Week 38 - Heat!

Sunday
Homemade fish and chips

Monday
Salad with chicken

Tuesday
BBQ chicken with salad and roasted zucchini and eggplant from the farmers' market

Wednesday
Stir fry with leftover chicken and zucchini, mushrooms, onions from the farmers' market and carrots and kale from our garden. Served with rice.

Thursday
Not-so-green chili stew with tomatillos, potatoes, and hominy from our garden, onions from the farmers market, foraged mushrooms, and Hatch green chilies direct from the farm in New Mexico.

Friday
Whole wheat pizza with homemade/homegrown sauce, onions, mushrooms, zucchini and bacon

Saturday
Pork chops with baked potato and Brussels sprouts.

Reflections
It was a HOT HOT HOT week! Well, at least the beginning of it was. Unfortunately it made it too uncomfortable to cook inside. On the bright side, the heat really kicked the garden into gear. The corn is now 7' tall - no tassels yet though. We have squash blossoms, tomatoes on the vines, flowers on the cucumbers, tomatillos eggplants and beans. I'm not so worried now about this coming Friday when we GIVE UP BUYING ALL FOOD. We've also struck a couple of bartering deals with a couple of farmers at the farmers' market. Fruit is going to be a problem for us. We just don't have any yet though we're trying to connect with people who would be willing to barter. Anyone out there in our area want to barter eggs or bread for fruit? :D

We Heart Movies

We are particularly fond of documentaries - our favorites being documentaries about food, fuel, and living green. There are some important documentaries that I feel everyone should see, especially in regards to food. Here are some we recommend:

Farmageddon - Movie Trailer from Kristin Canty on Vimeo.

Week 37 - It's Warming Up.

Sunday
Tomato braised rabbit with a salad.

Monday
Salad.

Tuesday
Salad.

Wednesday
Kale, onion and bacon frititta. 

Thursday
Roasted root vegetables - turnips, parsnips, and beets from our garden along with sweet potatoes, onions, carrots and potatoes from the farmers market.

Friday
Pizza with a whole wheat crust, Parmesan cheese, homemade/grown sauce, mushrooms, onions and bacon.

Saturday
Pork butt roast with potatoes, carrots and onions.

Reflections:
The days are starting to warm up and I'm not looking forward to canning, let along cooking, in this heat. Our house is small so the oven and stove can really do a number on the indoor temperatures. We do have an outdoor kitchen in our plans so hopefully sooner, rather than later, it won't be an issue anymore.

10 Tips on Giving up the Grocery Store

I get questions all the time about our year without groceries and people are always saying how inspired they are. I want to share some tips with everyone on how you can also be groceries free. 

 

So if you're feeling adventurous I've got a few tips on how you can give up the Big G too.

 

