Restocking or stocking the basic’s in your home health care kit.

Posted on August 13, 2011 by Just another day on the farm

Well, I could not help but notice that while sick and then having DH having plant rash’s plus cutting my foot up this week that my stock of supplies was in need of a topping up, things has been taken and used without being noted and replaced, so on the next planned shopping trip I picked up a box of goodies to add to my current toolbox, a few things to note, I went though the first box and checked all the expire dates and moved everything that was outdated to the outdated box, I know that our medical staff like to tell you that on Oct XX its done, but really what that means is that around Oct XX, the medication unopenned and in its sealed packaging has gone down to 90 or 80 or 70 percent of its effective state, or whatever percent that the goverment says it has to be above to get to be sold as that percent per gram and compared to the companies test that says it typically goes before at this age.. so right or wrongly I don’t throw out fresh unopened meds for a good while, I certainly won’t recommend this practise to anyone but its like thinking a vaccine stops on the XX date they say to get a new one, it may or may not be in decline but its didn’t just go poof and stop working LOL

On the flip side I spent a great deal of time reading and checking equal types of meds to find the ones that had the longest dates possable to be added to the box now, most of them will be not expire till 2013 or 2015, or till they are used depending on the item.

Its a good thing my check out guy was about 20 and way more interested in popping his gum then in really looking at was being bought, cuz if I had got one of the older ladies at the local drug store, I would have gotten a look, but that is part of the reason, I went to wally-world on a busy day 😉

My med box runs wound care to meds for many of the common kinds of issues, some things I would never normally take (as I perfer to work the home made ways or the different herbs first etc) but I still like to have what I think of as the “big” guns available just in case.  Plus its not always about me or DH, we do in fact have family or friends come visit and I need to have things that will work for everyone from newborn to old age. Many things are also backups that are cross over to critter care in a pinch.

I have a number of things that I store upstairs for the older folks in the family when they come to visit, walkers, tub bars, toliet set holders and rises, canes etc.

How much do you keep in your health care box’s, Do you remember to replace things that get used or do you sometimes get surprised when you go for something and its gone? Do you remember to rotate things out and fresh in? Do you do your box only for your own family in the house or do you prepare for all ages? Do you stock a number of “just in case” things or do you tend to stay only to the basics? 

 

Posted in Personal Care | Tagged | Leave a comment

Something to think about.. food and all it means..

Posted on August 12, 2011 by Just another day on the farm

Now most folks that have read my blog over the past few months will have figured out that we are working on being a do it yourself kind of farm and that we tend to buy in bulk, store a good amount of food in our house and ideally grow and harvest most of what we need on our farm or in wild harvest.  I tend to go to two discount stores for required loss-leaders and I do tend to shop the outside ring of the store, with the flyer in hand to know what I want, get in and get out.

I am in pickle making mode at the moment, I have put up 24 pints of bread and butter, 12 pints of dill quarters, and am working another 24 pint batch of english style bread and butter jars, and while it surprised me, I ran out of mustard seeds, I can find ways to mix or replace different things but not this at this time of the year.. sigh, so I needed to run to the store and get a couple bags of mustard seed because right or wrongly, bread and butter pickles need this 🙂 to taste right to me.

So into one of our “loaded” stores I flew, its the closest and I didn’t want to spend any extra gas getting to the cheaper stores that are further away, plus I figured the odds are goods that the basic cost of mustards seeds would be fairly even regardless of where I shopped for them, unless I could get to the big herb store in the city.

The lady in front of me was very well dressed, hair done, makeup on, and looking a little controlled with pinched lips and tight looking eyes.. ok, so I almost ran her over  with my cart the first time, she was going slow and I was moving it!

Zipped by her, grabbed the flyer to read the loss leaders and headed in to the store with two things on my mind, check the reduced department, and see if I can find Mustard seeds and maybe cheese cloth if they have any (most stores don’t) and I don’t know this store well so ended up down a few rows thinking maybe they would be the right one.. first off, it shocked me at how little stock they had, many of the things were only stocked three to five things on the front, with nothing at the back, the meat shelves had blank spots (this is something I am seeing far more often in the past few months) and the cost of veggies as I went by, stopped me and made me look again.. 4.99 for three peppers in a bag.. wow.

