In hay cutting hell.
© FarmgirlFare.com, the still feels like August foodie farm blog (this is Day 11 of unrelenting temps in the upper 90s and heat indexes up to 108) where it just took three people, three tractors, and ten hot and sweaty hours to do a one person, one tractor, two hour hay mowing job—and we've only just begun all this.
But despite the heat, we've still got to eat, and a fabulous farm dinner of homegrown grilled lamb leg steaks, the first green beans from the garden, just dug new red potatoes (which were unbelievably good), a hunk of homemade baguette from the freezer, and freshly baked chocolate chip raisin cookies (a bribe for the cookie loving neighbor who lent us the antique tractor above—which bears a striking resemblance to our own big tractor, except that his isn't dead) almost makes it all worthwhile.
And as Joe's mom said to him a few minutes ago on the phone as he was recounting the day, "Oh, but you love what you do, and you love who you're doing it with." "Guilty on both counts, Mom," he replied. How cute is that? But we'll still both be extremely glad when haying season is once again over!
I love my new old quilts (this one is hand stitched).
More photos below. . .
Attack! (taken 5/16/09)
© FarmgirlFare.com, the hand tossed, homemade sauced, fast growing foodie farm blog where there's something for everyone when we clean out a chest freezer, and the homegrown/homemade chicken food discussion continues in the comments section below. Feel free to join in the conversation.
And if you'd like to read more about what we feed our chickens and why, check out the comments section of yesterday's Dose of Cute. You'll also see why I never have time to reply to all of your comments—I easily get carried away!
At just a few days old, they're already turning into foodies (taken 4/21/09)
© 2009 FarmgirlFare.com, the baby gourmet foodie farm blog where this year we decided to skip giving our eight newly hatched chicks overprocessed commercial 'chick starter' food and went straight to a mixed diet of fresh meat, fruit, veggies, cheese, and yogurt with a side of ground up oats and flax and a sprinkling of kelp and natural calcium mineral supplement instead.
Everyone seemed very pleased with the menu.
Wondering what all you can feed chicks and chickens? I talk a lot more about what we feed our flock in the comments section below, and lots of other chicken owners chime in, too. And then the discussion continues in the comments section of this post. Cluck! Cluck! Cluck!
Ignoring the New Kid
© Copyright 2009 FarmgirlFare.com, the peeping foodie farm blog where, considering these baby chicks (who were born back in, ahem, April) are usually fed (and often photographed) several times a day, it seems impossible that the only picture that's been posted of them so far is this one, and yet it's true.
Where the heck are our priorities? Oh wait—they would be over with the whole 'several times a day' feeding thing. Current chick photos coming soon. Can't wait? Get a peep of past peepers here and here.
Bird
Dog
© Copyright 2009 FarmgirlFare.com, the soft landing foodie farm blog where one of the only sheep memories I have from my pre-farmgirl days is of taking a favorite back road parallel to Highway 101 in Sonoma County (the name of which I've completely forgotten, despite the fact that I used to drive on it all the time—I'm thinking it was Old Highway Something or Other) and seeing black birds sitting on the backs of sheep. For some reason I just thought it looked really neat, and I love that this sight—which never ceases to delight me no matter how many times I see it—is now a part of my life.
So Pretty
And So Fuzzy!
Breakfast Bliss
1. Find yourself some very ripe organic raspberries.
2. Pick out the best specimens and set them aside so you can whip up a batch of Really Raspberry (and Really Easy) Cream Cheese Pastry Tartlets.
3. To make one serving of jam, place the raspberries on a plate and mash them with a fork. For a larger batch, put the raspberries into a bowl and mash them with a potato masher.
4. Sprinkle in a smidge of sugar if your berries are a little tart.
5. Slather your raspberry jam on a toasted and buttered slice of Farmhouse White, a warm and flaky biscuit, a buttery homemade scone, or a peanut butter sandwich made with Honey Wheat Bran Bread.
6. Shake your head in disbelief at all the jam and preserves recipes you've seen that called for 1 cup of sugar (or more!) for every 1 cup of fruit as you savor each ridiculously delicious bite.
