Cheater's Sourdough Bread

All of my fermenting vegetables got me thinking...

I love sourdough bread, but I've been hesitant to start up a sourdough starter, without a fridge or freezer to slow the fermenting starter, I'd have to feed it regularly, which would mean either throwing starter out (since we are sans-chickens lately) or baking like a fiend.  And knowing myself, I'd probably work myself into a frenzy using up all of that extra starter in various rolls, breads, pancakes, etc, when we really don't eat all that much wheat normally.

Maybe I've just been lazy, who knows.

Anyway, I got to thinking over my maturing sauerkraut, how the lactobacilli  in the fermenting vegetables would be the same lactobacilli in the sourdough starter.  Then remembering Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions technique of increasing grain's digestibility and nutrition by soaking the flour overnight in water with a few tablespoons of whey (lactobacilli again), I knew I couldn't go too far wrong with this.

So I ground a pound (my normal loaf size) of our homegrown wheat kernels, placed the whole wheat flour in a bowl (about 4 cups) with 1 1/2 to 2 cups tepid water, enough to make a wet, but not soupy, dough, and 4 tablespoons of plain sauerkraut juice.  Mixed and covered and left in a warm spot overnight.

 Dough after 12 hours, ready to be transferred to bread pan

In the morning the wheat bran and gluten was noticeably broken down, and had both the sticky texture and pleasantly sour aroma of sourdough, along with some bubbles which meant that it had started to ferment.  I gave the flour a stir, added a good pinch of salt, and poured it, if that's the correct verb, perhaps transferred it into an oiled bread pan.  I let it rise, lightly covered in a warm spot, for another hour or so.  When the surface was slightly raised, maybe only an inch, put it straight into a hot oven, 375F.  Once in the oven it continued to rise into a nice light loaf.  It takes at least an hour to bake, giving it a characteristic thick sourdough crust.

I wish I could share the smell of the loaf coming out of the oven.  It was a perfect sourdough loaf, I could have sworn I was back in San Francisco.  Crusty exterior; chewy, pleasantly sour interior; moist but not too heavy.  And like sourdough bread it keeps longer, neither going stale or moldy as fast as yeasted breads.  Better yet, this recipe has been fool-proof, and oft repeated.  It's the least fussy dough I've ever worked with, and the easiest by far to prepare.

So if you've got a pot of fermenting vegetables hanging around in the cellar, give those hungry little lactobacilli beasties something else to chew on.  To keep my fermenting pot topped up, once the water level drops to an inch above the vegetables, I top up with a brine of 2 Tablespoons sea salt to 1 Quart or Liter of water.  Given a few days, the lactobacilli will have repopulated the brine, ready for another batch of sourdough.

Wintermilk: making soymilk and tofu

Well, I suppose we're not totally out of things to blog about, on the homefront...

Since we will be leaving the farm in the spring, and winters are a hardship on animals up here, we won't be keeping any livestock this winter. And since dairy and egg production are on hold through the dark and extremely cold months of January - March, we won't be missing much. Last winter we purchased rice and soy milk, in bulk, to carry us through the goat's milk drought, since the only other option within our range is commercial cow's milk. But we got to thinking about making soy milk and tofu this year instead.

Now, we have each been through the spectrum of diets, from vegan to vegetarian to Weston A. Price traditional-meat-and-dairy based diet. For the most part, veganism and vegetarianism grew naturally out of an urban environment, and we got interested in Weston Price and the well-known cookbook, Nourishing Traditions, as we started raising our own livestock.

We now have a hybridized diet. Since raising meat, eggs and milk is still resource expensive in the North, requiring large amounts of land, and grain/hay supplies to last at least 7 months a year, we do not entirely rely upon meat and dairy to supply our protein. In fact, to raise these products out of season, we need to grow high-protein legume feeds for the animals... legumes we could just as easily grow for ourselves. I enjoy the milk and egg glut that comes with the spring and early summer, but treat these foods as seasonal items. And for meat, we consume 10 lbs a month, for two adults, plus as much gelatin rich broth as I can put away. Legumes make up the rest of our protein requirements.

Along with learning about such nutrient rich foods as a good bone stock, and lacto-fermented vegetables advocated by the Weston Price foundation, we also became weary of soybeans. And in the process, did some in-depth research for myself. From what I have read, on both sides of the issue, and even from the livestock perspective, I understand the dangers of a heavily soy-based diet to be primarily from improper preparation, or from an imbalance of calcium when replacing soy for milk. Soy, along with other legumes and grains, is heavy on the side of phosphorous, and low on the side of calcium, the opposite of milk. So as we phase out dairy products, and begin using more properly prepared soy-based foods, my main concern is fulfilling our calcium requirements. Especially in the winter months when our "green" foods are at the lowest.

So I did a calcium "audit" of our typical winter diet, and found that the base-line is at about half of a recommended daily intake of 1000mg. In further researching calcium rich foods, sesame seeds and poppy seeds pack the highest boost of calcium, way above the alfalfa sprouts I had expected to close the gap. Another great surprise was that many of the spices I use in our winter foods, the kinds of spices often found in curry or gharam masala, are also some of the most calcium rich foods. These spices are mostly of the umbrelifa family: cumin, caraway, anise, fennel and coriander. It seems that calcium comes in small packages.

Well, after a lengthy pre-amble, here's some of the delicious foods we prepared with our bulk sack of soybeans...


First of all, here's a link to some tofu and soymilk recipes, since I won't be giving detailed instructions here. Basically, the beans are soaked and blended with water, then the slurry is boiled for 15 minutes to destroy the enzyme that makes raw soy indigestible. When it is filtered, the liquid is soymilk, and the pulp is called okara.

One pound of raw soybeans, which I bought in bulk for 75 cents a pound, made 3 Quarts of soymilk (in later processing I was more careful not to let the soymilk reduce like it did in my first batch below), along with about 4 cups of okara. I added a touch of sweetener and a pinch of salt to each Quart of soymilk, and I'm really pleased with the result. More about the okara below.

