Pantry Challange 2018 Day 6 Pasta

Posted on March 11, 2018 by Just another day on the farm

Yesterday was all about babies and having a quiet day, the morning extra was a big old feed run and then the work that it takes to unload a full truck load of feed bags and move them to different buildings.

The interesting thing about the feed store was the fact that the cost of Vit e had exploded the answer was on the counter in regards to the fact that there is a world wide shortage of both Vit A and E due to the fact that 80 percent of the types available in Canada? used this same plant.

Normally I would quote from the article but they popped a copyright notice and said I can use the title. one approved pictures and only the first sentence.  Bla! Here is the link to read more.. but in a nut shell, they had a fire, and then to make things even more tricky, their supply contract with a china company for Vit E has not been able to keep up with demand either.

https://www.feednavigator.com/Article/2017/12/04/Feed-company-warns-about-global-shortage-of-vitamins-A-and-E-in-H1-2018

Thankfully I had already stocked up in my home Vet-Critter Kit ahead and my stock is dated good till 2019 so I am ok at the moment. However when it comes back online I will be restocking while I can get it..  When are they going to learn that its going to be a much better idea to have production happening in more then one plant and more then one country..

I made a spice loaf for baking, I opened up a can of pineapple for fruit of the day and we had veggie soup for lunch and pasta with homemade cheese sauce with some freshly quick cooked pea’s

We moved a very expecting ewe  called Tawny who is greatly bagged up into the jug to keep a close eye on her, I am thinking twins for sure on her.. but we will see.

The little wee doelings have names now! Latte (thank you to reader Widdershins for that name) and hubby  name this darker sister Frappuccino (Cuccino for short)

Hubby made himself popcorn for a snack last night and that was our Pantry challenge for Saturday.. The only real challenge was being out and about and not getting anything in town. We normally get a treat in town.. There was a twinge of Boy it would be nice to get a X or Y

Then we both looked at each other and shook our heads and went nope.. we got this.. and by the time we arrived back to the urge had passed.

The birds are loving the mild and bright weather!

Eggs Count -6 (first little green pullet egg layer just started up)

Eggs Total- 31

 

 

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Barn Babies 2018 Twin Kids are our first

Posted on March 10, 2018 by Just another day on the farm

Sorry about the photo quality, it was taken in the darkened barn last night.  Juno gave birth to twin kids late yesterday afternoon. The first born is the darker cream at the back of the photo an the second born is the white tike still a bit damp yet in the front of the photo.

They are almost spitting image of Juno’s first babies Crème and Brule which had a different father, then her second birthing did last year with Jada by Jack.. As these are also out of Jack,  I was expecting a lot more color..

These little girls are yet unnamed, I am sure we will have names for them soon enough to share with you. Got any cute name ideas for them?

Juno bag is very big an full, she does not like to be milked, she is right sure that that milk is for her babies, thank you very much. I will be milking her today to put up some of that liquid gold to freeze just in case its needed in the rest of the birthing season.

This will be Jada’s first possible birthing year, if she took she is still quite slim, so either a single only, or a single combo with being bred a cycle or do behind her momma Juno. We will see..

I am pleased that we have a freshened milking momma on the farm, but with her having twins, I will certainly be milk sharing with plans to keep a close eye on her condition, as the house will be acting as a third kid.

The first three days, I will just do the one milking to put up some and provided the babies and mom are doing great, day 4 will be the first night that the babies will go later at night, just before we go to bed into their wee pen and then I will get up early and milk momma and then the babies will be put back to mom for the day and evening.

This means only one milking for the house each day but it also means that the babies will grow big and  strong till weaning time at which point I will move to full time milking or not depending on what is going on with Jada.

 

Posted in Goat milk, Goats, raw milk | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Pantry Challange 2018 Day 5 Soups

Posted on March 9, 2018 by Just another day on the farm

Wow, Day 5 already! It was a steady morning here on the farm with a trip to town this afternoon for a few things. I needed to get another gallon of paint, do a bit of banking for my mom and I washed and cleanup the truck a bit.  That road salt here in Ontario really eats the metal on vehicles I tell ya. Stopped at the church basement to donate six pair of now to big jeans that are still quite new and in good shape. I hope they will find a good new home to them.

