Have I Mentioned My Beloved Books?

I love my books. Especially a few series that I read and re-read. I just picked up a new book by Lauraine Snelling yesterday. It is the fourteenth book in her series about an immigrant family from Norway. Well actually, it is the fourteenth book about the family but the fourth series. The first series of six was the Red River of the North series, the next was three books, Return to Red River, then four books in the Daughters of Blessing series. And now this is the first book in the Home to Blessing Series. It is called A Measure of Mercy (the next book is due out in April). I've only started it and I plan to pace myself reading in. I have a problem often that if I start a book and enjoy it I will read it straight through even if that means staying up all night. Then, of course, I'm a mess the next day. At the time of writing this I've only read about half of the first chapter. Already, I'm hooked.

I enjoy Historical Fiction (but also lots of other kinds of books too). I've read the Love Comes Softly series and other books by that author (Janette Oke) and a few other miscellaneous books.

Do you have any book recommendations for me? April (when the next book in this series comes out) is a long ways away.

Homekeepers Journal- My First

I'm a day late on this (because I have a hard time remember what day it is). But I love this Homekeepers Journal that Sylvia at Christian Homekeeper Network does.

What's happening in my home...?

In my kitchen... Busy, busy. I've been trying some new things that I had put off doing out of fear, like making mayo. One thing I discovered was to be prepared to wipe down all of the cabinets above the blender after making mayo.

With our family... Joe and I are in a very peaceful place. We find ourselves really enjoying each other's company and working well together to accomplish things. God really blessed me with that man. The baby is trying to feed himself and ends up wearing more than he eats. It is a struggle to convince him to let me give him a little before he takes over. And he is taking a few steps now. Always on the go that little man. The girls are doing excellent in school, Kiki had straight A's and went to a special breakfast on Tuesday. My daughter and her husband are both working and looking forward to being able to get a place of their own in a few months.

Around the homestead... We temporarily have a turkey. It is very big and makes funny little chirping noises. The chickens are doing well and I'm getting 4 eggs most days. I'm pretty sure that one of the chickens is laying somewhere other than the nest but I haven't found the spot yet. We have 2 acres with about 1/3 of that in brush so there could be some good hiding places. Inside the house I'm working on my organizational skills and having a good routine in place.

In my inner man... I didn't know I had an inner man until I found Sylvia's site and these posts (be sure to read the verse and explanation that Sylvia gives). We have finally became serious about finding a church. We moved here in May and had so much work around here that we did on the weekends that we put off church hunting. We visited a small new church on Sunday and loved it. I always find it refreshing when the sermon is actually Bible based and not just providing 'lip service'. For me personally, I have been working on spending time with the Lord and having more patience. Amazingly, the more time I spend with Him the more patience I have.

Chicken Report

My little Ladies are doing great at their egg laying. Yesterday, we went to church in the morning and didn't let them out to roam until we came home (they have a small outdoor pen attached to their coop which they did go out in). When I went to let them out I looked in the nest box and found 5 eggs! I only have 5 girls so each one of them left me an egg. Two of them were a little wonky looking so I wonder if maybe they were the first eggs laid. On Saturday, I had got 3 eggs so that kind of makes sense (or possibly the other two laid somewhere that I haven't found yet). I'm not doing artificial light for the chickens (just a heat lamp on cold nights) so to get them all laying on one day in what is practically winter here is very good. Must be all the good food I feed them.

What do I feed my chickens? Well, they have have a bit of a smorgasbord. Each morning they get the kitchen scraps from the day before (veggie peels, bread crusts that the kids won't eat, leftover whey, yogurt, kefir, etc) and I throw some scratch out for them in the outside pen and around the coop. Usually at that time I let them out to roam (unless I have plans to be gone for a time during the day or the weather is inclement).

When they are roaming they can eat whatever they can find or looks good to them. There is still a little bit of grass in places, shrubs and a few bugs around.

