Local foods for Feb 17, 18 and 19th

Breakfast-Donuts. (The breakfast of champions!)

Lunch-The last of the chicken noodle soup.
Local chicken and homemade broth, frozen noodles, organic onions, carrots and celery.

Dinner-Spaghetti with Bolognese sauce, baguette, applesauce.
Packaged pasta, store bought baguette, homemade applesauce.
Bolognese sauce had local ground beef in it, 2 jars of local tomatoes, organic carrots, celery and onions. 1/2 cup of wine from CA. (I can find local wine on occasion at stores. During the summer’s I can get it at the Farmer’s Markets)

I did find out that a Vegan version of Bolognese sauce is called Napolitana. At least they look very similar.

Breakfast-Leftover fried potatoes and bacon from Saturday’s breakfast.

Lunch-Chicken, pasta, carrot and pea casserole from Saturday’s dinner. Homemade Applesauce.

Dinner-Creamed chicken with biscuits and green beans.
4 TBs butter melted, mixed with enough flour to make a roux. Then stirred in leftover chicken broth and simmered until the sauce was kind of creamy. Mixed in local, home canned chicken, and broth. While this was working I put biscuits in the oven. The biscuits had lard in place of shortening, organic flour, local organic milk. We covered a biscuit (or two) with the creamed chicken but also had some with local butter and homemade jelly. The biscuits were very soft and moist, although they didn’t rise much. I have that problem every time.

Breakfast-Cinnamon roll from the grocery store.

Lunch-Mexican Beans leftover from lunch on Sunday. Leftover Ham from the same bean pot’s ham hock. Leftover biscuit to dip in the bean juice. Grapes. (not organic even)

Dinner–Stir fry with squash, carrots, green onions, onions, napa cabbage and celery with noodles, rice balls (from leftover sticky rice) and some of those homemade egg rolls from this weekend.
Squash was local, carrots, green onions, onions, cabbage and celery are organic. Noodles are from Vietnaim. Sticky rice is from Thailand I believe. Egg rolls were stuffed with a previous day’s stir fry. Who knows where the egg roll wrappers came from.

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I’ve hit the jackpot the last couple days at dinnertime. The boys couldn’t get enough of the spaghetti or the creamed chicken. I elicited comments of “What’s for dinner??? OOOOO, I love that sauce!” and “This chicken stuff is really TASTY!”. Zagat’s couldn’t have said it better. 🙂 Ethan had three helpings before I told him no more chicken (and he had some for breakfast). Tonight seemed to be the same. They ate it fast, but didn’t ask for seconds.

I’ve been reading more interesting books lately. I really enjoyed Stephen King’s book Cell, as well as Lord of the Flies, which wasn’t that deep but was an interesting study in human interaction and the motivation of groups. Interestingly I see a lot of similarities to how our government manipulates us. I’m having a hard time slogging through War and Peace and have become distracted by Wild Fermentation for the time being. I also am reading through a book on Communal Living, which is very interesting.

We’re running low on meat products right now, and I’m feeling the need for a little meat added to the diet right now. When we’ve had meat lately it’s been really small portions, and for some reason I’m craving a big piece of it right now. The downside to eating this way is that I can’t just pick some up, at least not in the winter. I’ve got a half a pig and a beef quarter in process, but they won’t be ready for a while still. I still have a ham in the freezer. It might have to be cooked up this weekend. It is a little strange not being able to just cook whatever I want whenever I want. My Dad gets here tomorrow for a visit. He might be in for a rude awakening as we eat meat lite. 🙂

The story of one lonely chicken

If you’ve been reading my blog you probably read that Tuesday night my family had roasted chicken.  Well, we finally finished the chicken today, sort of, and I thought the journey of this chicken might make an interesting tale.

As I said Tuesday I roasted a chicken.  Not a large chicken.  About 4 pounds.  After it was done, and we had eaten a fair amount for dinner Tuesday I picked it fairly clean and deposited the bones and the gizzards into a stock pot.  Overnight they cooked until the morning when I had a nice large batch of chicken stock, as well as a nice bowl full of meat I was able to glean off the used up carcass.

Some of this meat and this stock populated a chicken noodle soup dinner Wednesday night.  This soup is still in the fridge, and I had 2 bowls of it for breakfast on Friday.  Then Friday night I diced up some of the chicken and added it to a stir fry.

The leftover stir fry (with chicken) was then added to egg rolls on Saturday.  Additional chicken was also diced up and mixed with cabbage and carrots to stuff more egg rolls Saturday afternoon.

