feeding our families - may

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On my kitchen mind this week is…

Moving to the land and setting up an outdoor kitchen!

Spring foraging.

Packing up the house kitchen, moving to the land, setting up an outdoor kitchen.

Campfire cooking!

Setting up an outdoor kitchen at the land.

Feeding my family (from scratch, whole foods) without the use of a regular full kitchen!

Building an outdoor bread oven!

An outdoor bread oven is something that has been on our minds for years. Now is the time to get it done for real. Because as you may have figured out by now, we bake a whole lot of bread around here. (I shared a few bread baking tips here. And if you happen to have any outdoor bread baking or bread oven tips for me then I would be happy to know…)

And speaking of bread… I have been making Mel's soaked grain bread recipe and it has been turning out really great. As I predicted (to myself) it has become our everyday bread, even though it has only been about 10 days, that is already 5 batches of bread. I have the recipe memorized, I've made substitutions, turns out good every time. I have been doing 100% fresh ground whole wheat flour, usually yogurt instead of vinegar to soak, and sometimes just water instead of milk. One of the greatest things about this recipe is that I do much of the work the day before. A bowl sits below the grain mill and at some point in the day the grain will be ground, after dinner I mix up the soaker and the sponge. Then in the morning I finish up and get the dough rising in the bread pans. Simple. Bread baking has always been part of our kitchen rhythm, either way it is fairly simple for us at this point. But a bonus of this overnight soak method (besides nutritional benefits) is that we have to wait less hours for fresh bread in the morning.
(In my head I call this Melanie's Wonderful Bread, which means that not only the bread is wonderful but that Mel is wonderful too. I actually usually put the emphasis on Melanie rather than on the bread…)

(The braided bread is not the soaked grain bread. It is just the plain white flour Challah that we bake for Easter…)

Well if we were going to go back to that on my kitchen mind list, it was going to continue rather repetitively…
outdoor kitchen,
spring foraging,
outdoor kitchen,
spring garden,
spring foraging, spring foraging, spring foraging.

The garden may be producing only chives and green onions at the moment, but Mother Earth has greens bursting out everywhere! Dandelions, daisy greens, salsify. I'm sure lamb's quarters are sprouting up out there somewhere. If only I knew where the nettles are! (I mean, if only I knew where there were nettles nearby, as I do know of some good patches, but nothing that is not quite a hike away…) (Must get some nettle seed and start our own patch!)

Outdoor kitchen.
I keep forgetting that technically there is a little camper kitchen too. Propane stove, and an oven big enough to hold bread pans, a small casserole dish, but not big enough for cookie sheets. Well there's a tip I just though of for myself! Make outdoor bread oven big enough to hold cookie sheets!

Obviously it's going to be getting more interesting here in my kitchen world…

Oh, and I plan to have a lot of fun with our cast iron dutch oven!


And on a kind of side note, it sure is nice to have shared the moving to the land news. Things where going to be feeling too awkward and vague here otherwise. Now we can continue on with the adventure…
(And of course many thanks for all the kind and supportive comments and emails!!)
(Phooey to malfunctioning comments, I don't know why people have such an issue with trying to comment here, maybe someday I can figure out something to help it work better…)


Happy kitchen time to you all…

Enjoy visiting my friends in their kitchens…

Melanie from Our Ash Grove

Jules from A Little Crafty Nest

Melody from Bespoke

Sarah from Our Island Home

Tonya from Joyful Living

Taisa from Small Wonders

Heather from Shivaya Naturals


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april feeding our families (gardening for our families!!!)

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(I had myself some fun making these little collages of past garden photos…)



When I first wrote to my friends with the "feeding our families" idea, I offered the following broad suggestions for possible topics…

I think the topic of "feeding our families" leaves lots of room for interpretation. We could share simply, or we can ramble on about our passions in the kitchen. Ideas I am having include...

a favorite meal,

a menu plan for the week,

seasonal menus,

holiday food traditions,

snacks for our children,

(are your children hungry all day long?)

food sensitivities,

food fears (gmo's!)

food memories,

picky eaters (my girls like almost all vegetables. not so big on fruit. particular about sweets (chloe), don't like chocolate (chloe, and me) (thinks bacon and eggs together sounds like one of the craziest things, and especially would have no interest in eating it for breakfast)

breakfast!

and I imagine as we approach garden season then that might play into how we approach and express food love to our family.

and budget stuff, probably many of us face the challenge of feeding our families well on a limited budget.