7. Lick the jam off your lips and set off to find more raspberries.
8. Put some of your next batch in the freezer to be devoured next winter during a snowstorm.
© Copyright 2009 FarmgirlFare.com, the fruit-filled foodie farm blog where it doesn't look like we're going to get any homegrown raspberries this year—the brambles never quite recovered from the summer Cary spent in the kitchen garden—but all the rain we've had lately (including two more inches during a thunderstorm yesterday that also sent down 1½-inch chunks of hail!) means there just might be a bumper crop of wild black raspberries ripening along the edge of the hayfield. Yum.
One of BB's Twin Ewe Lambs On the Way Out to Breakfast in the Front Field
© Copyright 2009 FarmgirlFare.com, the black is always in fashion foodie farm blog where one of the questions I'm most frequently asked (which will definitely be included in the Frequently Asked Farmgirl Questions page I'm diligently working on) is whether our black lambs stay black. The answer? Sometimes and sort of. It usually depends on if their mother is a true black sheep, and even then their wool usually bleaches in the sun to brown or grey. Most of the black Suffolk lambs fade to white and only keep their black faces and legs. But the Katahdin hair sheep (if they aren't bright white) retain their color and spots better, and since this lamb is half Katahdin and her mother is a true black sheep, there's a good chance she's going to stay that way (yay!). You can read more about black sheep and how much I love them here.
That's One Way to Get Your Minerals
Farmgirl Fare is four years old today!
In my very first blog post, An Unexpected Beginning, I wrote about the word unexpected, which my thesaurus told me meant surprising, unforeseen, sudden, stunning, eye-opening, astonishing, astounding, amazing, breathtaking.
Yep, that pretty much sums up the last four years (along with all the cute of course). Thank you all so much. Here's to another four and hopefully many more!
© Copyright 2009 FarmgirlFare.com, the time-sure-flies-by foodie farm blog where it wouldn't be a birthday without cake, so there's an Orange Yogurt Loaf Cake cooling on the kitchen counter. But since the oven is still hot and there's plenty of yogurt left over, I'm thinking about mixing up a quick Chocolate Emergency Cake—because it's always good to be prepared for an unexpected emergency.
And the winner of The Laws of Harmony by Judi Hendricks
Or At Least Kick Up Her Heels
Okay, I admit it. One of the reasons I like to hold book giveaways is purely selfish. I always make you answer a specific question in order to enter because I know I'll love reading your responses—and once again you didn't disappoint.
For The Laws of Harmony giveaway, I asked you to share a favorite novel that somehow features food. You not only mentioned several of my favorite novels (including Diane Mott Davidson's Goldy the caterer culinary mysteries
and Like Water for Chocolate—which has been sitting on my nightstand waiting to be reread for months) but you've also given me a whole new list of books I can't wait to read—especially Blessed are the Cheesemakers by Sarah-Kate Lynch since I really enjoyed her quirky second novel, By Bread Alone. Thank you!
The random winner of the signed copy of The Laws of Harmony is Gen, who said,
When I was a child I would read Little House on the Prarie every summer. I remember the food that was written about very well, it was homemade & homegrown most of the time.
I've just heard from Judi, and she's starting the California leg of her book tour. If you'd like to meet her in person, check out her Events Calendar to see if she'll be in your area. And I hope you'll let me know if you read and enjoy The Laws of Harmony!
© Copyright 2009 FarmgirlFare.com, the high kicking foodie farm blog where, unlike our Suffolk sheep, these new Katahdin hair sheep get to keep their long tails (rather than having them docked), which means they swing around and around in hilarious circles any time the little lambs—or their mothers for that matter—pick up speed.
And the winners of Falling Cloudberries by Tessa Kiros
My new favorite way to eat organic garbanzo beans
This was such a fun contest. I loved reading all of your 'around the world' food and travel entry comments. What a wonderful collection of personal memories and stories—and what a well traveled (and well fed) bunch you are! I truly felt like I'd journeyed around the world without even leaving the farm.
The two random winners of Falling Cloudberries: A World of Family Recipes are:
Lisa, who said: When I was 11, I travelled to Australia to visit relatives and was horrified when I was offered lamb to eat, which I refused. Now, at 46, I am always on the lookout for new lamb recipes as I raise sheep myself. I never imagined it at the time, but I did always dream of living on a farm. My farm is small, but it's mine and it feeds me.
Missallizoom, who said: I am dying to try Edna Lewis's Fried Chicken Recipe. It is so simple sounding. I don't have lard on hand and want to go pick up a cast iron chicken fryer to do it right. Some day soon I will... it is supposed to be the best!