I had a sandwich for breakfast using up older bread and the last two slices of a meat and worked right though lunch to be honest. I am going to be making Soup for supper, ham and veggie with a bit of pasta in there.

I have a leftover ham bone that has had most of the meat taken off it and its been kept nice and cold but it’s also getting older, and so it needs a good boil and to make it stretch out soup is always a good choice. Plus it will give me soup in the fridge to do a quick re-heat on the weekend if needed.

There is only one piece of cake left and nothing else goodie wise in the house, hubby made popcorn last night, that is one thing I keep a lot of in my Dry Pantry Storage for a snack, its popcorn.

I will need to do some baking later this afternoon and or both today and tomorrow to get things back into the house. I need to pull meat and do some ahead cooking that way as well.

If you have not had a chance, the comment section on yesterday’s post is really great, just filled with idea’s and things I didn’t talk about on my barley post, I loved that someone talked about the fact that you can get flaked/rolled Barley for different kitchen uses and someone else reminded me that you can roast it as mock coffee drink.

This is a Ham and White Bean Soup I made and shared on the blog in Oct of 2015, its pretty close to what I plan to make for our supper tonight. I am cheating tonight and using pre-canned beans.

Here is the recipe from 2015

I took 2 cups of navy beans, covered them, brought to a boil for two min, turned it off and let sit for an hour, drained and ready to be put into the soup pot.

In the soup pot, I put the meaty ham bone, 2 large diced onions (peeled) and 2 cloves of garlic, peeled, cover bone well with water or white stock, added salt, pepper, bay leaf.
Add the pre-started white navy beans and simmer for four hours at a low heat.. then pull the bone, and de-meat anything that did not come off in the simmer.

Then add, peeled, diced 2 large carrot, and 3 large potatoes, 2 heaping tbsp. of tomato paste, 2 tbsp. HP sauce or homemade version of it, 1 tsp of wostersauce, add any leftover ham diced to the soup.. check your spices, add salt, or pepper as needed.. Cook till veggies are done.. good hot, and even better reheated!

Farm Impute Day4 -6 eggs

Total of eggs- 25

 

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Pantry Challange 2018 Day 4 Barley

Posted on March 9, 2018 by Just another day on the farm

Sorry about getting this out later today but its been a very busy day on the farm with lots getting done. I had a request for more information about Barley in my comments.  I am going to share a lovely dish to be made with Barley in this post but I will be sharing recipes using Barley though out the challenge. I like using it in soups and stews. One of the nice things about Barley is that it will naturally thicken a soup or stew in a light and silky way.

One of my most favorite ways to eat is a treat is instead of making rice pudding, I make a Awesome Creamy Barley Pudding. I sometimes have it plain, sometime I add dried fruit to change the flavour of it. Its very filling and can be eaten as a quick breakfast in summer when a cold breakfast can be quite nice. I adore making this with Whole Fresh Sheeps milk.

Recipe-Creamy Barley Pudding

This is best to make the day after you cook up a nice big pot of barley and have leftovers to use up, but if not, cook up a cup of Barley in six to eight cups of water for 30 to 45 min till its cooked though, it will still be chewy, you can save the water for use in soups/stews.
2 cups of whole milk-I have made it with Cow/Goat or Sheeps Milk, I have also make it with canned milk.

2 tbsp of Brown Sugar or Honey or Maple Syrup (I find I need an extra tbsp for the maple)
1/2 cup of dried Cranberries or any other dried fruit, (I really like black currents)

a pinch of salt, I like to put a little homegrown Lemon Mint in a tea ball and soak it in the warm simmering milk/barley for about five min, This is a way to replace the typical lemon or orange zest, as these don’t grow locally.