In my next batch, beginning again with one pound of raw soybeans, the filtered soymilk is re-heated and curdled, very similar to cheese-making, to form tofu curds. There are a few curdling agents, including calcium sulfate which would fortify our tofu with calcium, but I couldn't find it locally and used the more commonly found magnesium sulfate, or Epsom salts (be sure to use the salts made for internal purposes... read the label).

The curds are pressed in a cheese-press type of contraption, forming a nice firm tofu. One pound of raw beans produced 1 1/2 pounds of pressed tofu. The whey is mild tasting and makes a nice soup base or bread making liquid.

First tofu fry... tossed with a kale, red pepper and onion stir-fry... yum.

Now back to that okara. It retains most of the fiber and carbohydrates, and about half of the fat and protein from the beans. Here's a link with some really inspired recipes to use and enjoy this unfamiliar by-product of soymilk/tofu making. The patties below are made from the UnChicken Nuggets recipe in the link above.

Since the okara is high in soy-oil, it can be used to replace some of the fat in baked goods. It is also a fluffy type of grain, and can replace eggs for a slightly firmer texture in cakes or muffins. I tried the toasted okara recipe, which has a lightly nutty/coconutty flavor that can be used to replace toasted coconut in recipes, and it smelled so good, I decided to try a granola. I mixed half rolled oats and half cooked okara, omitting oil/fat, sweetened to taste, spiced to taste, added sesame seeds (for calcium!), and toasted in the oven as granola. It's absolutely delicious, better than traditional oat granola. I have no doubt we will find many ways to incorporate this new ingredient in our diet. Okara can even be dehydrated and ground, for easy storage, or to make your own soy protein powder.

Making tofu and soymilk at home requires about the same amount of time as dairy milk and simple cheeses. But the cost-return is higher than dairy products. 75 cents worth of soybeans yielded $6 of soymilk or $8 of tofu, not counting the okara and whey by-products. Soy milk can also be made into soy-yogurt, using the same dairy yogurt starter. Growing our own soybeans would no doubt, require less time and land than maintaining a single dairy goat, year-round, in our bio-region and climate. So for now we have soymilk next to the goat's milk; tofu 2-3 times a week and goat's meat 3-4 times a week. A happy hybrid.

How to get those tomatoes naked

I rarely enjoy the task of removing tomato skins, and sometimes prefer to leave them, for certain things, such as last week's chutney, where the combination of textures (apples with their skins on, peppers, etc) conceal the tomato skins. But for a good tomato sauce, skins off is undeniably better. I've tried a few methods, dropping the tomatoes in boiling water to remove the skins, and pressing the raw tomatoes through a food mill, which separates both skins as well as seeds. The boiling water method works just fine, but it is a rather hot process working on a wood stove, and the heat tends to wear me out faster than the task. And the food mill is a slow process, but only leaves me with a puree, when sometimes I would rather have some of the texture of the tomato meats and seeds in the finished product. So it was with excitement that I read about a trick to remove tomato skins raw, in a 1980 Organic Gardening publication.

I've been wanting to try it out and see if it is a viable method for removing the skins from large batches of tomatoes. So I set out with a 20lb pail of ripe Roma tomatoes. I have a pleasant work counter and stool, so that I can sit at a comfortable height to do large food processing tasks. Here's the technique: use only ripe tomatoes, paste types work best, but it works for all varieties.

Scrape the tomato skin with the back of your pairing, or small kitchen knife. Scrape back and forth a few times, applying slight pressure, like you are shaving the skin, rotating the tomato to work around the whole fruit. You will start to see the skin wrinkle under the right pressure, and the texture of the tomato changes to that of a water balloon, as if there's a layer of water just under the skin. This method separates the skin from the flesh underneath. Then slice off the stem end and peel down from the top. The skin should come off easily.

I found this to be a method comparable to the boiling process, perhaps a bit slower, but no standing at a hot stove, waiting over a steaming pot for the water to re-boil. I certainly enjoyed the task more, and felt less worn out afterward. And sometimes that's more important than the length of time a task takes.

Naked tomatoes, ready for processing.

Add a few diced peppers, and garden herbs, and we've got a taste of summer to grace humble winter meals. What a delight when the harvest basket is full of such vibrant color, and flavor!

Tomato (or Otherwise) Chutney

I found a most delicious tomato chutney recipe, of East Indian inspiration, in an April 1981 Organic Gardening magazine. I modified it slightly, it's great fresh, served with a summer vegetable curry and cooked grain, and I have no doubt it would be great canned as well.

I do love chutneys because they are so malleable. You can use just about whatever you have on hand. I made an apple, tomato, green pepper and dried blueberry chutney last year that brightened up quite a few plain winter meals. The fruit ingredients in just about any chutney can be altered, the recipe inspiring the concoction above called for sultanas, and I substituted our dried blueberries with delicious results. Just keep the proportions the same and use your own varieties of garden or local produce for your own regionally specific chutney.

Tomato (or Otherwise) Chutney

8 large fresh tomatoes (blight sufferers can substitute tomatillos or ground cherries or other fruit, such as apples, or fruit and green tomatoes equal parts)

1 small medium-heat Hot Pepper

1 medium Sweet Pepper (green or otherwise)

1 medium onion

2-3 cloves garlic

2 Tbsp minced ginger (or 1 tsp dried ginger powder)

1 1/2 tsp whole mustard seed

1 tsp fennugreek seed (can substitute fennel or anise seed)

2 tsp turmeric powder

1 1/2 tsp paprika powder

salt to taste

Quarter or dice tomatoes or fruit, finely chop onion, peppers (remove seeds for milder flavor, or include them for extra heat), garlic and ginger. Set aside.

