Around the Homestead

Archive for the ‘In the Kitchen’ Category

I LOVE finding good deals so when I found out about swag bucks I joined.  Swag Bucks is one of the easiest point systems I’ve used.  You don’t have to do anything special to win.  I simply use their search bar when I’m looking online.   As you search you win swag bucks that you can redeem for prizes in their store.  My favorite is Amazon gift cards!  We love books in our house and as homeschoolers use a lot!  Also keep your eyes open for swag buck codes to earn extra points!

There has been lots of dehydrating in my kitchen lately!  Since I received my Excalibur Dehydrator I’ve been working at clearing out the freezer.  I’m happy to say that all the veggies I had frozen have now been dehydrated!  This is a huge space and energy savings.  It also frees up my freezer space for meat and things waiting to be canned.

These are peppers and mixed vegetables before and after dehydrating.

Today I’m featured on the Real Food Face Off along with Virginia at Living the Local Life.  The Real Food Face Off is a gathering of “real food bloggers” and is hosted by Kitchen Stewardship.   Twice a week 2 bloggers are featured together to share their thoughts on what real food is and share tips and tricks.  Check out Kitchen Stewardship to visit with many great food bloggers!

Some questions and answers that didn’t go live:

1.  If you only had energy for ONE make-from-scratch food, what would it be?  Is your preference for taste or health? One thing that I prefer to buy is Chinese chicken balls!  I have yet to find a good recipe for them so this is an occasional treat.

2.  What’s your favorite real/traditional food? I have two favorites.  My husbands pizza with garlic bread and salad.  Second is chicken and dumplings.

3.  If you had only $20 to spend in a week on real food, what would you buy and what would you make? If I only had $20 I would buy wheat berries (or flour), rice, beans, lard, butter, sugar, bananas, apples, celery, carrots and yeast.   With these ingredients you could make many different breads and stir fry’s.  Fruits would be saved for snacks.

Recently a dear friend asked me if I would like a dehydrator she was no longer using.  I was just so excited!  I’ve been canning for over 15 years and I would never give that up.   However dehydrating has many benefits.  It saves a LOT of space and properly stored many items can last up to 30 years.    Standard guidelines on canned goods are 1 year, although myself and many canners have used them well past that and they were just fine.

My main interest in dehydrating is time savings, space savings and long term storage.

This is the dehydrator I have except that mine has 4 trays.  I love it, enough that I will be getting a larger  Excalibur
one ASAP.

Below is what I’ve been dehydrating in the past week.  The bag of corn was a 1kg (2.2 lb) frozen bag, it now fits in just 1 medium zip lock bag!  Each bag of peppers had taken up 4 medium zip lock bags before dehydrating.  We bought lots on a case sale last summer, diced and froze them. The bottom right are blueberries.  Last week a local store had 600 g tubs of frozen wild organic blueberry’s on sale.   Now these will be easy to add to yogurt or baked goodies!  On the bottom left are banana chips, or what is left at them.   lol  The kids just love them!

I decided to join Crystal at Money Saving Mom and FishMomma at Life as Mom in the freezer cooking day.  Although in my case I’m spreading it out over a few days.  I find with many young little ones it’s much easier to spread the work out this way.

I actually started a few days ago and a little differently from many people.  I’m partly emptying my freezers! Yes I’m working at taking many of the vegetables and fruits out and dehydrating them.  This will save us a lot of freezer space and keep them in good condition longer then freezing.

Below is my plan although it may change depending on the sales this week.

My OAMC list for the next few days:

• Smooth Marmalade x 2
• Grapefruit Marmalade
• dehydrate blueberries
  
• dehydrate zucchini from freezer
• Whole wheat bread x8
• Blueberry muffins x 2 batches
• Waffles
• BBQ marinated chicken

One of my hubby’s favorite suppers is Sheppard’s pie.  I’ve experimented with different variations over the years.  So far this is our favorite.  I made this for supper yesterday, all the ingredients except the beef were from our gardens last summer.  The beef is from a local farmer.  I love having home canned foods on hand to make cooking go quicker!

A note on the recipe below.  The spice measurements are approximate, by “eyeball”.  I rarely measure spices when I’m cooking.  Before serving simply adjust the spices to suit your family’s taste.

Sheppard’s Pie

• 1 lb ground beef
• 1 medium onion
• 1 quart crushed tomatoes
• 1 pint (2 cups) peas
• 1 tps salt
• 1 heaping TBS parsley
• 1 heaping TBS basil
• 1 heaping TBS garlic powder
• 1/2 TBS pepper
• mashed potatoes

Fry ground beef until browned.  Add onions and cook until meat is done and onions start to soften.

