Cookie Cheer Up!

Well, we have a snow blower that works but unfortunately I don't have a snow blow operator!

Yesterday after plowing the drive and my wonderful path to the barn, Farmer John started to complain about his wrist hurting. He was in so much pain before work this morning I told him to go get it checked out.

Diagnosis... Tendonitis! Yah... so no nice plowed path to the barn.  We aren't quite ready to give that responsibility to our son with anything more than a shovel at this point in time.

Had another surprise diagnosis today... strep throat for my nine year old!  Keep the good times coming!

So what can you do when it is cold, snowy and you have "patients" to keep happy?  Make Christmas cookies!

Who doesn't feel better after a frosted Christmas sugar cookie? 

Usually we have a traditional recipe we follow but I found a new recipe that includes sour cream in it and it seemed like a good day to give it a try.

We didn't mess with Christmas shapes today since it was just a "test" run.  We stuck with easy-peasy circles.  Plain white frosting and simple sprinkles.

The verdict... Yum! I think this may be my new traditional recipe!  I will definitely need to make lots so that my son has fuel to snow shovel my path to the barn.

You can find the recipe for  Cut-Out Sour Cream Cookies and frosting here!

They certainly boosted spirits at Creek Cottage Homestead.  Happy baking, frosting and eating!!

Alice Waters Helps Me Sneak Veges!

 Chef Alice Waters is brilliant when it comes to vege recipes.  I've been turning to her book The Art of Simple Food for ideas on what to do with my garden bounty.

Tonight we are using fresh tomatoes and making her Simple Tomato Sauce: 2 lbs ripe tomatoes, garlic, olive oil and seasonings.  And I'm going to sneak in some roasted patty pan squash into it too! (Of course I will also put in some ground beef so that my meat loving son will be appeased.)  Served over pasta it will be simple and yummy.

She also has a recipe for raw tomato sauce.  Fresh tomatoes, basil and olive oil!

 

Last night I used some of my chard for her Chard Frittata.  Chard, olive oil, onion, garlic, seasonings and eggs (from our chickens) served on garlic toast. Yummy!  What I love about her recipes is that they really are simple yet cheffy and taste delicious!

If you are not the best "scratch" cook (like me) I recommend this cook book highly!

Eat This... NOT That!

Eat This!

 

Our tomatoes are finally coming ripe fast enough to warrant a bit of canning tomorrow.  I have already pulled out my trusted Ball Blue Book and will be canning a few quarts of tomato sauce.

 I no longer buy pre-made pasta sauces but in the past I have depended on plain tomato sauce for my sauce base.  What is so bad about that?  It's organic right?  Yep, however the acidic nature of tomatoes causes the lining of the can to leak BPA into the food.  Uncool!

Not That!

My budget is miniscule and I can not afford the premium sauce that comes in glass jars but I am able to make my own! I urge everyone to try canning tomatoes.  They're pretty easy and the taste is awesome! Not to mention kicking one more nasty chemical out of the house.  Hmmm... seems our great-grandparents had it good!

Surprise, Surprise!

 

City Daughter

Today was a day of pleasant surprises for me:

1. Six people to the dentist with not a one cavity! City daughter does need her wisdom teeth pulled though.

2. I was researching the YA market (Young Adult Books) and found out that the Christian publishing industry is really latching on to YA.  Yeah!  I'm not sure if I want to go Christian or Mainstream when I'm done with The Follower but it is good to know I have more options.

3. My tomatoes are really starting to ripen.  I may have enough ripe to start canning!

4. I remembered I had a Costco package of pork chops in the freezer.  Meat for dinner!

5. Farmer John made it home from Detroit meetings in time to eat dinner with us.

6. City daughter baked my favorite cookies for dessert... chocolate chip!

What a really good day!  Simple things make me happy :)

The Starving Week...

We jokingly refer to every other week in our house as starving week.  I get money to purchase food every two weeks so right before pay day pickings are pretty slim.  Tonight I was fretting over what to make that would constitute an entire meal and was pleasantly surprised with the outcome:

Wonderful rolls made from scratch by the city daughter who loves to bake,

Salad with produce from our garden and from the farmer's market topped with...

Shredded cheese, nuts and bacon,

Water or Milk to drink

It always surprises me how something comes together from seemingly nothing.  God is good to us!

Tomorrow it will be a beans and rice meal!

I was laughing with my mom tonight that we are becoming vegetarians by budget!

I still have two chickens to make into coq au vin too.

What something do you make out of nothing?

