12 months with 12 sausage recipes

Well, as I read a comment on how much a reader loves sausage and as I heard my big brother tease me yet again, that since when does someone put wine in sausage, plus a couple visits live with folks about making rabbit sausage or duck sausage, it got me to thinking that it might be fun to do a 12 month-12 sausage recipe challenge for 2014.

So the idea is to not just provide a recipe per month but to talk about different ways to do it, Jan’s sausage is going to be called “winter sausage” its a lamb/beef blend.

The post goes into detail on making a large sausage rather making small or med size sausages. Its nice to sometimes be able to make a two or three pound sausage in a matter of minutes, instead of taking a full hour or more to make the sausages.

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Posted in Food Production and Recipes | Tagged , | 3 Comments

And The Winner is…..Lucky Robin

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Congrats Lucky Robin on winning the Jan prize give a away! please send me your mailing address in the comment ( I will use the info but not approve the post, so no one else will see it 🙂

Stay tuned for feb’s give a way coming up.. Thanks to everyone that entered 🙂

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Sometimes its just not worth doing small sausage.. go BIG!

I have talked about and shown photos of us making small and medium size sausages but sometimes it not worth the work in doing the small ones, when its just DH and myself.

Sometimes you want the nicely sliceable rounds, you want the super spicy meat, and you want to be able to use it like a sandwich meat or on pizza like pepperoni (without the aging time) or fried sausage rounds for breakfast etc.

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Then consider making your sausage in the big bags, these bags hold two to three pounds of meat and make you one big sausage round.

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I made one pound of lamb, one pound of beef, 3 tbsp. of spiced dried crumbs, 3 tbsp. of brown sugar (as this is pretty much for hubbies use), 2 tsp of montreal steak spice, 1 tsp of seasoning salt, mix it all together really well, stuff into your pre-soaked bag, 2013-01-01 1271 (600x450)now you could put it into the smoker to smoke and cook if you wanted, or in my case, I put it into the fish cooking pan on a nice slow low heat of 300, with water under the raised part and let it simmer away..

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Yes, I could have (should have) packed it better, it should not have air pockets but I was not being fussy, it was going to be eaten at home over the next couple days 🙂

Once its cooled, it will be peeled and sliced into rounds for a number of uses in the house, if I had ran it though the grinder on fine, it would be a much finer texture but its just as good as it is at a medium grind 🙂

 

Posted in Life moves on daily | 7 Comments

Rabbit- The “other” other white meat.

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I roasted off a whole rabbit, picked the meat, and used the bone broth for stew, I love having pulled meat for different uses.  This is a lovely Rabbit meat salad this homemade English style pickles (the ones made with brown sugar and a lovely dark rich vinager), so  on flax rye bread, it was so good, filling and tasty.

I know that folks buying rabbit meat would want to make a fancy dish out of it, but for those of us that raise our own, we can afford to use it in more common dishes.

I find the fullness of the flavour of rabbit to be very nice, for the new person, the rabbit is closer to what they think of as “store taste chicken” then free range birds are..

How do you like your leftover rabbit to be used?  It does not always need to go into soups or stews, sometimes it really nice to allow its flavours to shine.

Posted in Life moves on daily | 2 Comments

Chili -Comfort Food

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If you like chili, you know what I mean, a pound of ground meat, a fried onion. garlic, beans, mushrooms, a big old jar of tomato sauce, chili spice and time.. yum, lick the bowl yum!

Hit the ditch this morning in the van, I’m ok, other then I didn’t help the back issues from the cow any, and while it took five hours from start to finish to get everything sorted out, I am grateful that myself and the van seem mostly ok, I had to walk to the nearest farm, and the cold and windchill was brutal. one of those so rare moments I would have liked a mobile phone..

Sleep well, and tomorrow is a new day..

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12 months- 12 soaps -Cold Month- Cold Soaping-Spiced Pumpkin

Well, I hope next months soap will end up being done sooner in the month, during the day with lots of nice lighting to take photos on, and I am going to recommend a few really good basic books on soaping, I thought about this long and hard, and while I have NO issue giving my recipes, without video and lots of explaining the small details, I am not sure I can do a basic soap making on the blog in the detail I would be comfortable with.

But lets get back to Jan’s Soap, this month has been a little on the crazy side, its been so cold and the cold has brought a number of issues with it that have needed to be dealt with, and so I just didn’t get to the planned soap on a timely plan..

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I finally made the pretty heart soaps for my Valentine Bags, but I still needed to get a kick in the pants on making either hair or baby soap..

Finally I said, just make any soap, what do you want to make or do, the answer came back quickly to me, BRRRRRRrrrrr, its cold out there!

So that’s just what I did, I pushed the edge of cold temp soaping, I am doing my best to slow all heating on the soap down, and I am working hard to not gel this soap.

The oils were just melted enough for me to blend it into a whipped oil, I used a icy slush of water and cooled my lye right down, and I had a thick trace to the point, I wondered if it was a false trace.. (and then everything started really moving along) I was working with two colors, and a layered/marbled/swirl effect in my typical two pound loaf in spiced pumpkin scented.

