Food

2010 Independence Days – Week 2

Posted on March 15, 2010 by Anisa

Plant something – so nothing yet.  😦  BUT that will not be the case next week!

Harvest something – eggs: Mayzie laid a tiny egg this week.  She hadn’t laid all winter, so we’re grateful for something at least, no matter how small…

Thankfully, we got a couple full size ones from her later in the week. 

Preserve something – froze half a batch of the soup below for later. 

Waste Not – compost and recycling.  We are also now reducing the energy we use to wash and dry our clothes… see below!!!  We’ve been brainstorming ways to store all those empty jars (since we’ve been eating our preserves, beets, pickles, jellies, etc.).

Want Not – OK, get ready, this is HUGE!  Our neighbor (the amazing Mr. Mitchell) GAVE us a practically new front loading, energy-efficient washer and dryer!  His friend had to move quickly, and sold the washer and dryer to our neighbor for $200.  So we are going to pay our neighbor the $200.  But these machines are less than two years old, and the same models are still sold at Sears for over $650 each.  So to me, $200 for over $1300 worth of appliances is the same as giving it away.  (!!SQUEAL!!!) – Yes, that’s right, I’m squealing like a little girl over a washer and dryer.  (Bonus – crossing item #36 off of my 101 in 1001 list!)

Got the garden plan drawn up and ready.  Forgot to mention last week that I borrowed my friend Jen’s copy of Carrots Love Tomatoes, and read through it pretty quick.  Great little book – very handy and quick to read. 

Henry and I spent some time cleaning up the garden on Wednesday… moved out the drip system (that was left out all winter – oops!), put the limp remains of plants we did not pull out in the winter into the compost pile.  Basically, we got it ready to be roto-tilled.  None of the above is planting, but we are preparing and I didn’t know what other category to put it in.  🙂 

      

Build Community Food Systems – Total revamp of the CSA blog this week.  Been working with a few other farm members to make it great.  Check out the new digs: http://monroeorganicfarms.wordpress.com.  Took green chili to a party to share. 

Eat the Food – venison, bacon, butternut squash, beans and asparagus, a big pot of green chili using pork and chiles from the freezer.  We’re trying to use up all the frozen asparagus before the new crop is in at the farm!  Yum Yum – I can’t wait to go harvest the good stuff this year!  Usually we use a soup recipe that is mainly asparagus and shallots, but this week I had some extra bacon lying around, and no shallots.  This is what I came up with, and we really liked the smoky flavor the toasted garlic and the bacon gave the soup. 

Toasted Garlic and Asparagus Soup

4 slices bacon, chopped into 1/2 inch pieces
1 small onion, chopped
1 head of garlic,  chopped
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
1 tsp dried thyme
3 Tbs flour
3 lbs asparagus, cut into 2-3″ long pieces
2 cups chicken broth
4 cups water
1 1/2-2 tsp salt or to taste
1/3 cup heavy cream

In a 4 quart pot, cook bacon over medium-high heat until crispy.  Remove some of the bacon pieces and reserve to garnish the finished soup.  To the remaining bacon, add the chopped onion.  Saute until the onion softens, about 3 minutes.  Add the garlic, thyme and red pepper flakes.  Continue to cook until the garlic begins to toast, but do not let it burn.  Stir in the flour.

Add the asparagus, chicken broth and water.  Stir and season with salt to taste.  Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 4-6 minutes, until the asparagus turns bright green.  Remove from heat.  Using an immersion blender (or working in batches using a regular blender), blend soup until smooth.  Stir in cream just before serving, and garnish with reserves bacon pieces. 

Categories: Food, Garden, Independence Days | 7 Comments

2010 Independence Days – Week 1

Posted on March 8, 2010 by Anisa

So – the first week has passed and I am excited that we have a few things accomplished, though not many. 

Plant something – nothing yet, but we are getting a plan together.

Harvest something – eggs – we’ve been lucky that our hens have laid through most of the winter with no heat lamp or anything. 

Preserve something – nothing – would have done the tamales, but they were too good and had to be eaten straight away!

Waste Not – compost and recycling.  We had to find a new place to take the recycling, since the local place moved away. 

Want Not – Rick started cleaning up in the yard a bit this weekend.  A bit more of this to do until the garden is ready to plant. 

