Sometimes we just need a simple soup, a clear flavor filled broth with hints of sweetness from the corn, along with some good old fashion filling from the meat and pasta.
Beef Corn Soup Recipe
1 pound of ground burger (this was local grass fed and very lean)
2 cups of frozen sweet nibblet corn (could used canned) this corn went from picked to processed and into my Freezer mates seven months ago and its as fresh as the day it was done as that tub was packed so that no extra air was left in.
2 cups of shell pasta
2 quarts of beef bone broth
Salt, Pepper to taste
1 tsp of olive oil or oil of your choice
Add your oil to your soup pot, cook your meat till it is browned, add your broth, corn, and shells, bring to a simmering boil, stirring now and again, it should only take about 20 to 25 minute’s to make from start to finish.
8 Standard Supper Servings or could get even more if served with a side of bread.
Sometimes less is more and that rings true for this soup, its so simple and yet so tasty!
Soup Cost Breakdown
7 dollars for the beef per pound
25 cents for the corn
pasta 25 cents (the bag was gotten on a dollar a bag sale)
Beef bone broth (made with my own beef bones) but lets go with if i bought it and say 1.00 if i had gotten the powdered version
Salt/pepper/garlic powder – .25 cents
Total for the pot of soup $8.50
8 Supper Bowls breaks it down to 1.06 per bowl
Super simple, and very close to a dollar a bowl, if i had gotten the beef on sale at the store this week which was 4 for a pound, i could bring that cost point down but if you were buying from the store the corn would have gone up in price as it would not be from the garden.
While i like cooking roasts and chicken and such for both meals and leftovers, the truth is, i like having precooked sandwich meats in the fridge. Wow the price on these has just gone crazy! I don’t mean the good stuff at the deli counter either, i mean all of it, the price point keeps going up, the amount we are getting keeps going down and in many cases, they have changed their recipes and they are hoping we don’t notice.
So as i was looking at food equipment for black friday sales, i spotted something called the Ham Maker, and went huh.. in some ways its like making sausage but without the casing and in the very size we think of as sandwich meat sliced rounds.
At $40 Canadian it was worth trying and boy, am i glad we did, so far i have made a number of different sausage recipes, i have made it course with just regular burger and spices, i have made it finer by doing the only stir your meat one way to create the longer texture fibers and i have put it and spices/dried and powdered greens/herbs and even veggies into the food Processor and let it grind till very smooth indeed.
The bottom line, the leftover juice makes the best soup/stew starter or you could use for gravy, or flavor other dishes with it. The cooled and sliced rounds can be made quite thin for sandwich or pizza or it can be made thicker for fast reheating with a bit of crisping.
Mine is standard size and it holds 2 pounds of meat prepared and then once cool can be sliced and stored in the fridge for ready to go use. I already had the water in the big pot left over from waterbath canning so i did it so you could see the pot but normally i do it in shuttle chef pot as it just fits it perfectly and it takes much less energy to run the cook time.
So far the spring to me is the only real weakness, you need to let it cool enough that you can get it to let go and or risk the first slice by putting a dull edge down enough to break the cooking seal, the rest of the unit is study as they come. So far the spring is solid and holding well, but i would like to see where its at in a year or five!
Mixing and matching meats, flavors, herbs, greens and even dried powdered veggies, its proving itself to be quite easy and useful! I will admit that i wish i could adjust the compression on the meat itself as i think some could use more and some could use less.
The wonderful scent of simmering marmalade filled the kitchen on this bitterly cold winter day, for here in Canada, the citrus season comes in during our bleak winter months. The color on these oranges as i cut into them was just stunning, deep ruby purple reds.
In Keeping with as simple as possible
Blood Orange Recipe
2 pounds of oranges (wash, trim ends, cut into quarters remove any seeds) Process them in a food processor till they are a med grind using the pulse grind
Measure out the amount of ground orange, in this case it was 3 cups, double the sugar
6 cups of Canadian Sugar (beet sugar)
1 tsp salt
Bring to a simmer boil and stir often, scrape down the sides and put a few small plates into the freezer, once it starts to give a glossy cover to the spoon,
check on your plate for thickness of what you want in terms of thickness, some like it thinner, some like it be a thicker set. In this case you can see how clean those edges are and that i have no fall back into my line, its at the thickness we like our no extra pectin added to be.