Ran into the well dressed lady at the discount freezer area, where the store puts almost past its date and freeze’s it and then you can buy it, I have in fact picked up the odd good deal in this way, and she was staring at a one pd of ground meat that had been reduced to 2.99 from around 6 dollars.

At the check out, she ws in line ahead of me, and I was amazed to see how little was in the cart, she put a discounted loaf of bread on the till, and four cans of cream of mushroom soup, as the last can went on, I noticed it was badly dented and without thinking said, “excuse me miss, do you realize that can is dented?” she turned that straight laced face with the hard mouth and said, quickly ” yes, I will use it right away” and turned back to the till, as it moved I realized that all four cans were dented and marked down to 29 cents each, she carefully handed over a five dollar bill and it hit me, this was not a matter of just being frugal or stocking up, this was a matter of that 2.99 meat was to much in cost, she spent just under two dollars including tax on her shopping, bread and soup, one old and outdated and the others dented..

Here I was with my cart, I had six packages of mustard seeds ( I bought them out), three big bags of dates (they were on sale) and ten pds worth of oats, so my cart didn’t look much like others in line either but It was because I have stores of food..

The strange thing is, I wanted to reach out and pay for her bill, wanted to say go back and get that discount meat, you stood and stared at, I wanted to say, I have extra in the garden, would you like some fresh produce? and in the time it took me to think it, she was gone.. and I was having things put though,  I said to the tiller, not alot in that sale, she nods and said, she does not buy much, lives over in XX apartments. I was moving slowly at that point on my way back to the parking lot.

We don’t have a local food bank in our closest little town, we do have a program for low cost fruit and veggies though the local health center, you pay ten dollars and they take that money and buy fruit and veggies wholesale and then split it among those that put their money in, there is typically between 70 to 120 box’s monthly, the only thing is unless you know how to perserve, getting fresh once a month does not last long, I have supported the program since it started, its a good one.

It was a hard moment for me when I got back home and started into my food preps again, how does someone who lives in a tiny apartment with no yard, help grow their own food, I know that I have a link on the site for folks that trade or work with those that have yards to grow gardens join with those that want to do so but don’t have land, and yes, I would say honestly there is lots of wild pickings to be had in our area but you have to know how to do that, what to pick, when to pick and how to use the produce and or perserve it.

It was a humble moment for me, I felt a slap of emotion, a twang of guilt for having as much as I do, as I looked around the farm at the livestock, the gardens and in the house, the fact that I will add eggs to my bread just to add cuz I have so many to use, that I will throw out anything not perfect from the garden to the critters, if I am canning because I want the batch to be perfect, that I can go out my front door and in a short walk find a dozen different fruits to pick at right now. and if you went into my cellar or freezers, I have well over a years worth of food for my family put away, that ideally by the time the fall season is done, that I will be close to my goal of two years worth of food in storage.

What would be the proper way to feel about this? Guilt that I have more? Shame that in a country as great as ours that folks go hungry? Angry that todays happenings can be seen in a real life person in my own community? Angry that I have not done more for my own area? I regularly send money for micro-loans to a women’s program oversea’s, because in most cases, in most 1st world countries we don’t have any idea what being poor is truly like..and because I know that if I support a women, she will do right with it, and so many benefits to her, her family and her village will be had from that little loan.

Bringing me back around, food is something that everyone needs, and being without no matter where you live is a hardship, I will say one thing for being a farmer, we may never have as much money as we would like but we do live in a way that is rich! in so many ways, and having amazing food to put on the table and in the pantry has to be counted as one of the blessings to this very hard working lifestyle.