Around 4 or 5 in the evening I put commercial laying mash in the feeder. I don't give them the commercial food earlier in the day because I want them to eat the other things offered to them. But by evening it is starting to get dark and the food in the feeder is a good enticement for them to find their way back to the coop. It sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. Often times they will be out playing in the yard until almost dark. Sometimes I have to go out three or four times before they are finally all in the coop.

We also have a container of oyster shells available for them and water in a few places. One of the nice things about them roaming is they find little stones which works as grit. And right now they have been enjoying leftover Halloween pumpkins that Joe brought home from work. I break off a couple of pieces for them each day. They usually devour it all and leave me the rind.

I would love to get the book Keeping Poultry and Rabbits on Scraps (pictured above). Apparently, it has some recipes and ideas for providing food for chickens entirely from leftover and scraps. I'd need to find another source for scraps, we do not generate enough to provide for the chickens completely.

I really enjoy keeping chickens. We had them when we lived in Oregon and enjoyed them then also. These chickens in some ways are different than those. We did not free range the Oregon ones (we lived on a road that led to a boat launch on the Columbia River so had a bit of boat traffic) and I think these chickens are more inquisitive and social. Whenever we are outside the chickens are right with us. We were working on a project on Saturday and kept having to move chickens out of our way. Two of them even jumped up in the back of our truck. Silly chickens.

Changes

When I started blogging I wanted to be able to have a record of the adventure we were on living in our camp trailer and planning to move half way across the country. And then when we got here I was able to document taking our property from a bare piece of land to a home. I love being able to show you my chickens , the wildlife that lives here, the snow and the changes that we are making to our property.

I have enjoyed sharing our real food adventure too. What I have discovered lately is that the food is taking over. If you have read here much you know that I am passionate (Joe still calls it obsessed) with preparing nutrient dense meals on our low food budget. I still want to share the other stuff going on here with the animals, house, etc and the result has been more than one post in a day on occasion. So to simplify things a bit, I've decided to have this blog just for family, home and property stuff and have a separate blog for food stuff.

I've transferred over some of the food posts to the new blog but left them here too-so if you are dying to look up how I made tongue tacos or the different ways I cook liver you can find it on either blog.


My food blog is Real Food for Less Money come visit me there to see our menus, recipes, and more.

Eat Raw

In the past when I thought of eating raw food I figured the occasional salad would be enough. I have to admit to not particularly enjoying salads so when I say occasional I should say rarely. Joe would kind of get after me because I would serve salad for dinner and encourage the children to eat it but somehow it wouldn't make it to my plate.

At the beginning of this year, reading through Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon and seeing how much she stressed consuming foods raw I knew I needed to re-think things a little bit. In the introduction section of Nourishing Traditions she has a section devoted to enzymes. What is an enzyme? "Enzymes are complex proteins that act as catalysts in almost every biochemical process that takes place in the body". Wow. Those sound important. Ms. Fallon goes on to say that enzymes fall into three categories; metabolic, digestive and food enzymes. The food enzymes are something that we should consider when planning our diets. Food enzymes are present in raw and fermented foods (heating over 118 degrees F kills these enzymes), help with digestion and actually allows the body to reduce its need to produce digestive enzymes. Eating a diet of primarily cooked foods can cause shortened life span, illness and lowered resistance to stress of all types.

With this information Joe and I have set out on a mission to increase the amount of raw and fermented foods in our families diet. We have done this through raw vegetables and fruits, fermented beverages, lacto-fermented vegetables, raw milk, and most recently raw beef. RAW BEEF?! Joe and I had eaten Carpaccio (Italian style raw beef) at a restaurant once and loved it. I wanted to try something like it at home. The Nourishing Traditions book has a section on Raw Meat Appetizers. The Carpaccio was in there along with a few others. The one that really caught my eye was Raw Beef, Vietnamese Style. It looked very good. I had most of the ingredients for it on hand and liked the concept. I decided to do a google search and see if I could find anything else similar. I found this recipe for Bo Tai Chanh Beef Carpaccio Vietnamese Style (not a truly raw recipe) which also sounded good. I combined the two and came up with a winner.


