Joining in the ranks of Canadian Doomer and others like Chile Chews, and Backyard Farm along with unprocessed real food month with its daily updates on idea’s and thoughts on how to use whole food in your diet, we are eating out of our pantry this month.
Another week has come and gone, and it included the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, so we had a long weekend with Dh home, its was a good week in terms of not eating out (none), did a little loss leader shopping including a case of peanut butter jars, I still had eight jars in the pantry but was able to find ones that are rated good till mid 2013, and as Dh can go though up to two jars a month, I would like to get a head jump on the rising peanut prices, we have tried to grow peanuts in our area before with very limited success but I am going to expand the bed and see if we can’t get a better crop this year for our own peanut source.
Eating out of the garden, and pantry/cellar was just fine this week, no issues at all, there is lots to be had, I am seeing a decrease in my fall egg laying between moulting, less daylight hours, I am currently getting a two to three eggs per six older hens, and on average six eggs per day from my current eight young layers, with a nice little flock of new layers coming up behind them. Going from a dozen to two dozen a day down to just under a dozen does show itself, but its fall butcher time, and only the best gets to be feed though the winter. My Sheep that is due to have her lambs this month is huge! but no signs of bagging up yet, so I am using a mix of frozen or canned milk, I am also using dried buttermilk powder and for some baking whole powdered milk, thankfully I have lots of cheese in the house.
On the unprocessed front can’t say that its been as good, clearly the food from the garden and farm all qualify and everything in the house is being made from scratch but there are things I am using out of the pantry that don’t fit the model and that is fine with me, I am not going to go spend money to be part of, having said that, I have been trying a little harder this week to use whole grains in most things, including doing a bit of wheat grinding to go with my unbleached but processed white flour that is the base of my baking goods.
My favorite meal of the week would be Broiled Lamb cubes with fresh horseradish/mint cream dipping sauce, with fresh mashed potato’s and roasting little garden carrots with raw local honey drizzle, with still warm Spice Pumpkin Walnut loaf with a touch of butter.
I will be using fresh grated horseradish over the next while, I have a good amount of smaller root that I planted out this spring that are being pulled for single meal cooking before I tackle my big patch for longer storage.
Here is a interesting little dressing if you want to give it try..
- Half a cup of homemade Mayo (or store got)
- 1/4 cup of buttermilk (can be made with powdered and water)
- 1 tsp of raw local honey
- 1/2 tsp of black pepper
- 1/2 tsp of sea salt
- 1/2 tsp of keen hot mustard
- 1 to 2 tbsp of fresh grated horseradish root
- six to eight fresh mint leaves very finely chopped.
Makes about a cup of dressing, its rich tasting and full bodied, it works in a cabbage salad but its awesome for dipping spicy little peices of lamb cubes but it also is excellent over hot mash potatos.
So girls how did your food storage week go?
Just another Day on the Farm 
I’ve been fighting with mice over our food! LOL I have a huge amount of tiny carrots soaking in water and a little vinegar, and I’m canning them this afternoon. The potatoes and sweet potatoes have been holding up well, so I’m putting them off for now. I’ve been doing some experimenting which I’m going to share later on the blog.
How do you store your horseradish?
I envy you the lamb. There’s a burger place here that makes lamburgers – they’re delicious, but expensive. One of the local farmers told me that lambs on the hoof sell for $200 – and I’d have to find someone to slaughter it – for precious little meat.
I will forward to reading the post, good luck on the mice war.. I use alot of fresh horseradish in the fall and the greens all year long, but I store it by grating it and pickling it for future use, Some of it I also tend to grate, pour water over and freeze in cubs as well, but most gets the vinager, I have also dried it and used it that way but it only holds heat for about 3 months max, however it still holds a horseradish flavor but no heat, useful in its own way in cooking certain dishes.
The lamb around here is going between 9 to 10 dollars a pd, so a 42 pd lamb locally will cost you between 378 and 420, cut, and wrapped for the freezer, Its been a good year for those of us who have a little extra lamb to sell.
As mentioned last week, we decided not to do the full challenge as there is just too much going on this month, including being invited two different Thanksgiving dinners last weekend. I would sum up the week kinda like that old nursery rhyme- when we were good we were very very good (three batches of homemade vinegars brewing), but when we were bad we were horrid (take out pizza for dinner yesterday on the job site)!
Update post to come.
I will still look forward to reading the post, I am glad that you had such a wonderful sounding thanksgiving and hey if you were working that late, you deserved a little pizza 🙂
Oh that wasn’t the worst of it! The post is up- http://backyardfarmsto.blogspot.com/2011/10/food-storage-friday-good-bad-and-ugly.html