Each month now I think to myself that perhaps I will take the easier, simpler approach. Though if you look back at my other posts you will see that I actually kept taking the more random, rambling approach. Hmmm, maybe that is how things will stay. 

I have never felt inadequate or even slightly concerned about my blog posts until starting this project, with such a wonderful group of talented, inspiring women, most of whom are much more prolific with their blog writing than I am. Then I unfortunately had feelings like… oh gosh, what have I gotten myself into, I have nothing to share, there is a reason I never wrote much about food in the past (even if the reason is nothing more than a lacking of time) (and a lacking of photos)…

Neverthless, I really am enjoying this series so, so much (despite my occasional gasps of "oh no!", usually occurring while I am busy in the kitchen and then suddenly realize I am supposed to be photographing and writing about all this food stuff too…)

Back to the simple idea though… 

Were we are at in the kitchen this week…

Shared the results of Saturday's bread baking morning with a kind neighbor. I like the way she held it close, inhaling, before carefully wrapping back up in cloth.

Uhmmm...

I don't think I can get anything else into my head other than thoughts of gardening and food growing!!!

We have trays of spring greens started… just Swiss Chard and kale for now, probably we will direct seed some spinach soon… tomatoes started indoors, a few varieties, some peppers too…

We garden for love, but also out of necessity. If we do not grow enough vegetables then really we do not have enough to eat. So while early spring is all about those good greens, we are also looking forward to getting our storage crops planted… onions, potatoes, cabbage (sauerkraut!), beets, various varieties of winter squash…

We even just had our first little garden harvest of the season! A teeny tiny bundle of chives, snipped from awakening plants, giving us a little taste of fresh green goodness!


I guess I have decided to skip the link gadget thing for now, but if you have a food post of your own to share then please do leave a link in the comments. (Did you all see that Heather from Beauty that Moves is doing a weekly kitchen series? All kinds of gorgeous kitchen inspiration over there!)

Enjoy visiting these lovely friends for more good food stuff...

Melanie from Our Ash Grove

Jules from A Little Crafty Nest

Melody from Bespoke

Sarah from Our Island Home

Tonya from Joyful Living

Taisa from Small Wonders

Heather from Shivaya Naturals

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feeding our families - march

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Hello again to all of our "feeding our families" friends. How fun and exciting it has been to be sharing with everyone through these first months of the year. Even if the kitchen and pantry are feeling less than thrilling at the moment. It is still winter here though, and probably that, plus garden yearning, really add to kitchen blahs? What a time to start up this project!

I am afraid I am only going to talk about cabbage. Raw, sautéed, fermented. It really is a very handy winter vegetable. And everyone here loves it. So yay. But I will try not to subject you to too much more cabbage-ness.

But a favorite recent lunch was sautéed onions and cabbage on toast. I think any vegetable simply sautéed and served over toast makes a good lunch.
Oh, and my girls really love onion too. If I am chopping onion for a meal then they will came and take big chunks off the plate for raw snacking.

I would like to start making more varieties of lacto fermented vegetables besides the usual sauerkraut. I do not use a culture for our cabbage/sauerkraut, just whey and sea salt, or no whey and extra sea salt. Anyone else having success fermenting other vegetables, with or without a special culture?

I would also like to start doing some soaked grain baked goods. Perhaps the buttermilk biscuit recipe in Nourishing Traditions would be a good place to start. Baby Elsa has not had any grains yet and I would prefer them to be soaked to begin with.

A couple questions answered from last time…

What do we do with our cultured cream? Well, the main reason I like to have it on hand is to add some cultured probiotic goodness to our meals. I will stir it into soups or stews just before serving, or drizzle it on top of a bowl of beans. Really good with any dishes were you might use sour cream. Very similar to sour cream, just not as thick, a little less sour. Also called creme fraiche. Also good on fruit. Served on biscuits with honey. Good for baby while we are waiting for our raw milk share to begin again, as I would prefer for her to have only raw or cultured dairy.

How do we make our rye porridge? Coarsely ground, soaked overnight if I remember, cooked in three times as much water on stove top, stirring very frequently as it has a tendency to stick and burn if you're not careful. We do the same thing with other grains, barley being another favorite. We used to do a "grain of the day" (Waldorf) porridge rotation throughout the week, which is useful for menu simplifying, plus if someone isn't so fond of one grain then at least it's not coming back around for another week.

