Stretching your Food Budget

Everyone at one time or another has had to stretch their food budget. Some people have to do it all the time and others learn to make do when there's an emergency such as a hurricane or blizzard. Learning how to cook on top of your regular woodstove is important but then again, so is having the ingredients in the first place. You can't have 100 spices and exotic herbs sitting in your kitchen wasting space and money and not know how to use them. That's not thrifty. Better to have a dozen that are not stale and really know how to use them well.

Having some of the basic ingredients on hand and knowing how to use them can really make your food go a lot further. Having flour is all well and good but having just a little yeast, sugar and dried fruit suddenly means you've got fruit buns, or even hot cross buns if you add a little spice to them. Eggs, flour, milk and salt give you the choices to make crepes or Yorkshire puddings (I think they're called popovers in the US). And that's what we had for lunch today.

I'm trying to use up and rotate some of our food stores so the girls and I did a bunch of baking today. It was a snow day so no school and it just seemed like the perfect time to teach them another baking lesson on how to knead bread by hand and the proper way to beat eggs. We made banana bread, hot cross style buns and Yorkshire puddings with gravy and vegetables plus some of our thinly sliced lonzino for lunch. Despite the skepticism of one son, they all ate with gusto. I baked the puddings in my tortilla pans to give them an interesting shape and to make them enormous and slightly hollow in the middle, then I made up some gravy with a packet mix and a bouillon cube with flour and water and in it I cooked a half package of frozen veggies. I sliced the meat thin, placed in in the depression in the pudding then filled it with the veggie/gravy mix.

The results? Filling and Delicious! Now it's time to teach a lesson on cleaning up after you bake.

We're making a concerted effort to eat less refined sugar and flour and increase the amounts of vegetables both raw and cooked that we eat each day, but on a snowy day like today it's always good to have some comfort food too.

I've got to get going and stir my beans on the woodstove, I'm making baked beans from scratch and figured that if the woodstove was on I might as well use the heat for something extra useful. Here's my recipe if you're interested in making your own Yorkshire's.

Yorkshire Pudding Recipe

3 Eggs
1-1/4 cups  milk
2 Tbsp Melted butter or oil
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp. salt

Beat the eggs, then add the remaining ingredients and beat smooth for 2 minutes. Leave at room temp for an hour or two before cooking. You'll need to cover it and stir again before baking.  When you're almost ready to begin baking, turn the oven on to 375f (gas 6) and lightly grease your tin or tins. These can be made in muffin tins with great success. Pour in your batter and bake for 30-40 minutes or slightly longer if using a big tin. It'll be puffed up and slightly darker than golden brown. Traditionally served in our house with roast beef, gravy and vegetables.

I always double this recipe but this should make 12 mice muffin sized puffs.

Cost of todays lunch was probably $6 because I made a double batch plus the gravy and veg. It fed 6 adults. Dessert was buns and juice for another $3 so a total of $9 or $1.50 per person.  Take that McDonald's!

City Dogs and Country Sheep- a recipe for disaster.

It's that time of year again that people are letting their dogs run loose and taking lovely long walks in the country for some fresh air and to enjoy the scenery. The problem starts when they let their dogs run loose and often unsupervised. I know how tempting it is to let them run free and watch the joy of a dog running through the fall finery but please consider this... Just because you think a field is empty doesn't mean it actually is. We farmers move livestock around all the time. And your dog running on the other side of the bushes could be worrying my sheep even if you can't hear it. Startled and running sheep do not always make a lot of noise. Your dog could cause my sheep to have abortions hours after you've gone home to your nice cozy house. And you'll never know. Even if your dog mauls an animal you might not realize. I know that your dog might be perfectly behaved at home but if the hunting instinct kicks in they will chase sheep, and sheep having no natural defenses, they just run. It just leads to a frenzy of adrenaline and the hunt is on, almost always ending badly for the sheep. If sheep are given this sort of fright or brush with death as they see it, they will often abort the lambs they are carrying. And nobody knows about this but the shepherd and possible the vet.

This is why it's an almost universally accepted law that if your dog, no matter how cute and fluffy, is caught on my land worrying my livestock (chasing them, being in their field, mauling them) I have every right to shoot your dog without compensation to you and in fact I could even go as far as to sue you. Most farmers won't sue, and are loathe to shoot a dog. So please do us all a HUGE favour and keep your dog controlled on a leash. And remember that public footpaths and bridleways are on average 6 feet wide so your dog is supposed to stay within that area. Nobody knows what their dog will do 100% of the time until the first incident occurs, it's just the way nature is, unpredictable.

The rules about shooting dogs apply in most countries in the world so this really is a universally applicable post. I think that out of just general respect for your fellow human beings that we could all try to be considerate and get along. We farmers welcome you to the country, and leashed dogs are fine but of course it's always a bad few who spoil it for everyone. I know that this will upset lots of animal lovers out there and I understand, I really do. But what about the rights of livestock? They're animals too. Farmers will always try to scare off or catch a dog and find its owners if they can. We love dogs too and most farmers consider them indispensable, working dogs and family pets alike. But ultimately it's your responsibility to be a responsible pet owner. If you're generally a good neighbour then there isn't too much to worry about. We've had at one time our sheep escape, cows escape and the pigs escape. It happens. But we just round them up and bring them back home, repairing any havoc they've wreaked while out. Similarly, if a dog or other farmers livestock wandered onto my place I'd try to return them home. This neighbourliness is what living in a rural community is all about. It's dogs chasing livestock that cause problems. In the UK the rules say this "The dog owner commits an offence if (a) their dog is in a field with livestock worrying them, Worrying means attacking livestock, or chasing livestock in such a way as may reasonably be expected to cause injury or suffering to the livestock or, in the case of females, abortion, or loss of or diminution in their produce; or (b) their dog is not under control in a field with sheep, even if he was not worrying them, but a police dog, a guide dog, trained sheep dog, a working gun dog or a pack of hounds are all excluded. (Dogs (Protection of Livestock) Act 1953).

Here's a good clip from Adams Farm on Countryfile from September 2013 about dogs.



That's all I have to say for now about dogs. Next up....dealing with raccoons.

On a personal note:
It's starting to rain a little so my chances for getting laundry dry today are looking less than promising. But other good things are happening. We still don't have much money raised for the trip but I know it will will work out in the end. We still have 4 weeks to go. And lots of things we can sell. Stephen will be back from the mainland tonight so tomorrow we will be back at work getting things ready.

We are getting closer to making plans for a BBQ fundraiser too. We're going to make all our own sausage and then invite all our friends over. Smokies and a bun by donation...sound good? We'll expect you all to come and tell all your friends. I'll post more details as we get closer to the date.