Home Sweet Home

We just got back from vacation on Saturday -- 2 weeks of eating fried chicken, french fries, greasy sandwiches and very few vegetables.  I couldn't wait to get back into the kitchen!  I hit up the farmer's market yesterday morning to pick up good eggs, milk, beef and veggies.  J made tomato sauce with the San Marzano tomatoes from our garden.  I used the milk to make 2 quarts of yogurt.  (I have a new and improved yogurt method that I will post about soon.)  I also sliced up one of our pickling cucumbers to try out Nourishing Traditions' lacto-fermented pickles.  They are currently fermenting on the counter, and I have to wait until tomorrow to try them.

Unfortunately our garden suffered a bit while we were gone even though Mama K came over to water regularly.  The sugar snap pea plants are completely done, as in dried out and brown.  I'm afraid we may have completely missed bean season, although I'm holding out hope that another batch will appear.  Our herbs were huge and mostly gone to seed.  Note for next year -- don't go on vacation during peak produce season!  Luckily our tomatoes have been loving the hot weather.  The Green Zebra is literally breaking under the weight of all the tomatoes.  Mama K picked a few ripe tomatoes while we were gone and put them in the fridge for us.  We sliced up the most amazing tomato last night.  I think it was a Brandywine.

I almost forgot...we came back from vacation with 10 lbs of frozen sour cherries!  Take a look at the tasty pie I made.

Garden Update

Our little garden is cruising right along.  We've had two good harvests of sugar snap peas, and we will probably do one more tonight.  The plants don't seem to be re-generating peas as quickly and some of the leaves are turning yellowish brown, so we may be near then end of the season for sugar snap peas. 

Next up to eat are the peppers.  We plan to use our banana peppers to make stuffed peppers tomorrow night, and the green peppers should be great in chicken fajitas on Tuesday.   

We've just started to see the first reddening of our tomatoes and should have a good crop in a few weeks.  A few cucumbers have appeared and the largest is probably 3 inches long.  Our herbs are growing like crazy, and we have a batch of dill drying in the basement.

Breaking Down Chickens

J and I attended a knife skills class at Crate a few months ago, and one of the things we learned was how to break down a chicken.  This part of the instruction was not hands-on, so I was nervous that it would be more difficult than the chef made it seem.  I finally had the chance to put what I learned to use this weekend, and it was so easy!

I ordered 4 freshly butchered Freedom Ranger chickens from Freedom Farms and picked them up on Friday at the farmer's market.  The chickens were $15 each and weighed probably 4-5 lbs each.  On Saturday morning, J sharpened our knives and I went to town on the chickens. 

First, I removed the legs and thighs from the body.  Then I removed the breasts and finally the wings.  I separated the legs and thighs and de-boned the thighs.  I also removed the skin from the breasts.  I saved the carcasses and thigh bones for broth.  I vacuum-sealed all the pieces into the portion sizes we use the most: 1-2 breasts per package, 4 thighs per package, 4 legs per package and all 8 wings in one package.  Our freezer is full!  We really haven't been eating much chicken lately, so this stockpile should last for several months.  We also still have a whole chicken in the freezer that I bought from another farmer's market vendor a few weeks ago. 

It took me probably 30-40 minutes to break down the chickens and then another few minutes to vacuum-seal all the bags.  I feel somewhat guilty using so much plastic, but if I want to eat pastured chicken, I have to have a way to store it.  It's really a catch-22.  For humanely-raised and butchered meat to be affordable, it really needs to be bought in bulk and in season and then used up over time.  Vacuum-sealing and freezing is the only good way to do this.  I could buy meat as we need it from the grocery store and have the butcher just wrap it in paper, but then we are supporting factory farming.  I figure, we are trying to reduce our use of plastics in other areas, so freezing meat in plastic is an okay compromise in order to have healthy meat to eat throughout the year.

Homemade Butter

We try really hard to keep up with our meal plan each week so that we don't let ingredients go to waste.  Sometimes, however, things just don't go according to plan.  This past week we ended up with an unused pint of Natural by Nature grass-fed cream that we had intended to use for pasta with cream sauce.  As we neared the cream's expiration date, I went searching through Home Cheese Making hoping to find a cheese recipe that called for a pint of cream.  It turns out I was making things too complicated -- the best use for leftover cream is to make homemade butter with it.  I was amazed at how easy this was.  To make cultured butter, you can apparently add a bit of yogurt to the cream in the first step and allow it to sit on the counter overnight before shaking.  Easy peasy :-)

1) Pour cream into a clean mason jar; tightly screw on lid. 
2) Allow to sit on the counter for a while to bring it to room temperature.
3) Shake the jar vigorously for approx. 5 mins or until you have butter.
4) Pour off (and reserve) buttermilk.
5) Scoop butter into a bowl; add cold water.
6) Knead butter with a spoon to release additional buttermilk.
7) Pour off water; add more cold water and repeat process until water stays clear.
8) Refrigerate butter.

Garden: Before and After

Wow, the garden has grown in the last few weeks.  Our sugar snap peas have outgrown their trellis and are taking over the cucumber supports.  We have tiny green tomatoes on most of the tomato plants.  A few peppers have even made an appearance.  While the dill is quite hearty, we are still waiting for the rest of the herbs to take off. 

Here are some photos taken on June 5:

Just 6 days later:

And 8 days after that:

Yogurt Debacle

I just wanted to give a quick rundown of my latest batch of yogurt.  Since it's been so hot, I decided to give the crockpot method another shot.  I added a half gallon of my usual creamline milk and followed the usual instructions.  I did not have enough of either store bought yogurt or cultures, so I used some of both as my starter...one packet of cultures and 1/4 c of Stonyfield whole milk yogurt.  My yogurt incubated for about 7 hours.  The result was a runny gooey mess.  I used it to make smoothies all week.  I'm not sure what went wrong.  Perhaps the crockpot/towel method just doesn't hold in enough heat?  Perhaps Stonyfield isn't the best brand to use as a starter?  I think I'll stick with my cultures from here on out.

How does your garden grow?

In the few weeks since I last posted, our garden has grown like crazy!  The sugar snap peas are almost to the top of the trellis we built (about 3 feet or so).  The tomato and pepper plants look very hardy and have little blossoms starting to open.  The pole beans and cucumbers are several inches tall and, after a slow start, our herbs have gotten going.  The only issue we have had is with the bush beans.  We soaked all the bean seeds (pole and bush) for 15 minutes or so prior to planting.  The pole beans all shot up in no time.  After waiting and waiting, one bush bean sprout (out of four seeds planted) shot out of the ground.  It seriously went from zero to 2 inches over night.  Since then it's been poking along.  The other 3 seeds never made an appearance, and it didn't help that someone stepped in that part of the bed.  A few days ago I decided to try again.  I put the seeds in water and promptly forgot about them, so they got soaked for at least an hour and a half.  No sign of any new sprouts yet, and I'm a little worried that the rapidly growing pole bean plants might be providing too much shade.

I should have some fantastic pictures to post soon because we just got a fancy new camera.  I waiting for the card reader to arrive in the mail, so I can transfer the photos to the computer.