So are you seeing effects of what is happening in the economic storm that is raging world-wide at the moment in your area, are you seeing more empty spots on the shelves, are you seeing folks in your own community doing with less? What are you feeling when you realize that you have more then others? Do you share a percent? Do you wonder if you should just give without trying to find a way to have the person earn it? I would gladly trade some work on the farm for fresh produce but how do you even start that talk with someone? Do you as a small farmer feel blessed when you look at your livestock and sit down to one of those zero mile meals? 

The really sad thing for me, is that I don’t think its going to get better, I think that the next generations are going to find that it will be very hard to live anything near the lifestyle that the past couple generations have had, that it will in fact be harder and harder to provide not just the needed things in life but all the little extra’s that are  currently taken for granted!

 

Posted in Food Storage | 10 Comments

My most available local wild fruits-ChokeBerries and Elderberries.

Posted on August 12, 2011 by Just another day on the farm

Just another day or two and the first of this years elderberry crop will be ready to start coming in, just want a those still reddish to turn a touch more black, but you can’t wait to long or the already black will start to go.. The bushes are loaded this year, which is excellent as this berry is a super power in the health department

To collect these berries, I snip the whole berry cluster, and then I put the clusters on a steel tray and into the freezer they go, in a couple hours when frozen, I take them out and using a folk, just pop the frozen berries off into a bowl, throwing away the stem, now you can do this unfrozen but its alot more messy, colorful and you won’t have killed off the many, many little tiny bugs that will be coming in with the fruit..

Folks like to dry the berries, freeze or Can them for later use, or make them into juice to be used to be made into jelly, or syrups or cough syrups etc. These bushes can grow five to eight feet in a single year, they do require a fair amount of pruning to keep them their most productive, while one will do ok, a row of them will outproduce the single bush with at least double the fruit, so it does appear to help plant at least few together.

The second most common berry bush in my area would be the black or blue Chokeberry, it is not a big of a bush as the elderberry and it takes alot longer to grow and produce berries but on the other hand the big patch that I pick from requires no care from me, it does not need to be pruned each year, nor do I need to really feed it, it just does its thing and yet remains loaded with berries each year.  Elderberries bush’s outproduce the chokeberry at a min of 3 to 1 in the amount of berries produced but the chokeberries fruit is at least twice the size of the average elderberry and must be hand pick off the bush. While they say you can eat the chokeberry fresh, it has two fairly large seeds in each one and for me at least, I would not enjoy the fresh taste, they need to be made into juice for home use in our place.

The Chokeberries are very healthy for you. The amount of research given into this berry is amazing, Germany and Europe exported it back when they found N.A. and it has been known and used there much more then I think it has been here in recent years.

When I grew up out west, the most common  wild berry was the saskatoon, and many hours of my childhood was spent picking with my family, now on my little farm, the Elderberry and Chokeberry had found there place into my kitchen.. 

What is your most common and available Wild Fruit in your area?

Posted in wild foods | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

Apricot/Banana Cake Recipe

Posted on August 10, 2011 by Just another day on the farm

I don’t know why I have never considered this combo before, but man did it turn out good!

The worst things about this recipe is that I didn’t plain on it going to the blog, so it was made farmgal style, so lets see what I did and then try and put it into a round two for folks off the farm.

Farmgal apricot-banana cake.

  • Two glugs of oil
  • 1 pint jar of Apricot fruit in med syrup
  • 1 turkey egg
  • 2 ripe mashed banana’s
  • a pinch of salt
  • two heaping cups of flour
  • a palmful of baking powder
  • Into a cake pan at 350 till golden brown and knife came out clean.

This cake’s flavor is amazing and its high and fluffy, but moist and filling..

So lets see if I can try and figure out how to make it again or fairly close to it.

  • 1/2 cup of oil or margrine
  • 1/2 of sugar (up to 3/4 if you want it sweeter)
  • One med can of  chopped up apricots with med or heavy syrup
  • 2 large eggs
  • 2 large ripe mashed banana’s
  • 3 cups of flour
  • half a teaspoon of salt
  • one and half or two tbsp of baking powder

Mix your fat and sugar together,add your eggs and beat, then add your water or milk, and your cut up and mashed fruit, then add dry, just mix though and into your greased pan at 350 for about 40 min or until your knife comes out clean.

