Just another Day on the Farm

Meat Cookbooks! A little Cookbook Love..

Posted on February 15, 2013 by Just another day on the farm

I love cookbooks, I am taking advantage of deals on the kindle but if I really like a cookbook, I want it in hard copy baby!

Now I have over the past while added in new meat cookbooks and I have read all of the ones I am talking about today at least twice from start to finish, and I have made at min at least a dozen recipes out of each one, (I won’t say that I followed the recipes to the letter on any of them because I cook based on what I have and the season but despite that, I have only included books that have proven themselves to me terms of producting outstanding meals) and I know that these books will be the starting bases for many recipes and meals that will come on the blog in the future. click on the pictures to be taken to amazon to see more info and prices.

Everyone kept telling me that I had to have this book and I did order it and I have read it, and I do like it, if you are new to cooking, new to the health movement, new to local food and want to understand the basic’s then this is a excellent book that will most likely answer all your questions and give you some very british cooking recipes on what to do with your meats.

Having said that, if you are looking for a book that is just as good as this book on meat but will cover pretty close to all the same subjects and yet so much more I have got to say that I honeslty reach for Forgotten Skill of Cooking! This book rocks! I love it, I have used it often and I have already wretched the front cover and now its down to the hard covers, which so speak volumes if you think about that..

Now while this one does explain alot of the basic’s, I do believe that this book is better for someone that already does alot of cooking, and is looking to take the skills we can all learn in modern books and get back to how to take those same meals and turn them back into forgotten skills.. Or in some cases, you need to have enough cooking, canning knowledge to understand the risks of some of the things being recommended in the book that would NOT meet our current recommended safety rules.

Now lets get down into the grit of things.. Beef, Pork and Lamb!

So lets talk about one of the best Grass-fed Beef Cookbooks I have had the pleasure of reading, this book is a easy read, the recipes are well done and I at least feel like I got to know the auther just by reading her book.. LOVE it and really like that she covers all the cuts, the idea is simple, if you have spent the time and effort to either raise your own grassfed beef or sourced a local farmer to get half or a whole beef from, then you should make each cut count..

Now this book is one of my newest but I have already devoured it and made a number of recipes out of it, I can’t wait to keep making and getting idea’s from this book, its all about pig and pork!, it like the book above covers every single part/cut of the pig, but it also has a real southern flare to it, so at least for me, it also helps stretch and expore new taste combos. Its also very much a coffee table cookbook, you can just sit down with a cuppa and spend your twenty min break feeling that you are not just reading a cookbook but taking a mini-break and feel like you are learning about how a whole area of the country feels about a food.. LOVE IT!

Now we move on to a little cookbook with alot of punch!! Unlike the others listed above, this is not a big cookbook, this is not a cookbook/tablebook or a cookbook/darn near a cult following in Ireland and England.. instead this little bookbook was put together by some ladies for a fund raiser and it deserves a major “You go Girls” and a big!! thank you all the folks that put forth a recipe to be included in this book.. if you eat lamb or hoggot or mutton.. you need this cookbook!! Enough said..

I have linked the picture to the e-book but here is the link for the hard copy..

http://www.blackbellysheep.org/cookbook.html

Now, I have not forgotten about all my little critters, rabbits, birds of all shapes and sizes along with some deer, goat recipes, now this book was gotten as a gift and it is the biggest (not the thickest) and most table book of the bunch but dang those huge awesome photos are so pretty and the recipes are sound, the breakdowns of how to butcher are well done, and this one is the book I reach for if I want to make a different meal, here is my heads up, its not that you won’t have most or all the things you need to make the recipes in this book but don’t expect these to be easy or quick recipes, cuz they are not.. these are slow, picky and careful recipes, using many pots or in the case of one, no pots, its how to cook your freshly butchered out live on a hot rock to serve as a open cooked recipes.. I adore this book and all the time for the ones I have made is so! well worth it but its fussy!

Its also the reason I am ordering in a dozen pheasent chicks this year, just so I can make some of the recipes in this book LOL

Ok and last but by no means least, I have to once again give a shout out to the awesome Odd Bits Cookbook.. This book is the best I have found to date on showing you how to take all those parts that most either throw out or give to the dogs and turn them into amazing meals..

So there you have it, my major go to books on meat.. do you have one to recommend to me? Lay it on me folks!!