Build Community Food Systems – Made a big batch of tamales with my friend Jen last Sunday.  I brought home about 25.  We were going to freeze them, but they were SOOOOOO tasty.  So we kept them in the fridge for quick lunches.  That’s good too though, since I often skip lunch if there’s nothing easy to eat. 

Also, joined the Advisory Group for the CSA.  I’ll be working on the web communications with a few other members. 

Eat the Food – We’ve enjoyed the pickled beets, canned and frozen peaches, elk sausage, bacon, basil pesto, and pablanos from the freezer this week.  Here’s the recipe for the delish tamales (from epicurious.com): Grilled Tamales with Pablanos and Fresh Corn – Yum Yum!  Oh – and Jen rendered the lard for us!  She went to buy lard, and the butcher at the store did not have enough, so he gave her some pork fat and we rendered it ourselves.  Easy and interesting.  No – we did not eat the chicharróns however.  😉

Categories: Chickens, Food, Independence Days, Recipes | 2 Comments

Independence Day Challenge 2010

Posted on March 1, 2010 by Anisa

So, March 1st (TODAY) marks the beginning of a new year for the Independence Day Challenge.  It has not been a full year for me, since I started in 2009, but since Sharon Astyk, the leader of this challenge, is starting her year a little early, I am too.  I like to follow along, and her record keeping encourages me with mine. 

So what is the Challenge?  Well, in Sharon’s own words,

“…most of us would like to grow a garden with our kids, or make sure that we know where our food comes from.  We’d like to live in communities with a greater measure of food security, we’d like to know more about what we’re eating.  We’d like to have more contact with nature, we’d like to be more self-sufficient.  We’d like to have better food at lower cost, we’d like to have a reserve for an emergency or to share.  We’d like to do more in our community and to eat with one another.  We’d like to sit down to a home cooked meal more often.

We want these things but we don’t know how to get them, in large part because when we think about growing a garden or preserving food, or working in our community, we imagine we must allot large chunks of our time.  We imagine it is impossible – because we know we can’t pull hours every day out of our frantic schedules. 

But what if we didn’t have to?  That’s what the Independence Days Challenge encourages all of us – busy working families and farmers, city dwellers and suburbanites and country folk – to remember.  That is, it isn’t all or nothing, we don’t have to wait until we have a whole afternoon free or are on vacation.  What if we could do it gradually, just a little bit every day or week – what if we only had to plant our few seeds today, and tomorrow, pull a couple of weeds and harvest two salads, and the next day make three jars of jam? 

What’s amazing about this is how fast it adds up – a few minutes here and there turn into a much greater degree of self-sufficiency.” 

Sharon has written a book, Independence Days: A Guide to Sustainable Food Storage and Preservation, and I think her work with her family is quite inspiring.  She says,

“That’s why I think food preservation and storage matter so much.  Ultimately, we are talking not only about the fairly manageable question of what to have for dinner, but also  about about transforming our society, our use of energy, our food culture, and, of course our culture as a whole.”

The challenge works like this:  Every week commit to writing down what you’ve accomplished in seven categories (listed below).   The only rule is don’t list what you didn’t do.  Because it is so easy to get blinded by what we haven’t done, that we don’t see our  accomplishments.  This is about your successes.

The seven categories are (and I mostly quoting Sharon’s descriptions here):

1. Plant something – In Sharon’s words, “it should be a reminder that gardening isn’t “put in the garden on memorial day and that’s it” – most of us can grow over a longer season than we do,  and enjoy fresh foods grown through spring, summer and fall, and even into or through winter in many places.  Even if you live in an apartment, you can sprout seeds.  So keep on planting!”

2. Harvest something – “as soon as you pick the first dandelion from your yard, it counts if you ate it or preserved it.  Don’t forget to include food you forage – whether from wild marginal areas, or even just from the neighbor’s trees that he never harvests (ask, obviously).”

3. Preserve something – Canning, dehydrating, natural cool storage, and for me, freezing (though Sharon’s not big on freezing).  “It doesn’t have to be overwhelming – and it is a way to preserve what is plentiful, inexpensive, delicious and healthy for a time when there is less of it.”

4. Waste Not–  “Once you’ve got food, whether purchased or home preserved, you have to keep an eye on it – we waste nearly half of all food, much of it in our homes.  In this category goes making sure you use what you buy or grow, cutting down on garbage production by minimizing packaging and purchasing, composting, reducing community waste by composting or feeding scraps to your animals, and taking care of your food storage – everything from keeping records and writing dates on jars to checking the apples and making sauce when they start getting soft.  BTW, reduce waste also refers to money and energy – stretching out your trips to the store and not “spending” gas on your food, cutting your grocery budget and reducing cooking energy.  These are things that are good for the planet and good for all of us.”  – Couldn’t have said it better.