Losing it Mondays!

200 lbs must go!

Hmmm... I have some fat showing too! I'd like to drop 20.

This is the start of my husband's journey to health.  He just entered a weight loss contest at work and weighed in today at 360 lbs. His ideal weight is in the 160's.  That is 200 lbs. to lose folks.  He has been able to lose weight before successfully, however some injuries happened that made working out too painful and he gained it all back.

With the start of this contest and a new shift beginning at work it is ideal for us to begin working out again. And I do mean us... the entire family.  We do it together from John on down to Taylor. I think we will start with walking.  It shouldn't be too hard on the joints and we'll take it slow and build up.  By the time winter comes round we should be in shape enough to start our work out videos and weight training. (This will be on top of any homestead work like chopping and stacking wood.)

We don't have too much of a change diet wise.  We've already cut out most junk food and eating out and I buy mostly whole foods. (I confess to having artificially colored corn on hand for children who immediately want food when they get up.)  We will need to increase our vege intake and watch portion sizes.  One thing John has to monitor on his own is sampling the Costco samples and not being tempted by the food court at work.  The frozen yogurt isn't too bad but calories add up.

I just want to state right now, we will not stop eating eggs from our free-ranging chickens or grass-fed meat, cream and butter.  These things are healthy for you!  I will not buy low-fat anything or diet anything- it's not natural people.  I will cook from scratch the things we like and take a meat on the side approach.  I will practice and perfect catching wild yeast at home and turning it into healthy bread. I also want to research "cleanses"- not the kind bought through a program or a store but made from scratch at home.

I think our biggest challenge is just getting moving and finding more energy. And of course for me... I keep hoping to catch a joy of cooking.  I love to bake and will make loaf after loaf of bread to perfect it but there is something about cooking that just doesn't do it for me.  But I really do need to transform into a chef.  That is unless some one knows Bobby Flay and he wants to just come live with us. We've got a great spot for him in the basement... as long as we aren't working out.

So join us every Monday and see how and what we are doing to make ourselves healthier.  I'll want to know what you are doing too!

Food From The Ground!

My "city daughter" wonders why we can't just buy our food from a store like normal people.  She did not get the "farmer" gene.  I however did and even though my gardens are messy (er, that means tons of weeds) there is just nothing like going out your back door and digging up dinner.  Here is a picture of the bounty we picked just the other day...

 

Zucchini, cabbage, carrots, jalapeno peppers, banana peppers, tomatoes, parsnips, beans, rutabagas, turnips, horseradish, dill, basil, patty pan squash and chard! Oh, and eggs from the chickens! So much more fun and rewarding to harvest your own rather then traverse the tiles of the grocery store under bad lighting!  I was going to say bad music too but then I remembered that the Musak playing now is from the 80's and were talkin' bout my generation!

Do You Know Your Ice Creams?

I was flipping through the new issue of Mother Earth News and found a wonderful article on Ice Cream and I realized I didn't really know the differences between types of "ice cream".  Luckily Tabitha Alterman has set me straight.

Ice Cream is made with mostly cream.

Ice Milk is made with mostly milk.

Frozen Custard is essentially a frozen pudding made with eggs. (It's my fave!)

Gelato is made with whole milk instead of cream and is slow churned so less air is whipped in.

Semifreddo (I had never heard of this one) is ice cream or gelato combined with whipped cream or meringue. It has a marshmallow like texture and is usually served in slices rather than scoops.  It is an Italian dessert and the name means half (semi) cold (freddo).

Sherbet- milk or cream mixed with sorbet

Sorbet/Sorbetto is made with fresh fruit and water. Sorbetto has less water.  They are whipped to be lighter.

Ice- frozen fruit puree (or vege puree)

Granita- Sorbet with larger ice crystals and not stirred but scraped with a fork

For recipes and ingredient ideas check out the Real Food (Eat In Season) section of August/September's Mother Earth News.

Lock Your Doors & Booby Trap Your Porch!

Is this a familiar site in your neck of the woods?

 

Zuke season has arrived and I made the mistake of planting all the seeds in the packet.  I forgot just how prolific each plant can be.  We are bursting with zucchini.   But the fun thing is there is so much you can do with it: quick breads, muffins, pancakes, cookies, stir fry, battered and fried, pickled and on it goes.  We shall not go hungry where there is zucchini.  My freezer will be stocked high!  My chickens will eat well.  And still there will be surplus...

