Red Flannel Hash

Super easy and fast, this hash is SO yummy!

Lightly adapted from Cooking Light

Ingredients

2 tsp pastured bacon fat or lard

8 oz pastured ground beef

1 cup chopped yellow onion

1 tsp coarse sea salt

1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper

5 garlic cloves, minced

2 cups shredded purple cabbage (I used 3 mini heads from the garden)

5 small to medium sized beets, roughly chopped (I used chioggia, but any beet variety will work)

1/2 cup water

2 Tbsp apple cider vinegar (I used Braggs)

1/4 pastured yogurt

2 Tbsp freshly chopped dill

Here is a picture of one of the three mini heads of purple cabbage to give you an idea of how much I used:

Directions

Heat a large skillet over med-high heat and add bacon fat or lard.  Once fat is melted, add ground beef and crumble and cook until there isn't any pink left.  Add onion, sea salt, black pepper, and garlic.  Saute until onion is translucent, around 5 minutes or so.  Add shredded cabbage, beets, water, and vinegar and stir to combine.  Cook until cabbage is wilted and the liquid has almost completely evaporated.

Spoon your yummy red flannel hash into a bowl and top with pastured yogurt and chopped dill.  The hash is also delicious on top of a bed of mixed greens.

Butternut Squash Soup

Ingredients

2 Tbsp pastured butter

2 small onions, chopped (or 1 medium, chopped)

2 celery stalks, chopped

1 butternut squash, chopped and seeds removed (save seeds for roasting--yum!)

4 garlic cloves, minced

2 large russet potatoes, chopped (do not peel--those skins have vitamins!!)

1 fresh sprig of thyme, finely chopped

6 cups homemade chicken stock (I used 16 homemade stock cubes plus water)

2 tsp coarse sea salt (add salt to taste if using a more fine salt)

freshly ground black pepper to taste

3/4 cup pastured milk

(optional)

black sesame seeds

raw pumpkin seeds

Directions

Melt butter over medium heat in a stockpot.  Add onion and saute until translucent.  Add stock to pot along with your chopped squash, potatoes, celery, garlic, and thyme.  Bring to a boil over medium high heat and then reduce to medium and simmer, covered for approximately 20 minutes or until squash and potato chunks are fork tender.

Once squash and potato chunks are tender, add soup in increments to a blender and puree.  It is helpful to have an extra bowl on hand to transfer your pureed soup into.  Once all of the soup has been pureed and is smooth, add it back to your stockpot.  Add salt, freshly ground pepper, and milk and stir for a couple of minutes to fully incorporate and to let the salt dissolve.

Garnish with black sesame seeds, raw pumpkin seeds, and a thyme sprig.

Saving tomato seeds

I don't know about you, but I definitely have favorite tomato types.  My four favorites are green zebra, roma, yellow pear cherry, and cherry tomatoes.  Given that I don't like to buy new seeds every year, it is sort of a "must-know-how" type of thing for when it comes to saving my seeds.  I was a little afraid of saving tomato seeds because it seemed like a daunting task.  However, it was not scary at all and I highly recommend it to all of you other frugal seed-savers out there.

For saving tomato seeds you need:

jars (one jar for each type of tomato)
water
patience

First, squeeze out the innards of your tomatoes into their respective jars.  Add a tablespoon or two (more if you're processing more tomato seeds) of water into each jar and then stir up the contents.  Cover with cheesecloth or a clean dish towel and secure with a rubber band to ensure that insects do not get in your mix. Stir once or twice a day for around three days or so.  Mold may grow on top of the contents, but not to worry, that mold is beneficial! It eats the gelatinous coat away from the seed, which in turn makes that tomato seed able to sprout when you are ready for it to sprout.  After 3 days or so, fill your jar with water and wait 'til the majority of the seeds sink to the bottom.  The seeds that float to the top are immature and can be discarded. Pour out the water mix, leaving only the seeds that initially sunk.  Continue rinsing the seeds in this way until your rinse water is clear and clean looking.  Lay your seeds onto a paper towel, blot to take away the most of the moisture, and then leave in a breezy/sunny area to continue drying.

Store in a cool, dark place until ready to plant.

Happy seed-saving!

My favorite ice cream

Ice cream is one of my favorite things...unfortunately, there are very, very few stores that offer somewhat healthy ice creams.  The best solution is, of course, to make your own! DIY! <--one of my favorite acronyms.

This recipe is not only loaded with healthy fats, but it's also chocolate flavored! What could be better than that? 

Gently modified from Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions

3 egg yolks from pastured hens

1/2 cup pure maple syrup

1 TBS homemade vanilla extract (there is a recipe in one of my previous posts)

1 TBS corn starch

3 cups cream from pastured cows (raw if possible, but NOT ultrapasteurized)

1/4 cup cocoa powder

In medium bowl, beat egg yolks together until smooth.  Blend in next four ingredients.  Once blended, remove 1/2 cup of the mixture and place in a saucepan over low heat.  Add the cocoa powder and whisk until completely incorporated.  Place cocoa mixture back into original bowl and combine.

Next, follow the instructions on your ice cream maker and within no time you'll be eating a decadent, chocolate-y treat! 