Heat heavy-bottomed sauce pan with 3 Tablspoons Olive or vegetable oil on high heat. When hot, nearly smoking, add mustard seed and fennugreek seed. Continue to heat until mustard seeds start to pop, remove from heat and add powdered spices (turmeric, paprika and ginger if using powdered). Let the spices heat through, but do not burn (about 1 minute). Return to medium heat and add minced onion, garlic and ginger (if using fresh), stirring frequently until onion is golden brown. Add minced peppers, heat through, stirring to blend flavors. Add tomatoes or fruit and cook until softened. A pure apple chutney may require some liquid like apple juice, cider or cider vinegar, or other fruit or citrus juice. Salt to taste.

This recipe makes about 2 pints. If making larger quantities for preserving, multiply as desired. For conversion, remember 3 Tbsp = 1/4 cup. Oil can be reduced to 1 Tbsp per pint if desired. Process in a boiling water bath, 10 min pints, 15 min quarts.

Going Crackers

All winter long I have the luxury of baking and cooking throughout the day, since we spend more of our time indoors, than out. Come summer, it's the opposite, and I flee from the house as quickly as I can get the morning chores done (as long as it's not raining, then it's a home-cookin', house-cleanin' laundry day, yes, I do laundry when it rains). It's a good thing then, that our diet changes with summer, and we enjoy simple, fresh meals instead of the heavier winter fare.

And by this time of year, the house get's too unbearably hot (with our wood cookstove still chugging), to bake much yeasted bread. So we go crackers instead. Crackers make great snack food, and pair well with light meals or soups. And of course, like everything else, homemade crackers pop the lid off of the store bought kind.

There are as many cracker recipes as there are ways to enjoy them. You can try almost anything, as long as you end up with a rollable ball of dough. Try some basics, then improvise your own family favorites. There are yeasted crackers that turn out soft and flaky. We tend to like the crisp crackers, either sweet or salty.

Here's my two favorite basic recipes.

Salty Whole Wheat Cracker

2 cups whole wheat (or rye) flour

optional 1/2 cup wheat germ, bran or rolled oats

1/4 cup oil, ghee or softened butter

yogurt, buttermilk or soured milk (add tbsp vinegar to milk to sour)

Mix dry ingredients in bowl (here's where you can add your own flavors like caraway, sesame seed, herbs...)

Blend oil or butter into flour

Add 1/2 cup of yogurt or buttermilk, stir until blended, then knead with your hand, adding extra liquid if needed. You want a medium stiffness, rather like pie crust, something that does not crack when kneaded, or stick to the bowl or hands.

Grease 2 medium cookie sheets. I roll my cracker dough right in the cookie sheet, but you can also roll out on a floured surface. Roll out a 1/4 inch at the thickest, again, you may prefer thin or thicker crackers. Sprinkle with salt to taste. Use a pizza cutter (or knife) to slice the sheet of dough into desired shape, or cut shapes out and transfer to cookie sheet.

Bake at 375 in the middle of the oven until golden brown and crisp, baking time will vary by thickness of dough. If the outside crackers are browning, remove baked crackers and return the rest to the oven.

Graham Cracker

2 cups whole wheat or graham flour

Optional, if using whole wheat add 1/2 cup wheat germ, bran or rolled oats

1-2 Tbsp brown sugar (sugar to taste)

medium to heavy cream (Half and Half or Whipping Cream)

Mix sugar into flour.

Add 1/2 cup cream, blend with spoon, then knead with hand, adding cream until reaching desired consistency (see recipe above).

Roll out directly in greased cookie sheets, or on floured surface, 1/4 inch thick. Optional: sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar. Cut to desired shape.

Bake at 375 until golden brown. Remove any crackers on the edges that brown before the rest.

No nonsense noodles

I love homemade noodles, but have not invested in a noodle maker, and I found the process of rolling out, slicing, and separating the noodles a time-consuming process, and not fit for busy summer meals. So the day I came across this recipe, I was hooked.

Make your favorite pasta dough, or follow this basic recipe below. My recipe will make a meal and leftovers for two hungry adults.
3 cups whole wheat flour
tsp salt
Mix and make a well in the center.
Lightly beat 3 eggs and pour into the flour.
Blend and add a tablespoon ghee, melted butter or oil.

Gather into a ball and start to kneed with the heal of your hand. If the dough is still stiff or does not stick together, add a tablespoon of water at a time. (If you are using sifted white flour, you can use milk instead of water, but I find water works best with whole wheat). Continue to kneed adding liquid until a stiff dough that does not crumble is achieved. Cut dough into four quarters, shape each quarter into a ball. Cover and let rest 10 minutes.

Grate each fist-sized ball of dough on the large holes of a hand-held grater onto a floured surface. Keep grating onto a freshly floured surface so that the "noodles" do not pile up, but lay in a single layer. Lightly dust the "noodles" with flour and gently roll or wiggle them with your fingertips to separate any clumps.

The noodles can be boiled immediately, but I find better results when they are allowed to dry for an hour or more. I grate them onto floured cookie sheets and put them in the warming oven of my cook stove. Bring 4 quarts of water to a rolling boil, and slowly add the noodles, making sure the water stays at a boil. These noodles cook very quickly, about 2-5 minutes, depending on how long they were allowed to dry. Do not over cook them, they will return to a ball of mush!

Drain in a colander, and allow them to stand in the colander, making sure all liquid is completely drained. Stir in a tablespoon or two of ghee or oil to prevent sticking. They can be moved to a covered baking dish and kept warm in the oven until serving, or served fresh.

The uncooked noodles can also be used in noodle casseroles or soups, following your favorite recipe.

No nonsense noodles with tomato meat sauce and green beans

Dandelion Wine: out to pasture

There's nothing like a good pasture. The grazers and chickens have all gained a bit of weight and upped the production since the pastures have come up. Penelope, the milking goat, only gets a handful of grain to keep her busy while milking, and the chickens only need about half of their winter ration of grain, to produce twice the eggs. We are able to graze, with no supplement of hay or grain from mid-May to about the end of October here.