Posted in Book Reviews | Tagged Meat cookbooks reviews | 2 Comments

Happy Valentines Day, A Gift from the Heart!

Posted on February 14, 2013 by Just another day on the farm

Ok, this going to be a very photo heavy post, and I am only going to share so many of these but I had the most amazing wonderful valentines day present waiting for me this morning in my kitchen

A Sea of Big Pink Post it notes hand done by hubby covered every cupboard, up and down, the fridge, the stove, and even some on the fan above my head.. I stood and laughed and then I started reading and then I started crying.. but its the good tears! Love my man.. have I ever said, how much I LOVE my husband.. I am so blessed!! I truly hope that everyone of you has someone in your life that just “gets” you.. There are many, many more then what I am sharing… Happy Valentines Day Everyone!

Posted in Life moves on daily | 11 Comments

Make’s its own crust egg pie

Posted on February 13, 2013 by Just another day on the farm

I know that I have talked about it before but I love eggy pie.. kinda like a custard but not.. so so good.. So blasted simple, Beat 4 eggs in a bowl, add between 1/4 to 3/4 cup of sugar depending on mood, 1/8th to 1/4th of melted butter, depending on mood, a pinch of salt, two heaping tbsp of flour or around 1/4th of a cup, a pinch of nutmeg, or cinnamon or pumpkin pie spice or all spice, 2 cups of whole milk or 1 can of canned milk, beat together really well and pour into a greased pie pan, bake in over right around 45 min at 350, will still be a bit giggy soft in the middle but will firm up, while you can cheat and serve warm it will not lift properly, serve cold as is, or with a dollop of whipped cream or a drizzle of cream or even better clotted cream..

Posted in Life moves on daily | 2 Comments

My Mangel Seeds have arrived!

Posted on February 13, 2013 by Just another day on the farm

Just one of my coming 2013 garden experments.. massive mangels for critter feed!

“Red Mammoth Fodder Beet (100 days)
Fodder beets have been around since the 1400s if not earlier. These beets were prized as nutritious animal feed that was easy to store. Fodder beets are hardy, adaptable and palatable. They are ideal for planting in late summer for use as a winter and spring crop.

Red Mammoth Mangel Beets produce an incredible mass of edible beet leaves and a large root up to 20#s or more in size! These beets prefer deeply tilled, free draining, sandy soil to achieve full size. Simply allow your animals to graze on the tops, cut the tops for feeding or harvest the root.
1940 Oscar H. Will Pure Seed Book says… “The heaviest yielder and most popular of all Mangels the light red roots are pinkish fleshed and grow well out of the ground. Yields run as high as fifty tons to the acre.”

Hard to believe that these seeds, they are good size to be fair are going to grow to upwards of 20 pds each, and of course I want to keep some and have them go to seed so that I can keep back my own..

This pic is from the net.. If I can do half as well as this old timer did in the 1920’s I will be a very happy farmgal indeed! I intend to do a very early small spring crop, with most being a later planted crop for winter storage.

Posted in Life moves on daily | Tagged mangels, Planting fodder crops, root crops for feeding livestock | 9 Comments

Homemade Laundry Soap..

Posted on February 13, 2013 by Just another day on the farm

Now I don’t know if you have noticed this as much as I have, that the current store prices on the laundry soap has totally gotten crazy! over the past number of years, something that I could see in the flyer that would even five years ago go on sale twice a year for around a dollar to three dollars, has creeped and in a big, big way.. Three years ago if you were lucky, you could find one or two sales for the smaller bottles for around 2.99 or up, this year, I have been watching those flyers and I have seen the super sales are sitting right around 3.99 and with limits on them to boot, and that’s for the cheaper brands, add another three plus per bottle for the “big guys”

At the same time that the higher costs have really kicked in, they also really started pushing cold water washing, use the cold water, it will save you lots in energy costs, but the cold water wash soap is more costly still and if you use the regular ones they don’t work as well. Due of course to the way the basic laundry soap works in regard to heat, the old fashion needs that warm to hot water folks..

There have been so many folks that have done many, many posts on how easy it is to be make your own laundry soap that I am not going to go into detail and do another post that is a repeat, so I am just thinking up to a really well done post that uses the same process

Instead I am going to offer my own tweeks on the recipe above..