• Make sure you have a game plan but if you don't you can still wing it. Now is the perfect time to start because farmers' markets and CSAs are in full swing. Planning is easy when the resources are out there. We visit our farmers' market every weekend to stock up on produce our garden isn't producing. Check out Local Harvest to find farmers' markets, independent farmers and CSAs near you. Once you're started and in the groove of things it will give you time to find food sources and stock up for the winter.
• For those conscientious carnivores out there, you can now find meat, egg and dairy CSAs. Check out Eat Wild for farmers near you. If you've got room for a chest freezer buy a whole, half or quarter animal. If you don't have that much room, find some friends or family to go in on a large order and then take what you can fit in your freezer. The more of the animal you buy the cheaper it is. We got a whole organically raised hog for $2/lb.
• Start small. Nothing says you have to eliminate everything all at once. Maybe focus on buying all of your produce at the farmers' market right now. Or sign up for a CSA. Or eliminate processed food. Try finding something each month that you can eliminate buying from the grocery store and learn how to make it yourself or find from an alternative source.
• Even your cheesemonger needs some love. Don't be afraid of specialty shops. Real butchers are making a comeback. You don't have to give up buying food from all retailers - the main point of giving up the Big G is to get closer to the source of your food. If there's a fantastic cheesemonger that makes their own cheese, or a butcher that breaks down whole animals that have been raised sustainably and they are willing to talk to you about where they source from then there's no reason you shouldn't buy from them. Plus you're helping to support your local economy and a larger portion of the money you pay is going to to the farmer.
• Learn how to can. Again, right now is the perfect time to stock up on produce at the farmers' market and preserve it at home for the winter months. A pressure canner is a worthy investment if you don't want to pickle everything.
• You don't have to be a chef or even that good of a cook, all you need are some good cookbooks and a willingness to experiment. You will fail sometimes, but don't let it bother you. We all had to start somewhere and as long as you keep at it you'll get better until it's second nature. I was terrible at making bread at first - always ending up as a brick - but over time I've been able to perfect it.
• Find a buying club or local cooperative or start one. I found an organic, local buying club that a woman runs out of her garage. We place a monthly order for bulk staples like flour, rice and sugar and pick it up from her house the following week. I found mine by Googling "food co-op in __________."
• It does take time, but not as much as you think it does. We no longer have to go to the grocery store. We go to the farmers' market once a week and pick up our order once a month. Running an urban farm is a total time suck, but preparing our own food independently of that is a drop in the bucket. My husband and I work together which helps save a ton of time. He'll make the spaghetti sauce while I make the pasta. Leftovers are eaten the following day for lunch. 
• Have the right tools. It can sometimes require an initial investment but in the long run it will save you time and money. I picked up a brand new bread machine for $5 at the flea market. When I don't have time to make bread by hand, I can add ingredients to the machine before bed, set the timer and wake up to the smell of fresh baked bread for less than $0.50 a loaf. My stand mixer is indispensible. I don't know what I ever did without a mandoline for slicing soon-to-be pickles or a food mill for removing tomato skins and seeds while making sauce.
• Be prepared to eat seasonally and locally. When we gave up the grocery store it also means giving up tomatoes in the winter, citrus in the summer and pretty much all tropical fruits like bananas. In exchange for giving up out of season produce you get fresher foods with more flavor.

Be prepared to fall in love with being free from the grocery store. When we hit our 6 month mark we realized that we really enjoyed eating this way and decided to keep doing it when our year was up. 

Adventures in Sausage - My Husband Doesn't like Stinky Cheese

Mmmmm, rabbit

 We've got so much rabbit and so very little freezer space right now, with more rabbits on the way. We needed to do something with all this rabbit and let's face it, I'm getting a little tired of just braising it.

Rabbit's a very lean meat and can be quite tough if it's not cooked right, which usually means either cooked very quickly or cooked for a very long time at a low heat. Since Tom is rather squeamish about rare or even medium rare meat, we have to go with the long cook time.

Grinding is a great way to deal with tough meats

However, there is another way you can prepare tough meat. Tough cuts from any animal whether it's beef, pork or rabbit lend themselves very well to grinding.

Not really wanting to make rabbit burgers and being that the current Charcutepalooza challenge is stuffed sausages I decided that rabbit would be the meat of choice for this challenge.

Pork fatback

But of course it wouldn't just be rabbit. Because sausage needs 25-30% fat I needed to add pork fatback. But I didn't stop there. My goal was a very flavorful sausage so it had to have asiago cheese and porcini mushrooms. But wait! It needed something more! Garlic! Yes garlic.

Unfortunately, Tom proclaimed that it smelled like a foot. He said the cheese smelled like a foot. The mushrooms smelled like a foot and now the fridge smells like a foot. Tom does NOT like stinky cheese, which, in my opinion, is quite a shame. I'm hoping this recipe works for him.

Unfortunately we're out of fresh garlic, but we have some really good dried garlic. So here's my recipe:

Rabbit Sausage with Porcinis, Asiago and Garlic

2 Whole Rabbits (3-3 1/2 lbs each), deboned and cut into 1/2" chunks
1 1/4 lb pork fatback, cut into chunks
1/2 lb Asiago cheese, cut into chunks
1.5 oz dried porcini mushrooms
3 Tbs dried minced garlic
3 Tbs Kosher salt
10+ feet of pork casings (optional)

1. Rehydrate mushrooms in 2 cups hot (not boiling) water. Put mushrooms in water into fridge overnight to chill.

2. Drain mushrooms reserving 1 cup of liquid. Return liquid to fridge.

3. Combine everything but the liquid in a large bowl and put in freezer until very cold, just short of freezing solid. Also freeze the detachable parts of meat grinder that will be coming into contact with the meat.