Congratulations, ladies! I think you'll really enjoy this book. Please e-mail me your shipping address (farmgirlfare AT gmail DOT com). As for the rest of you, I'll be giving away several more books throughout the summer—including a few great beach reads—so stay tuned.
In the meantime, here's another recipe from Falling Cloudberries that I've fallen in love with. I'm always on the lookout for new ways to use garbanzo beans (because it keeps me from munching on them straight from the can), and this refreshing salad caught my eye because it calls for two things I have plenty of in the garden right now: onions and cilantro.
Red Candy Apple onions—one of the nine varieties growing in my kitchen garden this year
Last year I asked you for suggestions on how to use up the 125 scallions I had in the garden (thank you!), and this year—because I'm crazy like that—I planted even more onions. Some of them have already formed good-sized bulbs, and yesterday I made another batch of this salad using the red beauties you see above.
If you love cilantro but have never tasted homegrown, I urge you to do whatever you can to lay your hands on some. You know how everything harvested from the garden has so much more flavor than storebought? Well, it's the same for cilantro. I haven't grown any cilantro in a while, but I planted some seeds on a whim back in March and was rewarded with a bumper crop.
Cilantro is easy to grow from seed as long as you keep in mind one thing: despite often being associated with summer and salsa, it's actually a cool weather plant. I've even had volunteer seedlings come up in the snow.
I never would have thought to put cilantro in a salad like this, but it really works. Of course that's what a new cookbook is supposed to do—surprise and persuade and inspire you, which is exactly what this one has been doing for for me.
While I definitely recommend Falling Cloudberries, I do have a small word of warning, as I've come across a few discrepancies with measurements. For example, this recipe calls for cooking 1¼ cups of dried garbanzo beans or using one 14-ounce can of beans, but a can is about 1½ cups, and 1¼ cups of dried beans will cook up into a fair amount more than that.
And the Greek-Cypriot Salad (which sounds wonderful) calls for one '6-ounce jar (about 3½ cups)' of Greek olives, but a jar that size won't hold anywhere near 3½ cups of olives (and it would be way too many olives in the salad). If you carefully read through the recipes, you should be just fine.
So what's your favorite way to eat garbanzo beans?
Garbanzo Bean (Chickpea) Salad with Red Onion, Parsley, Cilantro, and Feta
Makes about 5 cups—Adapted from Falling Cloudberries
**Click here to print this recipe**
Lately I've been converting my recipes to measured amounts of ingredients rather than saying 2 onions or 3 cloves of garlic, because I've come to realize that there is often a huge size discrepancy among fruits and vegetables. Just look at lemons. Some are golf-ball sized, while others will barely fit in your hand. The 'juice of half a lemon' could be almost anything.
I don't consider myself obsessive when it comes to cooking, and I admit to rarely following a recipe exactly, but this has started driving me a little nuts because there are times when it can make a real difference. 'Six apples' might literally weigh anywhere from 2 pounds to 5 pounds. Measuring ingredients by weight is often the best way to go, but not everybody has a scale (I love my Oxo Good Grips digital kitchen scale and use it almost every day).
That said, this is the kind of recipe where you don't need to be exact. Use my measurements as a starting point and adjust things to suit your taste. Next time I'll probably add extra red onion, and I'm thinking that using half red kidney beans and half garbanzo beans would be interesting.
The original recipe calls for lots more olive oil (like about a cup more) than my version does, so feel free to add extra, either while you're tossing everything together or drizzled on top just before serving.
Cooking the onions and garlic is the real trick here, as it makes them mellow and sweet, but allow them to cool before mixing them in or the feta cheese will melt. The optional olives add a flavorful, salty bite.
Tote this salad to picnics and potlucks, or serve it up along with a loaf of crusty bread and grilled chicken or steaks on those hot summer nights when nobody feels like cooking. You could also serve it on a bed of soft butter lettuce that you drizzled with olive oil and lemon juice.
As always, I urge you to seek out local and organic ingredients whenever possible; they really do make a difference. Organic garbanzo beans are a staple in my pantry and can usually be found for under two dollars a can.
