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.

The Disappearing Omega 3's

In my most recent issue of Prevention Magazine I found this most interesting article 'The Vanishing Youth Nutrient' on the disappearance of the vital Omega 3's from our diet. It is becoming more and more clear to me about the problem of grains, not only in our own diets, but in the silage of our meat animals!

We have not yet purchased a pasture-raised, pasture-finished side of beef for our freezer, but have been living for the most part on our own meat chickens that we raised, wild pork and the rare traditional lot raised beef from the grocery store. We occasionally will buy a huge pork loin, which we slice into chops and freeze...because of the low price. I really want to eliminate all commercial meat...it is still a work in progress for us. It's not happening nearly as fast as I would like. We have changed MUCH in the way that we eat and think about food, but the changes that we still need to make will require even more dedication.

Once again, I say that 'Organic' is not good enough for my satisfaction if the animals in any way subsist or are finished on grains, especially corn. It is greens in the diets of our livestock that make the meat Omega 3 rich (which we need) as opposed to an excessive amount of Omega 6 (which we do not need) in the grain fed livestock.

Let me reiterate that I am not opposed to using a small, balanced amount of healthy, toxin-free whole grains in our diet. The problem is that in this country, grains tend to be used in an unhealthy way. Not only through refining, but also over-use (compared to greens and other complex carbs), and not least of all is the problem of fungal toxins that exist in stored grains, expecially the universally contaminated corn.

'Strawberry' onions not so sweet

Well, Mom gave me Grandma's recipe for her freezer pickles the other day so I had to make half a batch. Since I had already put up all of the Vidalia Onions, I pulled one of my white onions from the strawberry bed to use. Slicing them thinly for the freezer pickles, I popped a piece into my mouth...just had to see if the experiment worked...Nah! I guess the ol' sulfur in our Midwest soil wins out. The strawberries just didn't seem to do any good. I'll bet the people who make such a claim for interplanting onions with strawberries must already live in an area with less sulfur.

Here is the recipe for the freezer pickles:


Grandma’s Freezer Pickles

2 Qt. thinly sliced cucumbers
2 Tbls. salt
2 medium onions, thinly sliced

Sprinkle salt over the sliced cucumbers and onions. Let set for 30 minutes then drain off salt water.

Syrup-

1 ½ cup sugar
½ cup vinegar

Bring to a boil long enough to melt sugar. Remove from heat and let cool.

Pack cucumbers and onions into four pint jars. Mix 4 tsp. celery seed into syrup then pour into pint jars. Leave some head space to allow for expansion. You can use canning lids and rings or plastic lids. Freeze the pickles and you can eat them the next day if desired. Leave in the freezer until the day you want to eat them.

Dilly Beans

I put up a batch of Dilly Beans the other day. I have never had these before, but the recipe sounded good so thought I would give it a try. The recipe calls for either a head of fresh dill or a teaspoon of dill seed in each pint jar. I went out to the garden armed with my kitchen scissors to snip the dill heads... once out there among my jungle of 4 foot tall dill weed, I realized that I didn't know what stage of dill heads is generally used. I was pretty sure that it wasn't dry heads with the seeds... but do I want dill heads still in bloom or with green seeds? Back inside I went to call Mom. Dill heads still in bloom was her answer. This will actually give more dill flavor than dill seeds, remarkably.

After cutting about two pounds of beautiful green beans into four inch pieces, in went the dill head, a clove of garlic and some cayenne pepper into each pint jar. Finished that off with the pickling solution and a water bath for ten minutes. I was surprized in that my new "So Easy to Preserve" Book called for processing in a water bath as opposed to pressure canning. I guess there is enough acid in the amount of vinegar to make it safe.

I will wait until Mom comes for her visit to give these a try.

Update: tried the Dilly Beans. YUM! The beans were nice and crisp and the cayenne gave it a real kick! Plenty of dill flavor and the garlic a nice background.

Sweet Vidalia Onion Relish

On the 4th, my MIL brought us fifty pounds of Vidalia onions. I had mentioned to her that back in April or May DH had made a business trip out to Florida, passing through Georgia on the way. I had asked him to bring me a fifty pound bag of Vidalias from Georgia. As it turns out, the timing was a little early for the Vidalia season. So now, here it is July and I have my onions!

I have a new book, 'So Easy to Preserve', published by the Cooperative Extension of the University of Georgia. I am real excited about the information in this book! I found out about it at a class on preserving the harvest taught by Beverly Coombs of the University of Illinois Cooperative Extension Service. She calls it her canning and preserving bible, and I can see why... but you will have to buy the book and see for yourself!

Here is the recipe for Vidalia Onion Relish that I made today...
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Vidalia Onion Relish

1 1/2 gallons ground Vidalia onions (about 20 lbs)
1/2 cup [canning] salt
1 quart apple cider vinegar (5%)
1 teaspoon turmeric
4 teaspoons pickling spice
4 tablespoons pimento, chopped
4 1/2 cups sugar

Grind enough Vidalia onions to yield 1 1/2 gallons, add 1/2 cup salt and let stand 30 minutes. Squeeze juice from onion-salt mixture and discard juice. The pickling spice in cheesecloth. Combine onions, vinegar, sugar, turmeric, spice bag, and pimento in a large saucepot. Bring to a boil and cook until thick, (approximately 30 minutes), stirring often. Remove and discard spice bag.
Pack both onions and cooking liquid to cover in hot jars, leaving 1/2 inch headspace. Remove air bubbles. Wipe jar rims. Adjust lids. Process 10 minutes in a Boiling Water Bath.
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The recipe says that this will yield about 8 pint jars. I ended up with almost nine, the ninth jar being about 3/4 full went straight into the fridge to use right away.

Another bonus is the two quarts of onion juice that I drained off before adding the salt. I thought that if I freeze the juice into ice cubes, this will make an easy way to pop some flavor into soups or stews, etc. I also saved about a quart of the onion juice that was extracted after the salt was added. Why throw this away when I can make good use of it? :)
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This recipe and others like it are found on Cooks.com.