Take your soap out of the plastic and let it sit in a open cupboard for extra drying time before grating
After Grating, let your soap again sit out for a couple extra days for drying..
This recipe will NOT work well in cold water, you need warm to hot water to make it work correctly.
You can add a nice natural scent to the soap but if you want to do so, pour out into your old laundry bottle, add your drops and shake well, don’t do the whole bucket at one go, it will fade, not get better with age, and second, this allows you to mix up scents, so that you can enjoy that change up.
You can use your own homedone soap in this recipe, you just want hard soaps.
You can make your own washing soda, its really quite easy and I will do a post on it, but in a nut shell, take your baking powder and bake it for around an hour or so at 400 and it will turn into washing soda, easy to get, easy to make, and you can make small batches as washing soda is one of those products that does not keep for that long, even if handled and stored correctly.

Do you make homemade laundry? if so do you make the dried version or the liquid version? If you scent your soap? what is your favorite ones and how much do you use?

Posted in Life moves on daily | Tagged Homemade laundry soap | 2 Comments

Working the Big Hide..

Posted on February 13, 2013 by Just another day on the farm

While I can see that this is bad timing in the sense of just putting up the baby bump, I would like to talk about working the big hide and my thoughts on it at the moment..

Here is my first one..

What was I thinking? and Just how strong were those folks that wore buffelo robes, you see I had this grand image of me making a big beef robe that would be worn fronter style as a robe, well give that I can barely! pick up the hide, it typically takes two of use to lift and carry it around, let just say that the idea of putting it on and thinking that I was going to be able to walk around and wear it has gone right out the window!

Second, I had a major issue with the weather, despite hanging it, despite working with it naturally a number of ways, the flexing temps, from everything brutal cold to rain over a few week period, I could not get it to a good working point, and i can honestly say that next time, I will have a area prepped and ready for it in the big barn, back in the hay/straw storage area.

What the second means is that I finally had to make a call, I had a spot on the hide that was going bad, now thankfully it was on the one edge of it, which really left me with two choices, call it and just let the hide go (if you just laughed and thought really?) then you have been reading for awhile.

So it meant that Dh and I cut the hide to a smaller (but its still big enough) hide that cut out the part that was going on me, and then we hauled that sucker into the house, my kitchen table area has been convertered into a hide working area, we had to expained the table with wooden boards to make it big enough but its made the difference between success and failure, I was able to thaw it out properly, clean it and salt it and get it to properly cure/dry, its finally coming along nicely in all regards.

I have good faith that I will be able to finish working the rest of what is left, I ended up trimming out about six to seven inchs all the way around.

Now it becomes what do I do with the finished hide when its done.. I am leaning hard to floor rug most of the time and brought out as needed to be used in the buggy as a extra special seat cover or lap cover.

As for all the extra’s, I intend to continue working the good parts and trimming it out and taking the hide off, so that I am left with proper leather cordage that can be used as wraps around the handles of garden/farm tools,

That is my own personal plan for my next sheep hide, I am going to make leather and then want to learn to use it to do old fashioned cordage wrapping.

Posted in Life moves on daily | 7 Comments

Girl and her baby bump…Ideally due date in 30! Days!!

Posted on February 12, 2013 by Just another day on the farm

Girl seems to be getting bigger by the week, she drinks more, she begs for her green cubes more, and she seems to spend more time laying down resting then she does standing these days..

She is also developing in other ways, I know that compared to a in milk cow these don’t see that big and the hair is covering things, but compared to what was there, we have clear development but you can see she has a while to go now.. if she goes at the perfect due date, she is due in 30 days but the books all say, she can safely go two weeks early or up to two weeks late.. so there is flex in there for sure..

Front view

Rear View..

They are already big enough that they fit the whole length of my whole hand, I can remember when her teats were the size of my pink finger but those days are now long gone..

My goodness, soon I will need to start thinking about a name for the calf.. hmmm

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Sheep Milk Mozza Cheese..

Posted on February 12, 2013 by Just another day on the farm

I should have kneed the cheese just a bit more, so that it was a touch smoother per the recipe.. but having said that, it turned out awesome, I was able to grate myself some wonderful mozza cheese, and when I melted some over eggs, and gave a melted bit a pull, I was able to get at least a four inch string before it broke apart.. it’s tasty, it grates, its melty and gooey, a total success..

