What do people do all day?

I don't know what we would do without books...



This was NOT staged, they are enjoying the book together!

Homemade vs Convenience

It's been a few weeks of being brave and making much of our food "from scratch" The advent of the raw milk has now put fresh cream at our disposal. Not wanting to be wasteful, we have had to put that cream to good use. Tortillas have been on my list for awhile to attempt and we are in process our second batch of those.

Now we have home made ice cream and packages of beans (black and pinto) in the freezer, fresh butter and buttermilk in the frig with the tortilla balls waiting to be cooked. I'm really evaluating how much "from scratch" should/can I do and when do I buy some of these foods from the grocery store already made, like refried beans. All of the things that we have made from scratch have been quite yummy and nothing is particularly hard either but there's a huge time element that is creeping up on me. I don't feel like I have known where the last three weeks have gone. We've made butter and home made ice cream. We've made tortillas. We've made multiple different kinds of beans from dried beans. So, we've spent a lot of time in the kitchen, that's for sure! But how many times did I tell my family, "Not yet, let me finish [fill in the blank]"

Hopefully tomorrow I'll get the rest of the 40 tortillas made and some in the freezer for later. Then I really need to re-think our menus and what I am and am not willing to purchase from the store and where my kitchen time is best spent. I really have loved making all of these things, but I'm at the point of evaluation...is it really worth the time savings, more healthy choices? If I am going to do this from scratch thing which I really believe is much healthier for us, I do need to come up with simpler menus that can reuse a lot of the time consuming elements. I haven't given up or don't plan to give up making our bread...and feel like I need to start getting good a buns now that grilling season is here. Oh, that's just more time! My next post may be more of my notes and thoughts around some specific foods...be forewarned!

Spring time find

You know the excitement of finding money in a pocket of a coat the first time you wear it for a season? Well, we had a great spring find at our house yesterday that felt kind of like that. I was clearing off the excess compost from the garden to plant some peas and found our orange peeler! Those peelers that you get from Tupperware that score the oranges so they are easier to peel - one of those. There it was sitting in the mulch. It must have been mulched with the peelings sometime over the winter. We can now peel oranges easier again, yippee.

Thinking of compost, God really did create an amazing planet for us. We have been putting our kitchen scraps in the garden all winter. And as I dug through all of the compost on the garden to plant, there really was very little that was identifiable except egg shells. All of the carrot and potato peelings and apple cores were completely unrecognizable and turning themselves back into quality soil for growing more stuff. Really a very cool process. I know it makes "trash" at our house more complicated (trash can, recycle or compost bucket), but composting a great way to reduce the junk that goes to the landfill and we don't have to buy more stuff called fertilizer.

Raw Milk and farm fresh eggs

Have I just moved to the country or am I'm being influenced by all of the chemical additives propaganda?

We are on our first gallon of raw milk this week and about our 4th dozen of brown eggs straight from the farm! Most of our friends around us are doing the raw milk thing, so I thought that we would give it a shot. The milk came in a glass gallon jar with a large layer of cream at the top. I skimmed off the cream and hope to make some ice cream tonight with that or some butter.

It took Todd and me a day to actually try it. We weren't really quite sure what to expect. Drinking it by itself or putting it in something, I really can't tell that much difference. Both of my boys have asked for milk from the grocery store this morning! I think that's just familiarity thing versus not liking the taste. We are used to skim milk at our house and they don't really care for 2% or whole milk when we go somewhere. So when they heard cream, they weren't too keen on it. After they tried it, I think they are good.

So, here's my thought. I'm still not all quite sure about disease kind of stuff in raw milk. I'm also getting less comfortable with all of the "things" that we do to milk that we buy at the store. I know where this milk is coming from. I know lots of people who have been drinking their milk for a long time. I have been contemplating going organic on the milk thing anyway but at twice the price, I wasn't jumping at it. So, here's my jump in for change - the raw milk is a slightly higher price than grocery store milk for a gallon which will end up being less than a gallon of milk and a couple of cups of cream but still not twice the price. The downside is that I have to drive somewhere else to get it which is not the grocery store.

The eggs are a no-brainer...they are a great price and they taste good. Good thing that they are at the same place as the milk so it's only one more stop. (They have free duck eggs right now - we'll see how adventurous I'll get. Boy this is a long way from my previous professional world...)

6 minutes faster

Sunday was my second 1/2 marathon race in 8 months at GO! St. Louis. My cousin and I did this together again along with a friend of hers. We finished 6 minutes faster than we did in Chicago (2:04:54)! It was a perfectly beautiful day for the race and we had a great cheering section!

Not sure what my next adventure will be...but I'm ready to hit the road again in the morning. I'd like to get to under 2 hours sometime soon I think.

Venison anyone?

I'm sure that I posted in the fall that someone "gave us a deer". To be quite honest, my family hasn't been terribly impressed with the meat so far and the ways that we have attempted to fix it. But we have kept trying every once in awhile.

For some reason in the last couple of weeks I have been itching to eat out of the freezer/pantry and not buy more groceries until we eat what we have. (Probably Dana's inspiration from her Battle Dish Month.) Well, that meant a whole turkey last week that was a gift from a neighbor, complete with all of the Thanksgiving trimmings, sans the pumpkin pie. This week I tackled the two hind legs of the deer that were occupying a shelf in the freezer (and ways to use the left over turkey).

The first step in tackling these hunks of flesh was thawing them - where do they fit and not spill their juice everywhere? Then my husband had to get the power tools out and saw off the end of the leg bone so this hunk would fit into the oven. Me, the non meat eater, really had no trouble handling the carcass and preparing it to be cooked. I guess, it is a challenge to see if I could make something that my family would really eat and realize that I hadn't spent any of the grocery budget either.

To figure out what to do next, I pulled out the recipe book and found a marinade that required 24-48 hours. I had two thawed hunks of flesh and I really didn't want to wait that long so one of them got thrown in the oven and basted with the marinade. The other did soak in a mixture of red wine, vinegar, vegetables and spices for about two days and I put it in the oven today.

My husband was kind and cut up the thing today and we now have a lot of cooked venison in the freezer. (I did the majority of the carving with the first leg.) We cook and eat very little beef at our house - I haven't eaten it in almost 20 years and my husband doesn't like the smell of ground beef cooking. So, I am somewhat perplexed as to what to do with all of this roast beast that we have. I continue to be up for the challenge though.

Earlier this week I made a bean soup (a mix that was a gift at Christmas - more pantry cleaning) and put some meat in part of it. First son did his usual budding vegetarian eating and ate around the meat. Second son did eat it well in the soup, but he really liked the emu too! There's a crock of soup in the freezer for another meal at some point (though there isn't any non-meat soup left for me) when I'm having another clean out the freezer type of week. I'm sure that I will be bringing a lot of meat dishes to our potluck at church and my cooking ability will be broadened!

We have agreed if there is ever a next offer of a deer, it will very politely be turned down. Until then, we'll be thankful for the food and the experience. We still have some of the backstrap that hasn't been cooked yet, maybe I'll try and figure out how to make jerky...(for those who really like the meat, I know that this seems like a big waste but at least we are using it and not letting it go to waste).