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!

Pasture Raised Meat and Produce For Sale

It's getting to that time of year when we offer sides of pork, chicken and lamb to our customers so that we can all get into winter with the freezer full. So just a thought...what can we get for YOU?

Delivery to Sackville can be arranged for $10. Local delivery free. Book now for late fall delivery.

We will be offering the following:

Eggs, available by chance. $ 3 dozen.

Pumpkins for fall decorating, pies and Halloween. Medium sized upto 10 lbs are $2 each. Large pumpkins upto 25 lbs are $ 4 each. Jumbo's will be $10. They are just starting to colour up in the fields but with the cooler temperatures coming I know that we'll soon be awash in a sea of orange happiness. I LOVE pumpkin pie!

Lamb, cut wrapped and frozen. $6 lb if you take a half or whole. $8lb for specific cuts. All lamb is anti-biotic and drug free. Free range pasture raised.

Pork, cut wrapped and frozen. $5 lb by the side  $7 lb for smoked meats like bacon and ham. Sausage may yet be an option we'll offer this year so keep checking back. Our pigs are pasture raised heritage breeds (Tamworth x Berkshire) and have had a happy outdoor life with their own little barn. Because of their mixed diet of pasture, grain and apples and carrots, our meat is lean and full of flavour. Definitely worth a try if you've never eaten heritage pork before.

Chicken, whole. $ 4 lb. Averages between 5-8 lb. Our unusual breed of chicken from France (the SASSO) is specifically bred to be able to live their lives outside and forage for a good deal of their own food. Our birds have absolutely free range (and they do) of 5 acres of pasture and they have a great time scratching around in the grass for treats or in the orchard devouring drop apples. These slow growing and super healthy birds have been a pleasure to raise and we'll be doing so on a much larger scale next year. Quantities are limited this year so order fast.

Turkey, whole. $ 4lb Our heritage turkeys exceptional flavour will ruin all store bought turkeys for you. Seriously, they are so delicious compared to the ones at Sobeys that it's hard to go back, lol. Raised naturally on pasture with barn housing for inclement weather, our friendly guys enjoy a great life exploring the farm and coming to see what we're doing. Turkeys are naturally curious and make a great addition to a farmyard. We're keeping back half our flock for breeding next year so quantities of Christmas turkey are limited for 2013. Please contact us to reserve yours.

We can be reached via our Facebook Page, Humblebee Farm or at humblebeecanada@gmail.com

Here's a great recipe for Krispy Fried Chicken

1 whole chicken, cut into pieces
3 beaten eggs
4 tablespoons oil

For the coating

2 cups flour
4 teaspoons paprika (don't skip this one, it adds nice flavour and colour)
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon pepper (black or white)
1 teaspoon poultry seasoning (doesn't matter the brand)
1 teaspoon thyme
1 teaspoon oregano
1 teaspoon tarragon
1/2 teaspoon garlic salt
1/2 teaspoon onion salt
1/2 teaspoon celery salt

Directions:

1. Sift together all the coating ingredients and place in a clean plastic bag. Coat each chicken piece first with the beaten egg, then with the flour mixture in the bag. Make sure you coat each piece completely with the flour to seal in the juices when cooking.
2. Heat the oil in a skillet. Brown the chicken in the oil slowly, uncovered. Once browned, cover the skillet and keeping frying on a very gentle heat until the chicken is fully cooked. Place a single layer on paper towels to drain out the excess oil.
3. If you don't want to fry your chicken you can dry roast in the oven but I like to spray on a little oil first or brush some oil onto the top of the chicken with a brush. This usually depends if I can find the oil spray bottle or not :)  

Looking for a Mortgage/Loan

Well, we're getting down to the wire looking for a private mortgage so we can buy property here in Nova Scotia. I've got a lot of research and more calls to make, we'll see if we can work something out. Basically the land we want to buy is $40,000. Worth more than that but we talked them down. We have $30,000 coming from the gov't in July (they now say) and of course we can make monthly payments. We do have the required income but with the legal wrangling going on between Steve's ex wife and Family Maintenance over payments, we don't qualify for a regular mortgage. All that over $600, can you believe it? It's getting sorted out in a couple of weeks but by then the land will have been sold to another guy.

**Note: it looks like the court stuff is sorted out now and we're just waiting on a Judges signature. Hooray!**

So we're faced with the dilemma...try and get a private mortgage at almost criminal interest rates? One guy quoted us 18%...we said No Thanks. Or wait and see if something else comes along later in the year? Any thoughts?

We've got a super busy day again today. The new car is in the garage and today will lose it's rust, have a plate welded into the floor and receive a spa treatment of mesh, bondo and red oxide primer. Steve got it all washed down yesterday outside on the driveway and it looked so odd to see him out in the dark with a flashlight in the rain washing a car. He wanted to get all the grime and salt off and unfortunately our garage slopes so that water runs and pools inside and doesn't drain out, so washing outside was necessary, if comical. Now it's a matter of fixing the rust and building up the new fender panels from mesh and body filler (Bondo).

Also on the docket for today are to get the legal papers from the ex. Church. Family time with a movie and junk food (but it's Fast Sunday so we're not eating until supper time) and of course I've got to make a dinner everyone will eat because we're fasting (not eating or drinking) until supper time. I'm thinking pork chops. Here's my recipe from a US Newspaper years ago:

1/2 cup chicken broth

1/4 cup honey

1/4 cup soy sauce lite

2 tablespoons ketchup

1/2 teaspoon ginger

1/4 teaspoon garlic salt

Basically you take your pork chops and brown them on both sides. Place them in a casserole or covered baking dish. Mix remaining ingredients and pour over the top. Cover and bake for an hour (or 30-40 mins for thin chops). Keep covered so they don't dry out while cooking and rest on the counter for 10 mins after baking before serving. We're having ours with mashed potatoes and peas. No gravy necessary. Oh, and this recipe is for 8 pork chops so you can halve it if you need to. We use less sodium soy sauce and you can also use fresh garlic in place of the garlic salt if you're watching your salt intake. You can also use fresh ginger if you grate it finely. The flavours have enough time in the oven to blend together. Oh boy, now I'm hungry!

Well it's time to get up and at 'em. Church starts in an hour.

I'll have pics to post of the new to us car and we're going to tap our maple trees this afternoon too. Hope you all have a wonderful day.