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

[Henrietta23]

Ok, Free, you should be a salesperson for them, cuz youjust sold one. I have never been a fan of juicing, I always thought it wasteful, and your were wasting the best part. but then you said you can buy an attachement to gring grains to flour (now since we are doing GF) I would be able to grind up the grains I need to make GF flour.

I'm going to be checking it out as well.

 

[Javamama]

I have a Blendtec (like Vitamix, different brand) and love it. Use it almost every day, especially for my green smoothies. Since I'm not a salad lover, this is the best way for me to get my greens.

 

[freemotion]

I wish I was getting a commission from them.....it is SO unfair!!!

I eat far more veggies this way, too, especially in the summer. It takes less than five minutes to make a lunch shake to take in the car, too, when I'm in a hurry. It takes at least that long or longer to run through a fast-food drive-through. Helps pay for the machine, too, with all the money saved over time, at least for us. I figure it was paid for in the first year, while we were weaning off take-out and doing more for ourselves.

I hadn't even considered grinding my own grains when we first got it....I think the dry container (for grinding grains and such) sat in the cupboard, untouched, for about two years. Then one night I was reading my Encyclopedia of Country Living and Carla was talking about going to the feed sack in the barn when food and cash was running low....and I thought....I have wheat and corn in the grain barrels, I'm gonna make a cornbread! And that is exactly what I did....and it was amazingly delicious, even though I'd used poor quality grains that I had to really pick through to get enough decent ones to make one pan of cornbread. I was hooked.

That was also when I discovered that even the fresher ww flour that I was buying at Whole Foods was already going rancid, when I compared the smell of it to the smell of my freshly-ground wheat. Even guests who are avowed ww haters have to admit that my baked goods are wonderful, not at all what they expect from foods baked at home from grocery store wheat flour.

You gotta get one!!!

 

[miss_thenorth]

It's commercial on Jamie Oliver's Food REvolution--quickly --they are pricey, but I'll see if hubby will go for one.
oh it's back on

 

[freemotion]

Oh, shoot, I forgot about that show!!!

 

[freemotion]

Yesterday my peppermint was finally lush enough to pick some and stuff it in a pint canning jar. I mashed it down with a wooden spoon to crush it some, then poured vodka over it, just to cover it. It went into my fermenting closet, where I will make a valiant attempt to leave it alone for a month so I will have some nice, strong peppermint extract. That will bring us to the end of June, when I will make......mint chocolate chip goat's milk ice yogurt! I got a new ice cream maker last year and haven't tried it out yet. It needs to be taken for a spin.

 

[modern_pioneer]

There is something to be said about vodka and stuff for cooking. I followed the recipe you gave last year for vanilla and I found out the your recipe will last 5-7 years. I did split the bean through the center and kept it in a dark cool place, and used 8 onces of the best Russian vodka money can buy.

I did it proper and have a great finished product.....

However you didn't mention what to do with the remaining vodka, so I decide to make a red curent/black current drinky after it sat over winter, added a little maple syrup, and I just drank the dang thing, just because it felt good.

 

[freemotion]

I took a sniff of my peppermint extract and it was still very vodka-y, but getting peppermint-y! I had to add some weights to the jar to hold the mint under the vodka. I used those flat glass "cookies" that you buy in craft stores, like flattened marbles. I have a stash of them that I bought a few years ago to make stepping stones for my gardens.

That reminds me, I should make a few for my strawberry patch, while it is still first-year-thin. It will make picking a lot easier next year. Plus, making them is lots of fun. I start with a purchased patio block, and cement the design onto it. On my previous ones, I made designs with a purposely broken plate, beach stones, and the glass rounds. Then I grouted them. They look great, very artsy-fartsy.

Today was all about food, from the moment I woke up until we cleared the supper dishes just now. I loved it. I got so much done.

