A super duper great day, and Zucchini Bread.

I woke up early this morning and have just had the best day, I got cows milked, kitchen cleaned, and floors swept and mopped by 9 AM.  Before you start to think I'm Miss Betsy Homemaker or something, note that this has never happened before and is unlikely to happen again.  Then while my kids cleaned their room, I got school stuff together, then we sat down and did our schoolwork.  (This is beginning to sound like a pleasant dream, it's actually not, I swear)  That went relatively smoothly, with not even a tear, again not the usual, Ari has a hate relationship going on with her Phonics book.  Then I chased the kids outside, nicely, no I'm not an abusive mother, and then I proceeded to make two batches of cheese, one of mozzarella, and one of paneer.  

Then I went out to the garden and picked a massive amount of basil, my plants are absolutely huge and beautiful.  Anyone need basil, or bell peppers?  I'd almost forgotten about the pepper plants as they've not really produced the last couple months, but I guess the cooler weather and rain has worked miracles, they were loaded.  Plus a very few little tomatoes and some okra. I get about that much okra every couple of days, not enough to eat, so I throw it into a gallon freezer bag in the freezer and when the bag is full I cook up a mess of yummy okra!  I've only had enough for about 4 batches this year, and it's so good, I'm planting 4 times as many plants next year.

And then I made a huge batch of pesto, yum!  I love fresh pesto and mozzarella, I just wish the tomato plants were bearing, I got a couple tomatoes, I can't decide whether to eat them or to save them for my husband.  He really likes pesto, cheese, and tomatoes, maybe I'll be nice and save them, I'm pretty stuffed right now with just snacking on the cheese as I was making it.  Next I got started on a double batch of zucchini bread, my kids have been wanting something special and I haven't made anything for ages, plus I've got a bunch of zucchini from the garden up the road.  I made some of it into Cheesy Surprises last night to eat with pork steak, from our freshly butchered pigs, oh super yummy goodness.  Speaking of pigs, I'm way past due for a post about them, I managed to not get around to doing it when they were alive, maybe I'll do one now that they're in the freezer.

And now, I'm worn out and I think it's nap time, though it's only 12:40, the kids are still outside playing so nicely.  I have such cooperative kids, they only come to the door occasionally to ask to be let back in and I just have to say "nope, no way, go away" and they are off again for another hour or so.  (I'm not actually that mean, or am I?)  I did give them peaches and a watermelon to eat to keep them happy, so I guess I'm not too terribly mean.

Here's the recipe for the zucchini bread, it was delicious.  Make sure to squeeze out the excess liquid, I grate it into a thin towel/piece of cloth, then wring it out as good as I could.  This is actually a double batch, so you can half it if you like.  I just had a ton of zucchini to use up.  And it's a good thing I did because we ate over half of it in basically one sitting.

Grain Free Zucchini Bread
1 cup almond flour
1 cup coconut flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
6 eggs
1/4 cup coconut oil
6 tbs honey
1 tsp vanilla
stevia if you think it needs it
2 cups or so of shredded zucchini,
with water squeezed out
1 cup or so chopped walnuts (opt.) (I forgot to add nuts, wish I had)

Grease a couple mini loaf pans, and/or some muffin tins, I don't have any mini pans and I ended up with one big loaf and 12 muffins.  Bake for 25 minutes for muffins, 35 for mini loaf, about 50 for full size loaf.


Most of it got eaten before I could remember to snap a picture.

Yummy food, Squash, and Geese

Well, life has just been too busy, or rather, as most of you know, I'm pregnant and therefore most of what I do is lie on the couch moaning about how crappy I feel, and then getting up to rush through what I have to do so I can get back to the couch.  I'm feeling a bit sorry for myself, not that I have any real reason to, I know people who have much harder pregnancies than me and deal with it much better, but it's my pity party and I can cry if I want to!  Anyways, after not cooking my husband supper last night and feeling awful about it, I forced myself to get a decent meal cooked today.  I picked a couple absolutely beautiful yellow squash from the garden today, that brightened my day quite a bit, I'm so in love with my garden, I just wish I didn't feel so sick when it comes to food.  Right now vegetables are on my "do not talk about or I will vomit" list.  But I love squash pie, that's not really a vegetable dish so I'm making it.  I usually make it like a lemon custard, but after scouring my cupboards and not finding any lemon extract, I found another recipe, for a Squash Coconut Custard.  Sounds good!  I'm also having absolutely horrible carb cravings, so instead of making a healthy grain free meal as usual, I decided to make a cornbread.  My husband loves cornbread and has been asking for some for a while, so no time like the present!  It's only got 1 cup of cornmeal, and tons of other yummy stuff to make it healthy, so I won't give myself a hard time about it.  I also whipped up some Heavenly Eggs, (Deviled Eggs, for the unenlightened) to add a bit of protein to the meal.  Yes, I know, that's quite a strange mix of foods for a supper, but I'm weird like that.  Who cares if they go well together, as long as it's all yummy that's all that matters.

