Well the challange for unprocessed real food month with its daily updates on idea’s and thoughts on how to use whole food in your diet finished up on Oct 31st. I really enjoyed their daily post and idea’s, while I did feel that most of the folks chosen to share where a little on the extreme side of being “green”, which could have scared a few new folks that were just learning, but at least the topic’s were in and of themselves mostly interesting to read..
I am still doing a eat out of your pantry and this past week has been different then the past month, this was the week that I hit the wall! Hard frost ten days back, took out my daily fresh fruit, and most of the extra gardens, now I am down to greens under row cover as what can still come in fresh at the moment..
Now don’t get me wrong, I have lots of potato’s, a few fresh still onions, carrots, turnips, and a boatload of winter squash’s but none the less my fridge is getting emptier, the only fresh fruit in the house is apple, I used the last of my cabbage, (whimper, I like my cabbage!), everything else is either frozen, canned or dried..
So this week, I needed to make up quarts of rhubarb stew from freeze rhubarb, I made up 20 cups of frozen gooseberries into- Gooseberry Juice, Gooseberry fruit, Gooseberry Fruit Roll-ups.
I really need that sheep to have her little ones, I am using canned milk or dried milk at the moment in order to make my fresh milk products,I’m out of frozen whole milk goodness!
So thankful for my year supply of butter in the freezer, I also have many pds of cheese both chedder and mozza in the freezer, but frozen is never quite like fresh..
I have been eating alot of lamb lately and so I have been working hard to find a number of different ways to prepare it, we have had breaded fried lamb steak, we have had homemade chinese with fresh sprouted mung beans on a bed of noodles, we have had orange honey-maple BBQ lamb pull aparts, we have had spicy lamb meatballs with hot mustard sandwhichs, we have had sticky ginger stirfry with lamb.. I can honestly say that each meal was very much its own in flavor and texture.
Let me tell you what a differnce it makes to the lamb meat if its deborned and ALL fat is removed, it could pass as beef, I am really amazed at the difference in taste when you remove all the “lamb” flavor that comes from bone.. But of course save the bones for broth making! Its just lovely to sometimes have it taste like lamb and sometimes for it to be more beef like..
The highlight of the week is that a number of my hens have finished their moult and are back into heavy egg laying mode, so the egg production has been increasing daily, its SO nice to have those extra four to eight eggs coming in daily again, soon I will have an extra dozen or so more daily.
So in a nut shell, there has been alot of trecking out to the freezers, down the stairs up and down for loads from the cellar, starting to sprout already and more taking this or that out and adding it in dried form to dishes and much!more limited fresh food to make meals from, I am truly now eating from the pantry.. Can you believe it took a month to eat though my fridge and the tail ends of the garden hmmm
So how did you do on eating out of your pantry this week ladies?
Just another Day on the Farm 
I still have two fat cabbages in my fridge. My knuckles are still healing from the last one. 😛 Mostly, I’ve been canning and drying apples. I should get to the potatoes and sweet potatoes, though, before their sprouts take over my kitchen. 🙂
I think you’re lucky to have all that lamb. When we do get over to your farm for a visit, please feed us lamb – I’ve only had it as a lamburger, which was a yummy, rare treat, from a local burger place.
Is it storebought canned milk, or do you can your own?
Can you share some of those rhubarb recipes? I’m trying to figure out what to do with all of the stewed rhubarb we have.
Two cabbages still, you are so lucky, I do have some frozen cabbage salad and lots of dried cabbage for soups/stews plus the sour cabbage, and some really great mixed pickled cabbage but fresh is fresh! Sounds like a plan on the lamb 🙂
Its storebought canned milk-I tend to have at least a case or two of carrnation canned milk in the pantry, as I do let me girls naturally dry up, and I only have so much room for freezing milk, it means that I have times where having the canned or poweder milk is a very good thing..
As for the rhubarb, I made some of it up with a touch of honey and mixed dried mints for stewed mint rhubarb, I cut up some apple into chunks and cooked it with a bit of rhubarb for chunky apple-rhubarb sauce, and then I took the last of the rhubarb and all the melt juice in the bag, put a touch of sugar, a stick of cinnamon and a heaping tbsp of small tapicoa and cooked it, finished it with a tbsp of butter and touch of vanilla and it was rhubarb pudding.. I think everyone would like the first two, they are very much within the norm, but for the last one, you will either like it or hate it, it depends if you like tapicoa or not.
Mm,mm LOVE tapioca pudding! Mom always used quick tapioca for thickening her fruit pies. :(Nobody else here likes it except me, but I am defininitely going to try this.)
(P. S. Did I have any luck with getting a message through earlier tonight?)
Totally, totally coveting those gooseberries. I made a goosey sauce a few years ago that we used on pork loin and OMGOSH…gooseberries+pineapple+onion+brownsugar+dry mustard+cinnamon+ a few more things I can’t recall. It was the most delicious sweet+savory sauce ever. And combined in a low oven with a nice pork loin….nothing short of magical.
I will have to try gooseberry/pinnapple together, I can see how they would go together so well.. Thanks for sharing the idea with me..
Hey FarmGal, Glad you mentioned the “lamb taste”. My aunt used to keep goats and I could never quite get past the “furry” taste in their milk. Had mutton stew swimming in fat once as a kid and haven’t been able to stomach it since (but I could drink whole cows milk ’til the cows come home, especially after… ; )