As i expected the end color is stunning! This marmalade has more of a traditional bitter edge to it then the Cara Cara did!
With these two done, that is our year’s supply of Marmalade made, so far in 2025, i have called lunch soups and marmalade. A slow start to be sure but at this time its more about using the canning pantry then it is about putting things up.
The cost savings for having made my own is over 5 dollars savings per jar!
With Winter having a very firm grip on us with loads of fresh snow, there is not a lot of forage available right now, in the “hunger months”
A single serving of raw High Bush Cranberries (100 grams) contains 25 grams of carbs, 1 gram of fat, and 0.4 grams of protein. It is also rich in micronutrients such as Vitamin C, Vitamin K, and Potassium, and antioxidants such as Anthocyanins and Flavonols.
The lean months are coming, we have held the feasts of yule, we are though the first month of the new year but the dreams of fresh forage and greens is months away yet.. Lets focus on what we can do over the next weeks to months!
Still there are things to be found, perhaps you picked enough of these after the hard frosts and you are good.. or perhaps you are new to forage right now and looking outside to that frozen world, new to local foods, new to forage.
As i drive around, i see them frozen in clumps all over our local Ottawa valley, bright spots of red in the landscape and they are used for landscaping, and most folks think of them as bird food. Do leave the high ones up for the birds but you are welcome to pick and bring home enough to make a small batch or two of high bush cranberry syrup for use in foraged tea, use on your pancakes or waffles, or perhaps you would like to try it as a local meat glaze.
As long as its made with Canadian Produced Beet Sugar, its full Canadian sourced indeed or with pure cane sugar (which you can easily trace where it grew and where it was processed).
Want to learn more about this plant? Here is a overview i had written a number of years ago here on the blog.
The high-bush Cranberry grows to a height of about 4 meters and bears large red acid fruits in drooping terminal clusters. There are at least eight speices of related bushes across canada, some of the common names include squashberry, hobblebush, moosewood, nannyberry, sheepberry.
For me personally, I am after the high bush cranberry, and leave the other’s alone, I don’t find them to be worth the time but feel free to try them and make up your own mind on if they appeal to your taste buds.
If you are hunting for them, look to edges of woods, and around ditch’s or edging swampy area, they seem to like moist areas, they can be found thoughtout the southern part of canada from Newfoundland to central B.C. Their relative Squashberry is more northern, liking boreal forests, and grows from Alaska to Labrador.
The fruits are quite juicy but are very acid (think pucker your whole mouth), when first mature, they are hard, crisp and very sour, but after getting a good hard frost, they become soft and quite palatable even raw but will still be tart.. they are best when cooked as either a sauce or Jelly.. (farm gal note, they have way to big of a seed to be used straight in a sauce, but if you put it the though the food mill, you will lose the seed, but get more flesh then if you make juice.
If you have a steam juicer, that will make the most juice and give the best color
High-Bush Cranberry Jelly.
8 cups of washed and de-stemmed high bush cranberries
1 cup of water
Place the berries and the water in a steel pot and simmer for about ten min. Drain threw a jelly bag or double layered cheesecloth.
Measure your juice and boil for at least five min, use six cups of sugar for each 4 cups of juice.
Stir till sugar dissolved, then bring in to a boil and cook, stirring constantly, until jelly sets on the plate test, the recipe uses open kettle canning on these, so it says pour into hot sterilized glasses jars, store in a cool place, if you want to waterbath, I would say ten min would do the trick, This makes a tangy dark red jelly.
These berries were used by the native peaple of Canada, in B.C. they were so valued that berry patches was owned by certain families and were passed on from generation to generation. The berries were perserved in oil or water in tall cedarwood boxes and were eaten at feasts. The boxes of berries were also used as gifts or as trade goods. Among the Kwakiutl of Norhtern Vancouver Island a box of berries was considered equal in value to two pairs of blankets.
Moving over to Europe, the Norwegians and Swedes eat high bush cranberries cooked with flour and honey and also distill a spirit from them, They were also a favorite in Maine by the lumbermen of old, who used to eat them with molasses..