5.  Want Not – The stuff you’ve done that isn’t growing/storing/preserving food goes into this category.  “That means the food you buy for storage, the things you build, scavenge, rescue and repair that get you further down the path.  Did you get a good deal at goodwill?  Scavenge some cinder blocks for your raised bed building project?  Share with a neighbor?  Find a grain mill on Craigslist? Buy some more rice and put it away?  Inventory the medicine cabinet? Pick up a new book that will be helpful?”  This category is about preparing and helping yourself.   

6. Build Community Food Systems – “Great, we’re all doing this stuff at home.  But what did you do to help spread the message, because that may even be more important.”  Things like donating to a food pantry, teaching neighbor kids how to make yogurt, talking about your food storage plans, bringing a casserole to a new neighbor.  As Sharon says, “The first line of security for all of us is each other – we are all enriched by a more food-secure community.”

7. Eat the Food – “Ultimately, eaters have more power over our agricultural future than they know – farmers can’t necessarily lead the way – they have to sell what eaters want.  So cooking and eating are the way we will change the food system.  This is where you tell us about the new recipes you tried, or the old ones you adapted to new ingredients, about how you are actually eating what you store and store what you eat, or getting your kids to try the kale.”

So here’s to 2010 – wish me luck, and join along if you like!

Categories: Food, Independence Days | 3 Comments

Mad House and Independence Catch Up

Posted on January 25, 2010 by Anisa

Is that February I see?  The first month of 2010 has FLOWN by!  We’ve had a hard time catching up since the holidays (as evidenced by my absence from the blog), but we’re looking at a few clear weekends, then a trip to the Tucson area to visit friends, and then a (hopefully) nice relaxing break from the hustle and bustle!

So in the last month, I completed my student teaching for my childbirth education certification, worked on the test, nearly finished the reading, and scheduled my last required observation.  I picked a business name (stay tuned for it, complete with links), and bartered a web design.  Yay!

Additionally, E is now up to six teeth, we had several dinners with friends, a game night or two, bartered hunting for mechanical work on the truck (hallelujah!), had to post bail to get Josie out of doggie jail (she made a break for Hampden and got picked up), and held a Mad Tea Party for Rick’s and my un-birthday!  The last was so fun, and I made an amazing hat thanks to a great tutorial, and a little friendly encouragement.

It’s been 37 weeks since I started tracking our family with the Independence Days project.  I use the term ‘tracking’ loosely, however, since I have not really kept good track for the last ten or twelve weeks.  This is what I can say for sure, from my memory.  Every day we collect three eggs from our five hens.  Pretty good since it is the dead of winter and we don’t give them a heat lamp or anything.

We have not planted or harvested any veggies whatsoever, but Rick did go make hamburger and sausage with his uncle and grandpa.  We used all the lard from the hogs (this years and last years) for this.  So we added about 30 pounds of ground meat to the freezer.  We also found pints of blackberries on sale for 77 cents each once, and bought like 20 and frozen them.  We should have bought more though, since we’ve eaten them all already (Rick went on a smoothie kick last month).

As I mentioned above, we bartered hunting for mechanics – and I say this totally falls under building community food systems.  Our friend is a mechanic and replaced the belts and water pump on the 4 Runner for us, with the promise that Rick would teach him and his family to hunt this year.  He saved us over $900!  I say we really got the better end of the deal in some ways because Rick loves hunting so much, and he is very happy for another reason to spend more time outdoors doing it.

We have surely been eating the food as well around here.  Most weeks all we buy at the store is dairy, bread, rice or beans, flour and sugar, coffee, peanut butter, maple syrup, and sometimes eggs to supplement what we’ve got from the hens.  And bananas, as I think Henry is addicted.  We’ve been eating veggies and meat from the freezer, our peaches, pickles and jams, frozen fruit – delish!

We’ve been talking about the garden a lot the last week or so.  I think that the sun coming up at 7:00am again is making us think Spring is around the corner.  We received the Baker Creek heirloom seed catalog in December, and have since been lustfully drooling over every page and variety since.

Alas – my writing time is up today – E is, shall we say, requesting – my presence.