Or just make your favorite banana bread and add a little fresh chopped apricots to the batter, I do think that the canned apricots blended in better then fresh would, and the flavor in the syrup without a doubt helped make the cake.

 

 

Posted in Food Production and Recipes | 3 Comments

Rain, garden produce, Chokeberry Season has started.

Posted on August 10, 2011 by Just another day on the farm

We are into our third day in the rain, good steady warmish rain, by my count on our rain gauge we have had just over 4 inchs, excellent for the pastures, for the garden and for our shallow well! Thankfully the rain is coming off and on with nice temps in the low twenty’s, so its just down right a pleasure to be out in the gardens, other then the bugs, they are not just out in force, they think they are in overtime!

In the forest (that really needs to be trimmed!) that thinks itself a tomato patch, my big girls are starting to come in well now, most of them around this size, which really only fits one per hand, I have several hundred of these coming yet.. in the Roma’s which are doing very well, I would guess that I have about 500-600 green tomato’s coming at this time, with more blooms on the way, but I will start cutting them to force them to ripen the ones they already have.

In the mini department, they are crazy this year.. at least five feet high, and I must have at a min around a thousand or more of these little guys in different stages.. they are sweet like candy, dry stunningly well, so I should have a good number gallon jars worth of dried tomato’s put away for winter!

Got out to a girlfriends to do a little apple picking, I should have ideally gotten over last week, as they are really ready and dropping at this point and bruise easily while picked and put into the picking bucket, and I am guessing you will notice the difference between natural looking apples vs what store look like.. These are already being simmers on the stove, will be drained out and the apple juice will go to make a number of different products, including apple cinnamon pancake/waffle syrup etc. Have to gift a little jar or two back to the friends that let me pick their tree.

Having gotten caught up on the big cucumbers this past weekend, and having a number of jars of different relishes added to the cellar, the cucumber patch is doing very well.. time to make some pickles.. lots and lots of bread and butter one are on the menu!

I see that the first pickings of the Chokeberry’s are ready to be started and the first of the elderberries will be ready by the end of the week, the bush’s are being funky this year, I have some that are just in bloom, some just starting to form green berries, some filling out and some bushes already having fruit turning color, so it will be a prolonged harvest, the older bushes are at least a full month ahead of some of the newer younger bushes.

So, what are you harvesting these days out of the garden? What is giving a bumper crop this year so far? What is making your groan and give the plants the eye (for me its the new heritage pepper plants I have, I have YET to see a single pepper, the plants look healthy and are growing and filling their cages, and yet few flowers and no peppers) On the other hand the corn is filling out nicely and the scarlet runner beans are looking to be workhorses.

Posted in Canning, gardens | Tagged , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Canning Meat..

Posted on August 9, 2011 by Just another day on the farm

Well I have been listening to CBC news about what is happening to the markets, to the riots in london, to the debt crisis that just keeps growing in Europe and the United States, and listening to Harper who is on a trip to sign free trade agreements in South America (which just happen to be considered growing markets).  The costs of everything is rising, including the costs of meat..

The ways to preserve meat for home use is limited, you have a couple choices.

  • Freezing- Costs involve buying a freezer, older freezer can sometimes be had from free cycle or at farm sales but you have to consider that they use alot more energy then more current models do, and you have to pay from the power to run them, either by directly paying the power company or by buying and installing green-energy products.
  • Drying-limited cuts can have this done to it, power costs to dry it down and then its done.
  • Charcuterie-Salt perserved, smoked, dried or make it’s stable hanging meats-Costs are salt, smokers, cellars space and limited ways to use these meats to a point.
  • Canning- Costs, include Jars, lids, canning pots and pressure canner, plus the power energy costs to run it, be it power, propane or wood.. 