Peanut Butter Cookie Recipe

My recipes of course have to come with notes and rambling…
These cookies are very rich. You can make them with other nut butters (maybe seeds too? sunflower? sesame tahini cookies?) but I warn you that then they become even more rich. Peanut is my favorite, followed by walnut (in photo) which I made recently when we were out of peanut butter. (Used hand blender to make walnut butter in a jar, worked well.) I want to try them with pecans soon.

You can make them less rich by substituting 1/4 cup of sugar for 1/4 cup of the maple syrup. But then they have sugar. We use organic sugar.

We use all organic ingredients. Always. Because we are very afraid of gmo foods.

For fats/oils in baking we use coconut oil or butter. We do not use the extra virgin super coconut flavored oil because some people here do not like coconut, and also it will change the taste of these cookies, which is fine if you like the coconut flavor, but we use the milder version, expeller pressed and organic. And organic butter, because dairy, yikes, add 100 other concerns besides gmo's to the list of reasons why we won't eat conventional dairy products.

Also I have made these with kamut flour.

Now we shall try to get on with the recipe...

1 ½ cups brown rice flour
1 cup peanut butter (or other nut butter) (ours is fresh ground peanuts. do not use one with sugar added)
½ cup coconut oil or softened butter (or melted and slightly cooled butter)
½ cup maple syrup (careful it is not so cold that it hardens your oil/butter, but I never go so far as to actually warm it)
¼ teaspoon salt

Oven at 350 degrees (F)

In a medium bowl add peanut butter, coconut oil or butter, maple syrup, and salt. Mix well. Add flour. Mix well again. The dough will be fairly wet. In general it is very forgiving. I rarely even measure the ingredients exactly, but then again I have been baking these for about 15 years.

Place tablespoon size balls (I use an actual tablespoon measuring spoon to scoop up the dough) on cookie sheet with an inch or so between them. They will not spread too much. Then make the cute little criss cross peanut butter cookie prints with a fork. If dough is too sticky then dip your fork in cold water  occasionally while making the marks, no more stickiness…

Bake for 10 minutes. Let cookies cool on tray for a bit before trying to move as they will be delicate while still hot. Makes about 2 dozen-ish.

And remember, I told you that these are very, very rich.
(Which is why I am leaving out the adding chocolate chips option. Jason likes them that way but it is too much for me.) (Also because I am not fond of chocolate.) (Yes, I know that is crazy.) (But also, when well cooled, and for a very special occasion, you could dip the cookies halfway in melted chocolate!)


Okay, recipe done now, in case you were wondering.

Those delicious peach tarts were made by the girls. Chloe sometimes gets consumed by the desire to bake a surprise something. I was not allowed into the kitchen at all.

And finally, after saying for more than 10 years that he wanted them, Jason made onion rings. Wow, they were really, really good!

So what is going on in your kitchen lately?
It has been suggested that maybe we can do one of those linky things (like for ginny's yarn-along) so that more of you can join us in the sharing. I will look into that, but for now if you would like to then please feel free to leave a link in the comments to one of your recent food posts.

I'm so late with my post this month that perhaps you have already visited everyone else…

Melanie from Our Ash Grove

Jules from A Little Crafty Nest

Melody from Bespoke

Sarah from Our Island Home

Tonya from Joyful Living

Taisa from Small Wonders

Heather from Shivaya Naturals

Thanks again to my inspiring mama friends!!!

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soon… feeding our families...

Hello all… I am very much looking forward to this months "feeding our families" series with my lovely group of mama friends, but it will probably be a day or so before I get my post done. Not that it is anything spectacular, I am just lacking time for the computer lately (always? lacking motivation to be at computer? always.) 

I will share a really yummy cookie recipe with you when I return. It is even vegan, gluten-free, sugar free, etc… You can consider it a kind of apology to all my gluten-free friends for all the yeasted wheat bread I post about.

Previous "feeding our families" posts with links to participating friends are here…

And beginning this month we will have Heather here as well, which makes me very happy, and will surely be very beautiful and delicious… (I may even read her post before I finish mine, which goes against the rule I made up for myself about finishing my post before visiting everyone else...)

Wishing you a happy day! I'll be back soon…

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feeding our families - february

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So yes, I thought it would be nice to have these monthly conversations about food. I could talk about food forever (as long as I took breaks to talk about sewing, knitting and books once in a while…) (gardening talk would count as food talk…) Apparently though I am not much good at writing about food.


