So close to the end of March and officially into spring! My garden is suddenly bursting with a whole lot of new growth.
Today we made a serious effort to clean out the freezer so that the freshly cured bacon, Canadian bacon and ham will have a home so we made a mess of ribs for dear friends.
Smoker man asked for potato salad to go along with it so I took a walk through the yard. Mostly unrecognized by all but me I found tarragon, parsley, lovage, chives, fennel, borage, and salad burnett making appearances so I plucked them all.
Then I boiled up some backyard eggs and made potato salad using some home grown, home canned pickles from last summer. If you’ve ever struggled with mushy pickles I highly recommend finding some Mrs. Wages pickling lime. Those pickles were as crisp and crunchy as a fresh cucumber. And as an added bonus you can use it to nixtamilize your corn and turn it into masa harina.
I’ve also been busy harvesting the cole crops to make room for carrots this weekend. I still have a shopping bag full of overwintered carrots and now about 15 pounds of brussel sprouts, cabbage, collard greens and beet greens in the spare fridge. I pulled up the sprouting broccoli plants and gave them to the chickens. The girls were thrilled since brassicas appear to be their favorite garden plant so far.
I combined some Rockridge Orchard apple cider vinegar, mayo and Sweet as Can Bee honey to make coleslaw.
Earlier in the week I headed up to Silvana Meats to pick up Chubby and while I was there I stocked up on a few things like local hot dogs, corned beef and head cheese. Reading Charcuterie got me all religious about not wanting to waste any of the pig but given the enormity of the situation when I was at the farm I decided to take baby steps. Buying a package of ready made head cheese gave me the opportunity to try it without spending any effort or time making it.
So now I’ve tried it and I’m really glad I didn’t try to make it. Got that out of my system! At least my homemade Bluebird Grains bread was good…
My husband was gone the better part of the week so the kids were once again driving the menu. We’ve been on a donut tear, first making chocolate balls which I forgot to photograph and then buttermilk drops. We never made it to the maple bars before my husband returned but he’s leaving town again in a few weeks so we’ll be getting the Cool Daddy back out then I’m sure.
The donuts were Lentz spelt, home clabbered buttermilk and backyard eggs.
We also made the largest chocolate chip cookie I’ve ever made using Lentz spelt. It was delicious with a scoop of our homemade Golden Glen ice cream.
There was a whole lot of sausage since I was mixing and seasoning and packaging all my bulk sausage. We had one night of spaghetti from Azure in Dufur, OR. I had some home grown plum tomatoes in the freezer that I had run out of time to process last summer and just froze them skinned in a ziplock. I cooked a quick sauce using frozen roasted garlic that Skeeter grew for me last summer and some frozen basil. I had frozen the basil in a ziplock still on the stalk and it looked remarkably fresh and was perfect in this quick sauce. One nice thing about freezing instead of canning was how fresh the tomato tasted. Oh summer.
After I mixed up my breakfast sausage I fried up a meal’s worth of patties to be sure the seasoning was on track. Yup.
I spent a fun day with friends who took home the other half of chubby. We seasoned and stuffed bratwurst while the kids played. That night it was nice to have a freezer full of sausages that could quickly go from freezer to grill to plate. I filled the empty spots on the plate with some freshly picked mache. A homemade pickled jalapeno and Charlotte’s sauerkraut rounded it out, along with a taster of local beer.
No St. Patty’s day is complete without corned beef and it was nice they had some up at Silvana since I didn’t realize when ordering cuts of our Cascade Range beef that brisket is a specialty meat. If you don’t specifically know to ask for it it goes into stew. That one didn’t go over with my husband very well but Silvana redeemed me because he admitted that theirs was better than our home cured corned beef and that’s saying quite a bit. I braised some garden turnips and overwintered cabbage to go along with them
Chicken Little has also been on a smoothie kick ever since I showed him how to use the blender. So far he’s stuck with frozen strawberries that I bought from Billy at UW market last summer. They were in 20# buckets marked #2 which means they weren’t pretty and needed to be processed right away but they made awesome fruit leather and smoothies! We also used Golden Glen cream and milk as well as some of our homemade ice cream. What is nice about that is that it’s only lightly sweetened and loaded with backyard eggs which made it an amazingly healthy after school snack.
Happy Dark Days!