So take above and gently simmer for ten min, then take an extra half cup of milk, blend it with one large duck egg or a large chicken egg or two med eggs, take pot off heat.. then slowly pour in while stirring to create a creamy texture, cook another one or two min (if needed) till the pudding thick’ns up, I find that the heat from the steel pots I cook in will do the job. Makes four big servings or six dessert servings.

This can be served warm as a filling breakfast meal or it can be served chilled as a dessert.
Lets Talk about Barley for a bit shall we.. most folks talk about it as nutty, but I have always found Barley to be a mild flour when used in baking. It’s very low in gluten, but when cooked Barley’s soluble fiber becomes Viscous (just like chia seeds do), this viscosity is translated in our mouth to being a buttery or fat feeling, which makes this flour a great addition to most baked goods.

Barley is currently the world’s 4th largest grain crop but its one of the oldest cultivated crops, they say that it came along at the same time as wheat around 10,000 years ago. Canada is the 3rd biggest producer of Barley behind Russia and the Ukraine.

The Babylonians used Barley as their main currency, In Europe, Barley became the chief grain used for bread, at least until the 16th century, However since Barley has almost no gluten, it was made into trenchers, which were in fact edible plates to which the rest of the meal was placed on top.

Barley water (the water in which barley was boiled in) can be used to calm upset tummies, just sip it and if you have the ability mix it half and half with a bone broth for a true healing drink.

Health notes, Barley is high in protein, a cup has as much as a glass of milk, its low in fat and high in antioxidants and fiber, including soluble fiber which is proven to lower cholesterol. Barley is digested quite slowly and has a very low glycemic index, it has nearly twice the amount of fiber as the same serving of cooked brown rice.

Do you use Barley in your meals, if so, how do you use it, soups? Stews? Baking? Side Dish? Porridge? Please share your favorite recipe with us..

Day 3 Farm impute Eggs- Five

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Chocolate Cake with a Marmalade Glaze Icing Recipe

Posted on March 7, 2018 by Just another day on the farm

Sweet Orange Marmalade Glazed Chocolate Cake

One Bowl Chocolate Cake Recipe (from my mom’s Red Cookbook)

  • One cup Butter
  • Two Cups of sugar
  • 2 Large Eggs or 3 Med Eggs
  • 1 cup of milk
  • Mix all the wet together in a large Bowl
  • Add 3 cups of flour
  • 1 cup of Coco Powder
  • 1 tsp Salt
  • 2 Tbsp Baking Powder
  • Mix the dry into the wet, it will be a thick batter
  • While doing the above, heat up water to just under boiling, once you are the thick batter stage, add one and half cups of very hot  but not rapid boiling water and mix it in really fast. It will turn a lighter color as it mixes and will become a more normal cake batter in texture.

    Into a greased 9 by 13 pan, bake at 350 till wooden toothpick come out clean. Cracks are normal on the top. It has a fine crumb to it

Marmalade Glaze Icing

Mix 1 cup of Orange Marmalade with half a cup of orange consecrate and half a cup of sugar, mix together, it will create a thin but very tasty glaze that will put on the cake while its still hot.  Take cake out of oven, allow to cool a min or two.. take a wooden stick or large metal fork and gently poke holes about half way down into the cake over it, then pour and smooth the glaze over the still hot cake, part will melt down the holes and some will stay on top and become more solid as it gets cool.

This Cake will be a great one for both snacking and to be taken as work box cake for hubby for work days but beware that sticky top if you want to wrap it up.

 

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Pantry Challange 2018- Day 3 1/3rd Rule

Posted on March 7, 2018 by Just another day on the farm

Day 3 has arrived with light snow, below 0 temps an so far its s pretty grey day, so after taking the dogs for a yard walk. I am sitting with a nice big old pot of red rose tea that I threw a few dried red clover buds into. Loving my flowering plant on the table it beings such cheer to my writing spot.

Day 1 was all about taking stock of what I had in regards to fresh food in the fridge or fruit bowl and what was coming in from the farm. Day 2 was all about starting more food if possible. Day 3 is all about STRETCHING that fresh food or preserving it.

in my mom’s little space on the door that she puts her goodies , I found two smaller rolls of garlic sausage, one got frozen and one got used for supper last night, and tucked behind them was a wrapped up half used the greens main cut off fresh green onions, the outside of each had some slime-rotting leaves. That was easy enough to remove, far more important is the fact that these greens had strong active perfect looking roots.. So they got potted up and placed in a warm sunny window to start growing me more green tops.