All ready do the basic syrup or jelly, take it to the next level.. here is the most amazing High Bush Cranberry BBQ sauce, this can be used on meats of all kinds and can also be used in sandwiches as a dressing.
High Bush Cranberry BBQ Sauce
8 cups of late fall harvested after at least one or two good frosts softened High Bush Cranberry * (see note)
2 cups sugar or 1 1/2Â cups honey
1 cup of vinegar (If you are water bath canning, if pressure canning, the berries are acid enough, leave it out)
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground black pepper
1 tsp keens hot mustard powder
1 tsp of ground cinnamon
2 TSBP onion powder (not salt)
2 TBSP Garlic powder (not salt)
1/2 tsp all spiceÂ
1/4 tsp or a pinch of ground cloves
High Bush Cranberry Note* Pick the berries, wash the berries, into a pot just covered with water, simmer them 5 to 10 min at med heat and then give them a mash with a potato masher as they are cooking as you want as much of the fiber as well as the juice for this recipe.. cook with some stirring and mash again if needed till all are popped for another 5 min..
Strain into a screen or a seed remover, and stir with a clean big spoon until you have the juice and all the pulp in the bottom bowl and the seeds and the few bits of skin that did not soften and get small enough to throw out..
Put that back into a clean pot (med heat) add all the rest, stir well, bring to a simmering boil, turn down if needed and cook slow and low to thicken it to your desired thickness.. if you want it more like a HP type BBQ you will want it a bit thinner then I did it, I wanted thick.. so I simmered down till I have lines when I ran the whisk in it.. you can see how thick it settled out after being canned
This is a smaller batch 4 or 5 small jars only.. water bath can for 15 min
Its got good fruit undertones while clearly being in the BBQ sauce family.. delightful!
Last Week Dear hubby sent me a message that at the store in the city where i normally get my Seville oranges for marmalade didn’t have any..
However they had my Blood Oranges and they had wonderful looking and Cara Cara oranges on sale for 2.77 a pound. I knew these oranges have a thinner skin with a lovely flavor.
A three pound bag of oranges made me 7 full 8oz jars and a bit left for fresh eating. They were indeed beautiful oranges, I washed them, trimmed the ends off, cut them in half to take out the middle pith and then cut them into quarters and into my food processor they went on the chop/pulse mode till they were cut up into bits but not blended by any means.
Into the bottom pot for my Steam Juicer Set (the bottom pot makes the best jam/jelly pot) went the diced orange and measured out 7 cups of sugar, 1 tsp of salt. Bring to a simmer boil and away it goes, it took me 50 minutes at the simmer boil to get it to the thickness i wanted.
If you like a loose style set, i would say it was reached around 40 minutes, that i got my first wrinkle on the cold plate but i wanted a full wrinkle line with very little fall back or spread, which for me took 50 min.
Remember to scrape down your sides and to stir often, this is a putter in the kitchen close by time, not a walk away and leave it, it will seem to simmer, simmer but once it goes, it will go quickly!
These were water bath canned for 15 to finish them, This was a hot to hot process, I took each hot jar out of the water bath, filled it with the jam, new lid, reused ring and right back into the water bath and only after all were back in the water bath pot did i start my count once i was back to a full boil.
All sealed and will be washed down, rings off and off they will go to the canning pantry.
Lets break down my costs as much as possible.
3 pounds of Cara Cara oranges = 8.31
Sugar 7 cups =3.20 (Canadian Sugar Beet)
Salt- = 05
Canning lids = 1.19
Canning jars (these are older heavy ball jars and they are at least ten plus years old, so at this point, i am going to say) =.25 cents but i expect its even less
Power : 2.00
Giving me a total of 15 dollars plus my time
That brings each jar to 2.14
The average of a Top quality small marmalade jars in the store is 8.99 and we can only expect the prices to climb over the next year.
That’s a savings of 6.85 cents per jar for a total savings on this batch $47.95
If you had asked me, if the odds were that i would see a war in my life time, i would have always said it was possible. I mean i am a Cold War Child in her early 50’s
Having said that, if you had told me that it would be with the USA, i would have given you side eye and a deep frown. I have a huge amount of respect, friends and family in the USA, my family who served in the Military, served along side the US forces.