I thought I might keep some food and kitchen notes throughout the month in preparation for this next "feeding our families" post, but all I ended up with was this…

monday kitchen 1-13
made granola in the morning, beans soaking and then cooking in the crockpot, cream culturing on the counter
dinner - leftover elk stew (simple and delicious, baked low in oven) served over mashed potatoes

thursday kitchen 1-30
next batch of cultured cream into the fridge
must bake bread this morning
looking for a pumpkin pancake recipe - discovered we have lots of pumpkin and eggs at the moment
broccoli soup?
wondering if jason took the elk steaks out of the freezer last night, will check soon

enjoying the jar of apple butter that we opened this week (also from freezer) - so so delicious, yummier than I remembered it being when we made it - this must have something to do with the fact that it is autumns goodness spooned onto fresh baked biscuits in the middle of winter…

Yes, I make cultured cream often these days. No, we do not always have venison for dinner.


Back to today…

I read my food post from last month and noticed I said we don't eat rice very often. But now we just ate rice and beans three nights in a row! I made a huge batch of Anasazi beans in the crockpot the other day. Two quart jars full went into the freezer. For the first night I made some spanish rice and we served the beans over it with spinach and corn. The second night it was the same ingredients layered in a dish with cheese and baked in the oven. Last night the last of the casserole was served with roasted sweet potatoes. You can imagine how happy my family is that the rest of the beans were put away in the freezer. I think the leftover rice is bound for the freezer too.

I never made the pumpkin pancakes. They sounded too sweet. We even skipped our usual "pancake sunday" because no one seemed in the mood for them. I did make pumpkin muffins though and they were super yummy. Still a little too sweet and I will do less sugar next time, maybe just a mix of molasses and maple syrup.

I am just about at a loss as to what to feed my thirteen year old daughter, who hardly wants to eat a thing these days. I mean, she does want to eat, she is hungry, but there is not a single thing that "sounds good", or sometimes something even sounds particularly unbearable. Kind of like how Chessa can now be nearly in tears at the though of having to swallow another bite of yet another bowl of oatmeal. (At least it took her five years or so to get tired of morning oats…) (And Chloe still likes oatmeal well enough, but now only sometimes…)
It seems like one answer to this issue would be to just take/keep matters in my own hands and serve up a good meal for her, hope she will eat it, which she likely will, cause she always does, this is how dinner is, but throughout the day…
I need to get better at lunches...

Today is quinoa porridge for breakfast. Much preferred over oatmeal lately. I love quinoa, but not sweet with honey how the girls like it. Rye is one of my favorite porridges…


Menu planning… I only menu plan about half the time! Just saying that makes me wonder how following a plan only half the time could possibly be a good idea. Hmmm. I do always have meals planned ahead of time, I just don't necessarily always know which night of the week we will have which meal…
More thoughts on all that later though...


I have considered sharing some of our bread recipes here before - one of the main things that stops me is that we live at about 7,000 feet, and altitude definitely affects some aspects of baking…

So how about a few little bread baking tips for now…

1. Bake bread - if you haven't but want to, then just go for it. You can definitely do it. Probably! For example, my mother may not be able to bake bread ;)

2. Use really really hot water when proofing your yeast. The only times I have had bread not work out well was when I didn't have the water/liquid hot enough. I use super hot water from the tap, as hot as it gets. The only time I have had my liquid too hot was once when heating milk, I killed the yeast.

3. Butter and honey!!! This is a more recent discovery of mine. For more than 10 years I baked our bread with only flour, yeast, sugar, and water. But adding fat and honey makes such a difference! The honey is just a few tablespoons in place of the organic sugar used when mixing the yeast. Then I cut thin slices of butter and let them melt in the hot yeast water. The bread is more moist, slices easier, and keep longer. And it's more delicious!

4. Knead well, for at least 10 minutes, and then an extra 5 if you can. You can feel the difference when you get to that 10-15 minute point.

5. If you are rushed and anxious for fresh bread you can shape your loaves and do a single rise. The bread will not rise as much or be as light as bread made with two proper risings, but it will still be very good.

6. If your oven should ever happen to suddenly break while you have bread dough risen and ready to bake (which I really hope it does not) then you can roll all your dough out into flat breads and bake them in a skillet on top of the stove. So you see, a broken oven can be a blessing in disguise, otherwise we would have never discovered how delicious yeasted flatbread can be! You could also try this out without the broken oven part happening first...