1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus more if desired
3 cups chopped red onion
1/4 cup finely chopped fresh garlic
2 15-ounce cans garbanzo beans, drained & rinsed (or 3 cups cooked garbanzo beans)
3/4 cup (packed) chopped fresh cilantro
3/4 cup (packed) chopped fresh flat leaf Italian parsley
1½ cups chopped green onions (scallions), green parts only
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
1 cup crumbled feta cheese
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
A handful of chopped kalamata or black oil-cured olives, optional
Heat 1/3 cup olive oil in a large frying pan and add the red onion, stirring to coat it with the oil. Cook the onion gently over medium or medium-low heat, stirring often, until the it is soft and starting to brown, about 10 to 12 minutes.
Stir in the garlic and cook until fragrant, about one minute; don't let the garlic brown. Remove from the heat and let cool.
In a large bowl, stir together the garbanzo beans, cilantro, parsley, green onions, and lemon juice. Add the cooled onion garlic mixture. (If you're impatient like I am, you can mix the onions and garlic into the beans while they're still warm, and the other ingredients will help cool them down.)
Mix in the crumbled feta cheese and olives (if using). Add salt and freshly ground pepper to taste (remember that the feta and olives will already be salty) and up to ½ cup more olive oil if desired.
This salad tastes best if made ahead and allowed to sit for a few hours before serving. Serve at room temperature, with a squeeze of lemon and a drizzle of olive oil if desired.
Other Farmgirl Fare recipes that call for garbanzo beans:
A Perfect Spring Salad
Arugula Pesto (garbanzos are the secret ingredient)
Broccoli Onion Garbanzo Bean Soup
Colors of Summer Salad
Lowfat Swiss Chard Cabbage Salad (a fresh twist on coleslaw)
Quick and Healthy Cream (or not) of Artichoke Soup
Roasted Red Pepper, Tomato, and Artichoke Soup (and lambing with your mom)
Still hungry? You'll find links to all of my sweet and savory Less Fuss, More Flavor recipes over in the Farmgirl Fare Recipe Index.
© FarmgirlFare.com, the bonkers for beans foodie farm blog where Farmgirl Susan shares recipes, stories, and photos from her crazy country life on 240 remote Missouri acres.
Win a signed copy of The Laws of Harmony!
Back in March I received an e-mail message from Lisa at TLC Book Tours about a new book called The Laws of Harmony. Hmmm, I thought, a self help book. Wait. Judi Hendricks. I know that name. Of course—Judith Ryan Hendricks is the author of the bestselling novel Bread Alone and its sequel, The Baker's Apprentice, two of my favorite books (which both revolve around food and include recipes). How interesting that she's written a self-help book. Okay, nothing slow about me.
The Laws of Harmony is not, of course, a self-help book but a novel. The main character is a thirty-two-year-old woman named Sunny Cooper who lives in Albuquerque with her boyfriend Michael, runs a little company called Domestic Obligations, and works as a radio voiceover.
Harmony refers to both the name the commune near Taos, New Mexico (called Armonia, which is Spanish for harmony) where Sunny grew up, and a small town on an island off the coast of Washington state where she ends up starting a whole new life.
I received my review copy of The Laws of Harmony the same day my hunky farmguy, Joe, arrived home from a few days out of town. I'd been working like crazy for weeks and promised him I would take the entire weekend off (in as much as that's possible when you live with dozens of farm animals). I love novels but couldn't remember the last time I'd had a chance to read more than a few pages of a one at a time.
Saturday afternoon found me curled up on the loveseat with my new book, a glass of champagne, and the luxury of several lazy hours stretching ahead. By the second paragraph I was laughing out loud and reading snippets to Joe, and by the time Sunny was describing the medicine bundle necklace she'd worn since she was ten years old on page five, I knew I really liked her.
When I first got it, it was filled with the corn pollen that Navajos use in their religious ceremonies, but I kept undoing the blue wool tie and spilling the pollen, so now it just holds my Zuni bear fetish, carved from turquoise with an inlaid white shell heart line that represents the path to power in his heart. It's my talisman against drunk drivers, muggers, lightning strikes, inoperable brain tumors, falling down the stairs, or being dumped for a twenty-two-year-old cocktail waitress. I don't leave home without it.
By the end of the weekend I'd read 270 pages, totally lost myself in both the story and the far away locations (the San Juan islands are one of those places I've fantasized about moving to for years), and felt great. Maybe it was a self-help book after all.