Prepping the garden for winter

There is still a ton that needs to be done in the garden, even though there isn't much left to harvest. I am talking about threshing seed heads, cleaning up weeds that are undoubtedly setting seed, and finishing up the bits and pieces left of the harvest.  I picked about 20 tomatillos the other day, which isn't bad for a "volunteer" plant. We didn't even plant tomatillos this year and they still came up! There must have been some viable seed in the compost from last year. I've also got (I'm guessing here) about 30 green cabbage heads that need to made into sauerkraut.  On top of that, the rest of the potatoes must be dug, two kinds of corn kernels must be removed from their ears, the raspberries and strawberries need to be transplanted, dry beans must be threshed, ... and the list goes on and on...

Looks like I've got my week cut out for me.

Raw milk!

Milk is SO good for you! I will specify and say that milk from the grocery store (which is pasteurized, homogenized, and from grain-fed confinement cows) is absolutely not good for you, but raw milk from pastured cows definitely is! It truly is nature's perfect food. I love milk.  I never used to even "like" milk, but now that I know the health benefits of drinking real milk, I can say that I truly enjoy the rich flavor. 

Part of the reason I couldn't enjoy milk to the fullest capacity was because of the onslaught of typical lactose-intolerant type symptoms it brought with it.  Growing up, my mum always bought skim milk and I was always hassled to "drink my milk". At some point or other I developed a distaste for milk and then only drank it on occasion. When I moved out of the house, my then-boyfriend now-husband pushed me toward buying 2% milk which is what his mum fed him. Finally having the choice of what milk to buy, I bought organic 2% milk.  This milk was expensive though, and I didn't know much about the company that was producing it nor where it came from. That's when I found out that our local health food store sold local milk! This milk also seemed expensive, but it seemed worth it to me to support a local farm that fed their cows grass. With this discovery, we began drinking whole, grass-fed milk.  As I learned more and more about the benefits of drinking milk from grass-fed cows, I found that there was a farm nearby where I could purchase a portion of the cow herd and receive whatever my portion of the herd produced.  Of course, this included the cow's milk.  The best part of this operation was that I could obtain unpasteurized (raw) milk legally and gain even more benefits from the white, liquid gold. The beauty of raw milk is that it contains all of the enzymes necessary for pretty much digesting itself. This makes it much easier for your body to digest, since your body doesn't have to produce as many digestive enzymes--they're already in the milk! Furthermore, cows raised on pasture are healthy and happy.  They are eating what they are meant to eat and get to be outside all day to boot. When cows are happy and healthy, this also means that their milk is healthy too.  Cows that are fed grain, however, are not happy and are certainly not healthy.  A cow is only able to successfully digest grass and when they are fed grain it makes them sick.  When the cow is sick, it is injected with antibiotics which are then excreted in its milk.  Does a big glass of milk from unhappy, sick cows plus a splash of antibiotics sound good to you? I certainly hope not.  Back when I was buying organic 2% milk, I was purchasing the brand "Horizon" organic milk.  I thought that because the milk was labeled as "organic" that the milk was coming from happy, healthy cows.  The reality is that the majority of the farms that provide milk to Horizon are confinement operations where the cows are always enclosed in tiny pens and, guess what, are only fed grains.  Yes, the grains that are fed to the cows are certified organic, but organic or not, those grains make the cows sick.  It is much better for you and for the cows that are producing your milk to be grass-fed or pastured. If you live in MI and a cow share program to obtain raw milk is not something that you are interested in, at the very least please try to find yourself a source of milk that is grass-fed or pastured. Again, better for the cow and better for you. 

Need more information on raw milk before you make the leap? Here is a little article on raw milk and it's benefits. Also, request "The Untold Story of Milk" by Ron Schmid, ND at your local library.  It's a really, really eye-opening book with tons of great information and history on raw milk and its health benefits. 

Here's to happy milk drinking! 

It's been awhile...

Hey there, folks! It's been a little while since my last post, and I am blaming it all on extreme busy-ness. There has been so much to do around here. I finished canning all of my tomatoes for salsa, picked and thrashed the lettuce seed heads, finished one Christmas-related knitting project, washed and scoured blue-faced leicester fleece as well as half of a fleece of polypay, and started a new knitting project for myself. Among all of that fun stuff that I did, I also wiped myself out with a week-long bout of gastroenteritis from (I am guessing to be) a stomach virus. So yes, I've been very busy.

I am now only working three days a week, which leaves lots of time for doing soul-preserving tasks like baking more, spinning, and knitting.  Boy, have I ever needed it! After a summer of extremely stressful waitress work, the cool weather has brought along the "slow" season and I am finally able to work less. Spinning has brought about a new excitement for me as well:  dyeing! On one of the days that I was feeling moderately well during my sickness, I went out in the rain and collected a huge bucketful of poke berries.  Good thing it was raining too, because my hands were quite the shade of purple when I finished! Tonight I plan on mordanting my washed/scoured polypay fleece and then tomorrow I'll get to dye it.  Michael is currently outside in the dark mashing the poke berries into juice for the dyeing adventure.

I am wishing I had some pictures right about now, because I did a TON of baking and cooking today.  The list consists of:  cinnamon swirl bread, peanut butter pie, shortbread (I swear this list isn't entirely sweets...), cauliflower soup, and a tomato tart. The tomato tart holds the last bit of this year's tomato crop, and I am feeling a little bit down about that. I was also less than thrilled to see how ridiculously puny my leeks were for my cauli soup.  They were probably a centimeter in circumference. Oh well. It was my first year growing leeks (ha, yes, an excuse!).

Well, I am off to start the mordanting process.