One of the best things I can say in regards to using up the fresh food is to look at it carefully, its it going bad, does it have staying power or will it go bad quickly.. if its turning or will go fast its important to preserve it..

Don’t keep it fresh, I know that seems odd to some because they are going to be thinking, keep the fresh as long as possible but in the long run, looking and being honest.. what can you preserve for future use

Herbs that will go fast, chop and preserve in salt or put it in the ice tube tray cover with your favorite oil, freeze, pop out and bag them up.

Tomato’s dice them up, and freeze them or make a fast salsa so they will hold longer in the fridge.

Cucumbers, peppers and such.. get them in the pickle, or ferment them… In our case I found a cucumber in mom’s area and while one end was gone soft, I did the rest into a quick salad.

If it will stay well in storage then for sure keep it raw and fresh..

So back to the 1/3rd idea, this was our supper last night, a little carb heavy I know but hubby loves his corn 🙂 It meet what I am looking for in  the beginning of this challenge, 1/3rd fresh being used and 1/3rd coming from my dry pantry or freezers and 1/3rd coming from my canning pantry.

If there is one thing I learned living in Iqaluit Nunavut Canada in a fly in and fly out, you only get one sealift food order per year when we lived there in the early 2000 back when it just first became the capital and we were still on the old food mail system. I could order fresh once a month from a store in Quebec to be flown up at goodly cost otherwise, everything came in one sea can sealift shipment that you were not even sure when it would arrive depending on sea ice..

Its that you always need to look at your pantry in balance.. If you eat all the peaches in the first month, there will be no more canned peaches for the next 11 months.. this has really stuck with me (after a number of failings when I would run out of things in second half of the year due to not planning carefully enough in the first six months)

Plan most of your main meals to be balanced when possible on the 1/3rd plan, once we truly lose all fresh, I am hoping that the farm will provide the 1/3rd.. we will see, otherwise I will move to 1/3rd dry pantry, 1/3rd freezer and 1/3rd canning pantry.

Day 2 Farm impute – 6 eggs

Egg total 14 eggs

 

 

 

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Pantry Challange 2018-Day Two -Starting seeds and bulbs

Posted on March 6, 2018 by Just another day on the farm

Well Day 2 is dawning cold in the house, and I am already missing my mom’s fancy coffee machine that I have unplugged. I am going back to making a big old pot of tea that can be drank hot or cold and I will be making up a batch of tea concentrate for DH and the house use.  It will be a good thing for me to get off the coffee for a awhile.

I started regular sprouts four trays yesterday on Day one and today I Will start a two trays of mung beans that I started soaking yesterday and one tray of pea’s that once I see them swell and get tails, will be transferred to a tray for Green Pea greens for a future supper.

If you need to eat out of your pantry, that should also include your seed pantry.. the seeds comes on super cheap in some of the most basic things, three packages for a 1 or even at times you can get them for 25 cents per package. If you can not buy things at the store and you can not harvest outside.. Sprouts and Microgreens are wonderful..  Now if you don’t have a set up that you can have trays and soil (and you should not be out buying soil) so then just go with sprouts..  While I will admit that I do find growth effected to the  better by using the trays, I started out sprouting  with a old empty clean jar that I put sprouts in and I didn’t even have cheese cloth, I used a clean piece of cotton with a old rubber band to hold it in place.. Soak, then drain and refresh them at min 2x a day, better if you can do three and once they start sprouting, I would lean the jar on its side to let them have even more growing room.

I also started a few pot of Green onions bulbs on Day 1 and will get a few more pots planted up over the next few days so that we will have fresh green tops at the very least if not small onions towards the end of the month. I am not sure what else I will start over the next week. I will cut the bottom of the celery off and pot it up as well for fresh Celery Greens to add as a burst of flavor and greens.