Saturday night the remaining chicken was diced and put into a cheesy pasta shell casserole for dinner with 7 people.  I measured this amount and it was 10 ozs.

I still have at least 4 bowls of soup in the fridge and a healthy amount of stock left.

From one 4 pound chicken I had 12 adult meal servings, 8 child sized portions, used it in 15 egg rolls and have 4 bowls of soup and a good amount of stock left.   I’m going to pat myself on the back a little and say that I fully used that chicken, and it was enjoyed for many meals by us.  While that little chicken may have given it’s life for us, I think we respected it’s sacrifice sufficiently.

Local Meals for Feb 15 & 16

Friday the 15th

Breakfast-2 bowls of leftover chicken noodle soup.  (Hey, if it’s in the fridge it’s fair game)

Lunch-Leftover stir fry from the previous Sunday.  Valentine treats.

Snack-Popcorn

Dinner-New stir fry with carrots, peas, onions, cabbage, sweet potatoes and chicken.  2 egg rolls.  Applesauce.  Sticky rice

A friend who is from Laos gave me a Thai steamer for Christmas, so I used it to make sticky rice for the first time.  Very good.  I love sticky rice.  They also hooked me up with some special seasoning sauce (really good soy sauce).  The stir fry was the best ever.  The sauce in it was crazy good.  5 tb seasoning sauce, 3 tb fish sauce, 1 tb oyster sauce, 2 tb brown sugar, 3 tb arrow root powder, 1/2 cup chicken stock, a little veggie oil, dash of cayenne pepper.  Add to veggies and enjoy.

Carrots, cabbage, onion are organic.  Chicken and sweet potatoes are local (and leftover from Tuesday’s dinner).  Applesauce is homemade.  Egg rolls were premade frozen ones.  (I’m all out but I fixed that today).  Sticky rice is bulk, but probably from Thailand or Vietnam.

February 16th 

Breakfast-Bacon, fried potatoes with onions, eggs

Bacon, potatoes and eggs local.  Onions organic.

Lunch-Quesadillas, western beans, applesauce, carrots, brownie

Tortillas were the same as the other day, cheese was local and organic, peppers in quesadilla were local.  Beans were local, as were peppers and ham hock in the beans.  Applesauce is homemade.  Carrots are organic.   Brownie is homemade.

Dinner-Chicken and cheesy shells with peas and carrots.  Roasted carrots, applesauce, brownie.

Chicken, cheese, butter and milk are local.  Stock, brownie and applesauce is homemade.  Peas and carrots are organic.

Today I also made a new batch of egg rolls for my freezer.  Egg rolls are easy to make if you’ve thought ahead and have some stir fry leftover.  Most of the time an egg roll recipe tells you to basically make a stir fry, on a smaller scale, for the stuffing.  Well I dumped the leftover stir fry on a cutting board, diced it all up and then stuffed the egg rolls.  Put them on a cookie sheet in the freezer and now they are all individually frozen ready to pull out and cook in the future.  I also made up a second batch of stuffing with some leftover chicken, shredded cabbage and shredded carrots.  I ended up with about 15 egg rolls.  I would normally make these in the summer to take advantage of the fresh produce.  This coming summer I’ll have to plan ahead more when I make them.

You may also have noticed that I’ve been having cabbage.  It’s not local.  If I had been thinking I could have bought some and stored it through this winter.  But this is perhaps the first time I’ve ever had cabbage, so I’m experimenting.  I know I don’t like fermented cabbage, so I’m trying to find other ways to use it.  If I can find ways to prepare it I’ll be able to store it in the cellar next year.  Winter is my time to experiment a little, which leads to off season food purchases.  But I don’t have as much time in the summer to experiment.

Local foods for Feb 13 & 14

February 13th 

Breakfast-Toast with butter, fried egg.

Homemade bread, local butter, local egg.

Lunch-Leftover Mexican Skillet (I pulled this from the freezer), carrot, crackers.

Skillet had local beef, bulk rice, local sweet peppers, local tomato puree and organic  onions in it.  Local cheese on top.

Dinner-Chicken Noodle Soup and grilled cheese.  Organic oyster crackers.

Homemade chicken stock, local chicken, organic carrots, celery and onions.  Grilled cheese had homemade bread, local butter and local cheese.

February 14th 

Breakfast-Oatmeal

Snack-Bread with nutella, carrot

Lunch-Yellow Curry vegetables from Thai Moon.  Spring rolls.  (Valentine’s lunch with my sweetie)  It wasn’t a very good lunch choice.  Spring rolls were good, and the sticky rice was excellent, but the curry wasn’t so good.  I would have preferred the curry from the Indian place.