More to come soon.

Categories: Chickens, Childbirth, Community, Hunting, Independence Days | 6 Comments

On Hunting…

Posted on December 2, 2009 by Anisa

Lookout, I’ve pulled out the soapbox.

Recently, I’ve come upon more than a few people who are expressing a general dislike for hunters and hunting.  It gets my hackles up right away, of course, being married to a very responsible, passionate hunter.  The arguments I hear are usually quite uninformed, and unfairly prejudiced.

Over the last month, I’ve heard about how *all* hunters are supposedly only after trophies, running around willy-nilly with machine guns, madly through the woods killing Bambi and any other living creature that crosses their paths with no respect or remorse, tromping over sacred wilderness destroying all that is in their paths.

Wow.

Many people are unaware that hunting is a highly regulated division of wildlife management.  Yes, management.  Hunters pay a fee to apply for a license in a specific area of the state.  Apply.  As in, they may not get the license they are applying for.  But the Division of Wildlife gets that fee no matter what.  The DOW gives out so many licenses per area (all the applications go into a drawing).  So many licenses are for males, and so many are for females.  How many?  Well, the DOW actually keeps tabs on the herds in all the areas of the state.  They determine how many animals can thrive on the land (all this counting, as well as the land management itself, is mostly paid for by those application fees from hunters).  The DOW  keeps track of how many licenses were filled the previous year, and how many weren’t.  They keep track of how hard the previous seasons were – was there too much snow for all the animals to find food? Was the summer too dry and the vegetation low?  They make sure that there are not more licenses given for an area than the herds in the area can afford to lose.

For example, in years past, Rick and his brothers and uncles and grandfather would all get licenses, usually at least one deer and one elk license each, for the area they hunt near Kremmling.  But last year (2008) hardly anyone had a license.  One person in their whole group had a deer license, and every one else got either one elk license or nothing.   The total number of animals killed last year for the family: zero.

This year, the herds had increased (due to the break they got last year).  Rick had two elk tags and a deer tag.  He filled his deer tag, and so did two other hunters in his group.  But a friend of ours, who hunts a neighboring area, got no licenses at all this year.  But he paid all the fees.

Also as with other applications in this country, you have to give information about yourself.  You have to give your personal information (like SSN, proof of residency, etc.), prove that you’ve taken and passed a two-day hunter safety course.  You can’t be a felon, and the types of guns/calibers used for hunting are regulated.  Not every one can just shoot a deer.

I encourage anyone to visit their states DOW website (here’s Colorado’s) and view the many rules and regulations surrounding hunting.

It is illegal to kill an animal without a license.  It’s illegal to kill a different animal than you have a license for.  It’s illegal to kill an animal outside of the season determined by the DOW (the seasons are one to two weeks long).  That is called poaching.   Hunters truly detest poachers.  Poachers steal and/or waste the meat, hurt populations, destroy habitat, and make hunters look bad.  They are generally selfish and hurtful to the image of hunters.  They are the ones people think of, running willy-nilly through the woods, shooting whatever they feel entitled to.

Poachers are not punished with a  simple wrist slap.  When they are caught, generally their guns are confiscated, their hunting privileges revoked for life, and they are saddled with huge fines and sometimes jail time.  My friend’s father (an avid hunter) helped catch someone poaching a bear near his home in Allenspark this summer.  The DOW awarded him $500 (he could have chosen instead to have Preference Points – points that give him an advantage in next years license drawing).

So what about trophies?  One of the recent argue-ers (unsolicited at a bookstore, after I made H put a video of  Disney’s Bambi back on the shelf) informed me of how terrible hunters were because they always took the biggest and the best animals, only hungry for trophies.  Well, as you can see with the license system, it’s harder to pull a tag for a male deer or elk than just wanting it.  And most “trophy worthy” animals (the ones with the big antlers) are older.   They’ve been around for a few years, spread their seed, and yes, hunters often look for them.  They have more meat because they are bigger. And killing the old male, and passing over younger fork-horns, will let those young bucks grow their own big antlers, and give them a chance to start their own herd.  The young ones are the ones that you don’t want to see on the table… like with beef, you kill the older, fully grown steer, and let the yearling grow up a bit.

But many hunters are a bit more like Rick.  They view the animal they killed to feed their family as the trophy.  The meat in the freezer is the prize after a few days hunting.  It doesn’t matter how big the antlers were (or if they even had any).  Having kids with full bellies all year-long is trophy enough for them.

