Soup's On

A few times throughout the year we will bake a turkey. I freeze the meat in meal size portions and cook down the bones and save the broth. Tonight I popped open a jar of broth that I had saved and made turkey soup (using carrots from our garden). We also had sourdough bread. I had started some sourdough last night for bread sticks to go with our pizza pasta, but it took a lot longer to raise than I had expected. So instead, I baked two loaves of sourdough bread this morning. (I had to stay home from church since the kids are getting over chicken pox.)

I was happy with how the soup tasted, and I thought the sourdough bread was better than the regular bread I make. I still haven't found a recipe I like for yeast bread, so maybe I will be making sourdough bread a bit more.

Here are the recipes I used.

SOURDOUGH BREAD
* 2 Cups of sponge
* 3 Cups of unbleached flour
* 2 tablespoons of olive oil or softened margarine
* 4 teaspoons of sugar
* 2 teaspoons of salt

Mix and knead like you would a yeast bread. Allow more time for the rise than you would a yeast bread. (Bread machines won't work for this recipe.) Punch down and form loaves. Let bread rise again. (Also allow more time for this step than you would a yeast bread.) Turn oven on at 350, and bake for 30 minutes. (Do not allow oven to preheat.)

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TURKEY SOUP
* 1 quart turkey broth
* 4 cups water
* cooked turkey
* 1 medium onion - chopped
* 3 carros - sliced
* 2 celery stalks - chopped
* 3 potatoes - diced
* 1 tsp salt
* 1/3 - 1/2 tsp pepper
* 1/2 tsp garlic salt
* 1 bay leaf (remove before serving)

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Preserving the Harvest

This year I have started canning. I have slowly been accumulating canning supplies for the last 5+ years. I decided that it was about time that I do something with them. I started out canning some pinto beans. They didn't cost me much in time or money so I wouldn't have been that disappointed if they didn't turn out. They actually turned out great though, and I have been using them in Mexican dishes.

After I gained a bit of confidence with my beans, I pulled out the ham and turkey broth from the freezer that I was saving for soup. I also canned that and was pleased with the results.

Finally, I felt like I was ready to move on to bigger and better things, which was good because my tomatoes were becoming ripe. Unfortunately, our garden is placed in the only spot in our yard that gets any sun (1/2 of the day) and is surround by walnut trees (poison to gardens!), but I have gotten enough whole tomatoes canned to last me a year, I hope.

Now that my whole tomatoes have been stockpiled, I have been canning spaghetti sauce. Ethan seems to like it, which is good, but I still don't think I have tweaked the recipe enough to make me put it in my recipe box. Luckily, I still have lots of tomatoes in the garden to ripen so I can keep playing a bit.

Here is a picture of the tomatoes I "squished" tonight. (Caleb asked what I was doing, and I informed him that I was squishing tomatoes.) The pint jars are some of my spaghetti sauce, and the quart jars are some of my whole tomatoes.

Town Chores

As I mentioned earlier, we are trying to do as much learning as possible from in town, whether it's experimenting or researching. One of the things that we are experimenting with is "pastured chickens". This spring we built a movable chicken pen for our backyard. We were able to build it completely out of salvaged materials, except for some of the chicken wire. (You can see the assembly in this May posts of The Beginning Farmer) Every day, Ethan's job is to wiggle it over to a new spot in the yard. The chickens eat 30% of their feed from the grasses and what they scratch up in the grasses. The variety of greens and living critters makes their eggs quite a bit more nutritious and delicious! Ethan also checks on their feed and water every day and collects their eggs. Ideally, broilers (meat chickens) would be the ones being pastured in movable pens while laying hens would be in a moveable chicken house on a trailer (to keep their area fresh), but this is what will have to work in town.


My job with the chickens is to wash up the eggs, stock up the fridge, and then figure out all of the ways we can use them. We had originally planned on trying to find a customer or two to sell our surplus to, but we really haven't had a surplus yet. It isn't that our chickens aren't laying enough eggs, it's that we are using a lot more eggs that we did before. From the record keeping I've been doing (another important responsibility I've taken on - to see if our efforts are profitable), we have seen that the chickens are earning their keep. Their eggs are costing less than store eggs, and they are better for us!