The kids are 3 months old now, and have been trained to the electric fence, and introduced into the herd. They are slowly integrating into the herd order, which takes a few weeks, and we had to watch that the does don't bully the kids around too much for the first few days. The two specks on the left of the picture below are the kids, then the two does, and of course Pilgrim, "the big goat", and the movable chicken tractor on the right.
The chickens are also much happier on pasture, they have bugs and greens to peck all day, and I think they are healthier, being moved every day onto clean ground, than they are in the barn with heavy bedding. I even have some extra milk or whey to give them, and the five hens often lay five eggs a day. If you look closely at the hen in the center, you can see some glossy green feather tips. The Rhode Island Red heritage is starting to show on the hens as they mature. Two of them look like straight Barred Rock, and two have green tints, and the white hen has thrown to the Rhode Island White heritage of the original ISA Brown commercial hens.

Roosty shows the most coloring, with red feathers and some long green tail feathers too.

There are some excellent Dandelion patches in the hay fields, it makes great hay too, more nutrition than either the Timothy or Red Clover it was sown to. The Dandelion is in full bloom, which means it's time for Dandelion Wine! Last summer I made some Red Clover and Daisy Blossom Wine. It was good, but I think I will like the Dandelion better. I might make a straight Red Clover wine later this summer, the Daisy added a bitter to the wine.

It didn't take long to gather 6 or so quarts of Dandelion flowers. I followed a simple recipe. Pour 6 quarts boiling water over the flowers. Cover and let steep for 24 hours. Strain the flowers out, pressing the liquid through a muslin cloth. Add 3 lbs organic sugar or honey, the grated rind and juice of a lemon and an orange (I don't have fresh citrus, so I use dried orange and lemon peel, and a dozen cardamom pods), and a pound of Golden Raisins. Stir until sugar is dissolved. Dissolve one package yeast in a cup of warm water and a teaspoon of sugar, add to the liquid mixture. Set crock or jar in a warm spot, away from drafts or direct sunlight. Cover loosely, and stir every day for three weeks. Pour into bottles, corking loosely to let excess gas escape, and store in a dark cool room. When fermentation is complete, cork tightly. Ready to enjoy in 6 months.

The Sanctuary and the Sting

The Flea Beetles are out and devouring. We have a hard time with Flea Beetles, especially the brassica eating variety. This area used to be a Brussels Sprouts growing region, and the last agricultural use these fields were put to was 15 years ago, growing Brussels Sprouts. And of course, they used lots of sprays to combat the flea beetles and cabbage moths. And of course, all that did was to proliferate the most resistant individuals. So even 15 years of these fields being sown to pasture, and cropped for hay, we still have a mighty infestation of flea beetles at the slightest hint of something good for them to eat.

The over wintered kale that had survived under mulch was just beginning to sprout. The flea beetles took care of them, no more sprouts. They mowed down an entire row of radish just germinating. I have only one organic method that seems to work. A 50/50 mixture of molasses and warm water sprayed on all surfaces of the plants will keep the flea beetles off, but it must be applied after each rain. I use it to get crops like radish, beets, chard and turnips up and going strong enough to handle some flea beetle damage, but it takes too long to spray all of my larger transplants of cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale and Brussels sprouts because you have to cover the bottom sides of the leaves as well as the top. So I have decided to starve them out. These transplants can wait until mid-June before we put them in the ground. Last year, I put them out at about this stage, then covered them with row cover. But the flea beetles must have hatched under the row cover and managed to finish off a few of them before I noticed they were inside. So this year, they have a Brassica sanctuary in one of the Freezer Cold Frames. By the time they go in the ground, they will be strong enough to withstand the Flea Beetles.

The stinging nettle is growing like gangbusters, so we tried a recipe from a wild edible plant book for Creamed Nettles. I harvested these with scissors to avoid a lot of stings, but a few stings never hurt. Once they are steamed, they do not sting. Let them cool slightly and dice them on a cutting board. Make a basic white sauce, with any variation of herb or spice you enjoy, and mix with the cooked nettles.

I like to use yellow pea flower to make the cream sauce, and spiced with nutmeg and black pepper.

Served with Roasted Purple Potatoes with Creamy Tomato Sauce, and Whole Wheat Caraway Bread and Goat's Butter. They were just delicious, very much like spinach, and also full of vitamins and minerals. And nettles grow like weeds!

Making Ghee

Ghee is a clarified form of butter, traditionally used in Indian cuisine and culture. But ghee has some advantages over butter, it has a higher heat tolerance, and can be stored at room temperature for months. We store our extra butter as ghee. For the most part, we use it like oil for frying, it does not burn at high temperatures like butter does. But it can be used in any recipe that calls for butter.
To make ghee, melt the butter on low heat. The best quality ghee is clarified slowly.

The butter will separate into pure fat, and milk solids. Most of the milk solids floating on the surface will eventually sink to the bottom, and what remains floating will be separated out of the final product.

Bring the butter to a very gentle simmer. All of the water must be evaporated out of the fat in order for it to store for long periods of time. I have kept pure ghee for up to six months without any deterioration of the product. Be careful not to burn the butter while it slowly simmers for up to an hour. This is best done in a double boiler. When the fat does not bubble any more, the water is cooked out, and the ghee is ready to be strained.

Pour the hot ghee through a fine-mesh sieve, or a few layers of cheesecloth. The best quality ghee is at the top, above the sediment line, so if you are planning to store your ghee for longer than a week, be sure it is free of sediment. I pour off the best ghee first, then pour the rest at the bottom into my "greasing pot", and use it like bacon drippings to grease cake pans, etc. Ghee stays in a semi-solid state at room temperature, somewhat like olive oil when kept in the refrigerator, but melts into liquid gold when heated.