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I got it in and finished but it was touch and go to get it done as fast as it was happening, I banged it good, I hope I got it to settle well,  IF? it turns out correct, it will be a soft marbled effect with each bar looking different from the next one.

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And here is the finished soap, its quite pretty, its a very hard soap with a good lather, it does have a very nice marble effect but I should have cut it sooner, it was just a touch to ready by the morning, I think this one was ready to be cut by the time I went to bed. Middle a full size bar at 6.5 oz, side to the left a nice 3.5 hand size bar, and to the right the back side of the bar

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Great Goose Challange :) -2014

A friend of mine gave me a grassfed goose of a heritage breed and said, can you cook this and figure out how to make it taste good!? LOL

She informed me that she has a number in her freezer and the one they did, well lets just say that they were not impressed at all.

I have thawed out the goose and its been just sitting and chillin for two days to relax! I intend to allow the breasts/legs/thigh to sit in the fridge for another full day before doing anything with them.. the birds were frozen after butcher before they had a chance to relax, so this is very much needed on the back end.

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Now I intend to cut it up into parts, different recipes for different parts so that I can try and give feedback on ways it was cooked.. now this was to be a young bird, hatched that spring, pasture raised, with almost no grain at all.

(Ps, this always makes me laugh a bit, every HUNTER know’s that they are aiming to  get that goose that has been stuffing itself on corn or other grain or acorns or fall berries and treats, not the grass-fed only ones, but its all about marketing these days, a mostly grass-fed raised bird that was then “lightly finished on local Non-GMO grain would of course give you a MUCH higher quality bird” but it won’t sell as well)

now I am not knocking the grassfed part of the bird, but its a thin bird, and its not got a lot of fat on it, which by the time fall came on a natural wild bird, they would be plump, and have a good amount of fat in place..

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My plan is to break the body into parts, two breast, two leg and thigh, roasting off the rest of the goose, which will lead to a meal with roasted meat and ideally enough left over to do a pick off and a second meal like goose pot pie..

I will render out the fat off the bird for a use as well. Now interesting to me is that this full size young goose is the same weight as one of my spring born, farm raised Muscovy drakes of the same age approx.

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The wings are going for stock, and I have not decided if I am going to split the legs and the thighs into different meals or not.. time will tell.

While I am not going to be say that I will use it, anyone got their favorite Grassfed goose recipe they want to share? I’m open to ideas 🙂

 

Posted in Life moves on daily | Tagged | 5 Comments

Figured out what i am making with the calf hide

I am going to make a end table with it,,

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Fresh Wet Hide

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Finished Hide

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and plan, wooden end table with a finished hide on top, the photos of the ideas are all of the net, but they give you the general idea.

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rough logs with cow hide end table

Posted in Carfts an Hobbies | Tagged | 1 Comment

A few little Valentine Soaps

I made dark pink heart tops, and then a few big full sized Pink and white with pink middles, and I had a little fun cutting up some to be a “broken heart”

Somethings on this worked, and some didn’t, its always a learning curve, It was nice to play a little..

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Posted in Life moves on daily | 4 Comments

Introducing Lou – A pure Sebastopol Gander

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebastopol_Goose

Now don’t get to excited, as I don’t have a purebred female to breed him to, but if you are interested in this breed, let me know and I will provide the contact info from where I got him from, she does a solid breeding program and would have purebred available for sale.

I got Lou to mate with Pom, giving me two breeding sets of geese for this year, we will see if I regret this idea or not.. I have Honk a mixed breed of Embden/ Pilgram and Hiss would appears to be a Embden/Buff.

Pom is a purebed female Pomeranian, who will be mated up with Lou the purebred Sebastopol Gander..

Of course the truth is the geese might have something to say about that, they might bond and breed in a way I was not expecting, but I am hoping that I won’t have to move them into breeding pairs, I am hoping that given that Honk/Hiss raised babies last year, will mean that they are mated up for this year.

The goal is to raise the babies as naturally as possible, with a light grain finish, I hope that each female will hatch out 6 to 12 babies per goose.

I am planning on ideally doing some goose down feather projects in the future, as well as wanting to plan for rendering a  good amount of goose fat.

Do any of you raised geese? Any helpful hints or tips? While I do remember my mothers geese from my childhood, they hated me! and I have had Honk a couple years and I do so enjoy him and hiss, I was not quite as happy with Pom’s temperament, she is a little more pushy, Lou is a total sweetheart, he was imprinted on people as a wee babe and so he can be picked up, petted and handled.. total sweetheart but of course if mated and defending his female and babes, I expect that he will be a lot more protective.

Honk and Hiss were given the bought  babies to raise last year (as Honk was bonded to Apple the duck hen when Hiss came and while she was laying, he would not bond or breed with her at that time) and they were amazing parents, and I have high hopes for them being the same this year, it will be Pom/Lou’s first year of breeding, so we will see..

I am open to any helpful hints or tips on raising geese as naturally as possible, I want the females to sit, hatch and the parent unit to raise the offspring..

Posted in Critters | Tagged | 3 Comments