First I made a crust, I usually don't bother with crusts for custard but I figured, why not go all out.  I just mixed 2 cups almond flour with 2 tbs coconut oil and an egg, pressed it out in a bowl, and threw it in my preheating oven til it was pretty and golden.









Then I chopped up the two squash, threw them in a pot with a bit of water to steam for about 5 minutes until soft. Then put it in the blender with the rest of the ingredients and blend until super smooth.

Finished product, and it was yummy, though I ate so much of the Heavenly Eggs and cornbread that I couldn't eat much of it, oh well, it'll make a good breakfast.  I completely forgot, again, to take a pic of the cornbread, take my word for it, it looked good and tasted better.  I had several servings it was so good.









On the farm side of things, I let the goslings out of their pen today, the garden is fenced to keep out chickens, so I figure it'll keep the goslings in and safe, I think they are big enough that the cat's won't think they're edible, or at least I hope.  They have been doing such a good job of eating weeds wherever I've moved their pen, I've had to move it three times a day to keep them fresh greens.  I've not raised geese before and I read that after 6 weeks they can forage for 100% of their food, that's awesome!   After having chickens which eat a ton, this will be a nice break for my feed bill.  Not that they will really produce anything, but I've hopes that they will protect the chickens from the huge owl and hawks that keep hanging around my chicken pen.  Actually, I guess they will produce more goslings hopefully next year, that'll be fun :)

 And then I've just got to show off my squash, this has been a wonderful year for squash for me, I don't know if normal people's squash are this good, but to me this is amazing.  My plants are huge, and loaded with squash, there are 5 yellow squash of differing sizes on this plant, and I already picked one off this morning, plus tons more blooms.  I'm so excited :)  Last year my squash were devastated by Vine Borers and millions of Squash Beetles, I probably got two squash out of 10 plants.  I even bought a Shop Vac and spent hours vacuuming up beetles off my plants, I filled that vac
up several times with bugs, it was ridiculous.  So far this year I've only seen a few, those *((*&^$# bugs had better stay the heck away from my garden.

And then I just had to show off my cute little pumpkin, this is the first year I've planted pumpkins and I'm so excited.  I sure hope they turn out well, I love pumpkin pie, pumpkin cookies, pumpkin smoothies, pumpkin custard, pumpkin pancakes, um, basically pumpkin anything, though the pumpkin soup I made once was just okay.  Chris really liked it though.













Mexican Cornbread

2 eggs
1/4 cup coconut oil or butter
1 cup buttermilk or yogurt
1 1/2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese
1 (8 ounce) can cream-style corn (8 oz can? What's that?  I used a regular 14 oz can)
1 large onion, chopped
2 fresh jalapeno peppers, seeded and minced ( I used a can of chili's as my jalepeno's aren't big enough yet)
1 cup cornmeal
1/2 cup almond flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease an 8 inch square baking dish or a cast iron skillet.
In a small bowl, beat eggs. Mix in butter and buttermilk. Stir in 1 cup shredded cheese, creamed corn, onion, and jalapenos.
In a large bowl, whisk together cornmeal, flour, baking powder, soda, and salt. Stir the egg mixture into the dry ingredients. Mix well. Pour batter into prepared pan. Sprinkle remaining 1/2 cup cheese on top.
Bake for 30 to 35 minutes until center is set and top is golden brown.

