Freemotion's food journal: Expanding the gardens, pics p 53

[VickiLynn]

Wow! You've been busy! It made me tired just reading this.

 

[freemotion]

Wow! You've been busy! It made me tired just reading this.

My feet hurt. Now my back hurts because I subluxated something lifting the honey pail and a five gallon bucket of wine, when dh was just in the next room and he never hesitates to lift something for me if I ask him to. When will I learn?

Supper tonight.....oooooooooh, sooooooo good! DH made veggies (brocolli and turnip/carrots mashed together, both with butter and salt) and I made biscuits and turkey gravy with chunks of leftover turkey in it.

I'm still swooning.

I used to wonder why I could not cook meals that were as tasty as my mother cooked, and when I went to Maine to visit, I'd always ask her to make gravy, no matter what. Hers was always amazingly flavorful....I could eat the entire pan by myself if I dared (never did, I'd be killed!) and would have some on bread with my meal just to eat more of it. Mmm-mmm-MMM! I remember the tastiest meals taking place after we'd moved to Maine when I was 13, and my dad had trouble finding enough work, and we became quite self sufficient.

The secret I have now learned. It is fat. It is all those jars of fat saved in the fridge and used with a heavy hand in cast iron pans. None of that non-stick crap and no sprays and no olive oil....just drippings of every kind, and purchased fat when the drippings ran out. Jars and jars of lard rendered from our own home-raised pigs. Purchased salt pork when that ran out. All browned in nice, black cast iron pans, where you tend to brown things more because you can't see how brown they are getting like you can in a shiny pan. Sigh....

I made my "cheat" gravy this way: I put a generous amount of bacon drippings and turkey fat in my large cast iron skillet, and added enough flour (I used hard red for more gluten) to take up the fat. I stirred that to brown it, adding a big dollop of garlic powder and onion powder since the broth I'd be using was straight, unflavored turkey broth.

I added a couple of cups of the turkey broth and whisked it until it bubbled, and added a generous amount of sea salt (home made) and black pepper. If you make this, remember to over-flavor the gravy, as the turkey chunks will take up some of the flavor and dilute it somewhat.

Then I diced some leftover turkey and added it to the pan. We had this over hot biscuits, fresh from the oven.

Here is how I made my biscuits....but first I have to again praise my new old grinder, the All-Grain that I got of craigslist. Everything I've made so far using flour ground in that mill has been absolutely wonderful. It is making a HUGE difference. If you have the money and can actually get someone from the website to call you back (they have not returned my calls, seriously, what is up with that???) it would be well worth the $625 for a new one if you are serious about whole grain flour and do a fair amount of baking.

For the biscuits I made tonight, I used:

3 c soft white wheat flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp sea salt

Cut in with pastry blender:
1/3 c lard
1/3 c turkey fat (I almost used bacon fat instead)

Stir in:
1 1/8 c kefir

Knead quickly with a little more flour and pat it out into a rough rectangle on a large cookie sheet (not up to the edge, though.) Cut into squares...I made 20. Bake at 450F for about 10-15 minutes.

Nothing was really measured that closely except the baking powder.

Gotta run, I need leftovers. Writing this made me hungry again!

 

[freemotion]

Tonight we had pizza made on some dough I'd made in advance and instead of freezing it raw, I cooked it lightly....almost done. It worked out great. It made up faster than I could've ordered one and picked it up. I loved the recipe/method, too, so I'll get that in here soon. I want to try a couple of variations first, in my quest for perfect whole wheat bread, yeast risen, slightly fermented but not fully sourdough. I'm getting closer, thanks to a link from Hattie the Hen from the UK.

I needed a very quick meal because today was a canning marathon day, along with the usual farm chores and laundry, laundry, and more laundry.

I made:

55 pints of catfood
5 pints of chicken broth (to fill the canner...I hate empty spaces! )
7 quarts of chicken broth....but one jar exploded in the canner, so I only have 6 quarts. :/

My feet hurt. I massaged them, but they still hurt!

 

[FarmerDenise]

I used my sourdough to make pizza with ww flour. We rather liked it that way. The sour dough took away the sweet taste of the ww flour. I got four in the freezer still.
Tomorrow needs to be turkey processing day for me. Today I rested and played with goats.

how about a nice soak in a tub full hot water with either epsom salts or acv added for those sore feet.

 

[freemotion]

Hey, FD, I planted more garlic today! I planted 130 cloves in three different spots. I have big black plastic leaf bags, filled, over two of them. I planted one near the house this afternoon and it still needs its leaf bag insulator, but it started to rain and we might get more than two inches in the next two days, so I'll wait to get that covered. No chance of it freezing that deeply, at least.

I wonder how many cloves I should plant for four adults? Well, I planted all the big ones, so I guess it doesn't really matter for this year!

Does anyone know if I can leave some leeks in the garden to go to seed next year and have a perpetual leek patch? How about regular yellow or white onions? I planted a few from purchase plants and they didn't really grow, in spite of the assurances of the garden center employee who was certain that I'd get usable onions this year. I barely got sets.

I got small onions from the sets I planted. I used a lot of them, and now the rest are sprouting! The drawback of a warm fall.

The last bag of feed corn that dh picked up looks gorgeous, so I took some out to make into cornmeal for the rare cornbread. I hope to have some organic, non-GMO corn in my garden next year (thanks again, FD!) that I will put some aside to dry for cornmeal as well as eating some sweet corn and saving some seed.

 

[dragonlaurel]

ummmm garlic. Thanks for the reminder. I gotta get planting some soon. Can you plant the stuff from the grocery store?

 

[freemotion]

This is my second attempt at planting garlic, since I NEVER remember to plant in the fall! Last year I planted grocery store garlic and we had a warm fall and it all sprouted and sent up shoots about 6-8" tall. In the spring, there was no sign of garlic, and after a while I dug around and even sifted some of the soil in that area, and couldn't find any evidence that garlic had been planted.

Others have success with grocery store garlic, however! I may have had the same results with heritage garlic as well, as it may have been because of the strange weather conditions.

So, here's hopin'!!!

 

[Henrietta23]

I've got garlic to get in too before the ground freezes. I got 20 bulbs last year and I'm using them up way quicker than I thought I would! I bought three times as much this year but I keep forgetting to plant it!!! Soon it will be too late....

 

[freemotion]

Whoa, haven't posted here in a while!

I did some canning this weekend and am labeling 60 pints....40 of ham and 15 bean soup, and 20 of baked beans with salt pork. That means a bunch of meals are already made, our version of fast food! I was able to salvage some onions I accidentally left on the porch that froze solid. Yay! I still have a few squashes that are frozen that I'll probably make into soup.

I still need to do some spaghetti sauce and pizza sauce. But that will wait because I will be canning pork next week when we have fresh pork to deal with!

I have all the backs, necks, and wings of the 10 meat chickens boiling in my big stock pot, I will strip the meat and make a big soup for the week. We have lunch guests on Wed, so I want to make a really special soup for them....I have a few carrots, onions, and scallions left from the garden, and oh, I think I'll reserve one of the frozen squashes for that soup, too. YUM! Squash or pumpkin puree is wonderful in chicken soup, especially if it has been roasted first.

Off to get squashes in the oven!

 

[abifae]

Very nice!!! I'm still at itty bitty canning steps hee hee.