To get a taste of the slightly nutty, buttery flavor of ghee, try simply frying eggs in ghee. It is a great cast iron seasoner, ever since using ghee, my cast iron pan doesn't stick, no matter what I throw in it. Or try popping popcorn in ghee, and drizzling some on the popcorn as well. No popcorn like it!

The goats have made fast friends with Pilgrim, grazing together as a herd. Juniper even stood in his barn, eating hay out of his mouth because she couldn't reach his manger!

Fiddleheads and other wild symphonies

The Fiddleheads are bursting out of the ground this week. These are my "wild asparagus". When picked young, they are a delicious spring vegetable. Of course, when picking anything wild, be sure to positively identify the plant first. Fiddleheads are a distinct wild food, and once you know where to find them, they are as reliable as spring rains.

Collect the fiddleheads as soon as they emerge from the ground, and snap them off. Like asparagus, the stem will snap at the point where it is still crisp and fiberless. The trick to removing the fuzz is to rub it off dry. Once they are wet, the fuzz does not come off easily. To prepare them, I prefer steaming rather than boiling. Bring the water to boil first, then place the steaming basket and vegetables over the water and cover. Fiddleheads will discolor if placed over low heat while the water comes to a boil. Steam them until crisp-tender.

They can be enjoyed with any number of sauces. Simply butter, garlic and salt. Hollandaise or cream sauce. Even as a cold vegetable in salads with vinaigrette dressing.

This is our favorite time of year to take long evening walks with the dogs. We wander through old logging roads to get front row seats at the nightly chorus of Spring Peepers, Robins, Sparrows, and Thrushes, their flutes and whistles syncopated by the drumbeat of breeding Ruffed Grouse and the windy whooshy wing beat of breeding Common Snipes. We even caught sight of two bear cubs dutifully waiting in a couple of birch trees about 1/4 mile off. Mama Black Bear eventually returned to her cubs, and we moved off to leave them undisturbed.

But not before I took a few video clips of the Peeper chorus. I was determined to catch sight of one of them, they were so close, but they were too well disguised. But you can see the rippling in the water, this pond was teeming with them.


Back on the farm, we have planted out most of the feed grains. One half acre of wheat, and one half acre of oats. We will also be planting about 1000 row feet of peas, as well as millet and amaranth for feed crops.

And I brought a bit of the wild into my herb garden this spring. We have a few patches of wild caraway around the pastures, and last fall, (after studying the plants at various stages of growth for over a year to be sure it was caraway and not poison hemlock), I collected what I could of the seed heads, giving me a few ounces to use in the kitchen, and some seed to start in the spring. But when I saw these second year roots popping up along the pasture this spring, I decided to try transplanting some of the roots into a prepared garden bed. Wild caraway is a biennial, so it only produces seed in it's second year. There is a cultivated annual variety, but like fennel and anise, it is a long-season crop, and frost usually threatens my nearly ripened seed heads. But these second year roots, which took quite well to the uprooting and transplanting, will produce early and hopefully prolific seed heads.

Making goat's butter and yogurt

The kids are weaned off milk, we started weaning them at 8 weeks old, and completed the transition to warm water in the end of their 9th week. They are grass burners now, and they are doing quite well on a few bales of the best hay in the barn. Watching their condition closely for signs of dropping weight, we have been ready to feed them some grain, but their condition has held and even started to gain again in the last few days, and we would prefer not to feed them any grain as it changes the bacteria and pH balance in their rumens.

Now that the milk is all ours, I have been rubbing my hands together with all of my dairy desires. Butter and yogurt are on the top of the list. I have a mid 20th century cream separator, designed for the home dairy in mind, but that would be the home cow dairy. It is inefficient to put less than a gallon through the separator, so I saved up milk for two days, so that I would have a gallon and a half. When we were milking a Jersey cow, I separated the cream twice a day, and also had to wash the darn thing twice a day. So I am quite happy to reduce that chore to once every two days.


The milk must be warm to separate, between 95-105F, so I warmed it on top of a pan of boiling water, double-boiler style, to be sure that the milk did not scald.


The cream separator works just as well for the goat's cream as it did for the cow's cream. In fact, I think it separated better with the temperature of the milk above 100F. Cream is more viscous when it is warm, and does not stick to the discs inside of the separator as much. My pail of fresh cow's milk, after being filtered, would likely have cooled down to 85 to 95F by the time it made it to the separator. When I took the cream separator apart after the first run with the goat's milk, I noticed that very little cream had been left inside.


One perk of using a cream separator is that it makes perfect cappuccinos! I worked as a barrista at a fancy restaurant in my city days, and in my prime could hardly have made such perfect peaks as these.

I collected cream for 6 days, until I had a quart. It took about 4 gallons of milk to make a quart of cream, which would work out to 4% butterfat. The cream is perfectly white, instead of the rich creamy color of Jersey cream, but it has a delicate and mild flavor, and it kept well without going sour. I actually think that the goat's cream has a more mild flavor than the Jersey cream, and I had more problems with cream spoilage. I could usually only keep the Jersey cream for 4-5 days max before it would start to sour and make off-flavored butter. But not so with the goat's cream, it was still sweet and fresh on the sixth day.

Again, my butter churn is designed for the home cow dairy, and can fit up to 2.5 quarts of cream, but one quart is the minimum. It came with a small hand-crank, and I used to turn that handle for at least 20 minutes before churning the butter out, but Mr. Fritillary, always looking to improve designs, fitted the drill onto the shaft that the handle was screwed onto, and made churning butter into a 3 minute job.

For an excellent tutorial on making butter at home, head on over to Throwback at Trapper Creek's blog and read her post "Butter me up".

The goat's cream behaved just the same as cow's cream, except that it can be worked at a slightly lower temperature, between 55-60F.