I cut up and cooked the wilting celery and frozen it flat in a package so I can break out smaller portions and use it up over the month, I also took the three banana’s and froze them, I will use them up in a baking item that will much further then just eating them would.

Today has been a simple meal day for me, I have had eggs with toast and some nuts and dried fruit for a snack as well as a couple cuppa of regular tea or Chia tea. Hubby took eggs for breakfast and leftover pasta dish for his main lunch with a blueberry cake for his snack.

So today’s Question for you.. if you needed to? Do you have mung bean in your pantry that can be sprouted? Do you have extra greens, radish seeds or mustard seeds or so many others that can be sprouted in jars or trays? in your seed box?

What about extra’s in the house, could you repot up the green onion ends, or the celery ends, they will not regrow whole new plants but they will put new growth out in amounts that you can use it again in a cut and come method to give a bit of freshness to a dish?

Odds and Ends of the day: Started saving egg shells for the garden, instead of putting them in the pigs bucket.

From the farm: Day 1- Eggs (all chicken) 8

Its been a truly spring day, with cold winds, the odd skiff of snow coming down while I was working outside, its cold enough that the ground is frozen. No new babies in the barns yet but the horse’s are frisky and enjoying their spirited play time.

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So what do we have to start this challange with?

Posted on March 5, 2018 by Just another day on the farm

You are going to get a sneak peak into my kitchen today and in the weeks to come.. I will take a picture of the fridge, and or fruit bowl if anything is in it each Monday.. I expect that its going to look much different by the end of this challenge.

I normally do not have this much different things in my fridge (a number of things are my mom’s but we are certainly going to eat them up) and I am in fact as I looked lacking some of the things I normally do have(like where is my cabbage?). Besides the fridge, I have four squash left, about 25 pounds of storage potato’s and about 7 pounds of smaller sweet potato’s

I knew this challenge was coming and I chose to not start any sprouts till today, letting the ones in the fridge get used up before starting new ones for the challenge.

Reason’s to consider doing your own pantry challenge be it for a weekend, a week or better yet a min of a month..  What if you lost your job? and you needed to live out of your pantry for a month, could you do it? What if you had a baby and you are heading back to work and you have a month between EI and your first paycheck?  What if life decides that you need a kick and a thousand dollar repair bill on your car.. (yes, ideally you have savings and can just pay the bill but lets be real here for a min, sometimes things come along that make us tighten the belt) being able to learn how to make and then live out of your pantry for a week or two or for a full month is a very good thing.

Second reason to consider doing your own pantry Challenge.. find out how to make meals out of those items that have been just sitting there. that water chestnut can that you should use up.. but as long as you are bringing in fresh, you are never going to use it.. This type of challenge will make you think out of the box on those “hey this was on sale” but you never eat it items.

Or Flip the coin

Third Reason to consider doing your own pantry Challenge.. learn to create super frugal meals..  When you get lower on things, but you are still having a hard working day, you need to make sure you are still eating well.. The Pantry Challenge makes you do a bit more work in creating meals with the basic’s (because that is the first and formost thing) your pantry should have is basic’s.

I truly believe that at some point in everyone’s life they are going to have some thing or some reason to need to eat from their pantry. Creating a working Pantry is good thing.. creating a working Homestead Pantry is another thing indeed..  Its got a lot more tied to the season’s and the farm life.. sometimes there is gluts and other times famine.. something that we just do not think about in our “just stop by the store” and pick up?

Anyone going to consider joining me in a few simple things as we go along..

So here is Day 1 Question for you?  How much Rice or Grains that are cooked like Rice do you have in your pantry?  If you needed to eat out of your Rice or Cooking Grains Store how long would it last you? Would you be able to feed your current size family for the next six weeks? or would it be longer?

I have enough rice and multi cooking grains but strangely at least upstairs, I appear to be much lower in barley then I should be??  I am not happy about this, as Barley is my go to! I am hoping that I am going to find that I have a good amount put away, otherwise, I have just found my first weak spot in my pantry!

