or lemon juice, and simmer for 12-48 hours. Yup. 48 hours.

Ps....peaches are still in the making. They are so perfectly ripe that they are spoiling and we are focused on canning and freezing. The dessert posts are on their way, very soon.

Fried Green Tomatoes with Sweet Tea

Fried Green Tomatoes: 

• 3-4 green firm tomatoes, cut into 1/4 - 1/2 inch slices. 
• buttermilk
• fish fry breading (like Zatarain's Cajun Fish Fri, but a corn flour base with seasoning works too)
• frying oil (lard, coconut, peanut)

Dunk slices in buttermilk, dredge in breading, fry until brown, drain on plate.

Easy if you know how to fry things. That part is critical. Practice that. If you have the temp to high you'll set the kitchen on fire, too low and you get greasy soggy yuck that no one can eat. Fried green tomatoes are just to delicious to ruin, so make sure you or someone who can help knows how to fry food.

Sweet tea is the only appropriate drink to go with this. Some say glass bottle Coca-cola is acceptable, and I can maybe support that. Maybe.

Easy Summer Dinner: French Bread Garden "Naked" Sandwiches

French Bread Garden "Naked" Sandwiches

Ingredients:
Mushrooms
Chevre (or cream cheese)
French Bread
Tomato
Basil
Asiago
Butter 
Seasoning

Fry sliced mushrooms in butter, add favourite seasoning.
Slice French sourdough thin, spread on chevre or cream cheese.
Top with whole leaf fresh basil and slice of garden fresh tomato.
Serve with the hot mushrooms and sprinkle with Asiago cheese.

Grilled Farmhand Sticks

Again with the easy week night meals! This is a favourite here, very versatile.  We often are in the middle of important farm work at dinner time, losing daylight hours. This is a side affect of working day jobs and coming home to the livestock chores of 4 different kinds of animals. Chad needs something that he can eat quickly, on the go, and is nutritionally dense.

I start with what veggies I have on hand. Load the kabobs with them. Then I cube up the meat to the size of the veggies. I brush with oil, usually butter but coconut oil and lard work well and olive oil is a last resort (temps too high for olive oil and it makes it taste off).

Once oil is brushed on I generously sprinkle with seasoning of choice. Swamp Fire works well. I also like Pensey's Bicentennial and Bavarian. Your favourite seasoned salt will work, but watch the salt quantity.

Grill until the meat is as done as you like, turning a few times while it grills.

Recipe that is shown above:

Grilled Farmhand Sticks

All of these cut into 1 inch cubes more or less:
Zucchini
Sweet pepper
Baby bella mushrooms
Onion slice
Beef stew meat
Butter
Seasoning and salt

I make variations, use different seasonings, use lamb, deer meat, pork, beef.....whatever vegetable is in season. That is why they have yet to get sick of it. You can even use the butter and seasoning that drips and pools into a roux and make a cream sauce for pasta/rice/couscous/quinoa, then serve the veggie and meat on top.

Easy. Prep time is about 5-10 minutes (how fast you are at chopping things into cubes and threading on the sticks) and grill time is about 10 minutes too, but mostly hands off.

Clean up is easier. If you just have the serving platter and everyone eats off sticks there is no need for dishes. Clean up gets longer if you make the pasta version. That's why I don't usually make that- but if I have the meat thawed and the grill going and unexpected guests pop in, the pasta is a great meal expander. I love feeding our farm guests!

5 Minute Easy Kid Lunch

This is the base of my easy kid lunch.

1 quart of meat broth. This one is chicken.
Add whatever scraps of unused frozen veggies are in the fridge. I had 1/4 a bag of broccoli, 1/4 bag of peas, and some carrots. Boil it up.
Add seasoning and salt.
Add whatever noodles are in the pantry. I like rice noodles.

If I add rice noodles, I'll call this ponyo noodles and add hard boiled eggs and ham slices.

If I add macaroni, I also melt some cheese into it

There are endless possibilities to use up odds and ends in the fridge and freezer. I have the kids help me pick out combinations and figure out what they think will taste good together. They chop, grate, and stir.

It still just takes 5-10 minutes from GO to table.

Sure it would be better to just make pizza bites or chicken goo nuggets, but yuck. Oh, I still sometimes whip out the pizza bites, don't get me wrong, but this is just so much better and encourages so many skills in the process. Good stuff, that.

And seriously, 5-10 minutes. Uses up scraps and leftovers. Nutritious. WIN!

Farm Update July 4, 2013

 

 

......and Isaac walked by himself and stood up without holding anything by himself.

This weekend, for those of you who cannot view the pictures:
Chad chopped down a dead ironwood tree. It fell on the chicken run. That was not intended. Then his chainsaw broke.

We had 300 bales of hay mowed and baled. Then it was a race to get it under cover before the storm hit. We failed. The above picture is our successful attempt to dry out the bales. Then we had to scramble to get those in before the next round of storms. Good gravy that was hard. You know, for Chad. It was actually pretty awesome to watch if you are standing in the shade with iced sweet tea. Just sayin'.

Then, THEN, we brought home a bottle calf! Susan is her name. She's a 1 month old red angus heifer. She is Lily's job.

Oh wait, there's more. Jessica and I cleaned out the garage. 

I got some peahens and named them Beyonce and Anastasia. Yes I did.

I made cream cheese stuffed peppers wrapped in cottage bacon and broiled. Twice.

I roasted a chicken.

Lily and I cleaned out the under cabinets in the kitchen and did all the dishes twice.

And Isaac walked and walked. We were all sitting around listing off all the hard work we each did, Chad, Mama, Lily, and Isaac......and Holly reminded us that she did not. She just played. Ha.

She actually said Ha!

Not actually true though. She played with Isaac, cleaned off the table, and helped with laundry. Silly wonderful girl.

Grandma and Grandpa got here yesterday and have been working hard too. Seriously awesome holiday so far.

So that is the update past shearing. We still have more to do. Tomorrow will be an epic laundry day. Yes, I know epic is an overused word, but y'all have not seen my laundry crisis. Seriously. Ha!

Happy 4th of July!

Recipe:
Peppers, split and cleaned out
Cream Cheese
Bacon (Cottage)

Stuff peppers with cream cheese.
Wrap with bacon.
Secure with toothpick
Broil until bacon is crispy