Britesea - Living the good life in rural Oregon

[frustratedearthmother]

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE to hear what you're fixing for dinner! You are my inspiration!

I'm not changing the things I post about - please don't change your posts either!

 

[Mini Horses]

I like your menus.......since you make your own items that we sometimes consider "staples" I'd love to hear some of the items you prepare & recipes. For only one (me) it isn't often useful for me to make my own mayo, mustard, etc. But, I do make soap, render lard, cheese from goat milk, etc. These things are good and easy, saves me $$$. Being on a kind of budget, I like to do things that take more time than $$.

Been wondering where you were as we "took over" your thread with discussions. I felt like I was on your porch with others having a nice day and you were "somewhere" inside. Glad you came back out.

 

[Britesea]

*Bustles out with a tray of glasses and iced tea all around* Welcome to my porch!

Ok, @frustratedearthmother and @Mini Horses - I'll keep posting the things I like to talk about- Growing food, cooking food, and eating food!

We continue to have a cold week- highs in the low 60's, low in the mid 30's and spurts of rain. My tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant are sulking and grumbling sullenly, but the kale and lettuce are just as happy as if they had good sense. I've got some lamb's quarters and purslane that I'm allowing to grow in a few selected areas and looking forward to salads and greens. I still need to plant corn, beets, and green beans, but I'll wait until I know it will warm up a bit. I've ordered a min/max thermometer that hopefully will help me track my micro-climate more accurately. I have decided to place the greenhouse along the north fence of the garden. I think that will keep the garden just a teeny bit warmer since it will be shielding the beds from the cold north wind.

I do like to make my own mustard- it's easy and tastes sooo good and it lasts virtually forever. When I make my own mayonnaise, I make it without sugar, and with fresh REAL olive oil ( I recommend California Olive Ranch if you can find it- from tree to bottle in 8 hours or less). Sometimes I add garlic for aioli yummmy! I've rendered lard, and made cheese and butter when I had access to fresh milk, but I've never actually made soap. I found a recipe for a hot process soap that interested me; it's cooked in a crock pot though, and I don't have a spare one. I also make our deodorant, laundry detergent, and a couple of salves that we use a lot- one is a first-aid antibiotic ointment with honey, comfrey and calendula in an olive oil/beeswax base; the other one is a plantain ointment (which I always need after working with the stinging nettles, no matter how careful I am)

We finished up the pot of beans I had made last night, along with a batch of homemade corn tortillas. I'm getting better at making them; didn't have any trouble with them tearing or splitting this time. One of these days I want to make my own nixtamal and make some with fresh masa instead of the dried flour- I've heard they taste even better.

We are trying harder to go lower carb now- so dinner is Pork Tenderloin topped with a tomato/zucchini/garlic salsa and a green salad with blue cheese vinaigrette. Dessert is fresh cherries in yogurt with a touch of stevia.

Just got 3 cords of Juniper wood delivered, so I have to go help stack for a bit.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Thanks for the iced tea! Hits the spot.

Making corn tortillas is something that I've tried so hard to master and I. JUST. CAN'T. DO. IT! DH bought me one of those cool tortilla presses and a bag of organic masa and I can't, for the life of me, get them to work without either being tooo thick or tearing up. What is the secret???? I don't try to make them often because DH is diabetic so we really watch the carbs around here too. But, it's like a point of pride with me now, lol. I have got to conquer this!

And thanks for this post!

 

[Mini Horses]

Aaahhhhh....nice tea!

The beans sounded so good that I got a container out of freezer to have for supper, won't have to cook after getting home from work!
Good fiber, protein and taste.

Will be doing food sampling today at a store, some processed stuff that requires me to push it for sale. I much prefer the healthier samplings, like making salsas, etc. But the check pays for the animal feed. PLUS is that I get a lot of free napkins.