7. Consider setting an extra ball of dough aside for other uses… pizza, calzones, cinnamon rolls! I have finally caught on to the convenience of homemade pizza night…


And that's certainly enough food rambling for now…

Please feel free to share any food thoughts you may have…

and please visit my dear friends who were kind enough to take up this little project with me… A few new friends joining this month… Thanks to all who are participating!

Melanie from Our Ash Grove

Jules from A Little Crafty Nest

Melody from Bespoke

Sarah from Our Island Home

Tonya from Joyful Living

Taisa from Small Wonders

Lisa from Hullabaloo Homestead

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Feeding Our Families

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I sometimes wonder how it is that I don't post much food or kitchen stuff here considering that it is what occupies most of my hours, days, years…

Even when I'm not in the kitchen my mind is still often contemplating the days meals, the baking list, the weeks' menu, the grocery list. 

Good thing all this food stuff makes me happy.

Here above is a collection of almost every food photo I have ever shared on my blog (minus birthdays cakes, and more garden salads). This despite the fact that I have obviously cooked thousands of meals and baked hundreds of loaves of bread in recent years! (Wow!)

I would really like to be sharing more here about that wonderful work we all do of preparing food for the ones we love. So to help motivate myself I decided to invite some special blog friends to join me in a series of posts on feeding our families. At the beginning of each month we will share some of what is on our kitchen hearts, and I very much am looking forward to the conversation and inspiration!

Now I will be honest and tell you that, oh my, this first post just snuck on me! Yeah, you might think I would have had something prepared ahead of time, but no. 

At least I remembered to get the oats soaking last night! Porridge for breakfast. Probably with only butter and honey as I usually cannot get the girls to add any fruit or nuts to their bowls. Unless it's peach season. And sometimes apple. I guess it's really more the dried fruit they are opposed to. 

For dinner there is leftover pinto beans and brown rice, creamy from coconut milk, yummy from the addition of sautéed onion and green peppers. Surprising that the girls liked the coconut milk part. The first night it was served with roasted winter squash, tonight… oh phooey, I just realized I didn't buy the cabbage I meant to get at the market yesterday. Well, so I guess we won't be having roasted cabbage for dinner… 

(Simple and good… Roasted cabbage… I cut a head of cabbage into wedges, sprinkle with a little olive oil or coconut oil, sea salt and pepper, into oven at 400 degrees until it's done to your liking. That's about as good as I can do at recipe sharing for now…)

We actually don't eat rice very often, but beans, plenty, and my family would likely say more than enough. Later this week I have a garbanzo bean dish planned. It's just onion sautéed in lots of olive oil, garbanzo beans (I cook ours in a crockpot) and lots of cilantro. And lots of pepper, which must be freshly ground according to my sister, but we're always out of peppercorns…

Well there, that was almost like sharing two recipe ideas!

Today's baking list is scones in the morning and then the several loaves bread that will last us the next few days. The girls will probably help with the scones. 

Oh, and Jason is feeling like he is up for the challenge of cooking dinner one night a week! It's the time part that will be challenging, as his kitchen skills are really quite great. Last week he made some delicious chili with ground elk. (Oh, and last autumn he hunted elk, his first successful year, and how great it is to have meat put away in the freezer!) (A long way from vegan! But we are still as particular as ever about our food choices!)

See, it looks like I will have no problem at all finding all kinds of food stuff to ramble on about!

Please feel free to share any food thoughts you may have…

and please visit my dear friends who were kind enough to take up this little project with me…

Melanie from Our Ash Grove

Jules from A Little Crafty Nest

Melody from Bespoke

Sarah from Our Island Home

Tonya from Joyful Living

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autumn day on our little mountain

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A stormy day, which stayed sunny long enough for us to enjoy our picnic.

We tried to bake our bread to be shaped like oak leaves. Kinda worked.

Chloe baked some ginger cookies. Stars, hearts and trees.
Fourteen stars - for the 14 years of marriage Jason and I celebrated on this day.
Hearts - lots and lots of them, for lots and lots, and lots, of LOVE.
Trees - because we have our own forest now.

Such lovely autumn colored bits of yarrow.
Thunder in the distance.
Darkening skies. Falling rain.

Earlier in the week there were evening moonlight horse rides.

October is ending...


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