Besides all of this, hunting is spiritual, sustainable, organic, natural, and an important tradition for many families.  Rick says ‘thank you’ to each animal whose life he has taken to sustain our own.  When he shot the grouse with H, we taught H how the grouse died so we could eat.  How to treat it with respect, and how the grace said at dinner means something…

The animals on a hunters table is free-range, organic, and healthier than anything commercially raised.  It’s sustainably “produced” by nature.  And thankfully most of America has overcome the greed that decimated the bison on this country.  Most hunters are conservationists.  Rick’s uncle loves to hunt ducks.  So he belongs to clubs and organizations that preserve duck habitat.  The DOW works with land owners to preserve and maintain wildlife habitat, as well as conduct outreach and education for the public, such as Georgetown’s Big Horn Sheep festival in November and youth hunter mentoring.  And, by the way, Rick is a volunteer for the DOW for these kind of programs.

There was a great short series of articles called Thoughts on Eating Venison posted on Field & Stream’s blog yesterday:

The Obligation
The Ritual
The Manifesto
The Plea
The Tribute

The blogs, along with the comments, can be quite enlightening as to how hunters around this country think.

For me, I sleep easier knowing that my food never placed a hoof in a feed lot.  There are no antibiotics or hormones to contend with.  I know it was slaughtered humanely, and processed in a clean facility.  And it’s quite tasty too.

What about you?  Thoughts on hunting?  Personal experiences?

Categories: Food, Hunting, Sustainability | 13 Comments

The Left-over Cranberry Sauce of your Dreams

Posted on December 1, 2009 by Anisa

Must share this yummy recipe – I made it up myself last night!

Peach-Cranberry Pie

1 home made pie crust (made with butter is the best!)
8 cups sliced fresh peaches (or frozen, unsweetened peaches, defrosted and undrained)
1 cup left-over orange-rosemary cranberry sauce
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup flour
1/2 – 3/4 cup rolled oats (I used a big handful)
2 Tbs butter

Preheat oven to 375.  Put pie crust in a deep dish pie plate (or, if you’re like me, your cast iron skillet).  Stir together peaches, cranberry sauce, sugar, flour and oats.  Put in pie plate.  Dot with butter.  Bake for 40-45 minutes.  Cover edges of pie crust with foil if they are browning too quickly.  Let cool for about 15 minutes before serving with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

If you wanted to, you can just put the filling in the pan and cover with the crust (like in my picture) and serve it in a bowl, or this would be very good with a lattice pie crust on top.  But I am in way too much of a hurry for my desserts to go to all that work unless I’m making it for a party or something.

Categories: Food, Recipes | 1 Comment

Where I’ve Been and Independence Update!

Posted on November 25, 2009 by Anisa

Wowza!  I’ve been off the blog for over a week – it’s been a mad house around here!  What with the teething and growing and friends over for dinner and getting all set for the holidays, plus prepping to do my student teaching!  Yikes!

So a quick update…. I think I owe a few weeks of Independence days.  We’d be on week 28, but I really don’t feel like I have all that much to report for the last three weeks or so (see the mad house comment, above).  The chickens are just hanging out (or hanging in) in the snow, and we are still getting two or three eggs a day from them.  The two older hens are not laying, and I’m guessing they won’t lay through the winter.  The three little girls are busy, but they can’t keep up with Henry, the egg eating machine, so we did buy a couple dozen this week.  Yes, they are both local and humane.  😉

So there’s nothing in the Plant Something, and only eggs in the Harvest Something category.  Does any one know if it is too late to put garlic in the ground?  We’ve wanted to do this, but have kept putting it off and now it might be too late??

We did pick up our hog (well, only half a hog this fall) last week.  We split it with Dave the Dentist, and so maybe that counts as Want Not/Prep & Storage or Build Community Food Systems??  Since we didn’t harvest anything new, there was nothing to Preserve.  Wait, no, I take that back.  We did boil a turkey carcass to death, so we preserved some turkey stock (which is delicious!).

Waste Not – well, compost and recycling, of course, and we are still mucking about with the pallets Rick brought  home for the new bins we want to make.  Rick brought home a piece of drywall that was to be cast off at work (they’re remodeling his office), to replace a damaged piece in our basement junk room.  Also, found a couple of cute uses for scrap fabric that have been transformed into Christmas gifts.