4. Reassemble meat grinder and run meat mixture through and into a bowl set in ice (I use the bowl to our stand mixer). I use the smallest die that came with the grinder.

5. Using my stand mixer (mine is the smaller Kitchen Aid mixer so I have to do this in batches), I quickly mix half of the ground meat adding 1/2 fo the reserved mushroom liquid to evenly distribute the spices. I repeat with the second half and then combine it all in one large bowl. Don't overmix or you'll end up with an emulsified sausage - mix just enough to distribute everything evenly.

6. Cook a small patty to check and adjust seasonings as needed. Return to the freezer to chill again.

7. You can choose to stop here and use it to make breakfast sausage or you can stuff it into casings.

I have to admit, or more like my husband has to admit, smelling like a foot can sometimes be a very good thing. The porcinis I feel are a bit overpowered by the garlic and asiago though, so I think next time I'll save my money and omit them.

So what did we do with the sausages? We've added them to spaghetti sauce and lasagna. We've eaten them on homemade rolls with homemade sauerkraut and eaten them as snacks when out and about. I even add them to soup. Sometimes you don't need a special recipe to use them because they are the special recipe.

Week 36

Sunday
Tom made some chicken soup because I wasn't feeling so great.

Monday
Rabbit sausages with asiago cheese, garlic and porcini mushrooms (upcoming recipe) on a homemade bun and a salad.

Tuesday
Fritatta with onions and kale with a salad.

Wednesday
 Vegetable Stir Fry with asparagus, mushrooms, onions.

Thursday
Stuffed winter squash from last year's garden. Stuffed with rice, squash, peas (from our garden), onions and mushrooms from the farmers' market.

Friday
Spaghetti with rabbit sausage sauce.


Saturday
Pork ribs with garlic mashed potatoes and kale from our garden.

Reflections:
June is a third over and my sense of panic is setting in for our 3 months with buying no food. I think we're set in the staples other than rice. Plenty of oil, flour, sugar (brown and white), yeast, and salt. Unfortunately I forgot to order a bag of rice so I'm trying to find a source for local rice. You wouldn't think it was that hard considering they grow tons of it in the next county over. That said, it's the vegetables I'm getting worried about. The garden is languishing in our bizarre cold and wet weather. One caveat though is that some of the garlic was done so I was able to harvest it.

Week 34 & 35 - Frittata-tastic

Sunday 
Sausage lasagna with a salad made from lettuce from our garden.

Monday
Sausage soup.

Tuesday
Frittata with ham and mushrooms with a side of artichokes and homemade aioli.

Wednesday
Elk Burgers with sweet potato mash and a salad.

Thursday
A spin off of beef stroganoff  with peas from our garden, mushrooms, onions and potatoes from the farmers' market.

Friday
A beef curry with kale, snap peas, turnips and potatoes all from our garden. 

Saturday
We were at a family friend's house for dinner - baked chicken, asparagus, salad and corn pudding (I think that's what it was called). We brought homemade bread. 

Sunday
Pork stirfry with veggies from the farmers' market served with rice.

Monday
Frittata with mushrooms and onions and potatoes.

Tuesday
Roasted chicken (we helped teach a couple how to process chickens and in exchange they gave us one of them) with potatoes and artichokes.

Wednesday
Frittata with mushrooms, onions and kale with rabbit sausage.

Thursday 
Vegetable soup - veggies from the farmers' market. 

Friday
Pork chops with roasted root vegetables (parsnips, turnips, rutabagas, and golden beets) all from our garden. Salad with lettuce from our garden. 

Saturday
We got home fairly late and I wasn't feeling well so we just fended for ourselves.

Reflections
I don't have much to share this week. We've been doing a lot of events lately and yesterday was actually our last big event that we had planned. My allergies have been really bad and Friday it began to morph into a cold, so now I'm sick and I have allergies. Joy. Hopefully next week I can write more when I have more energy.