Posted in Life moves on daily | Tagged Sheep Milk Mozza cheese | 1 Comment

My Favorite Sheep Cheese

Posted on February 11, 2013 by Just another day on the farm

http://youtu.be/gH-W6kh_3rw

Now I am not saying that I don’t thrill at the idea of making cheese’s that take months to be ready, and I will be more then happy to do those when I have lots and lots of milk from my sweet girl, but right now, I pretty much am milking one sheep which produces around a pint per milking, that means that she does about 7 quarts per week, or in canadian terms, right around 7 liters, she gives less milk on her evening milking but more cream, and she gives more milk with less cream on her morning milking..

The link above is a cute little clip I did of my milking her, I do it a bit different when I have two free hands but overall, it turned out not bad all things considered.

Back to my cheese, so out of that milk coming in the house, I have fresh milk drinking, cooking and baking milk taken out of that, but none the less every three to five days I have enough sitting to make a batch of cheese and to have a big old jar of whey to use up, I find I am using the whey more and more in the baking, in place of the milk itself. This appears to be working well with my lower gluten flours, as it reacts very well with baking powder/or baking soda to help create lift.

So I don’t tend to use any milk that is fresher then two days, so while it has been chilled quickly, most of the time the milk used to make this cheese is seven to five days old, I will skim off any thick heavy cream and set it to be made into butter or used as cream.

Then I take all the milk in a half gallon jar and pour it all together, put cheesecloth on top and put it in the deyhrator at the yogurt setting, and leave it alone for 12 to 16 hours, I tend to do it in the evening, leave it overnight and its ready to make cheese in the morning..

In the morning, i just dump the heavy clumps of raw cheese along with the whey into a pot, add one tbsp of salt (canning salt) and bring to just a gentle simmer..

Now at this point, I have a number of fun things to do, the biggest cheese clumb, gets scooped out and put into cheese cloth and pressed to make a awesome firm white, tangy slightly sweet cheese, its excellent with a bit more salt mixed in, herbs mixed in, or rolled in herbs. Or I can continue to heat the cheese and let it get to a boil, and you check it with the spoon, when it hits the right level, you scoop it out, and pull and roll, and voila, instant mozza, (its not really mozza but it acts just like it)

What is left now is perfect for making roccotta and I do that sometimes, but most of the time, I just pour it back into clean half gallon jars, and let it cool and settle, the top will split from the whey at the bottom, and I skim it out with a one cup with handle, and that becomes a perfert cooking milk, and the whey is wonderful for the baking..

What I love about this is so many things, its super simple to make, it gives me so many uses from the same thing, it really only takes me less then 20 min from start to finish, love love this cheese.. its my go to cheese..

O ya, after its been pressed, you can cube it up, allow it to dry for a day in the fridge and then put it into a salt brine and have mock feta in a matter of a couple days.. (I have I said, how much I love how easy this cheese is to do different things with)

Posted in Life moves on daily | Tagged sheep cheese | Leave a comment

Fried Foods can sometimes be a o so good treat..

Posted on February 10, 2013 by Just another day on the farm

Now when I am feeling all spendy, I love to order deep fried salt and pepper pork, but over the years, I find myself ordering less at meals and so the app’s tend to either become the meal or don’t get ordered.

Add in the fact that one of the few things I don’t have in the house is a deep fryer and that I tend to bake most things for a healthier version and I rarely deep fry anything..

BUT, and this is a BIG But.. I have a craving.. I mean it was crazy, I would have taken chips, or fries or KFC chicken in a heartbeat.. but I had a) told myself not extra spending and b) no leaving the farm today , at least anywhere not within walking distant..

Then a friend said, going skating and beaver tails added to the craving, cinnamon/sugar beaver tails..

O my god, it just got worse, and I caved.. not in the sense of breaking my own rules but.. I made a very small batch ( 6 in total) of yeasty doughnuts and for supper, well I took out a small pork roast I had cut to make a canadian bacon out of at a later date and I cubed it up, in a bowl, I added in cornflour, and corn meal and Jerky seasoning and I coated those peices and deep fried them.. they were perfect, crunchy, slightly sweet because it was the same oil that had done the donut mid-afternoon treat (don’t worry we didn’t go crazy, we have one for this evening and one for breakfast as well).. to make that donut even more amazing, I drizzled it with sheep’s cream and it melted into the sugar and created a kind of icing on it.. heavenly.

It hit the spot, it was awesome! I can’t say that I would add these to the homestead menu on a regular bases but for a extra special treat, I would do this again for sure..