Dinner-Cheese Pizza, organic salad mix, oranges.

Homemade crust, local cheese, organic pizza sauce,  organic salad mix, organic oranges

Local Meals for February 12

Breakfast–Toast with butter and honey (all local), fried corn (local corn and butter)

Snack-oatmeal (not local, instant)

Lunch-carrots (organic)

          enchilada casserole (corn and chicken local, tortillas nixtamalized but not local, black beans bulk, enchilada and tomato sauce not local, onion organic)

          fried corn (local corn and butter). 

I buy the nixtamalized tortillas instead of local ones because I think they are healthier for us.  I could buy local if I wanted too.  We even have a couple Mexican restaurants here in town that sell fresh ones.  I’ve tried to make them but I can’t get them thin enough.  They turn out more like pitas or chalupas. 

    Does anyone want the enchilada casserole recipe?  if so I can post it.

Dinner-Roast chicken (local), sweet potatoes (local), slice of bread (homemade) with butter (local), and apples (local) and onions (organic).  Brownies for dessert (not from a box).

        Chicken and sweet potatoes had olive oil and two Penzey’s seasonings on them.  Northwoods and Galena Rib and chicken rub.

        The bread was the no-knead bread with butter.

        The apples and onions were this recipe right here.  It was awful.  I’ve had this at an apple festival before and it was good, so I think it might be the cooks fault.

        I made my first ever batch of homemade brownies.  (recipe here about half way down)  My only error was using a pan that was too small so I had a hard time getting them cooked in the middle before they burnt around the outside.  But they still taste darn good.  They had local eggs and butter in them.  Organic flour.  Sugar, vanilla and chocolate were not from around here.  No nuts (it’s a texture thing for me)

After dinner was over and the carcass picked the chicken bones (and gizzards) went into the stockpot with 2 carrots, 2 celery sticks, one onion, one large bay leaf (brought back from Texas by my mother in law) and a handful of peppercorns.  Then I let it all simmer (just barely bubbling) on the stovetop for about 12 hours while we did other things and went to sleep.  We’ll be having chicken noodle soup tonight.

🙂

That’s the easiest way I know of to make stock.  I put the pot of stock outside in the garage this morning.  Since it’s -9 I don’t think it will stay warm for too long.  In fact, it might actually be frozen by the time I get home from work.  I’ll scoop out what I need for tonight and then process the rest after dinner.

(Sorry for the lack of paragraphs.  WordPress won’t do my bidding)

Local foods for Feb 11

I should have done this sooner.  I’m having a hard time remembering what I ate yesterday.

Breakfast-Toast with strawberry jelly (homemade)

Snack-Crackers, piece of bundt cake someone brought to work.

Lunch-Leftover Stir Fry from Sunday’s lunch.  2 leftover corn bread muffins.

Dinner-The leftover mashed potatoes and gravy from Sunday night.  (I had a meeting to go to and I wasn’t very hungry)

Not much exciting there.

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We’ve had utility trucks outside our house all day and they’ve left the engines running the whole time.  That’s just stupid.  The trucks are even empty too.  Even more stupid.

I hear a train a comin’

it’s rolling ’round the bend, and I ain’t seen the sunshine since I don’t know when. I’m stuck in Bush’s prison, and time keeps dragging on…

The Obama train keeps on rolling. He’s picked up more states, he’s leading in delegates. Hillary has replaced her campaign manager. She’s running horrible ads (so I’ve heard about her new one). And it seems that every time he speaks he draws record numbers of people.

Check out the great video below.

Post which featured the video, with tons of great information in it.

Edwards was my man, but I’m happy Obama’s got the train rolling.

Separate note:

Did you know that our government has spent $4 TRILLION on it’s Defense budget in the last 7 years. $4 TRILLION! I don’t want to think of all the good that could have been done with that. It’s kind of interesting actually, military budgets are. You spend money to buy things, which you then spend a lot of money blowing up. If we just set the money on fire would it cost us less money each year? Could we possibly have half the budget if it just set it on fire instead of buying stuff to blow up? An interesting thought.

Local foods for Feb 9th and 10th

Saturday

Breakfast-Fried egg sandwich.  Local egg, butter, homemade bread, local cheese.

Lunch-Gengis Grill (since we were sans children we went out for a dinner with no table manner correction involved)  I got a veggie stir fry, which was useful in helping me find more sauce choices for my stir fries.  It was delicious.