Today, while those things still hold true, I am faced with the fact that we now entering into economic war between our countries. I truly believe that things can be settled in the end as adults, and i am well aware that there are many factors at play in this.
I am not using that word war lightly.. While there are layers to a war, put any doubt to the side, this is Economic Warfare. What does that mean?
“Economic warfare or economic war is an economic strategy used by states with the goal of weakening the economy of other states.”
There is one thing that has become very clear in the past 24 hours, and that is this had united Canadians Coast to Coast and that the great white bear is starting to growl.
This is going to be a long three days, a even longer three weeks and its possible it will be a VERY long four years coming at us. This will hurt in terms of our dollars value combined with everything costing more everywhere.
What does that mean in the day to day? It means Support Canadian, Buy Canadian or Canadian Allies Products, it means creating list of where we need to buy our gas from, where we can buy our coffee from, where we can stop to eat, where our cloths come from, it means what hardware store and more
It means going into those hardware stores and grocery stores and reading labels, it means telling the staff, i will pay more if need to support and buy Canadian.
More directly for me, it means growing more food for my local community, it means more skill sharing, it means make more soaps, salves and planting an growing more basic for seed saving. It means supporting those that support us regardless of where they live.
In many ways we have already made a point of local, local meat, local grains, local dairy and so on, these things will not change.
I am hopeful that things will be sorted quickly but i am also hunkering down because i think its going to be a long bitter fight coming..
Time as always will give the answer
Grolar Bear, A true north wild and free.. We will find a way!
I have been mulling and starting posts and then putting them into drafts, the world is always amazing, beautiful and a little bit tilted. When we can find a flower that lifts our spirit or where we can sit in awe of watching a bee collecting nectar, where the sunrise or sunset can just make you pause in awe.
At the same as those magic moments in the outer world, we have our family and friend world, and there are the laughs, hugs, tears, sharing of food, dreams, hard work and more.
Then there is the made world, not the connected day to day work with food, soil, plants, animals, crafting or making but the hard man made world of mind work, bills to be paid, the parts of our life that is controlled by so many outside forces.
Its February, the month of love.. and yet that outside world is very much on edge, change is in the air and things will be moving fast and slow at the same time. Canada and globally, things are in motion with more balls in the air then ever.
So after giving it a good think, I have made a few choices for the coming month, i am setting myself the goal of three posts a week (if i do more great).
One Farmgal type post, recipe, book review, product review, sharing of farm life related something, garden and so on.
One “Little Things” post, Beautiful Photography, notes of sweetness, kindness, love and relationship and community!
One Friday Ramble, this will be more political, Cranky, and at times a bit snarky as i grumble at actions being taken and their effects on my life or my community or my country.
I hope you will join me on working this month to see the Little Things! Each week i will give a idea!
This week find time to get outside by a fire, head to the local skate park, join a friend for some outdoor time with a fire, sit by the wood or gas stove, or at the very least sit by a flickering candle warm in side with a cuppa, there is something about the crackle of fire. Can’t get out, can’t have a fire, draw picture of a fire with friends, can’t draw, go online and find a photo of fire that calls to you! Watch a video of a live fire, close your eyes and listen..
I have noticed that this post is getting a good amount of views and for good reason, when you do your feeding times has been well studied on how it effects when your momma’s will lamb, kid or calf out.
This is a very good thing for those that work from the farm as they can bring far more babies being born in the first part of the day and get better sleeps or flipping it, you can with correct feeding work towards having your birthing happen at night when you are home if you are working off the farm on regular full time hours.
Its all a matter of when you feed out your hay, if you want 6am morning, feed after 6pm. This does not work if you are feeding round bales and they are on full access 24/7, but it works wonderfully if you are feeding out twice a day.
For so many years, I have done a no buy feb, but we faithfully did a no buy Nov and i am honestly not in the mood for it this Feb. We have a few things planned for the month to try and bring a little travel and adventure into our world while the gardens are sleeping and before the spring arrival of new babies and so on.
What i will continue to do is turn to the freezers, Pantry and Canning Cellar for items to use and find ways to stretch them. Above was a small end package of beef ribs from the 2023. It was a small row of six only, not really enough for a “feed” of ribs but enough to make a perfect two person supper with other fixings.