The butter is pure white, and again, I would use the word delicate to describe it. Both in texture and in flavor. It was slightly softer than cow's butter when I was working the buttermilk out, due to the factor that it seems to melt at a lower temperature. I made sure to drain off the buttermilk first, it was sweet just like the cream, and great for baking.

The butter is delicious, creamy, mild, and not at all "goaty". Never once, in my home goat dairy experience, have I found either the milk, or any products of it, to be "goaty" in flavor or smell. We did try some goat's milk from the farmer's market before buying our goats, and found it to be slightly tangy, but not off-putting, and figured we would get used to the flavor. But the flavor of the milk, whether cow or goat, is often due to handling, cleanliness and freshness. And our own goat's milk is fresh, clean and from a healthy animal, and that makes all the difference.

One quart of cream makes one pound of butter, so I should be getting one pound of butter every 6 days, along with a quart of yogurt a day, and 1.5 quarts of skimmed milk a day. And that is with a single dairy-cross goat. It is perfect for us, and we would be able to put away plenty of milk and butter for the dry-season, as well as making cheeses, with one more dairy-cross, or with just one pure dairy goat. But with the two dairy-cross does, we will also be able to provide for our own meat as well, from the kids. And two does still consume about 1/3 the amount of one small dairy cow.

I couldn't resist making up some buttermilk pancakes with fresh butter, what a treat!

And with all of that extra skimmed milk, made some yogurt. Dairy heaven! In the past, I have purchased store-bought yogurt, Balkan style, with active acidophilus cultures, as my yogurt starter. But I thought I'd try the freeze-dried packets at the health food store. It has three bacterial cultures, including acidophilus.

The resulting yogurt has a thinner texture than I expected, but creamy and well flavored, slightly-tangy. In my second batch, I used 1/2 cup of yogurt from the previous batch, to culture each quart. I'm not sure that this yogurt will work well for drained-yogurt, a cream-cheese-like spread. If not, then I will try again with the Balkan style yogurt starter.

What came first, the carton or the egg?

Mr. Fritillary asked me a pair of thought provoking questions, and my answers were all the more genuine because he asked them without context or prompting. He handed me an egg from the basket of freshly collected eggs on the kitchen counter, and asked me to describe my thoughts and feelings as I held this egg. Knowing that he must be working on an essay, I dredged for both immediate as well as the deeper responses, and began to sort through the flood of personal and specific stories and feelings that his question provoked. The weight of the egg in my hand communicated the feeling of good, nutritious food to my body. I thought of all the things I had recently made with eggs, and what I could make in the future. I thought back to the previous few months when we were without eggs, and again of the celebratory occasion of our first omelets this spring, of pudding and meringue. But my thoughts were also specific to that egg, I knew it was from one of the young pullets that had just started laying. I thought back to last summer when we incubated the eggs from our old hens, watched the chicks hatch, brooded them, and brought them through winter, into their first spring when we finally start to receive the rewards for our work and our attention. This egg also reminded me of the future potential it contains, to hatch out and ensure the continuation of our flock, and our egg production. I even started to think of the connected stories of growing and harvesting our own grain by hand last summer, and the accomplishment of providing feed for our chicken flock all winter. And even on to the manure we have been moving out of the chicken coop that will provide the fertility to grow another year's worth of food for ourselves. All these stories in one little egg. I also noticed that my feelings were centered around contentment, accomplishment, resilience, celebration, and the security of being able to put nutritious food on our table.

At this point, I began to wonder where this all was going, when Mr. Fritillary handed me an egg carton, and asked how it made me feel, and what it made me think. Now I could appreciate the direction this was going. I was immediately confused, in a subtle way: was this food? Doubt: Where did these eggs come from? How were they produced? How fresh are they? How far have they traveled? And then there was driving to town, supermarkets, prices, organic or omega-3, fat and cholesterol. These feelings hit me like a brick in my stomach. How long would this carton last? How many meals could I get out of it? When would I be able to get to town again? (We do not have the option around here of buying eggs from a local small farm.) Scarcity and anxiety tugged at me on one end, and on the other end over-production and waste from our own past market egg production: How big is our local market? How much do we charge? Are we covering the cost of producing the eggs? What do we do with the surplus? Are we providing the best, highest quality product, or do we have to cut corners in order to cover the costs because quality food is not valued in the local food-culture? Food is expected to be cheap, and we could not contend with the ethical compromises of producing cheap food. And worse yet, if we did compromise, producing and selling cheap food would only perpetuate the cycle because we could only afford to buy cheap food on those wages. There are quite a few stories in that egg carton. Among them, the story of our becoming primarily subsistence farmers, on a self-reliant scale, each year trying to keep our interaction with the market economy contained and under our control, so that it does not contaminate our entire lives in the way that this single egg carton demonstrated.

I have been reading recently about the concept of Resilience in the Transition Handbook over at Appropedia. Resilience is the concept I have been reaching for, without knowing what to call it, always aware that there is something stronger and more necessary than self-reliance or sustainability. Resilience describes a network, more complex than a closed-loop self-reliant principle. Out here, we are forced to be self-reliant because our neighboring "community" does not share our values, or our view of what needs to be done now, in order to ensure a future on this planet. So for the most part, we act on our own, and rely upon ourselves. This is not a model of strength, it is vulnerable and open to shocks, and at the very least, restrictive because it closes us out of the full resources of a community and a local economy. But on our little homestead island, we have moments and pieces of resilience. I will never look at an egg in the same way again.

Speaking of eggs, forget frugal for now, this is the season when we splurge! Eggs are a wonderful spring food, easily digested protein for spring work, like mucking out barns and starting on this winter's supply of firewood. I've had my eye on this Yorkshire Pudding recipe all winter, and couldn't wait to try it. You may know them as pop-overs. They can be made plain, and spread with jam, but I opted for the savory version, making what some may know as Toad in a Hole. I never grew up with any of these recipes, but they are a new found favorite. If you are awash with your hens' idea of spring fever, and have some extra eggs to spare, then these are quite a frugal delight.