Eat the Food – ah, food.  The one category that never fails me.  I always eat!  So this week, we are making green bean casserole from beans we froze, and chardonnay glazed carrots from the sweet carrots of the late summer/early fall.  And mashed potatoes from the spuds stored down in the basement.  Yum.  Yes, we are hosting Thanksgiving dinner.  I plan to break out the home-made dill pickles and watermelon rind pickles for snacks while the turkey roasts.

And I made my cranberry sauce ahead of time.  I adapted an Everyday Food recipe.  I was standing there cooking it, when suddenly the urge to add rosemary overcame me.  I put it in and I think it turned out pretty tasty.  So here’s that one for you:

2 packages fresh cranberries (24oz each)
1.5 cups sugar
4 large strips of orange peel
1/2 cup water
1 cup freshly squeezed orange juice
2 sprigs fresh rosemary, plus more for garnish

Rinse and drain cranberries.  In a large sauce pan, add cranberries, sugar, orange peel and water.  Over medium-high heat, bring to a boil.  Reduce heat and let simmer 15 minutes.  Add rosemary sprigs and simmer 5-10 minutes more.  Remove from heat, and stir in orange juice.  Let cool, cover and refrigerate for up to a week.  To serve, bring to room temperature and remove rosemary, garnish with a fresh rosemary sprig.

So that catches up the Independence Days.  Happy Thanksgiving Day to you!

Categories: Chickens, Food, Independence Days, Recipes | 1 Comment

Independence Days – Weeks 23, 24 & 25

Posted on November 2, 2009 by Anisa

Sweet E - 4 monthsThree weeks on one post… sheesh!  Things have been crazy for me the last three weeks.  Rick has, of course, been hunting which has left me with my hands full with the boys and not a lot of time for sane blog writing.  I’ve also been working on my childbirth educator’s certification, and am very close… this weekend is my workshop, and then I should hopefully be able to take my test and be certified.  Trying not to stress about this, but I am getting down to the wire a bit.

Then, this morning I woke up to one dead chicken and one chicken missing.  I thought Lavender, our grey chicken, had flown the coop… I saw what I thought was her jump over the back fence.  When I went out to investigate, she was nowhere to be seen and still (as of 7:00pm) has not come home.  Unfortunately, we don’t expect her back, as one of her Rhode Island Red comrades was lying dead (and partially dismembered) in the yard.

FALLJosie was trying to help herself to chicken for breakfast, but we don’t think it was her that did the killing.  There are fox tracks all over the place and I had only just let Josie (who has never tried to attack the chickens before) outside.  I didn’t hear a ruckus of any kind, and she didn’t have any blood on her.  But you’ll not catch her saying no to a free chicken either.   😦

We’re a bit bummed on that front, as it means we’re back down to only five.  And oddly (or maybe not so oddly) I’m not too sad about the dead red-head, but I have a bit of heartache about Lavender… this is why you don’t name food.  She was one of the originals, and though she was meanest and leanest, she laid a white egg everyday and was fun to watch.

So anyway, here’s the dirt on Independence Days.  All in all, not the most successful three weeks since we’ve started this.

Plant Something –  um, none.

Harvest Something–  Rick successfully harvested a doe!  Eggs from just the young chickens, as the older hens are molting and looking quite pitiful.  A very large bunch of kale (and gave the Spicy Kale and Potato Soup a second – and much more successful- go ’round).

Preserve Something – venison and elk in the fridge, potatoes to the basement, carrots to the freezer.

Waste Not – I really think we had a big FAIL in this category.  The upright freezer door got left open a crack and we lost a bunch of food in the door.  The stuff in the body of the freezer stayed frozen, since it was full, but we had a mad rush to eat some pork chops and beef remnants.  The rest had to be tossed.  😦

Want Not/Prep & Storage – nothing new

Build Community Food Systems –  we were able to share a few veggies this past week, but I didn’t get to the last of the farmers markets to get those apples I wanted.

Eat the Food – mmm I.O.U. some recipes.  Not in the mood to type recipes right now, but I will say that we’ve been eating venison, practically finished the pork completely, enjoyed some tomatoes and chiles for a pot of home made green chile, eating potatoes, and peaches.  We did share a few of our preserves as well… mostly as gifts to my awesome bro-in-law, Dan.  🙂

Categories: Chickens, Food, Hunting, Independence Days | 3 Comments

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