I oven baked it with lots of seasoning and did a long slow cook at 300, pulled the meat and left the bones, adding in a good amount of water, and put it onto the wood stove, then carefully made sure all the browning bits were scarped into my beef ” bone broth”.
This was the base for both a soup and a cup was added to a pot of rice for extra boost of flavour, yum! It even had a bit of left over rice after the main meal which i turned into a fast lunch by adding a little grated cheese blend and diced up Cured Beef Tongue
One of the things I started doing a few years ago was turning more of my fruit into sauce and then pressure canning it so i could make it self stable without the same amount of sugar needed to do so in waterbath canning. I had high hopes at the time that it would work well for us in our homemade yogurt but members of the household find the homemade yogurt not sweet enough as is, never mind adding in unsweetened fruit.
Muffins to the Rescue! I am almost at the point of being willing to write up this new recipes, just a bit more trying with other fruits, dried greens and spices and different baking trays/sizes for timings and it will be ready to come out here on the blog.
This was a Carrot Pineapple Oatmeal Loaf Muffin, so far i have tried it with apple sauce, peach sauce, Apricot sauce, fresh ginger, ground ginger, with just dried nettle greens, with mixed dried ground spring green blend. I am working to make each muffin either have or be very close to having a fruit and veggie serving, along with the oatmeal and bran bonus.
Some sprouts, some growing fresh and fast greens, radishes and so on, along with frozen, canned and dried goods means that we should be able to help keep the monthly shopping costs down. We will find out Feb 1st if there is in fact if 25% tariffs come into effect and the ripple effect that will have.
Storm update: the wind did some minor roof damage on the croft barn, branches down and so on, otherwise we got some drifts and need walk the pasture fence lines to make sure the hot line is good and in effect for the horses, otherwise, we never lost power and stayed warm and well fed here on the farm and i was truly grateful that hubby was able to make it a work from home day, he got his hours in and switched his in office day to a much safer day to drive in.
We have a massive winter wind storm coming in, they are saying it could be like the winter wind storms of Christmas 2022, that storm took down a huge number of trees, power outages and drifting snow upwards of 10 to 15 feet depending on where you were located.
Our area looks to be in the middle, with wind to be between 50 to 80 km a hour, where as the worst areas are looking at up to 100 km a hour along with the snow that will happening at the same time.
Today the wind is coming in on our standard winter directions, which is a very good thing for us, it means our both our big spruce tree hedgerow (further from the house) and the closer shorter/dense bush hedgerow will do their jobs in terms of both lifting the wind up and over and helping cut it and hold the snow drifting in.
The shorter thick hedge row has a built in swale in front of it to help catch and hold the snow on that side of the hedgerow away from the house, this means that we will get min drifting in the frontage area between that hedgerow and the kitchen garden to the walkway and the front of the house.
You can see some of what is happening from the photo from my winter wind direction side of the front yard, behind the spruce lines, is in fact a second short line of a combo of native spruce/maple/lilac. Here is that view from a spring/summer photo.
Don’t let the back end view from the higher up photo from the living room fool you on just how much coverage that second shorter/thicker closer hedge row is! This is a direct summer look from the ground level, and you can just see the photo i took the photo out of in the warmth of my house.
The willows help cut the wind some but not at all like the hedgerows do..
This one shows the smaller rose /fruit tree row one of the inbetween the spruce and the house hedgerow..
Did you buy a house that had windrow plantings down to help cut down storm winds/winter winds or drifting? Or did you like me, need to plant them yourself? The winter wind drift side is now triple rowed out and the winter solar sun is kept fully open and allowed to pour in.
If local, stay safe and safe warm, have a good one folks and if you do not already have hedgerows to help protect your home, outbuildings or barns, do consider them, they are worth the work!
I am sorry to have this rant, I might not even post this.. I most likely will and I am sure I will lose a reader or two.. but I have to write this.. If you live in an apartment or a tiny condo in the city, you can be many things.. You can be […]
Ok, its just going on record that we are going to be “in just in time mode” on most things this year. Let me give a example.. we have pulled at least a hundred or two wild parsnips but then we needed to focus on this or that.. and suddenly this week, we are like.. […]
Just another Day on the Farm 