Food Allergies Equals Food Snobs...

Our family has discovered over the years that we have turned into "food snobs". We don't eat out at restaurants a whole lot due to food safety and tend to eat at the same restaurants when we do go out. However, the Restaurants we do tend to frequent are of higher quality. As everyone can attest; it is more expensive to eat healthy. We are extremely lucky to be able to lead the lifestyle that we do. Our sustainability allows us to enjoy healthier meats such as the pork and chicken that we have raised ourselves, the fresh eggs that we gather. A lot of our fruits and vegetables were grown by us on our farm. When you eat as natural and healthy as we do, it can be difficult to enjoy the new burger place everyone is bragging about. It's not as enjoyable to eat the movie theatre popcorn when my husband makes ours on the stove top and cover it with ghee. In a way this is great because we really don't eat out much at all. It also makes the visits to bigger cities such as St. Louis and Nashville much more enjoyable. We research and look forward to trying those locally owned, organic restaurants that can safely serve us. Yes, they are much more expensive than the fast food restaurants. However, you truly do get what you pay for... In all things in my experience.  I've had quite a few requests for ghee. It's really easy to make and has a long shelf life. Start with a good amount of grass fed butter. 

Place in your stove top in a pot to melt down. 

You are essentially cooking off the milk fat and water. 

The dairy will float to the top as it separates. You are going to cook until the butter takes in a golden look. You can use a spoon to move fats off the top to get a good look at the bottom of your pot. 

Use a coffee filter and a funnel to strain ghee. This part takes the longest. 

But you are left with a flavorful fat to use as you wish. Melt to pour into popcorn. Use to cook your meat or veggies. Scrambled eggs with ghee is unbelievable. Have fun and enjoy!! 

Cooking for your freezer...

 Have you made any New Years Resolutions?  Is yours to be more prepared/organized in the kitchen? To eat  healthier?  

Gnocchi is a great go-with-anything freezer staple. It is a potato pasta that is fluffy like a dumpling. Gnocchi can be made with any potato; I can remember a couple of years ago my CSA basket was full of sweet potatoes and led to a lot of gnocchi. You can add cheese or veggies to the dough as well. It's super versatile that can be treated as a pasta with a simple sauce or often-enough at my house as a dumpling. 

Roast your potatoes in the oven until cooked through. Remove skins when cool to the touch. 

Get out your trusty potato masher or a fork and mash away. But not too much. The potatoes will be chunky. The less you do with this dough, the better it is. It is truly rustic. Add an egg and mash into the potatoes until combined. Next you pick your flour such as potato here...

Combine flour a little at a time until the dough starts to hold together. Cover it up and let it rest for about 20-30 minutes. It's tired. 😉

Tear off bits of dough and roll into logs. Use a light hand. It shapes really easily. 

Cut into bite-size pieces. You may want to toss a hand full of your flour onto pasta to prevent sticking. 

Place gnocchi into boiling salted water or as I do into boiling stock for lots of flavor. It cooks very quickly and floats to the top when done. 

Do as you wish with these fluffy beauties! Toss into a skillet with garlic and olive oil for a tasty side dish or make as a yummy main course. The best thing?  Toss these into a freezer bag, label, and save for those busy nights that a quick meal is in order. This weekend I used a batch as dumplings in my Rabbit & Dumplings...

Happy New Year Friends!!! 

A Sustainable Holiday Season...

I have to tell you...  If you are looking for a great Dressing recipe, you should definitely try mine.  It's a newbie to the recipe book, I tried it for Thanksgiving and it was a HIT!  It was sooo much better than the baked squares that I've had in the past.  Also, I came up with a yummy alternative to the typical turkey and dressing leftovers.  I made our favorite waffle recipe (Paula Deen's substituting our flour and adding xantham gum) and added some chopped leftover smoked turkey (my brother-in-law's recipe) and dressing.  The turkey and dressing baked into the waffles with that added texture from the waffle iron.  It was made even better with the addition of leftover cranberry sauce added to our maple syrup and heated through.  It was so good that I can easily see it becoming a family tradition for a Black Friday Brunch.  I hope you'll consider trying it.  As we started taking down the Thanksgiving Decorations to make room for the Christmas Decorations, I decided not to let a perfectly good pumpkin go to waste.  While the kiddos took the seeds out, my husband began cutting the pumpkin into easier to handle chunks.  We cleaned the seeds and roasted the seeds and flesh of the pumpkin in a 300 degree convection.  When pumpkin flesh was fork tender; I added to the food processor and pureed until smooth.  From this point- so many things can be done with pureed pumpkin.  You can add stock to make a soup, add to your favorite muffin, cookie, or bread batter, or you can add to your favorite pasta dough recipe.  If you're not sure, pour into your muffin tin and freeze; when frozen remove from muffin tin and place in freezer container for future use.  I do this with soup; when I want my favorite soup I can place in mug and heat up.  I refuse to let anything go to waste, and given our diet I always prepare food in bulk.  Sometimes I get so frustrated with our freezers, we have three.  Everytime I open our freezer, ziploc freezer bags and containers are everywhere and it can be difficult finding what I need at times.  One of my resolutions for the upcoming year is to find an easier way to store everything.  Any ideas would be appreciated...  Happy Christmas to Everyone!  I hope you have a wonderful Holiday Season.  If you are running short on christmas present ideas, I would suggest some homemade goodies.  I enjoy sharing my homemade extract recipes with friends and family as special gifts.  You can find my vanilla extract listed here. This year, as presents, I also made a Bourbon Vanilla Extract as well as Orange Extract.  They are super easy to make and make great gifts.

