Illinois Farm Direct

I found the Illinois Farm Direct website today and I want to be sure and keep this handy. There are places very nearby that I would be patronizing if only I remembered them. The most interesting thing I saw today is a farm within 15 miles where I can go to buy organic goat's milk. And another sells raw honey.

Homemade Noodles

My girls are hard at work-- each faithfully popping out a smooth, pastel egg almost every day. I had decided not to sell eggs this year. Even at the $3.00 a dozen that we ended up selling them for in the past, I figured that it was still a not-for-profit venture. These jewels are way too good to sell at a loss when we can find ways to put them to good use right here. I would rather feed them back to our chickens and the cats also love them. Most of them, we will eat in various ways ourselves, and then there is the occasional dozen given away to visiting family and friends.

Today, I pulled out my trusty KitchenAid mixer along with the pasta attachments and made three batches of noodles and hung them to dry in the pantry. I LOVE my pasta machine! I honestly would not make noodles if I did not have this...rarely...probably almost never. But with this I can whip out beautiful homemade noodles in no time at all.

The three batches used up a good 15 or 16 eggs and I used Hodgson Mill unbleached white flour. I have some Bob's Red Mill organic semolina flour which I will use the next time and then I can cook a batch of each up and do a little taste test. I did not realize that semolina flour is higher in gluten than all purpose flour. This is supposed to make for better pasta, but the noodles made from the Hodgson Mill all purpose flour seem to be pretty darn good.
We do not have any known intolerances to gluten, but since many people do, I will still be looking for tasty noodle recipes that are gluten free. I may try to make a small batch from Bob's Red Mill gluten free flour (made with garbanzo beans, fava beans, potatoes, sorghum and tapioca).

It took me two and a half hours to finish up the three batches. By the time that was done, I whipped up a quick dinner: NOODLES (!) with leftover chicken breast, some chicken stock thickened with arrowroot, sliced organic carrots, some of Mom's vidalia onions that I had sauteed and keep handy in the freezer, green peas and all seasoned with sage, parsley, sea salt and black pepper and a little lemon juice for a tasty twang. Yummy homegrown comfort food!

Baking Powder

Since any baking powder that I have found in the grocery stores contain cornstarch, I was pleased to find not only a recipe to make my own without using cornstarch, but also discovered this Wikipedia article explaining the science of baking powder and how it works.

Baking Soda and Cream of Tartar are the active ingredients. I will use arrowroot as the starch in my homemade baking powder. This will be a single acting baking powder, not double acting as the timing will not be a problem for me, so a heat reactive acid salt is not critical. (Read the article).

Here's the recipe:

ABC 1:2:1

1 part Arrowroot powder
2 parts Baking Soda
1 part Cream of Tartar

That's it! I still have half of a can of Clabber Girl baking powder to use up so I can reuse the handy-dandy can with the straight edge made for leveling off the measuring spoon.
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Update 2/13/10:  The homemade blend has worked just fine for pancakes.  That is all I have tried it for so far.  I did find a corn starch free commercial baking powder at our local health food store.  The brand is Hain and the ingredients are monocalcium phosphate, potato starch, and potassium bicarbonate.  It is sodium free (thus the potassium bicarbonate instead of sodium bicarbonate) and also gluten free.