Thankfully many of these items are upfront costs and then are in fact reuseable for many years to come. If looked after your freezers will last twenty years, same with your glass jars and pressure canners etc.

I was raised in a family that canned meat but we didn’t use pressure canners, we water boiled bathed meat and then stored the canning in very cool temps in proper cellars, I am currently pressure canning my meats and low acid foods at this point.

If someone is looking to buy sheep meat, they almost always want lamb, and its a lovely meat, I have been getting my reviews back from folks that got my grass-fed lamb only this year and its been nothing but postive, in fact by word of mouth only, from folks that have bought lamb,  I have already had a number of request on if I have any more for sale..

However no one asks for mutton, and I don’t know why, I love my yearling Mutton, I tend to keep back at least one or two altered males to grow out and butcher out in the late winter/spring to give a much needed bump to the meat supply, and I sent one of these big boys to the butcher in the last load out, and asked for it to come back as only stew meat and hamburger, in total not including bones/organs, I got back almost 70 pds from him, and its all going into canning, stew meat, meatballs, burger patties, homemade sausage, soups and stews are all on the canning menu, mixing in the garden overflow with those 70 pds of meat and suddenly the idea’s are endless on how to mix it up.

I can honestly say that when yearling meat is canned, it is so tender, you would never know that you are in fact eating mutton, instead of lamb.

I have heard and read so many folks talking about the fact that they won’t can meat at home, and I just don’t understand this thought, if you follow the safety rules and the approved recipes, process the meat for the required time in a approved pressure canner, its not hard folks.

I will admit that I perfer a cold pack method, so lets run though this, thaw your meat in the fridge, wash and rince your jars, fill with meat, put your new lids, follow the pressure canning instructions, and take out finished jars and store in a cool dark cellar if at all possable.. I know that I have taken it down to the most basic but really it can be that basic, sure you can add broths, spices, make meatballs or patties, but you don’t have to.. basic canned meat is excellent on its own.

The only advice I will give is this, try and can in the wide mouthed jars when it comes to meat, even in the pint jars, so that you can more easily get your scrubby in to clean the jar afterwards.

So swinging this back to the current times mixing with the need to store, if you need to lower your bills, canning is one of the best ways to store and keep food along with drying that is once done, as the lowest energy costs, if you don’t already have a little extra put away, just in case. Please consider doing so, look at your current ways to keep and store the food you do have and give it a little thought on if you need to add more, or add more ways to preserve it?

Beef Stew with Veggies -Makes about 14 pints

  • 4 pds of stewing lamb
  • 12 cups of cubed new potatos
  • 8 cups of sliced peeled carrots or turnips
  • 3 cups of chopped celery
  • 3 cups of chopped onions
  • 4 tsp of salt
  • 1 tsp of pepper
  • Boiling water or broth to cover etc.

Make your stew like normal, browning your meat, and onions, adding your veggies and any broth you want instead of water, then laddle your hot stew into clean hot jars leaving a inch head space (measure this out, its important to not go higher) and process in a pressure canner per its requirements.

Posted in Canning, Lamb Recipes | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Energy imputes and rewards..

Posted on August 8, 2011 by Just another day on the farm

So its monday, which means its laundry day, its meant that its laundry day for years now, but its out of date with the new provincal high, med and low energy power costs. You see when I want to do my laundry on monday, it is in fact at the highest power costs per KWH.

Now I know what you going to say.. move laundry day to the weekend when the costs are the lowest possable, but there is a problem with that.. weekends are the workhorses of my week, they are only TWO days that I get my very strong backed hubby home with me, we tend to spend one day mowing/weeding and working in the gardens and the second day doing some kind of needed farm/critter work with one shopping trip thrown in, normally during the worst of the heat of the day..

Now my laundry line outside happens to run across my garden, no biggie on monday, cuz that is not a garden day, but the weekend, that is a hauling things, chopping of green things, working with hoe’s things and if anything is on the line, sure enough at some point, it will get dirty.

