Monthly Archives: December 2009

Backyard Homestead Giveaway

Posted on December 31, 2009 by Annette Cottrell| 20 Comments

 

backyard-homestead

I’m really excited about this giveaway because it’s so near and dear to my heart!

Carleen Madigan and Storey Publishing have for years provided folks the tools and inspiration to become more self-sufficient. Many of those books focus on what you can do with a few acres of farmland. What makes this book unique is that it’s geared towards anyone with a quarter acre of land, even if it’s in the city.

She touches on keeping livestock, growing fruits, vegetables and grains, keeping bees, preserving food and much more. Want to make cheese? Brew your own cider and beer? Save seeds and start plants for the garden? It’s in here.

One thing I particularly liked about the book is at the back it has a comprehensive reference guide to point you in the direction of more information.

This is the perfect book for anyone starting out who wants to do more for themselves with a small amount of city land. As I’ve learned this year, you don’t need a 5 acre farm to become more self-sufficient. Farming, animal husbandry and self-sufficiency can happen on a small scale right in the middle of a bustling city life with small children underfoot.

This book will supply you the ideas and information you need to embark on your dream.

To enter the giveaway simply comment below and at 9 p.m., Monday, January 4 I will close the contest and use random.org again to pick a winner.

Good luck and happy city-steading!

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Posted in Sustainable Books

Dark Days Week 6

Posted on December 28, 2009 by Annette Cottrell| 11 Comments

I can’t believe it’s already almost New Years! It’s been a busy, relaxing week meaning I wasn’t schlepping my spawn all over town to their activities and things slowed down in my store so I managed to get quite a bit of stuff done, including make millions of cookies and presents and one of my favorite things to do – cook!

We’ve had aebelskivers from Lentz spelt and Tonnamaker’s apples:

aebelskivor1

Butternut squash soup from our own butternut squash, onions from Nature’s Last Stand, celery from OR that I found at PCC after the frost devasted mine, hard cider from Rockridge Orchards and vermouth that I found hiding in the dusty liquor cabinet.

butternut-squash-soup

Swedish dark limpa that I made using 33% rye from Bob’s Red Mill, 33% hard red wheat from Bluebird and 33% spelt from Lentz spelt. It was achingly soft, the perfect crumb with just a touch of molasses. Perfect with soup and great as grilled cheese sammies with Pleasant Valley jalapeno gouda the next day.

Pleasant Valley is in Ferndale and they don’t have a website but they do have a wholesale buying club. Get enough friends together and buy amazing local cheese at a huge discount! I have wheels of it in the fridge – it’s totally replaced all those storebought cheeses for not much more money. They make a farmstead which is similar to cheddar, a munschli which is like a Swiss style, and several varieties of Gouda.

limpa

Crispy latkes with purple potatoes from Methow Valley and our backyard eggs, fried in beef tallow from our cow ala Marissa of Food in Jars.

latkes

Pork chops from Akyla farms served with a mustard and Golden Glen cream sauce, braised garden kale, oven steak fries from our Methow valley potatoes, awesome saurkraut made by my friend Charlotte from (I believe) Nash’s cabbage, and home canned peaches from Rama orchard.

pork-chop-dinner

Tamale pie made with hamburger from our Cascade Range Beef cow, home canned red chili sauce made last summer from Tonnamaker chilies, our onions and tomatoes, our corn from the freezer, Pleasant Valley farmstead and a cornmeal topping made from home cultured buttermilk from Dungeness Valley Creamery milk, backyard eggs, Bluebird soft wheat and dent corn from Azure Standard in Dufur, OR.

tamale-pie

Christmas dinner of rib roast from our Cascade Range Beef cow, creamed Nash’s kale, spiced Nash’s red cabbage with Tonnamaker apples, mashed Methow Valley potatoes (I estimate we have another month of these left and that’s it), a cabernet sauvignon reduction with the pan drippings from Chateau Ste. Michelle, Swedish Julsalad made wtih Golden Glen cream, mustard, Tonnamaker apples and home grown beets pickled in Rockridge Orchard apple cider vinegar, horseradish creme fraiche made with OR horseradish root I found at PCC. (note – to preserve the root you simply peel it then grate it in the food processor, then mince it as finely as you like in the processer. Place it in a jar and cover it with vinegar. It will keep in the fridge for eons, future post on this)

jul-dinner

Anna’s Drommer – Swedish cookies reminiscent of those Danish butter cookies in tins. With only a few ingredients they are as simple as it gets which really lets your good butter and fresh flour shine. They require baking ammonia, however, to get that crispy light texture that doesn’t soon stale. You can buy it through King Arthur Flour. In Swedish it was called hartshorn because it was originally made by distilling reindeer antlers.