Add tomato sauce, spices and peas.  Bring to a boil and cook 10 minutes.

Spread meat mixture into a baking pan and top with mashed potatoes.  If desired sprinkle with shredded cheddar cheese and parsley.   Bake at 350F for 30 minutes or until the top starts to crisp.

Monday: Baked chicken breast, mashed potatoes, gravy, veggies.

Tuesday: Sheppards Pie, mashed potatoes, garden salad.

Wednesday: Hamburgers and fry’s.

Thursday: Stir fry, rice.

Friday: Baked tomato pasta, garlic bread, ceasar salad.

Saturday: Pizza, garlic strips, salad

Sunday: Roast, scalloped potatoes, carrots.

A good friend of mine needed to go gluten free.  I understand just how challenging that can be!  When my now 4 year old dd was a toddler she reacted badly to gluten and milk.  Thankfully it only lasted just over a year.    Dear friend decided to sell her grain mill since it had been used with gluten flours.   It’s now a much loved addition to my kitchen.   Now I already own the family grain mill with a hand base and I do like it.  However I find it to hard to grind large amounts of grain with it daily.

Today I gave it a try and ground enough wheat to make my normal bread recipe.  What can I say I LOVE fresh whole wheat bread!  I made four loaves and two are gone already!  One was devoured before it finished cooling.  The other was turned into garlic bread.  That went great with our pizza supper.  Now if I could just find a local source for taller bread pans!  All our area sells are 8 x 4 inch.

What am I up to in the kitchen now?  I’ve been canning for over 15 years and made many jams.  However one thing I’ve never made is marmalade.  Now hubby and I both love the taste of orange marmalade, so you may wonder why have I not made my own.  Well you see we love the taste but don’t like the chunks of peel. We both like smooth jams as you can see by my strawberry jam post, I puree our fruits before cooking.  Now I’m joining in on the Tigress Jam Can and this months fruit is citrus.  So I’m taking the challenge to come up with a marmalade hubby and I will LOVE. I was going to experiment this afternoon.  But I was drafted by hubby to help insulate the ceiling in the summer kitchen/craft room.

So tomorrow I’ll be experimenting with oranges and clementines!  And you can bet my food processor will be involved to make a nice smooth marmalade.

I have always been inclined to have a pantry, perhaps it comes from being around my Grandma.  Who’s generation lived through the depression and was very skilled at stretching things.  It seems that more and more people have fallen into the practice of shopping weekly for all their grocery’s.  Keeping just enough food on hand for a few days.   Through out my live I’ve seen many times why this is not a good idea.  You really never know when having some staples stored up will be a huge help.

Storms

We live in a snow belt.  Just last week the schools were closed for 3 days and the roads also.  Yes they did open for short spells, but do you really want to drive on bad roads and then get stuck at town when they close again?  It’s a wonderful feeling to see the snow falling and not have to worry that your short on food, water and other supplies.  In the summer like wise storms can knock power out for hours or days.

Job loss

Another good reason for stocking a pantry is income loss.  I can’t count the times hubby has been laid off work with little notice, or weather has reduced his work hours.  Even a tax mix up can happen leading to your refunds being cut off.  Yes that happened to us a few years ago.   We went to town to shop and found a bill in the mail.  We knew we didn’t owe it but it took months to sort out.  Our income was greatly reduced during that time and we were able to live almost entirely off our pantry stores.

Price increases

Prices are always going up.  In the past few years we have seen more frequent price jumps as inflation affects all sectors.  Do you remember the grain crises a few years ago?  Almost over night a 8 kg bag of rice went from $6.00 to nearly $20.00!  Like wise wheat berries, as well as processed flour more then doubled.   With the price of grains rising it drove the prices of all grocery’s up.   Having a good stock of goods at home can help protect you from sudden increases.  It allows you time to save up to restock your goods, and to watch for sales.

Savings

Keeping a pantry saves a lot of money!  I don’t buy the same things every week.  Instead I have a master list of what our family uses.  I keep a base amount on hand at all times.  I mark off a list how many we have used and when I see a good sale I can replace them.   It’s even better if you can use coupons on sale items.  This helps since I normally don’t get caught having to replace all items that go up in price at the same time.

Check back soon to learn how to keep track of your pantry.