I don’t like to do laundry in the evening, I have tried, its a bright and early morning thing for me, I have started washing clothes in cold water (other then whites and some critter bedding, it needs hot) to help with energy costs, I have a critter laundry line, and peaple line, I have cloths racks for indoor drying, and I use the dryer as little as possable.

I use the water out of the dehumidifers for floor washing, as its grey water otherwise, we have a clear, if its yellow let it settle, if its brown flush it down and we have a very water wise toilet, we shower, instead of baths, and we often use the solar heated, rain water collected outside shower during spring/summer/fall.

No rugs in our house, so we rarely use the wet/dry vac, we sweep and mop instead, we use rainwater for outside waterings as much as possable, we have a hand pump well on the back barn, so that it does not cost energy to get the water from the deep well, and on the powered house well, we use it sparely. No AC, but fans do run for both the house and the barns and with this heat, will continue to do so.. having said that we use tree’s to help create shelter belts, and to cool the air coming in naturally.

Canning season is on us, and it is also hitting the energy prices on the head, the typical cool parts of the morning, when I tend to get up early to beat the heat, the produce was picked the evening before, and I process in the morning.. right at the highest peek costs, now I do have the propane stove, which helps with costs some, but I perfer to pressure can  inside so that I have less possablity of temp control issues which means that its on the electic stove, and I am not canning late in the evening tired and heating up the house.

I want to cut power useage on the farm, and I am slowly but surely finding ways to make it happen, I now hand scrub certain things daily on my board, which cuts down on loads, I use my crock pot more, I use the big toaster oven (that can be a oven, a dehydrator, broil or defroster and will fit a full size cake pan or a 13 inch pizza in it) but for a fraction of the power use of the big oven. I have ordered a new thermal cooker, you only pay the energy to bring it to a boil and then it continues to cook for 2 to 6 hours with no further energy cost outpute. I ordered a ecozoom stove to be able to do VERY frugal and renewable outdoor cooking (I’m so going to try using dried cowpies to cook with at some point), I have a solar oven (which only works for a few months at best some of the time) I got a wood smoker for both hot and cold meat smoking, but not the power one.. I have outdoor dehyrdatiors, that only work for a few weeks of the season because of the humidity.

We use our naturally cooled cellar, and I use the one room in the house all spring/fall and most of the winter as a cold room, we use very limited heating in the winter and close off part of the house for the season (like they did in the old days).

I got solar lights to giving the laying girls extra light hours to reduce the cost of the power, for egg production, I keep back and respect broody girls that sit eggs, hatch chicks and raise them the way that has no energy costs compared to the folks that use the egg incubator, and the heat lambs etc.  I have little second hand wool coats made for the lambs/kids out of recycled coats from value village instead of running heat lamps in winter.

I am so frugal, that when I heat the kettle now, I fill the thermo with the hot water left so that I don’t have to turn the stove back on to make another cuppa..

And what does it get me, besides a sense of pride.. when the bill comes in.. Nothing!, I have been able to reduce our use so low that the costs of getting it to us, etc is the higher part of the bill but it does not matter, the bills that come in now, use half or less of the power that was used the first year on the farm, and the bill itself is higher..

I know that having talked to other local small farms around me that I am very low on power use, the power company in fact once sent someone out to check our lines because our summer power use was so low, and still, the cost of power in the province is high..

The past couple bills have had a reduction of about ten dollars or so as a farmer rebate.. I will take it, as I am sure everyone who gets that small reduction will be happy to do so, but I will admit that I wonder what about the folks that are not trying to reduce? Do they just have enough money that they don’t care? What about folks on limited incomes? Are they doing without and just not talking about it?

Is it any wonder that I am always! on the look out for things that work without power, and are done by hand power, wind power, solar power, or animal power.. how about you?

Posted in frugal | Tagged | 16 Comments

August Lamb Recipe Challange- Summer Ground Lamb with Cousous

Posted on August 6, 2011 by Just another day on the farm

Today has flown by, and the garden has been a center point so it was only fitting that it was a major part of tonights supper..