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Pantry Challange 2018- Day 1 Eggs

Posted on March 5, 2018 by Just another day on the farm

Good Morning Folks

Today lets talk about what I do have lots of in the fridge and due to the farm, something that I do have more coming in.. Eggs!

Currently I have both hen and duck eggs coming into the house and there are more to start laying, I have older hens that are start back up after a winters rest, I have young pullets just starting their first lay.

On the Water fowl front, I have older duck hens and four young hens that were raised though the winter, that will start their first laying season this year and I have three year old mated geese that will be laying, plus a lovely and lonely turkey hen as she lost her tom and I have not gotten her another one.

I am planning on letting her lay, sit and then buy day old turkey pullets to let her raise them up and picking a new tom out of the babies to keep back.

Farm Fresh Eggs flavour are outstanding, I throw a bit of hay into each birds pen daily, not only does it give them something to do but eating that bit of green each day helps keep my birds healthy and gives me wonderful yolk color even now in winter.

One large (53g) egg contains 6g of protein and only 70 calories. Canada’s Food Guide considers 2 eggs one serving from the Meat and Alternatives food group.

Eggs have long been recognized as a source of high-quality protein. The World Health Organization (WHO) and other public health authorities actually use eggs as their reference standard for evaluating the protein quality in all other foods.

Eggs provide a complete range of amino acids, including branched chain amino acids (leucine, isoleucine, valine), sulfur-containing amino acids (methionine, cysteine), lysine, tryptophan, and all other essential amino acids.

All B vitamins are found in eggs, including vitamins B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B12, choline, biotin, and folic acid. The mineral content of eggs also deserves special mention here–not because eggs are a rich source of most minerals but because they are a rich source of certain minerals that can sometimes be difficult to obtain from other foods.

Eggs are a very good source of both selenium and iodine. While many fish, shellfish, and mushrooms can be rich sources of selenium at this time of the year, its harder to come by local fish or mushrooms

I remember times in my 20’s where having a dozen eggs in the fridge meant I had protein to get me to payday when combined with cabbage, onions and of course rice. I still feel the same way when I have eggs in the house, that I have a amazing protein source.

As I do not have anyone in milk yet and I have limited fresh milk in the fridge,  I will certainly not be making cheese anytime soon.. I have some cheese in the fridge but not a lot.

Time to start a nice big batch of Salt Cured Egg Yolks to make a mock cheese for pasta use during this pantry challenge.

Given how important eggs can be and their endless uses, I think I will do at least one egg based recipe per week of the Pantry Challenge in some form or way.

 

 

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Machine’s on the farm

Posted on March 4, 2018 by Just another day on the farm

Hubby and I have always shoveled everything by hand on the farm, and only very rarely have we hired machines to do the work that is very hard to do.. example when we had the loads of gravel delivered, we hand moved the walk way loads but hired Farmer R to come and spread the drive way.. what he could do in under a hour would have taken us way, way to long.

As you know we have had a lot of snow this winter, including having it drift badly enough that five times we have had help come to plow us out and dozen and dozen of hours spent shoveling the lane way.

We certainly will continue to shovel a lot of things by hand but Dear Hubby Got this very much on sale (as the season is ending) new Snow Blower as a gift from my mom, he also got a little party, and he might have asked his wife for a set of Throwing Ax’s that did indeed appear on his birthday.

I am looking forward to learning how to do proper maintenance of it and ideally being able to do a lot more of the snow removal with it, and I will tell the truth, I am greatly looking forward to being able to do a single up and down path from the house yard to the barn with this. However I know that from shoveling the pathway that many a time in winter we go from a open path to knee or even mid hip drifts that cover the path totally in certain spots.  The drift patterns will not change so we will see how the machine handles them.

So while we still use the scythe for a lot of our cutting, we now have a lawn mower, while we still have lots of shovels, we know have a snow blower, while I do have my fire pit and cooking tray, we now have a BBQ..  Crazy I know! LOL

We will see if this proves to be a good thing or not.

 

Posted in At the kitchen table | 14 Comments