People ask me how I do it all, so I think I will try to journal for a while on how I organize my days to get things done. First of all....how do I do it all? I don't! It is a myth. No one gets everything done on their list...so get that out of your head. The list just gets adjusted and prioritized

If I have an overwhelming number of critical, time-sensitive tasks, I make my list on paper cut into little cards, each big enough to write one task on. I write out all my tasks on these tiny cards, then I spread them out and start to categorize them. Which tasks involve getting in the car and going somewhere? Put those in one pile. Which tasks are done outside? Another pile. Which are for the computer? Which for the kitchen? Etc.

Then I sort each pile, putting the most time-sensitive tasks on top, the no-one-will-die-if-this-doesn't-get-done tasks on the bottom. By now I have maybe a half-dozen little stacks, each with a critical task on top. I scan the tasks, then put them in order of most critical, and start with that one and work my way through those tasks. I save the away-from-home errand pile for last, if possible, after the top task in each pile is done. Then I take the entire errand pile and get in the car and get that whole stack completed all at once.

This idea came from my favorite organizing book by Liz Franklin, How to Get Organized (Without Resorting to Arson.

By now, the most dreaded work of the day is out of the way, and I can enjoy the rest of my jobs a lot more. I found that when I made lists on one sheet of paper, I would get overwhelmed and pick a few tasks to get warmed up. These were usually easy, unimportant items, and I always ended up at the end of the day, scrambling at midnight to get the time-sensitive stuff done. Thanks to Brian Tracy's book Eat That Frog I no longer procrastinate......as much.

Anyhoo, today was a git-'er-done day. My most important task on June 8 was to get the bulk of the veggie gardens planted and weeded, which I did. I started the day by inviting my folks over for dinner at 7 PM, when dh was due to get home from work. This would give me multiple deadlines throughout the day, as I planned on making homemade pizza.

Here is how my day went down:

8 AM: Rise and shine! Warm Plum's three bottles, prepare food for goats and pigs, feed everyone and milk. Filter milk and make my hot chocolate. Prepare six bottles for Plum and refrigerate.

Drink hot chocolate while checking e-mail and the forums. Then back outside to finish chores, feeding the flock, the chicks, the broody hen. Shut the lactating does in the pasture so the kids can stay outside longer today.

Back to the house to shower and prepare for the one appointment I scheduled...a massage at the house, a rare thing for me. I dislike working from my home, as my home is sacred. But this appointment was with my hair stylist, and we've been trading services for years. We are pretty comfortable with each other, and she knows that my projects come before my picking up my messes! My house is clean, but messy, with projects in various stages set up all over the place. Spring is the worst, and harvest season gets a bit crazy, too.

She uncharacteristically forgot her appointment. I was all showered and no place to go. So we resheduled. It worked out great because I really rushed to get things done this morning and was off to a good start.

So I got my gardening shoes on, my long-sleeved cotton shirt and sun hat, and out I went. I planted:

zucchini
basil
onions
carrots
beets
mangels
rutabagas
parsnips
kohlrabi
cabbages
collards
green beans
blue hubbard squash
marigolds

I left some space for some leeks that still need hardening off, and some kale that I want to start in pots that I forgot about. Maybe I'll direct seed it.

My other pasture garden has:

tomatoes
hot peppers
sweet peppers
marigolds
and all the above root veggies, planted just a few at a time between the tomato plants. It is a new experiment. I put the plants further apart than I normally do, hoping to get more tomatoes if there is another blight this year. I separated each plant with a few roots to make good use of the space. I have 35 tomato plants, mostly roma, a few marglobe, a few brandywine, one early girl and one cherry. All but the last two I grew from seed on the growing stand I made for my basement last year. I grew most of my plant this year, except the ones that I could buy cheaper than buying the seeds since I only wanted one or two plants.

I have some space left in that garden for some more winter squashes. I still have some sod to turn within the newly fenced in area, and may or may not get to it this year. Not a priority.