  • 1 pd of ground lamb
  • 1 large onion finely diced the white, and dice the green
  • 2 or 3 cloves of garlic
  • 1 green pepper-seeded and diced
  • 1 med zuccini- sliced into four and diced
  • 30 small sweet cherry tomato’s cut in half
  • Fresh herbs from the garden, your choice, but basil, horseradish greens work very well.
  • Salt and fresh cracked black pepper
  • We had a couple cobs of cooked leftover corn, so sliced the kennels off and added that as well.

Serve on a bed of cousous or rice or can even serve it in a wrap with a touch of sour cream.. Leftovers of the meat mix, can be added to scrambled eggs or hashbrowns etc.

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The Food of a Younger Land by Mark Kurlansky

Posted on August 5, 2011 by Just another day on the farm

This book is about an I qoute ” A protrait of Amercican Food-before the national highway system, before chain restaurants and before frozen food, when the nations food was seasonal, regional and traditional from the lost WPA files”

This book is an amazing read, even if you are not as crazy about food and recipes as I am, if you have any interest in history of how peaple feed themselves when it was truly regional and seasonal, this book is choke full of amazing information.

The base of it is the WPA files, and this was called the Works Progress Administration or for short the WPA. It was charged with finding work for millions of unemployed Americans in the late 1930’s. It sought work in every imaginable field. For unemployed writers, it created the federal writers project, which was charged with concieving books, and assigning them to different writers, editors and publishing houses.

They came up with the idea of a book about the varied food and eating traditions throughtout America, an examination of what and how Americans ate. She wanted the book to cover local food disagreements on how to make this the “proper” way, to capture now nearly forgotten food traditions.. Kellock called the project America Eats.

The book itself is a collection of the turning ins of dozens of these hired writers from across the country, covering a vast area of local food knowledge and recipes from each of the different states and area’s.

This book gets a five stars and I would highly recommend it, but be aware that you will most likely finding yourself reading it again and again.. as there is so much information that I don’t believe it likely that anyone could grasp it all in the first or third sitting!

Posted in Book Reviews | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

August Lamb Challange Recipe -Apple Mint Shoulder Chops

Posted on August 5, 2011 by Just another day on the farm

Most folks in the stores are used to seeing the little leg chops that are used for grilling etc, but when you buy a whole lamb, you are going to get a fair number of packages of Shoulder Chops as well, they are bigger, have a bit more bone to it, and can be a little tougher then the leg chops.

Anyone who has been following along this spring knows that I love my apple mint and that I grow a huge! amount of it, for fresh use, for making jelly with, for drying for winter use and in different recipes, here is another wonderful use for it.. Ideally this should be Apple Mint but if you don’t have it, any fresh mint will work in a pinch.

2 to 4 pds of Shoulder Chops, (I tend to go light on meat when it comes to lamb, as I find that a little goes a long way but if you want the typical portions N.A. like it eat, you will need to cook more of these then I would per person)

  • 1 cup of fresh apple mint leaves
  • 1 cup of boiling water
  • 1 pint of strong apple Juice or 1 can of apple juice concentrate, thawed out.
  • a heaping tablespoon of raw local honey.

combine your water and fresh leaves and let steep for 15 to 20 min, Drain out the mint leaves, combine the apple juice with the honey and stir together, pour this over your meat in a flat bowl that is then covered or in a plastic bag and allow to marinade in the fridge for at least 4 hours up to 24 hours.

Now you have a couple choices, put the chops and the juice into a crock pot on high for a hour and then low for another 3 or 4 hours till fall apart tender. Serve it over rice.

You can put it into a oven proof pan and bake it for about 30 to 40 min and serve it with sides of roasted veggies mix, (I recommend potato, turnip, onion and carrot)

You can put them on the grill and serve with baked potato and corn on the cob.. any way you want to try it, it will take a shoulder chop to a new heights in yum!

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