Batter: 3 eggs lightly beaten, 1/2 cup whole wheat flour, 1 cup whole milk or light cream. The batter will be runny. You can pour this batter plain, into a greased muffin pan, filling each cup half way. Or you can add a tablespoon of sugar and fruit (dried or fresh). Or for Toad in a Hole, add half a teaspoon salt, your favorite herbs, and one small onion, diced and sauteed until beginning to brown, mix into batter. For the Toad part, make marble sized meatballs (a la breakfast sausage patties) and brown them in a frying pan, or use slices of dried or cooked sausage. Drop your choice of meat in the bottom of each greased muffin cup, and pour batter over, just to cover or half-full. Bake in moderately hot oven (375F), until fluffy and browned, about 15 minutes. Best enjoyed steaming hot!

I never was a fan of meringue pies, at least not the store bought kind. But I'm digging up all kinds of egg recipes, and gave it a try. The recipe was for a basic vanilla pudding, and press-in crumb crust. I used oat flour in place of 3/4 of the whole wheat flour, making a soft textured pie crust. And I added some dried blueberries and chopped dried apples, along with a dash of cardamom and nutmeg to the pudding (in place of the vanilla). The pie didn't last long, but my favorite part was the pudding, and I am quite happy with this oat pie crust, it held together very well. It went something like this: 1 cup oat flour, 1/4 cup whole wheat flour, 1 tablespoon lard (or softened butter), mix, then add spoon fulls of water (I tried milk too, but it made the crust too crumbly) until the mixture holds together and is slightly sticky. Press into lightly greased pan and bake 10 minutes at 350. Pour pudding (using your preference of thickener, flour, cornstarch or arrowroot) into baked pie crust. Beat egg whites, adding a teaspoon of sugar, a sprinkle at a time, until frothy. Spread evenly on pudding, bake 5 minutes at 350 until browned. Cool to room temperature before cutting.

My frugal kitchen

This winter I have been focused on cooking frugally. For us, this means creatively using what we have grown and preserved, as well as stretching the ever elusive dollar in the kitchen. We have squirreled our grocery bill down to $50 (or less) a month, for two adults. This includes organic coffee, tea and sugar, salt and spices (not herbs), and bulk dry goods. But I've also learned the old Depression or War Ration Era art of stretching the more expensive or difficult to grow ingredients. Now, when I look at some basic recipes in modern cookbooks, they look over-extravagant and too rich when it comes to items like meat, fats and sugar especially. We had both been accustomed to a rich diet, we were up to our eyeballs in butter, and full-cream milk when we kept a Jersey cow, and ate up to 2 dozen eggs a week when we kept a larger flock of chickens. But feed bills were getting high, and we cut down to a dairy goat and 6 hens, which we can feed with grain and hay from our own homestead. Since making that switch last fall, we have both become healthier, lost that 15 lbs of extra weight that hangs on through the winter, and cut our food bills. And by gradually shifting our tastes, have come to prefer our frugal diet.

As omnivores, our diets are incredibly flexible, the most stubborn part of our foodculture is the culture. We become accustomed to certain foods, tastes and textures, but we can also acclimate our taste buds to a new custom. Temporal diets don't work because food is culture, and we cannot easily stick to an imposed foodculture for a period of time, any more than we can pretend to be from a different ethnic culture for a short time. But we can adopt a new culture over time. My three years of homesteading has gradually acculturated me to a very different relationship to food than I ever had, an inherently intimate relationship to food and it's proportions.

A frugal diet makes sense, not only in the kitchen, but in the garden and barnyard as well. We have been shifting our diet to the types of foods we can easily grow ourselves, even if we are not growing them yet. Meats, fat, eggs and diary are the most resource intense foods to raise, so we use them frugally and seasonally. Grains, storage vegetables and fruits make up the bulk of our diet. Fresh greens are abundant in season, but we are working on keeping a small supply of greens coming most of the year. When fresh greens are not available, we rely on a good dose of herbal tea, including dried alfalfa, stinging nettle and mullein, to provide us with a spectrum of vitamins and minerals. Even common culinary herbs and spices provide the body with various vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals. Food is life, it is the best preventative medicine.

So here's some of the frugal cooking techniques I have been practicing in the kitchen. First it helps to buy in bulk, and ration your usage. I don't mean to the point of deprivation, just have an idea of how much you use in a month, watch your use throughout the month, and stick to it. Experiment with cutting expensive ingredients or substituting ingredients that are difficult or impossible to grow locally.

In deserts, I cut the sugar and fat in half, sometimes only using 1/4 of the amount. I usually use one egg in a desert recipe, substituting for the rest with applesauce, pumpkin puree, or milk. I often substitute oats for part of the flour, oats are generally less expensive than flour, they add sweetness to the desert as well as texture and bran. Dried fruits, applesauce, pumpkin puree, milk and oats have a certain amount of natural sweetness, and replace some of the sugar I cut out of the recipe. Even chocolate cake tastes great with oats, by pouring boiling water over a cup of rolled oats, and mixing in a tablespoon of butter, fat or oil, you can replace a couple of eggs in a cake recipe, and maintain the moist texture. You can even cut the amount of cocoa to 3/4 or 1/2, and add up to a tablespoon of cinnamon (depending on the recipe), along with your favorite spices like ground clove, cardamom or even coriander (one of my favorite desert spices), or if you love spice, a dash of cayenne goes great with chocolate. The spices add complexity to the desert, and you wont miss the reduction in cocoa. Fiddling with desert recipes takes some experimentation, but even if they are not the perfect cookies the first time, you can't go too wrong with flour, oats, sugar, fat, egg, milk and dried fruit, no matter the proportions. If you cut the sugar too far, spread with jam. If you make something with a truly inedible texture, break it up and toss with cubed bread and make a bread pudding out of it.