What will I do with said surplus?  Start a cottage industry of course.  Creek Cottage Homestead (The official name of our farm.) is now offering fresh, homebaked, zucchini bread for $8 a loaf for local area pick up.  If you live in the Grand Rapids area you can place an order via the comment section.  If you don't order you run the risk of heaps of huge zukes being dumped in your car when you aren't looking and dropped on your porch steps. (Warning zukes produce like rabbits.) I know where you live! (Well, not really... some of you.) Don't let this be your fate.

Coming soon muffins and cookies and perhaps even cake.  I might try a gluten-free experiment too.  Anyone ever try quick breads with out wheat flour?

What do you all do with your zucchini?  Anyone willing to share recipes?

Of Turnips and Rutabagas...

This is our first gardening year on our new property.  We moved in last mid-June and decided just to watch and listen to the property before embarking on any gardening ventures. But while we waited, we planned and for Christmas I gifted my husband with a seed collection from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.

 

The collection I bought him was the Large Northern Package (They also have southern packages.) and it contained over 25 types of vegetables/60 varieties.  In other words we got 60 packages of seeds.  Included were some veges that we probably wouldn't have picked on our own like turnips and rutabagas.  But since we know we need to expand our vegetable horizons we planted everything with a vow to try it and use it/preserve it.

 

 

Now it is into summer and the turnips are ready for harvesting and the rutabagas are growing nicely.  But what to do with them?  Of course I've seen them at the grocery store and occasionally at the farm market but I've always skipped over them.  So I consulted my cookbooks and came up with a recipe for butter roasted turnips.  Surprise of surprise they weren't bad.  Now, they will never be a common sight on my dinner table but seasonally they will make a nice change.  Next time I'm going to try roasting them with butter and brown sugar so they carmelize a bit. I also might mash them. 

 

What I'm really excited to do is use the turnips and rutabagas in soups!  Not in the summer, though.  I try to stay away from hot soups during the summer. They are, however, a staple on our table the other three seasons. 

 

There are three ways to preserve the veges.  I can can them but I would need a pressure canner and I do not as of yet have one.  I could blanch and freeze them or I can blanch and dehydrate them.  I'm going for dehydrating.  After prepping the veges (wash, remove tops, peel) I will cut them up into slices, steam blanch for 5 minutes and then dry them in our dehydrator.

 

 

 

As you can see our dehydrator is a dinosaur but it still works just fine and soon I will have preserved turnips and rutabagas to throw into soups when ever I want.  I think they will be a perfect addition to my hearty homemade soups!

 

How do you use your turnips and other root veges?  Anyone willing to share recipes?

 

Removing Garden Carpet...

You know that Ben Franklin saying... "A stitch in time saves nine"?  Yep... truth!  We put off weeding in favor of other farm chores, mainly keeping up with the strawberries and now we will pay dearly.  We have hours of weeding ahead of us.  Almost all of our garden beds are entirely carpeted.  Pretty but not practical.  Between rain, hot and humid weather, mosquitoes and other commitments we just haven't gotten out there to do it.  Now we have no choice.  Our veges are still healthy and growing but I don't want to lose harvest because I didn't weed.

We have chosen to go organic and not use any chemical weed control.  I don't even want chemical fertilizer on my lawn.  We have tried mulching: wood chips, leaves, straw, newspaper... we still have weeds.  There just isn't anyway around it.

I actually find weeding relaxing but my children are not fans and I don't like "whine" in my garden.  That is what makes weeding unbearable for me.  I think today, since it is hot and humid, we will use the 1/2 hour on, 1/2 off method.  I also think my 1/2 hour off will be spent in the kiddie pool or fighting the mosquitoes back in the woods and setting a lawn chair in the creek.  I admit to having elements of redneckness in me.

Despite the weeds we have peas galore, tomatoes forming, squash and beans blooming and basil out of control and tons of greens!  I'm thinking I need to watch Craigslist for a cheap used electric stove to put outside for an outdoor canning kitchen so I can put up the bounty without heating the house up. (We are being frugal and trying to avoid using air conditioning.)

Well, I guess I'd better feed the tribe lunch and head out to "roll up" the "carpet".  I wish it were going to be that easy.

Have a great day!

 Carpeted root crops!

 

 Beans

 

 Zukes

 

Tomatoes 

 

Basil 

 

Peas 

 

Endive, Chard, Kale and some Dill

Bubba Gump's Strawberry Co.