While I suppose it would be categorized as 'women's fiction,' there's a little of everything in The Laws of Harmony: friendships, family, mother-daughter struggles (I laughed out loud when Sunny described her aging hippie mother, Gwen, as "like a cat, always attaching herself to the one person in a room who's least likely to want her around") humor, self-discovery, intrigue, deception, secrets and surprises, and tragedy. The story constantly moves back and forth between present day, the recent past, and Sunny's childhood at Armonia. Much of the book is dialogue, which I like. No recipes in this book, but food is ever present. I always love to read about what people are eating, and how food plays a part in their lives.
My sidewalk table [in front of the bakery] is just big enough for a book—a silly mystery about drug smuggling written by some local guy—a cup of coffee, and a giant, still-warm chocolate chip cookie, its caramelized edges and gooey chunks of chocolate making me want to cram the whole thing in my mouth at once. I force myself to break off little pieces and chew them slowly until they disappear. This is not the way I learned to eat.
Gwen, in spite of her back-to-the-earth lifestyle, had been raised with table manners, which she tried halfheartedly to pass on to Hart and me. But the reality of life at Armonia was, the last one in the dinner line got more rice and less chicken, more lettuce and fewer tomatoes, cukes, mushrooms, and green peppers. I learned to get it while the getting was good, and shovel it in quickly to make room for seconds.
I remember the first time I had lunch with Betsy, looking up, suddenly embarrassed by my clean plate, while she was still languidly spearing bites of asparagus, cutting an olive in half and smushing it against a crumb of Roquefort cheese. She's really the one who taught me to savor food, all the contrasting aromas, tastes, textures.
A few days later I'd finished the book and was relaying the rest of the story to Joe as we walked through the creekbed on our way back from checking on the steers. I told him I wasn't sure what to say in my review, which I reminded him would part of an official online book tour.
"I suppose there must be a happy medium somewhere between describing the entire plot—you know I don't read the back covers of novels and can't stand how movie previews always give the story away—and simply saying, 'I really liked this book, and you might, too.'"
"So it basically just tells about what happens to this girl from day to day?"
"No. Well, yeah. I mean, I guess. Well, no. It's not like the mysteries or thrillers you read where you're racing through the pages to find out what happens. I guess there must be certain ways you're supposed to judge a novel, but I have no idea what they are. All I know is that these characters are likable and believable, and I was interested in what happened to them. When I got to the end of the book, I wished there were another 480 pages."
"Then that's what you should say in your review!"
And now if you'll excuse me, I do believe today is a holiday. And since it just started pouring down rain, it's going to be a while before I can go out and plant one of the raised beds in the kitchen garden with the eggplant, sweet pepper, and basil seedlings in the greenhouse that are dying to be liberated from their cramped little plastic containers. What a perfect excuse to curl up on the loveseat and take another trip back to Harmony. Happy hour, anyone?
Related links:
The Laws of Harmony at Amazon.com
The Laws of Harmony Online Book Tour Schedule and Judi's bio
Upcoming events where you can meet Judi in person
An interview with Judi Hendricks at HarperCollins
Bread Alone at Amazon.com
The Baker's Apprentice at Amazon.com
The Kitchen Table (Judi's blog)
Sunny's Blue Ribbon Blackberry Brownie Recipe
Other book reviews on Farmgirl Fare:
Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant
Local Breads
Cooking with Shelburne Farms
Comfort Food
The Cornbread Gospels
The Artist's Palate
Falling Cloudberries
The Vegetable Gardener's Bible (my favorite gardening book)
Astrological Gardening: The Ancient Wisdom of Successful Planting & Harvesting by the Stars
Would you like to win a signed copy of The Laws of Harmony? To enter, leave a comment in this post telling us about one of your favorite novels in which food is featured in some way. If you can't think of one, then simply tell us why you'd like to win this book!
One entry per person, please. I moderate comments, so if I'm away from the computer it may be several hours before yours actually appears. If your comment doesn't show up right away, there's no need to leave another one.
You can enter through next Sunday, May 31st, and I'll announce a random winner on Monday, June 1st. Please check back to see if you've won, especially if I have no way to get a hold of you (for example, if you have a blogger profile, is it public and does it list your correct e-mail address?). Sorry, but the book can only be shipped to a U.S. address.
© Copyright 2009 FarmgirlFare.com, the book-loving foodie farm blog where Farmgirl Susan shares recipes, stories and photos from her crazy country life on 240 remote Missouri acres.