Vietnamese Style Raw Beef

1 pound grass fed beef, frozen for 14 days, partially thawed and sliced very thin

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon natural sweetener

3/4 cup fresh lemon juice

1/4 cup fresh lime juice

1 small onion, thinly sliced

1/2 cup crispy peanuts, finely chopped

1/2 cup crispy onions (see below)

3 green onions chopped (whites and greens)

chopped cilantro

lime wedges


I get beautiful grass fed beef each month from my beef CSA. There was a package of little steaks from October's delivery which looked perfect for this recipe. The most challenging part of this recipe was slicing the beef very thin, having the meat partially frozen helps with this. So does a very sharp knife.

Combine the olive oil, sweetener, lemon juice, lime juice; stir to mix. Add the thinly sliced beef and onion. Mix well. Marinate in the refrigerator for several hours (mine marinated about 5 hours). When ready to serve remove meat from marinade. Put on individual plates and top with peanuts, onion flakes, green onions and cilantro. Squeeze lime on top.

*Crispy onions- 1/2 cup dried onion flakes sauteed in olive oil and drained on paper towels (from Nourishing Traditions).


Joe and I loved this beef raw. The citrus marinade 'cooked' it just enough and gave it a wonderful flavor. Adding the toppings made it something special. For the children I seared each beef piece for about 5 seconds per side. They just aren't ready for raw beef.


What is your favorite raw or fermented food? Do you need some ideas on how to incorporate enzyme rich foods into your diet? Look here to see 50 great ideas from Cheeseslave.


This post is a contribution to Fight Back Friday hosted by Food Renegade.


Source: Nourishing Traditions pages 46, 47, 235

Congee (Sort of)

I was looking for a way to use fish broth and ingredients I had on hand. Internet searching found this fun site which talked about a rice porridge/soup dish called congee. I thought that sounded like a pretty good way to use the fish broth and combined some of the congee ideas to come up with a very yummy side dish which easily could have been our main dish.

Congee is supposed to be a kind of soup. It is made however thick that the person consuming it wishes it to be. When I made it instead of making a soup consistency I made it more of a casserole consistency (which I felt went better with our dinner). Congee is amazingly frugal with the most basic congee being rice and water. I upped the nutrition value a bit using bone broth and a few veggies. Even with those changes is was still incredibly inexpensive.

Congee Basics

1 cup white or brown rice rinsed until the water runs clear (the idea is to remove most of the starch)

6-12 cups of water or bone broth (depending on how thick you want your congee to be)

Combine the rice and water in a rice cooker (do not fill your rice cooker more than 70% to allow room for cooking). If you do not have a rice cooker you can cook it on the stove top. But for ease of preparation I loved using the rice cooker. Look here for other cooking methods.

Add three thinly sliced carrots

Put the cover on the cooker and turn it on. I went back and stirred it every 10 minutes or so to help break down the rice. In this picture I used 1 1/4 cup white rice (I try to make food familiar when I'm trying new things and my family loves white rice. Next time I'll use brown), 7 cups fish stock and the carrots.

While the rice was cooking I cooked some kale and mushrooms in coconut oil.

When the rice was finished cooking (my rice cooker shut itself off of cook onto warm and it looked good and done). I stirred in the kale/mushroom mixture and 2 teaspoons of coconut oil.


Here is the finished dish. Rich with healthy bone broth, carrots, kale and coconut oil. The options for making this 'Congee' are endless and I look forward to making this again.

Have you ever had congee? What was in it?

This post is a contribution to Pennywise Platter at The Nourishing Gourmet

Exciting Day!

Here it is! Our first egg. And she put it in the nest right where she was supposed to. What a good little chicken!