14 responses so far ↓
1 Suzanne // Mar 22, 2010 at 8:50 am
How delicious and inspiring! You are making me think about making a blog myself. Maybe something along the vegetarian lines, with lots of yummy pictures. I really enjoy reading your blog and looking at all of the delicious pictures. Looking at the meat pictures doesn’t really phase me of course, because having never eaten meat (except by accident a couple of times), it doesn’t look like food to me. I understand some people eat meat, it just isn’t food to me. I also really appreciate the use of the whole animal. Anyway, thanks for posting all of the great pictures and I am loving your blog. All the of sweet dishes sound absolutely divine!
2 admin // Mar 22, 2010 at 11:36 am
After I posted this last night I lay in bed and then thought about that first picture being a huge mound o’ meat. Not a good leadoff for my vegetarian readers! We have been eating a lot of meat lately just becuase I’m processing it all now and I will be having some curing posts this week but otherwise we are meated out and ready for some non-meat meals. Time for some veg and grain/legume salads!
3 admin // Mar 22, 2010 at 11:37 am
Suzanne, I meant to ask if you would be interested in doing a blog post on local vegetarian non-soy meals? I’d love to get more of those recipes! Most of the ones I have are from PCC but actually finding affordable local legumes has been a challenge for me. I’ve gotten some leads on local farms that I hope to checkout more this spring.
4 Suzanne // Mar 22, 2010 at 12:11 pm
I would be interested, I just don’t know if I am qualified. I am not much of a locavore. I will consider if I could even come up with anything worth presenting on the topic. I am honored that you asked though. Almost all of my meals are non-soy, so I have that base covered. Our soy of the week and possibly month, is coming up… TVP sloppy Joes, this Thursday.
Post meat all you like, either people accept it, or they don’t. If it bothers them, they stop reading. Like I said, to me, it isn’t food, it is like seeing a rock on the plate with the food.
5 Rebecca // Mar 22, 2010 at 1:31 pm
So, what I would like to know is how on earth you find time to do all this and be a working Mom too! Maybe sometime you can post about time management….
6 Kanani // Mar 22, 2010 at 5:44 pm
About the bolting broccolo -last year i learned that if your broccoli gets past the “florets” stage & has stretched out into long stalks with little yellow flowers, you can cut off the stalks & use them & the flowers in salads. Or stand in the garden & graze.
Slightly spicy, but pretty & fun
7 cityhippyfarmgirl // Mar 22, 2010 at 6:39 pm
Just found your blog and am really happy to back track through some of these great posts. Lots of really good resources- just wish they were local for me!
8 kitsapFG // Mar 22, 2010 at 9:15 pm
I laughed when I saw the sausage with the pickled pepper and mache on the side… because we had that same meal last week too! Only I just purchased my sausages but the menu was almost exactly the same minus the beer and saur kraut.
Everything looks enticeingly yummy.
9 admin // Mar 22, 2010 at 9:36 pm
Suzanne, I can probably suggest local resources for your recipes, I’d love to have you do a post! Just let me know.
Rebecca, I work from home so I can do stuff like start making bread in the morning since I know I’ll be in and out or here. If I worked outside the home I would be squeezing all that in on the weekends which would cut into everything else. I also try to focus on the kids between after school & dinner time so they don’t need as much of my time on the weekends and evenings as they would if I work. And honestly everything else I do in the middle of the night instead of sleeping like I should which is why I got so sick this winter…but I don’t watch any tv or keep my house spit spot clean which gives me more time too. ;p
Kanani, I definitely eat the bolted broccoli! I grew sprouting broccoli so it wasn’t really bolting. The collards, on the other hand and now the lacinato kale are bolting like crazy. I still eat them but the leaves aren’t as sweet once the plant starts putting energy into flower production.
CityHippyFarmGirl, glad you stopped by! Where are you located? I couldn’t tell for sure from your blog but I was guessing the UK.
10 cityhippyfarmgirl // Mar 23, 2010 at 12:37 pm
Sydney, Australia for me. You have lots of great stuff in here. Really inspiring!
11 admin // Mar 24, 2010 at 12:04 pm
I wish I could help you out with resources.
12 Dark Days 09/10 :: Week #18 Recap (PacNW) « (not so) Urban Hennery // Mar 25, 2010 at 9:17 pm
[...] (Sustainable Eats) is cleaning out the freezer, too, making a pile of ribs for friends. Into the freezer went freshly [...]
13 angela // Mar 26, 2010 at 10:36 am
Everything looks delicious! We’ve been on a kale smoothie kick since they served them at school for St. Patty’s Day.
14 admin // Mar 26, 2010 at 9:23 pm
Angela, how do you make your green smoothies? I’m always looking for more smoothie ideas. Did they put peppermint flavoring in them? Would that work with kale? I’m willing to try it if you don’t know…
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