Eating

Well, we are not in the Bay Area anymore. No more running out for an easy and delicious burrito or pizza just a few blocks away.  So we’re trying to take advantage of this new situation. 

Since moving to the farm a number of factors have contributed to our desire to change the way we eat and prepare meals, but our greatest influence has to be the slight obsessions we’ve developed for Laura Ingalls Wilder and her Little House books. We started reading them last year, and now that we’re growing food, like her family did, it seems like a good time to pick up some of the other homesteading skills that were so important way back when.

Here are some of the changes we’ve made so far:

We have collected cast iron skillets and a dutch oven, which we plan to season regularly and keep for many years to come. Laura Ingalls’ mother had to  deal with the heavy unwieldy utensils and so will we.

 

We are determined to buy only whole chickens and use the bones to make stock every time. We’re also using beef bones for beef stock. This has proved to be delicious and is an old-time remedy for whatever ails you. 

Derek can no longer simply walk to Walgreens to get a pint of Phish Food and is learning how to bake his own sweet treats from scratch. (After two attempts at cookies he is yet to be successful. We have thrown the too-crumbly dough and flat over-cooked cookies to the pigs and they seem to think Derek is an excellent chef)

We’re eating farm fresh eggs grown right here on the property almost every day. Just like Laura, if the chickens don’t lay eggs, we won’t eat any. 

We’ve also made lamb stew with home grown lamb, froze a whole lot of amazing home-made burritos for later use, and saved and used the fat from our bacon to cook other meals. And I have finally discovered that bacon fat is amazing!

Living where we work also gives us more time for all this cooking, so don’t worry, we’re still asleep before 10pm almost every night.