 

[hqueen13]

Oh good, I'm so glad you're going to keep posting your meals! Wish you could post the recipes easily, too, but I'm sure half of them don't have recipes!
Yay for a cord of wood! I'm sure that will help! I can't believe yall are so cold, I'm SO glad its not THAT cold here! That would drive me nuts!
Your ointment sounds amazing too. Do you have a recipe? I have chamomile going NUTS, and I Just haven't had the time to slow down to figure out what to do with it all, right now its going to waste :-/

 

[Britesea]

The cold front gave way to warmer temperatures on Monday, so now it feels more like summer. While we wait for R to come back from Portland to help us with the greenhouse assembly, I'm starting work on setting up an irrigation system for the garden. I bought a lot of soaker hose and connectors and the plan is to have one in each bed, connected to a Mother hose so I can just go from one bed to the next and turn each one off or on as needed. After that's in place, I can mulch the beds to keep moisture in and weeds down. This is the first year I'm so organized!

One of my ducks went broody and is sitting on a huge number of eggs. I seriously doubt she can actually cover all of them, lol. So now I'm wondering if I should put the greenhouse on hold long enough to get the new coop finished. Once the babies are hatched (if any), I want to herd mama and babies into the coop where I can set up a brooding lamp in case mama doesn't understand about keeping babies warm. That's what happened the last time someone got broody. I had to rescue the single baby that hatched because I found her nearly dead from cold... twice. As a matter of fact, that rescued baby is the one sitting on the nest now.

I dehydrated 3 dozen eggs yesterday, and got them all crushed and ready to seal away from oxygen. I'm debating between using my vacuum sealer on a glass jar, or putting them in vacuum sealed bags. Today I have some frozen mixed veggies I want to dehydrate; I use them for making dog food and they take up a lot less room when they are dehydrated. I also have about 16 pounds of ground pork to can up for dog food today.

DH has lost 3 pounds since we started this low-carb diet (about a week now) and I've lost 5 pounds. My blood sugar readings have dropped as well- YAY! Tonight I'm making a remoulade salad with daikon radish and some smoked sausage, and I think I'll dig out some of the frozen strawberries and make a sorbet for dessert. We had eggs scrambled with pepper bacon pieces and some of the kale from the garden for breakfast; even DS liked it!

@frustratedearthmother - I won't pretend to be a master with the tortillas, but I've found that the amount of water added seems to be crucial: too much and the tortilla sticks and tears when you press it, but too little and it tears because it's too dry. I also use waxed paper for each tortilla- not plastic wrap like a lot of the recipes will tell you. I got a good quality cast iron press and it presses my tortillas to a perfect thin round. Corn flour seems to be one of the carbs that I'm not as sensitive to (rice is the one I have to really avoid) so we can have a batch of tortillas once a week or so. I'm going to have to try flour ones one of these days, but I understand they don't work well with a press- you have to press much harder, and can break the press.

@Mini Horses - How do you get a job handing out samples? I've never run across the opportunity except once when Food Hero was looking for volunteers to push healthy recipes using local, seasonal produce.

@hqueen13 - I'll be happy to post some of my recipes. I could post the remoulade and the antibiotic ointment in the kitchen section.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Hope the soaker system saves you lots of time... I like getting things organized like that. Congrats on the weight loss!

I'll give the tortillas a try again, someday.... Every now and again I forget how badly I screwed 'em up last time and I'll try 'em again, lol!

 

[Mini Horses]

Sampling....I work for a couple of companies but, mainly Advantage Sales & Marketing. Go to their website and see what's available. It's fun most days. I've done it for over 15 yrs. It's part time and 98% weekend work. But, you can tell them you will only work certain days OR tell them dates you cannot work. Most times I take a weekend or a Saturday off about once a month....depends on how much work I have for my other PT job &/or if I have something I just want to do.

Oh, it's called "merchandising".

 

[creativetwinszoo]

Oh boy! Homemade tortillas is something that I'll have to get around to someday (and homemade frybread, the good real stuff!!)
Hope momma duck will keep the babies warm! All that brooding just give up sounds troublesome :'(
Remoulade salad?.? Whats that?.? Sounds interesting!