Meat: We can our meat, which I find to be a surprisingly versatile way to preserve meat. It is also easy to ration. If you are keeping meat in the freezer, either wrap it in small portions, or keep a strict practice of only serving your pre-determined ration once the meat is cooked, reserving the rest for leftovers and subsequent meals. We keep our meat consumption to 10 lbs a month, excepting a few feasts at butchering time. This comes to 1/3 lb a day, between the two of us. Meat is never the main course on our plates (except those few exceptions which can be planned for holidays or family celebrations). I often make a meat sauce or gravy to accompany grains and vegetables. Use a small amount of meat with a good meat stock in a soup, the flavor is rich and intense, as well as nourishing. I make meatballs with the canned meat, flaked like tuna, and mixed with rolled oats, sauteed onion, a bit of flour and milk and/or egg, and spices/herbs. Try some vegetarian meatloaf recipes, with a bit of meat in addition. Pastry or shepherds pies are another frugal use of meat. Frugal meatballs on a bed of Faux Carrot Kraut.

Grains: The least expensive grains (at least in our area) are barley, oats and peas and we incorporate a lot of these three grains in our diet, they are also easy for us to grow and do not require a lot of fertility. Next comes wheat and beans, followed by lentils, millet, rice and quinoa. We are growing more and more of our grains at home each year, but we still purchase what we don't grow in bulk. When poor populations go hungry, it is usually due to grain prices being too high, the manipulation of grain prices in the commodities market is a criminal action. Purchasing your grains locally, from small farms or mills who buy from local farmers is the next best thing to growing them yourself. If you have the space for a large potato patch, you probably have room to grow some of your grains, they require less fertility than potatoes, and in my experience, one pound of cooked grains replaces 3 pounds of potatoes, and provides higher protein and nutrition. For a few reasons, one being that we cannot grow rice, another being the strong impression that last summer's food riots made on us over the doubling of rice prices, we decided to stop buying rice, and have found two substitutes, both at half the cost. Whole oat groats cook up to a similar consistency of rice, and goes nicely with stir-fries. Barley makes a great pilaf substitute. A great way to prepare it is to toast one pound of pot barley in oil, fat or butter until beginning to brown, then covering with water as you would rice, boil until water is absorbed and grain is tender. At this point you can add herbs, spices, onion, garlic, and even vegetables (diced or grated carrot, green beans, etc.), and your frugal portion of meat. Mix all the ingredients, cover and put into a hot oven to finish cooking, this way the barley does not burn on the bottom, and the whole dish has a chance to steam together. It is delicious, can be eaten with a tomato sauce and bread, or you can keep the vegetables for a side dish. Millet can also be prepared like this. Peas, beans and lentils are of course high in protein, and can substitute meat for the day. Toasted pot barley and green beans.

Toasted millet and green peas.

Fruits and Vegetables: Frugal is homegrown and preserved. If you have a foodculture that does not match your climate in this department, than perhaps your most frugal option would be to adjust your diet to the types of vegetables and fruit that you can grow yourself, and then start planning the garden to fulfill those needs.

Dairy, eggs, fats and oils: Use sparingly and seasonally. Be creative.

The trick is to find a balance, being frugal and sticking to your food budget, but also leaving room for creativity and celebrations. Plan celebrations at certain times of year. I always keep a treat for us during the months of March, April and May especially, after living out of the pantry for 4-6 months and before the garden is even planted. We have a few great feasts, celebrating our harvests in the fall. We splurge on each food when it is in season, getting our fill of fresh blueberries in July and broccoli in September, then bidding our time for the next season, nibbling on dried blueberries to remind us of summer's flavor.

For inspiration, here's a few of our spring meals, inspired by Mr Fritillary. He comes into the kitchen when I get into a rut, and spices things up (not because he's not willing the rest of the time, but because I keep the key to the kitchen and pantry, it's MY space! If you've ever lived in 300 sq ft with another human being through 5 months of lock-down winter, you'll appreciate our little islands of space).

Organic Tater-tots: 5 medium potatoes grated fine (Yukon Gold is especially nice), mix with 1/4 cup yellow pea flour (or substitute with whole wheat flour, but the pea flour adds a great flavor, as well as protein), salt and curry spice (or spice to your liking). Form into small patties and fry in 1/4 inch of high-temperature oil or fat in a cast iron skillet until browned on both sides. Could be baked, but these were intended as a treat, comfort food.

Samosa and spicy apple mint sauce.

Samosas: Dice 3 medium potatoes and 2 medium carrots, steam until tender, drain. Heat 2 Tbsp fat, oil or butter in a heavy bottomed sauce pan, add tsp each of cumin seed, caraway seed and anise seed, 1 tbsp curry spice, and mix until the spices are heated through and just beginning to brown (do not burn!). Combine mixture with cooked vegetables and 1 cup canned or frozen (or fresh, lucky you:) green peas, and 1 tbsp salt. Set aside. Mix your favorite pastry recipe, enough for 2 double-crust pies. Roll out as for pie crust (1/8 inch) and cut out 6 inch rounds (I used the lid of a small sauce pan to cut the shapes). Make at least 12. Wet the outer edge of pastry, 1" wide, with water and spoon vegetables into the center of the pastry (not too full). Fold over, keeping the vegetables in the pocket, and press edges together with a fork, pierce tops. Place each pastry on a greased cookie sheet, when all are filled, brush tops with butter, oil or fat and bake in middle rack of oven, 325 for 25-30 minutes until browned.

Samosa filling in pastry.

Sauce: I made apple mint butter last fall, and it made into a delicious sauce atop the samosas. Empty one pint into sauce pan (or use applesauce and dried mint or other fruit sauce, local fresh fruit etc), heat and add cayenne pepper to your own taste, and a touch of sugar or honey to balance the heat if needed.