Yep, we're in the middle of strawberry season and we are feelin' like Forest Gump.  We've had fresh strawberries, strawberry shortcake, Oat-Fashioned Strawberry Dessert, strawberry ice cream and with today's pick I think the family is finally ready to let me make jam.  So tomorrow I'm jammin'! I believe I have enough for a batch of strawberry-rhubarb jam and just strawberry.  I might even try some syrup making.  I've never made a fruit syrup before. Hmmm....

Anywhoo... I would have never guessed we'd get so many strawberries from our two small patches.  We still have them coming.  We are picking only the ripest and then we let the patches sit for a day and then pick some more the next.  We may not have to u-pick many or at all this year.  (For berries to freeze for smoothies.)

The smallest patch is around two x four feet and is filled with Ever-bearing.  They fruited all through the summer last year.  The larger patch  is around three x fifteen feet and I believe these are June-bearing.  When we moved in last year they were already done.  But both patches are really turning out the berries.  I pull one of the kids out to pick with me because my back gets too sore to do it all alone purely because of the mass of berries and the time it takes to get them all picked.  (I have a new appreciation for migrant workers who do that day after day for very little $$.)

Even the chickens are getting a little jaded about the fruit.  They are getting all the too ripe or bird eaten, or wormy or any other reason that the berries are rejected berries. Tonight we went to put them in for the night there were still berries on the ground that they hadn't finished off.

I'm not complaining though, I have waited with anticipation for these berries and I will enjoy the "fruits" of my labor later this year when the season is done and I have put up berries sitting in my freezer and larder. I'm really trying to get out of the habit of buying things out of season so I know this strawberry window is short.  The it's on to cherries, raspberries, blueberries, peaches, apples and tomatoes.  There is also a farm about an hour north of me that does gooseberries, currants and a few other less known fruits.  I may be stopping by pick some of those goodies up.  I can't wait till I have my own.

What are you doing with strawberries and what are you planning on putting up?

Working With What God Gives Me

Just a quick morning post.  Gonna work with the bounty that the Lord has given me today.  I'll be picking strawberries from our two patches and hopefully will secure enough for a batch of strawberry jam or strawberry rhubarb jam.  I also will be infusing some plantain oil today for use in a healing salve in a couple of weeks as well as exploring what else is growing "wild" that I can harvest and use.  (My poor delusional husband calls these things weeds.) I love foraging on my property.  God has so richly blessed us with all we need if we just open our eyes to see it!

What has God given you?

New Project? Me A Cookbook Author?

I just found out that one of my sister-in law's families has a family cookbook.  My niece just turned 19 and was gifted one.  What!?  How come my family doesn't have a family cookbook?  Oh... cause I'm the only girl and I haven't put one together yet.  Sigh.  New project!  But it will be a fun one and a good one to pass down to my kids and my brother's kids.

I'm thinking of not only putting in recipes but stories and pictures too. Hmmm... who knew my first "published" work would be a cook book.  I wish I would have realized to do this when my grandmother's were alive.  I hope my mom is able to share some of their recipes.  I remember Norwegian things from my mom's mom and wonderful potato pancakes from my dad's mom (German ancestry).  Both sets of my Grandparent's parents immigrated to the USA so I hope there are some recipes that go back to their "motherlands".

I guess while I'm at it I should get with my mother-in-law and my husband's sister and work on a Lewis family cookbook too.  Ohhh for more time in the day.

Have any of you put out a family cookbook?  What did you include and who did you "publish" it through? How much did it cost?

 

I imagine that a Schuh family cookbook would look similar to this.

Flowers and salads!

Last night's dandelion and lilac salad was a success!  I will not be facing church discipline or excommunication. I don't know that people will be rushing to recreate it any time soon but everyone tried it and found it surprisingly good.  Everyone but Farmer John.  Turns out that he doesn't like the smell of lilacs (You think I would know this after 20 years.) and "they taste just like they smell."  After he was finished eating there was a little pile of lilac petals on the side of his plate.  Seems the dandelions were fine for him though.  Next time I'll sneak dandelion greens into it too.  I only did the flower heads last night.

Regular vege salad with the addition of edible flowers: Lilacs and Dandelions.

I also used my available flowers in a more traditional sense.

 Dandelions flower heads floating in a shallow bowl of water.

Lilacs as the centerpiece of the table.

The other in season item I used for the evening was rhubarb from my garden in a yummy rhubarb crumble topped with homemade vanilla custard!

My rhubarb earlier this spring.

 

It is so much fun to "use what you've got" and be creative rather then running to the store and buying something.

