Monday, August 29, 2011

Week 47 - The New Challenge

Sunday
Fend for yourself day.


Monday
Rabbit Sausage Vegetable Brown Rice Soup with kale, carrots, corn, and onions from our garden. The stock was made from duck and rabbit carcasses.

Tuesday
Homemade spaghetti with fresh tomato sauce.

Wednesday
I had French toast and Tom and pickle and tomato sandwich since we were headed to our EBUAA meeting.

Thursday
Frittata with peppers and onions.


Friday
Pizza with homemade crust, goat milk garlic cream sauce, peppers, zucchini and onions from our garden.

Saturday
Homemade hummus (from garbanzo beans we grew last year, sundried tomatoes, basil and garlic from the garden) served with homemade tortillas, BBQ'd rabbit with a jerk seasoning, green beans, BBQ'd corn with flourless chocolate cake for dessert.

Reflections
We've got some big news! We've decided on what our challenge will be next year.While we're going to continue living the no groceries lifestyle (and yes, I'm keeping the blog going) we're going to add a twist. I've always loved ethnic food but I've always been too intimidated to try cooking much of it. Well next year we're going to change all of that! Every month we're going to pick a new cuisine and for a month we're going to make one meal a week from that cuisine. The meal is going to be as traditional as possible. We'll be making the meals on Sunday so we have the weekend to source all of the ingredients we will need. We will be allowing ourselves, however, to go to ethnic markets to pick up ingredients. However, if our October is, say, Indian food, we can only hit up the Indian market in October. If there isn't an ethnic market for it, we have to make do with what we can do. So for now the cuisines we're going to do are Indian, Japanese, Thai, Cajun, Spanish, Mexican, Italian, Moroccan, Ethiopian, Greek, German, and Russian. Twelve cuisines for twelve months.

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Week 46 - Goat Milk Ice Cream

Sunday
Bean and cucumber salad.

Monday
Frittata with peppers, corn, and onions with homemade ricotta on top. Served with shoestring french fries.

Tuesday
Vegetable stirfry with carrots, eggplant, green beans, peppers, and onions from the garden. Served with rice.

Wednesday
Nada really. We fended for ourselves. Tom had some sauteed veggies and I had scrambled eggs with some bacon sausage.

Thursday
Tomato based soup similar to our spaghetti sauce with corn, onions, peppers, eggplant,herbs and garlic from our garden.

Friday
Bacon, pepper and onion pizza.


Saturday
Lasagna with homemade rabbit sausage, homemade pasta, sauce made from our garden, homemade cheese, served with garden green beans and homemade bread. Dessert was apple crisp made from apples we traded pickles for.

Reflections
Busy busy busy. The garden has taken over our lives, and yet we don't have much to show for it other than tomatoes, peppers, beans, corn...wait. We are having an issue with powdery mildew this year thanks to the late heavy rains. Our bees are doing REALLY well and in about 2 weeks we'll have two full honey supers to harvest. I'm hoping to transition from sugar to honey in everything from canning to baking.  One thing I'm super excited about is ice cream! I spent 5 months skimming the cream from our goat milk and we finally had enough to make some ice cream. I decided to make some mint chocolate ice cream. I'm used to the "mint" ice cream that you get commercially. This one, however, is made with spearmint and chocolate mint. It has an incredibly earthy flavor to it. It's real and delicate with a very subtle green flavor.

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Week 45 - Bartering

Sunday
Frittata with zucchini and onions from our garden.

Monday
Pizza! Peppers, onions and zucchini from our garden with homemade sauce.

Tuesday
Green bean and cucumber salad with a thai peanut dressing made from honey from our garden.

Wednesday
Not-so-green chili stew with tomatillos, potatoes, onions, hominy, and chilies from the garden.

Thursday
Jeanette brought us deli sandwiches. 

Friday
Pizza with bacon sausage, peppers, onions, and zucchini with a goat milk based white sauce and homemade ricotta.


Saturday
BBQ rabbit with a Jerk marinade with BBQ'd corn and green beans.

Reflections
Bartering has been treating us well. We've traded a breeding rabbit for rice, burlap bags for fruit and powdered sugar and a chest freezer for maple syrup, peanuts, baking chocolate and more fruit. I really enjoy bartering because you trade items someone else needs for items we need. It also helps reduce waste. Instead of the burlap bags and freezer going into a landfill someone who could use them got them. Actually, the burlap bags - leftover waste from coffee roasters - were picked up at the local waste facility because I know a lot of people that could use them. We traded rice for Scooter, one of our American Blue bucks. We had two bucks and only one doe and it just turns out that Scooter is the littermate of our doe so we couldn't breed him. He's an awesome rabbit so our friend, who is going to start raising rabbits took him to add to her new breeding program.

Sunday, August 7, 2011

Week 44 - Only 8 weeks Left

Sunday
Vegetable stir fry with zucchini, green beans, carrots and onions from the garden. Served with rice.

Monday
Vegetable soup with stock made from duck carcass. Zucchini, onions, parsnips and carrots from the garden.

Tuesday
Pork stir fry with green beans, peppers carrots, zucchini and onions from the garden.  Served with rice.

Wednesday
Bacon sausage (yum!) on homemade bread on my way out the door to a meeting. Tom had a vegetable stirfry. 

Thursday
Roasted duck in a tomato sauce with parsnips, zucchini, and onions from the garden. 

Friday
No dinner. Jeanette and I went to the movies and she was in charge of snacks. Um, yeah, I can't do candy anymore....

Saturday 
We went to a friend's house after a day on the river. We had her wonderful tortilla soup and fajitas.

Reflections
So the consensus is to keep the blog. Now I just need help with a name change. So help me out!

I can't believe how fast this year went by. Only 8 weeks left and I'm sure it will be over in no time. The canning season is starting. I canned 16 quarts - 4 gallons - of pickles today. I also have some lacto fermenting.

Our milk supply has been reduced thanks to a spider. Long story short, Daisy, one of our does, got bit by a spider and is now on antibiotics which has a 4 week withdrawal on it. So no milk from Daisy for awhile. It also is forcing us to wait 2 months before we can slaughter the kids. So no goat meat for this last bit of our journey.


Monday, August 1, 2011

Weel 43 - 9 weeks left with a question

Sunday
Raviolis stuffed with brie, zucchini, sun dried tomatoes and basil with sauteed green beans.

Monday
Pork stirfry with onions from the neighbor, green beans and zucchini from our gardnen.

Tuesday
Sauteed green beans and zucchini from the garden with onions from the neighbor simmered in a tomato base.

Wednesday
BLT sandwiches on our way to the EBUAA meeting.

Thursday
Roast duck with potatoes, celery and parsnips from the garden.

Friday
Pizza with leftover duck, bell peppers, zucchini and onions from our garden.

Saturday
My mom was in town and took us out for sushi!

Reflections
It's time to think about this blog and where it's going after our year is up. Right now I have two options. The first one is that I change the name of it since it's no longer a year without groceries, but really living grocery store free. The other option is to no longer keep going with it and transfer everything over to our Dog Island Farm Blog. Do you have any thoughts?