annas-drommer

Trifle made with Golden Glen cream, Bluebird soft wheat lady fingers, my friend Cyndi’s backyard raspberry/currant jam, Rockridge Orchard Asian Pear Brandy and home canned cherries from the neighbor’s tree. I omitted the brandy for the kid’s bowls…

trifle

I then used the remaining simple syrup from the cherries, impregnated it with my ginger bug, let it sit out on the counter for a few days until it became bubbly, and capped it. In two more days it will be bubbly lacto-fermented cherry soda for my little guys to fight over.

cherry-soda

And finally out of leftovers, I made a batch of Wardeh’s spelt tortillas, kidney beans from Azure Standard (Dufur, OR), Pleasant Valley farmstead, carrots from the garden, cabbage from Nash’s, mole sauce from the freezer, home canned salsa from our garden last summer and more red chile sauce from Tonnamaker peppers. Did you know Tonnamaker has dried peppers right now while they last? I even got some dried paprika peppers!

tacos-mole

The days are starting to lengthen and we are just weeks away from beginning seed starts – time to dig out those seed catalogs and dream!

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Posted in Dark Days Challenge

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What’s Growing – Fall and Winter Plantings

Posted on December 27, 2009 by Annette Cottrell| 7 Comments

In raised beds:

  • Cabbage (2 types)
  • Sprouting Broccoli (2 types)
  • Collard Greens
  • Brussel Sprouts
  • Cauliflower
  • Arrugula
  • Kale (3 types)
  • Spinach (New Zealand)
  • Cress
  • Mustard
  • Raddichio
  • Italian Leaf Lettuce
  • Provencal Salad Mix
  • Mache
  • French Sorrel
  • Carrots (2 types)
  • Parsnips
  • Turnips
  • Rutabagas
  • Oats
  • Winter Wheat
  • Chicken Foraging Blend
  • Garlic
  • Onions
  • Leeks
  • Shallots

    • Celeriac

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Posted in Growing Groceries - Plants, Seeds and Growing Tips, Seasonal Plantings

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Dark Days Give Away

Posted on December 24, 2009 by Annette Cottrell| 20 Comments

little-house-cookbook

When I decided nearly one year ago to stop buying food unless I knew who had grown it, I envisioned this blog would read like the last pages of Shackleton’s diary with food running out and dissension among the crew.

In the beginning I felt like an early pioneer buying 50 # bags of grain and enough provisions of sugar, salt and leaveners to last until the next stage coach came to town (little did I know that most frontier folks bought flour and it was usually white flour so that the shelf life would be longer.  Home grain grinders are a fairly recent invention.) In my household white flour became taboo since I sourced all our grains locally and ground them myself. 

We stopped eating things like QFC crab cakes (a favorite indulgence), breakfast cereal and corn dogs. I even bought dent corn from an organic farm in Oregon and ground it for things like corn bread, or nixtamalized it and ground it in the food processor to make masa for tortillas.

If we were going to eat cheese, I made it myself from milk from St. John’s or Dungeness Creamery. Unable to locate a rice farmer I could get comfortable with, we stopped eating rice.

So many times I thought of The Little House on the Prairie and tried to remember the foods they ate. It was honest food for an honest day’s work and I became fascinated with it.

So much so that while Christmas shopping online a suggestion popped up for a book I’ve never seen before. The book is called “The Little House Cookbook - Frontier Foods from Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Classic Stories” and it’s fascinating. So fascinating that I barely managed to cook dinner tonight since I was so engrossed in it. I let the kids stay up a little later so I could get through just one more chapter. And I can’t wait to take it to bed with me and finish it tonight.

Whether you try the recipes or not the historical account of food – what it meant, how it was eaten and who could afford it will captivate you.

I read all the books when I was young and grew up with the show which happened to be on TV when I was the same age as Laura was in the series. I loved the books then but now that I am trying to create a 1/4 acre of self sufficiency in the city for my family and can appreciate the work that went into merely surviving on the frontier, it’s amazing to read this book.

Even in Laura’s childhood the few staple food items you could buy at the country store may have been deceptive:

“There was no law against stretching flour with plaster, cornmeal with sawdust, and pepper with gypsum. The coffee might easily have contained dyed navy beans, the raisins might be part pebbles, and the lard might be floured.”

It seems that food was not always honest, even when it was simple raw ingredients from a country store.

My dark days (and Christmas Eve) gift to you is the chance to win this book. Simply comment below and on Monday, December 28th I will use a random number generator to pick the winner of the book. I thought I would make it a little more legitimate since the chicken picking the number out of the hat didn’t work so well last time.

Good luck and Happy Holidays!

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Posted in Growing Groceries - Plants, Seeds and Growing Tips

Pizza Rolls

Posted on December 22, 2009 by Annette Cottrell| 13 Comments

pizza-rolls-done

As soon as I saw a picture of these pizza rolls I knew I had to make them. When we do forage into PCC the kids gawk at the pastry case by the checkout line and the whining starts. The top three allowable kid picks are the soft pretzels which we’ve been making, the cheesy breadsticks which we’ve been making, and the pizza rolls. Check, check and check.