Dinner-We went to some friends house for dinner.  We had tacos and burritos.  I made Apple-Raisin Dessert Enchiladas.  They were incredibly good.  Soooo good.  Also had ice cream on the warm enchiladas.

Sunday

Breakfast-Toast with nutella.  Donut hole at church.

Lunch-Stir fry.  Cabbage, carrots, celery and onion were organic.  I found some spinach in the freezer, which was awesome.  I mixed in some noodles from the Asian market (they were from Vietnam I believe).  The sauce might have been the best yet.

Had popcorn for a snack as we watched a movie.  Popcorn was local and so was the butter.

Dinner-We had venison medallions (co-worker gave them to me), mashed potatoes (local), pan gravy, more of the salad mix (organic not local), fresh bread and ice cream.   Milk and butter in the taters were local.  Flour was organic, but not local.

Additional notes:

My stir fry sauce was a mixture of soy sauce, oyster sauce, fish sauce, cooking sherry, honey, veggie oil, Asian 5 spice powder, water and chicken stock.  Does anyone have some favorite sauce recipes?  I’d love to know them.

The pan gravy I made might have been the best ever.  I pan fried the medallions in olive oil with a little salt and pepper sprinkled on them.  Then I added a tablespoon of butter to the pan.  After the butter was browned I added enough flour to make it nice and chalky, then I added chicken stock until I got the consistency I wanted.  It’s the best gravy I’ve had for a long time, possibly since I was growing up and my mom use to make fresh gravy after frying some chicken.  And it went very well on the medallions as a little extra moisture for the more dry venison.

Local foods for Feb 8th

Breakfast-Oatmeal

Lunch-Handful of baby carrots, pumpkin bread (homemade), 1 corn bread muffin (leftover from last night)

Dinner-Vegetarian entree at my company’s holiday party.  The “normal” meal was pecan crusted chicken, pork chop, mashed potatoes with gouda and green beans.  The veggie meal (which I think was vegan) had a flaky pastry thing stuffed with veggies, rice pilaf, and green beans.  There was also a salad and I ate chocolate cake instead of cheesecake to avoid as many factory products as I could.

The veggie thing was actually pretty good.  I said “normal” meal because the server really made a huge deal out of there being a vegetarian meal on the table.  It was a chance to educate the people at the table about factory meat, but it was too loud to talk to them much about it without having to shout, so the opportunity passed for the most part.  Some of them already know my thoughts from talking at work.

I have more to say, but I have to run.  The kids are only at grandma’s for 7 more hours.  Gotta make the most of it.

🙂

Local Foods for February 7th

Breakfast-2 fried eggs with butter (all local)

Snack-coffee cake from cafeteria (my pumpkin bread was in my lunch bag)

Lunch-vegetarian lunch platter at Casa Las Glorias (I forgot my lunch bag today)

Dinner-Chili and cornbread muffins. Chili is leftover from Super Bowl party.

Chili breakdown–Pork, corn and sweet peppers local. Onions, black beans, kidney beans, tomato sauce, tomato paste and chicken stock are organic. Chili spices from Penzeys. (I’ve done used up all my homemade chicken stock, which makes me absolutely sick. I can’t eat enough chicken to keep up with my stock needs. It’s hard to eat meat lite and still have bones for stock. Anyway…)

Cornbread-Milk, egg and lard local. Organic flour. Corn meal not organic. Butter and honey on muffins were local.

Some people will tell you that chili shouldn’t have anything but beef in it, and not ground beef. But I won’t have any until early March so I used a pork shoulder. Purists will also tell you that real chili only has beef and sauces in it, not all these vegetables and certainly not beans. Well, they’re right, but it’s my chili and I can make it stew like if I want to. 🙂

You want a few secrets to making good chili?

Always make your chili the day before you need it. The flavors melt together overnight.

I always brown the meat quickly in the pan, then cook the onions and peppers in the juices. (Don’t do this with hot peppers. The fumes will drive you out of the kitchen. Trust me.) Then I add chicken stock or water and use it to scrape up all the crusty stuff on the bottom of the pan.

Also, making chili is like making good stock or good BBQ. Low and slow is the key. Have the temp set to just barely bubble.

One word. Chocolate. Add just a little and the chili will have some amazing depth behind it. Use baker’s chocolate and modify your amount based on your chili. 1-2 ozs is sufficient. The slow temperature is key here so you don’t overcook the chocolate.