Coconut Squash Custard

1 cup chopped squash, I use yellow, if you use zucchini I'd peel it or the kids will probably flip
1 cup flaked coconut, divided
1/3 cup sucanat or honey

Stevia to taste ( I didn't add this and it's pretty much sweet enough, though it wouldn't hurt to be a bit sweeter)
1 1/2 cups milk
3 eggs (next time I'm going to put in a couple more, it was a little soggy)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 pinch salt
1 pie crust (optional)
1 pinch ground nutmeg

Heat 1 inch of water to a boil in a small saucepan over medium heat. Add zucchini, cover, and steam until softened, about 5 minutes.
In a blender or food processor, blend the cooked zucchini, 3/4 cup coconut, sugar, milk, eggs, vanilla extract, and salt until smooth. Pour into the pie crust, and sprinkle with remaining coconut and nutmeg.
Bake at 350 degrees F for about an hour, or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.

Drag princesses and gardening

My son found some of his sister's dress up clothes and decided to try them on, this is the outcome.

I'm so beautiful

Oops, Cinderella lost her, um, his shoe

So then big sis had to get in on the fun and picture taking, the dress up clothes were a Christmas gift two years ago, they fit him better than they do her.

After the ball, with a bit of a hangover

Enough of adorable children...  Did you know that you could regrow celery!?!?!?!?  Organic celery costs close to $4.00 a bunch, and we can go through half a bunch just making Ants on a Log.  So I'm trying it out, the first time my celery had been in the frig a month, and then after I planted it the chickens dug it up twice and the dog once.  It tried to grow, but needless to say it failed miserably.  So I'm trying again, this one is taking off admirably well, I need to get it planted in the garden today, hopefully somewhere where the chickens can't get at it.  I did try to plant celery from seed this year, but it didn't make it, I planted it too late and didn't water it enough.  It seems to be rather delicate, I'll have to start earlier next year, and take better care of it.

One of the first "fruits" of my garden, besides greens, snow peas!  Of course, I could have been picking this a month ago, but I didn't get them planted as early as I should.  Now I need to find a good recipe for snow peas, I'm not a big fan of Chinese food, and that seems to be the main way to cook them.  I did find an Indian recipe for Potato's and Snow Peas, your supposed to use normal peas, not pod peas, but I don't care, I'm going to try it anyway.  This is the recipe I'm planning to try http://www.food.com/recipe/aaloo-mattar-indian-style-peas-and-potatoes-158223  

I'll let you know how it turns out.

Speaking of greens, here's my Kale, Collards, and Spinach.

And here's what they turn into: 

Saag Paneer

Chop up an onion and cook in butter
Chop up 3-4 cloves garlic and some fresh ginger and add to cooking onion
Add 1 1/2 tsp Cumin
1 1/2 tsp Coriander
1 tsp Curry
1/4 tsp Cayenne (if your kids aren't eating)
Stir that up then add a pound or so of greens.  Cook til wilted and tender.

Make this first, preferably a couple hours before hand. Dump a gallon or two of milk into a big pot, heat to 190 or so, dump in 1/2 cup or so white vinegar or lemon juice.  Stir until it's all separated into curds and whey.  Pour it all into some cheesecloth, stir in a tablespoon of salt or so and hang to drain.  Then chop into cubes and fry in butter.

Mix it all together and stuff your face!

Weights, bugs, and monsters

Well, we had quite a day today, up at 6, then milking and chores as fast as possible, cooking our favorite pancake recipe (see below), loading up kids and milk and eggs in the car, and off to town to meet milk customers at 9:30.  After selling milk and eggs I trained at the gym, I'm starting a new strength program, I was getting bored with Starting Strength and decided to try Wendler's 5/3/1.  I warmed up with some jogging, 20# back squats and overhead squats and then did squats and bench press for my main workout  Then did some assistance work - 4 sets of 13 lunges (what I could do in the room I had) with 2- #20 dumbbells,  3 sets of 10 inverted rows, a few sets of push ups and then some stretching and just for fun, some handstands.  It's going to be hard to walk tomorrow, I can feel it already, yay!  Then I delivered some more milk, and then just for fun took the kids to TCBY, we had bought a 1/2 off coupon like Groupon several months ago and needed to use it before it expired.  Finally we got to head home sweet home.