As you can also see in the pictures, we try to include the kids in as much as we can with the chores. They enjoy helping where they are able to, they develop an interest in what we are doing, and it teaches them about responsibility.

Sourdough

This past week I have been working on starting a batch of wild yeast starter dough. I really shouldn't say working on it though, because it is hardly any work. I was pretty excited when my sourdough started getting bubbly and smelled of yeast, even though I hadn't added any yeast to the mix. That meant that it was started on the wild yeast in the air and on the wheat flour.

After my starter got established, I decided to try to make something with it. Since pancakes were on the menu for the next day, I thought that would be a good place to start. I used my sourdough starter, eggs from our chickens, and berries that I had picked and frozen. I mixed up some regular pancakes too so I would have something to compare them to. I thought the sourdough pancakes were great. Ethan couldn't tell a difference, but that is a compliment from him. He has very particular tastes so if something matches something he already likes, I am relieved.

One of the great things about the sourdough pancakes is that they use no milk. Our old recipe used 2 cups of milk for the same amount of pancakes. With milk being over $3.50 a gallon, these pancakes are more economical.Above is a picture of my pancakes and sourdough starter.

I would love to have more sourdough recipes if anyone has any to share. Here are the recipes I used:

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WILD YEAST SOURDOUGH STARTER

1/2 c unsweetened pineapple juice (acidic and prevents bad bacteria from growing)

1/2 c whole grain wheat flour or whole grain rye flour

1 c unbleached all-purpose flour

2 c water

1/4 teaspoon cider vinegar (optional)

DAY ONE - Mix 2 T whole grain flour and 2 T pineapple juice. Stir well, cover, and let sit for 24 hours at room temp.

DAY TWO - Add 2 T of whole grain flour and 2 T pineapple juice. Stir well, cover, and let sit another 24 hours at room temperature. You may or may not start to see small bubbles at this point.

DAY THREE - Same as day two. Add 2 T of whole grain flour and 2 T pineapple juice. Stir well, cover, and let sit another 24 hours at room temperature. You may or may not start to see small bubbles at this point.

DAY FOUR - Stir mixture and measure out 1/4 c -- discard the rest. To the 1/4 c, stir in 1/4 c unbleached all-purpose flour and 1/4 c water. Let sit 24 hours at room temperature.

REPEAT - Day four until mixture expands to double its size and smells of yeast. Mixture may start to bubble after a couple of days and then go flat, looking totally dead for a couple of more days. If this happens, at about Day 6, add the 1/4 tsp. vinegar with your daily feeding. This will lower the PH and wake up the yeast, which will then start to grow.

FINAL - Once the yeast starts growing, starter should be fed equal parts of flour and water in a quantity sufficient to make enough starter for your recipe. Store the starter in the refrigerator when you are not using it. It needs to be fed equal parts of flour and water once a week to keep it alive. Either use or discard at least half of it when feeding - THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT to maintain a healthy starter! If you forget to feed it for a few weeks, it probably will be fine but may take several feedings to get it back up to par.

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SOURDOUGH PANCAKES

1 c sourdough starter

1 c all-purpose flour

1 c warm water

2 large egg

2 T vegetable oil (I didn't use this)

2 T sugar

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

Place the sourdough starter in a plastic or glass mixing bowl. Add the flour and water. Stir and leave covered for 8 or more hours. (Remember to feed the starter.) After the mixture has rested, add remaining ingredients, stirring well. Cook pancakes.

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But You Live in Town . . .

Some of you may wonder why Ethan and I have blogs where we refer to ourselves as farmers - while we live in town. It is our hope to someday live in the country and have enough land where we can do some farming. Not conventional farming like most people think of, but alternative farming. (No, we have not turned into hippies!) Some people say it can't be done while others encourage us as they are doing it. And here we sit in town.

But I believe that farming starts with a mindset so we are using this time to develop that mindset and do as much experimenting and learning as possible from within city limits. This blog will have posts about things we are doing, learning, and hoping for. I will also talk about things that I am doing to help us reach the goal of owning land in the country while still having me be able to stay at home with the kids.

I hope you enjoy reading about our journey. Be sure to check out Ethan's blog, "The Beginning Farmer", too. (Click on the link found on the right of this page.)


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