So for the same price that you would pay for any one of those items at the store I can make up an entire batch of them – enough to feed every kid that gets off at Chicken Little’s afternoon bus stop and their parents. Or sometimes we wait until we get home to snack and then I have enough to freeze for another day. It’s fun treating kids to healthy food that they get excited about though so I can’t usually resist bringing something warm from the oven to the bus stop with me.

Back to the pizza rolls.

I found a recipe for these on the King Arthur Flour blog which is great but admittedly all the recipes call for special ingredients, not all of which are organic and many of which I refuse to use like dried milk. So I took their recipe (which probably was better tasting for all those additives) and altered it somewhat, using some of my favorite whole wheat bread making techniques that seem to make those additives unnecessary anyway.

I’ve used white whole wheat here because it gives the kids the perception of white flour and doesn’t have the full flavor of whole wheat which lets your other ingredients really shine. You can add shredded parmeson and pizza herbs to the crust to really bring the pizzeria taste home but it’s not at all necessary. You could use any toppings you like on a pizza here too – our current favorite homemade pizza is mozzarella, pickled cherry bomb peppers from Tonnamaker Farm peppers that I put up last summer and soooooo glad I did, and some basil freezer pesto or frozen basil leaves (I tossed a washed bag full of basil leaves in the freezer just before the first cool weather.) We also really like the combination of leftover roast chicken and barbecue sauce.

Since these were for the kids to snack on though I used some browned Italian sausage. They would have really loved these with pepperoni as well.

Pizza Rolls

Phase 1

  • 1/2 cup milk or buttermilk
  • 2/3 cup water
  • 3 Tablespoons olive oil
  • 3 cups organic white whole wheat flour
  • 1/4 teaspoon dried yeast
  • 1/2 teaspoon sea salt

    • Mix all the ingredients together until you get a rough dough. Let rest for 5 minutes. You want a really sticky dough here but it takes at least 5 minutes for the whole wheat flour to soak up the water so you can’t really test it until it’s had time to rest. After 5 minutes test to see if you need more flour or water. Cover the dough bowl with a dinner plate and let it rest on the counter overnight.

    Phase 2
    When you are ready to make the rolls add:

  • 1 teaspoon sea salt
  • 1 tablespoon organic sugar
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons dried yeast

    • Knead the dough until it is soft and smooth but still sticky. If you add too much flour you will end up with a tough dough.

    Return the dough to the bowl and cover it again with your dinner plate. Let it rest in a fairly warm spot to rise till doubled, about 60-90 minutes or longer depending on your kitchen temperature. I like to save the dishwasher to run until my dough is rising and then place the bowl on the counter over the washer so that it benefits from the steamy warmth.

    At this point you can go run errands and completely ignore your dough. That is how you make bread making fit your schedule. The first rise can go too long without negatively impacting the final product. The second rise, however, you need to pay attention to.

    When you are ready, gently deflate your dough and transfer it to a lightly floured work surface.

    Roll it into a 12″ x 18″ rectangle and spread the top evenly with at least 1 cup of shredded cheese. Add your other toppings and roll the dough into a log as if you were making cinnamon rolls.

    pizza-roll-dough

    Pinch the roll closed along the top seam and at both ends so no filling falls out. I cut mine into 16 rolls using a very sharp serrated knife and gently sawing back and forth. If you press down you will squish the roll. I also find it’s easiest to start cutting in the center of the roll, then cut each half into two and continue in that fashion until I’m done. I think if you start at one end and cut progressively along until the whole log is cut from left to right it’s harder to keep the rolls the same size and you end up really squishing the loaf and pushing fillings down to the end of the log. Maybe that’s just me though.

    pizza-rolled-up

    Place the rolls onto silpat or parchment paper lined baking trays, 6 to a sheet and flatten them down. Cover them with a clean dish towel and let them rise again for 60-90 minutes. As PJ said in her KAF blog post “they won’t get wildly puffy but you should be able to see that the dough around the filling has expanded a bit.”

    pizza-rolls-rising

    At this point I spooned about a tablespoon of pizza sauce on top of each bun and sprinkled another 1/4 cup of shredded cheese on top then baked them for about 30 minutes at 350 farenheit.  They would have been better with a tablespoon and a half of sauce spread all the way to the outer edges but this was my first time through the recipe and I didn’t feel like opening up a new jar of <a href=”http://www.sustainableeats.com/2009/08/17/canning-tomato-sauce/”>homegrown, home canned tomato sauce.</a>  It’s precious stuff.

    pizz-rolls-dressed

    You want to be sure not to over bake these or again the dough will toughen up and dry out once the buns have cooled.

    I made these on Saturday and we just finished eating them today, several days later. The rolls remained soft until the end which is saying quite a bit for whole wheat flour. They make a great snack on the go or can be frozen and grabbed as you make school lunches in the morning. Handy! And now you can stop spending so much money in that pastry case when you shop.

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    Posted in Local Grains - Where to Get Them and What to do with Them, Recipes for Seasonal and Local Foods, Snacks

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