Adult Potato Beetle

Nasty fat larva

It's been looking like rain off and on for the past couple of weeks, but we haven't received more than a few drops, so I went up to water the garden.  I'm thinking it's going to be time for some sort of irrigation system soon, it's getting to where it takes a couple hours to water everything, well, I guess I was also weeding and squishing bugs.  We are overrun with Potato Beetles, I loath the nasty things, the adults are hard bodied and hard to squish, the larva are little bulbous things that look like red dog ticks, and when you squish them they squirt fluorescent orange goo on you.  Keep your mouth closed when you squish, or else...  I usually get hit in the face a couple times, today they got me in the eye, and it burned!  It was awful, I was so angry, nasty bugs! So I squished a bunch more for revenge.

I have one chicken who keeps getting in the garden somehow, despite the fence.  Her favorite place is the compost pile, of course, but the problem is that I've planted bunches of squash in it, well, there used to be bunches, now there's like 6 left.  And this is the 3rd or so planting, the previous ones were scratched up as well.  I've got to find, or buy, some netting to throw over it until the plants get bigger, or kill a chicken...  Though it looked like she might have been  eating potato bugs, at least she was pecking something over in the potatoes before I ran her off, maybe I won't kill her.

I'm trying to find more space in my garden, and I spend too much time pulling weeds from the cement blocks lining my raised beds, so I'm seeing if filling them with herbs and other miscellaneous plants will 

work.  So far it's looking good, I've got probably 15 basil plants spread out around my beds, a couple dill, parsley, sage, even some bell peppers and jalapeno's I couldn't find a place for.  We shall see how it works, hopefully well.

When I got back to the house, there were MONSTERS leering at me thru the sliding glass door, ahhhhhhh!

Yummy Grain Free Pancakes
5 eggs
1/3 cup milk, cream, or coconut milk
1/2 cup almond flour
1/2 cup shredded coconut
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
Throw everything in the blender, blend it up, then make pancakes or waffles.

Welcome to my life!

I've been asked to start a blog by many different people (well, a couple).  There's so much going on in my life that I'd like to chronicle for myself, as well as others, and my handwriting is too bad to keep a journal, so I figure this is the way to go.   If I can find the time to do it regularly!  Note to ones self: Pray for more time, it'd be nice if God would make 36 hour days.  Well, my plan is to share our journey towards self sufficiency, and to also share the yummy recipes we come up with for all this food!

  Here on the farm we have dozens of new projects, we've (well, I've) decided that our goal is to become 90% self sufficient food wise, so the garden and livestock have become a major focus lately.  We also are in the process of digging a root cellar.

And building an Egg Mobile.  Oh how I can't wait to get the chickens out of my yard and down in the pasture to clean up after the cows.  Cleaning chicken poop off of feet gets old after a while :)

And planting a big garden.  So far I've got asparagus, 6 different kinds of tomatoes, jalepeno's, bell peppers, sweet peas, regular peas, climbing beans, bush beans, okra, onions, broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce, kale, collards, swiss chard, spinach, potatoes, sweet potatoes, yellow squash, zucchini, cucumbers, spaghetti squash, acorn squash, hubbard squash, pie pumpkins, butter melons, watermelons, dill, basil, sage, parsley, chives, buckwheat, amaranth, and cowpeas.  The last three are for the chickens, I'm hoping to eventually grow my own chicken feed, though I'm not anywhere near that yet, just trying it out.  I think that's it but I may have missed a couple.  I way overplanted this year, but I was having so much fun!

So needless to say the house gets neglected a bit, but that's one of my goals as well, Organization!!!  I'm planning to get rid of or lock up all kid toys, I don't have time to clean up after them, or to stand over them forcing them to clean up for themselves.  I figure they don't need to be playing inside anyway this time of year.

This isn't actually too bad, I managed to find a bit of time to pick up yesterday.

Need to put a lock on this puppy!

So that's my introduction for the time, my kids are all awake now and bouncing off the walls, and whenever I sit down that's "climb all over mommy" time.  So I need to get up and fold the 6 loads of laundry waiting for me, wash a few dishes, pick up the house, clean the freezer, clean and organize the shelves in my kitchen, clean out the car, weed and mulch in the garden, and put fresh hay in the chicken nests.  Well, that's my list of things to do, anyone want to make bets on if it'll all get done?  Ha, we'll see...  I'll be back later, hopefully, with more interesting stuff about everything that's going on here!