My gardens along the foundation of the house in the front yard contain mostly perrennial herbs. I added 15 sage plants to the one lonely one I had, thinking in terms of making lots and lots of sausage with all that lovely pastured pork this fall. I also have:

oregano
marjoram
thyme
pathetic asparagus that gives me nothing
more basil
dill
rhubarb
pickling cukes
two tomato plants for nibbling on
scallions
marigolds
parsley
cilantro (yuk!)
lemon balm
feverfew
sage, of course
chamomile
peppermint
spearmint
Brussells sprouts (first time experiment)

I have space left for a few more cukes that I want to plant in a couple of weeks, and some pole beans that I want to try. I never planted pole beans before, and it is time to see if I like them. Next year I'll have to plant some beans for drying, too.

A large chunk of the front yard is now a strawberry bed, and I put in raspberries a couple of weeks ago. I plan on expanding the strawberry bed later in the summer by turning more sod and transplanting some of the daugher plants to the new area. I will do the same with the raspberries as they get established.

I still have 2.5 flats of annual flowers to plant and need to finish weeding my flower gardens. I do a bit at a time, mulching them with lawn clippings from our yard and the neighbor's. This forces me to get a little section done each time someone mows the lawn and leaves me with a large wheelbarrow of clippings that will heat up and rot within hours if I don't get busy!

In between planting and watering all the seeds and tender seedlings, I got stuff done in the kitchen. I ground kamut and hard red wheat for the pizza dough and made it from a french bread recipe....no planning ahead for sourdough this time. Since I was grinding and had the stand mixer out to make pizza dough, I decided it was high time that I made loaf bread with freshly ground wheat. I used a white sandwich bread recipe and added a cup of oat groats to the grinder to make it a bit moister.

It still came out a bit dense. I think it will make great French toast and will be wonderful toasted with butter. But it is probably too dense for sandwiches. I'll try it tomorrow and let you know it it is worth posting the recipe. It might be good as grilled cheese sandwiches.

Somewhere along the line, I had a low-carb lunch of chai tea, and cheddar slices with avacado....mmmmmm! A lunch that provides a lot of energy for physical work.

I thawed out some homemade pizza sauce and put the pizza together a couple of hours early so the crust could get fluffy. It was wonderful. I can't wait to have homemade pepperoni one day!

I brined a small, experimental batch of feta that I made last week. It smells so good already that it is probably time to tell about it. Although I won't really know for sure until I've brined it for a couple of weeks, I think it was a success.

Thanks to patandchicken's advice, I bought a new cheesemaking book, 200 Easy Homemade Cheese Recipes by Debra Amrein-Boyes. A wonderful book!!!! Very easy to use. She writes a bit about the history of cheesemaking and drops some hints about how it used to be done in farm kitchens....handed down wisdom that I have been searching for. Here is what I did, based on the few sentences found within the text (not a recipe in the book):

I sterilized a pot by boiling a bit of water in it with the lid on, dumping the water and letting the covered pot cool. Then I did my evening milking and strained the milk right into the pot. I got a little over two quarts. I left the pot on the counter overnight.

In the morning, I milked, and after taking a pint for my breakfast I added the rest (strained, of course!) to the pot and let it sit for a couple of hours. Debra's comments had the renneting step done right away, but it smelled so fresh to me even after being left overnight so I figured it probably needed to acidify a little longer.

I warmed it to 86 F in a sink of hot water and added lipase and rennet and proceeded as for feta. The resulting curd was softer and took several days longer to form a tough enough rind to brine. I would salt and turn it daily, and even squeezed it with a paper towel a few times to get more whey out. It took a week, and now it smells divine! I can't wait to taste it!

I rubbed it daily with Redmond Real Salt, and it is in a brine made with Celtic Sea Salt, so this will be the good stuff. I plan on straining this expensive brine and using it all season if possible.

In this busy day, there was still plenty of time to visit with friends and family, touring the farm twice and playing with the goats twice with guests. Lots of Peach and Plum time, too, on my own as my daily goat therapy!

 

[ToLiveToLaugh]

That feta sounds heavenly. And if only all work were more like garden work! Hard, yes, but rewarding and measurable and infinitely pleasing! Glad to hear you had a good day.

 

[freemotion]

Wow, you actually READ all that???

I wish I could have most of my days be like today....