The only downer to the night was the over abundance of mosquitoes that chased us off the deck and indoors for the evening.  Bat houses, homemade natural mosquito sprays and itch remedies will be fodder for another blog post.

Spring on the Homestead: Lilacs and Dandelion Trails

We first laid eyes on our homestead almost a year ago.  When I saw it, it was evident that the property was for me.  One of my big wants on my "list" was lilacs.  I wanted my home to have some thriving lilacs on it- the more, the better- and this property had one whole, long fence line of the shrubs.

 

They were beautiful and smelled heavenly.  Unfortunately for me we didn't close on the house until mid-June and the lilacs had finished.

But it is spring once more and those precious lilacs are mine- ALL mine! Not only do I intend on some very pretty bouquets in the house but since lilac flowers are edible I will adding the blossoms to salads and topping desserts with them.  I might try sugaring them... wouldn't they look pretty on a cake or pie?  I've also heard that one can make lilac wine.  I'm not a drinker but it might be fun to learn how to make flower wines. Hmmm... lilac tea too.

Its a good thing I'm hosting a ladies bible study tomorrow night.  I think I shall be creative with my lilacs and dandelions and see how my foraged treats go over.  It will either be a big hit or I'll end up in church discipline. LOL!

 

 My coveted fence line!

 A white lilac growing in one of the flower beds.  I wish I could bottle up the aroma!

Another lilac type of shrub in another flower bed.  This one however lacks any aroma.

A beautiful bonus: A path of dandelions leading back into our forested area.  I am a lover of the herb (dandelions are not weeds) and couldn't believe this beautiful path was on my property.  God is so good to bless us with this land!

Cooking From Scratch!

When I was 17 I wanted to live in NYC, have a personal chef and a maid, jet-set around the world, be a big time fashion buyer for Saks or Bloomingdales or Macy's, not get married and not have kids.  Do you get the idea that I didn't gain a lot of cooking skills in my youth?  Not for lack of trying on my mother's part- I just wanted nothing to do with it.  Fast forward to present day (25 years later)...

I've visited NYC, once.  I most assuredly would not be happy living there. I fell in love at 22 and married at 23.  We have 5 children and one more in Heaven (stillbirth). I didn't even enter the field of fashion after graduating with a Fashion Marketing degree.  Can I tell you how down right catty that field is? I have traveled a fair bit- German speaking Europe, Italy, Australia, a good portion of the USA and hope to once the children are off on their own.

As for the personal chef and maid... I have those...their names are Me, Myself and I. My husband does his share and the kids are being trained in these areas as well.  But I am the manager of the home.  It was an interesting ride for me coming from very little knowledge in these areas to where I am now. I remember burning water (yeah- for real!)  I let it boil away to nothing and scorched the pot.  I remember calling my Mom and asking how one mashes potatoes and many other things.

Being a child of the seventies and eighties I grew up with processed food in the house but was lucky enough that my mom was of an older generation and still cooked a lot from scratch. (Though I remember a lot of microwaved meals in the mid-70's/early eighties).  For a long time after I got married I thought I was serving a good meal if I bought pre-made frozen lasagna, frozen garlic bread, and a bagged salad.

Now don't get me wrong! Those things have their time and place but I was serving stuff like that consistently and thinking I was feeding my family well.  I've learned a lot since then and still have a long way to go.  I  also still confess to not liking cooking but as a wife and mother I want to feed my family healthy, whole foods that are tasty. That means cooking from scratch!  Luckily I've found some wonderful cook books and helps along the way. These are my go to's...

 My first cookbook ever. I believe it was a bridal shower gift from my mother.  Oh, how she knew I would need it.  It is still my go to book today.  Simple, basic, from scratch recipes.

 This is a great one for help with seasonal eating and what to do with 10,000lbs of zucchini/tomatoes/ what ever you have too much of.

 Recipes and reasons to change the way you eat. 

 A chef's take on good, simple food- a good primer. Alice was a farm-to-table chef before it was cool.

 Good old country cooking!

The West Ladies also have a DVD for those who want some visual inspiration.

Here's my challenge: Pick one item/meal that you would usually purchase processed and learn to make it from scratch. (Like lasagna, or even just salad.)  You will taste the difference and love it. Happy SCRATCH cooking! If I can do it, trust me, you surely can! (Side note- you don't have to make the ingredients yourself- yet- you can buy the pasta, cheese etc. but one day you might just want it totally from scratch with your own homemade cheese, pasta, and sauce from your own tomatoes. The process  of not buying processed is addicting!)

Happy from scratch cooking!