Watch Out Food Allergies, There's a New Food Revolution in Town!

There is a new food revolution among us.  The facts are; sustainability, organics, and food allergy friendly foods go hand-in-hand.  Studies have shown the more sustainably gathered the food is, the healthier it is.  Most say that the reason food allergies have gone so rampant among society is due to the means most foods have been processed.  Injected with hormones, sprayed with pesticides, and processed with preservatives; sounds good, huh?  People are starting to realize that their health starts with them, and it’s a wonderful thing.  As a mother, it is my number one job to take care of my children; a huge part of that is making sure they are making the right choices.  When I became a mother 10 years ago, I made the choice of a healthier lifestyle for our family.  I learned how to make baby food and only bought organic produce and juices.  After our second child, I realized I wanted to do more for our family in the way of being sustainable.  I started my first garden and learned how to can and freeze vegetables and fruit.  For the most part, my family and friends teased me by calling me Martha Stewart and our farm Little House on the Prairie.  I took these as compliments.  Now this food revolution is spreading throughout our families and neighborhoods and spilling over into school systems.  Farmer’s Markets are springing up all over America; along with channels devoted to cooking fresh with what’s in season.  Beautiful cookbooks and blogs abound with phenomenal recipes.  Food allergies beware!  With all of this great, fresh, sustainable food growing around us, you don’t stand a chance!

Here’s what’s in season now!

Kale Chips

2 large bunches of kale (cleaned)

Olive oil

Sea salt to taste

Remove kale from stems and tear into chip-size pieces. Toss with olive oil and spread onto baking sheet. Sprinkle with sea salt and place in pre-heated 200 degree oven for 45 minutes.

Sustainability: A Homegrown Lifestyle

Sustainability is a word used to describe a way of life for many people, including ourselves.  My husband and I live next door to his parents, and when I say next door I mean in the country with an area of woods between our houses.  Up the road are my father-in-law’s cousin and her family, and on the back side of the farm are my husband’s grandmother, two aunts, and their families.  Those are just who is in immediate proximity.  His cousins, aunts, and uncles live all around us within a few miles; and most of us chose a sustainable way of life.  It was the way the older generations survived; by their own means.  It is not how I grew up, and it was not my husband’s first or second choice as to how he thought we would be living.  It all started with me wanting a garden.  I didn’t grow up around gardens, but always wanted one.  After our second child was born, my father-in-law and husband tilled up a spot in our backyard and I started my first garden.  I bought books on gardening and eventually about canning and freezing.  I was a self-made woman who was providing healthy, home grown food for my family.  I loved it!  As the years have passed our gardens have grown to a large vegetable garden, a smaller herb garden, a flourishing fruit orchard, 40 chickens, 8 ducks, 60 guineas, 7 Nubian dairy goats, two horses, a miniature donkey, two dogs, and a cat named fluffy.  It keeps us busy with feed bills, maintenance, and little adventures along the way.  We now provide ourselves with seasonal vegetables, fresh fruit and herbs, farm fresh eggs, and raw dairy milk on a daily basis.  The men enjoy hunting for deer, rabbits, squirrel, and turkey.  They are not trophy hunters and only kill what we eat.  I have the joy of making fresh rosemary chicken sausage or sage duck sausages.  We have large freezers to store meat and some fruits and veggies.  We had an ice storm in 2009 and were without power for 9 days; it reminded me how much I loved canning those veggies and fruit jams.  There is a new food movement among us along with urban gardening and a growth in hobby farms.  More and more people are appreciating the freshness and hard work of taking care of themselves and their families the same way their ancestors did.  They say history repeats itself.  Perhaps this is our new path as history is coming full circle.  With surging gas prices, unemployment, and larger grocery bills; sustainability is fast becoming a way of survival for some.  I have the pleasure of being a leader for the state of Kentucky in the B Kind 2 Earth challenge.  Ask yourselves this, what are you doing in the means of sustainability?