Homestead farming for  green living in West Virginia

Llamas...the  other hummer

Recipes

Here are some recipes that we’d like to share.  These are foods that I’ve learned to make over the years and have found to be successful and tasty.  I’m no gourmet chef and really never aspired to be one. I learned everything from my mother and grandmother and friends and neighbors. Recipe sharing is a tradition that I’ve tried to carry on.  There are a couple of family secrets that I’ll have to take to the grave or share with my niece...eventually.

If you decide to try one of these recipes, please let me know how it worked for you.  Bon Apatite!

Crumbly Feta:  I like to sprinkle feta over my salads, this method always produces a nice crumbly result.

Zucchini Relish: Too many zucchini, not enough friends and relatives?  This is a great way to use that bumper crop.

Bread Pudding: Sometimes Barney doesn’t eat the entire loaf of bread for the week, so instead of croutons I made this bread pudding—something like grandma’s but with a little kick.  This is an altered Paula Deen recipe that’s less sweet than the original

Farm Quiche:  I love quiche.  Did I say I love quiche?  This is a recipe that can be easily modified to whatever you have left over or from the garden.  I use my mother’s pie crust recipe - something I’ve finally perfected after about 30 years of failures to get it just right.  I’ll hold on to that secret for just a tad longer.

Rabbit Casserole:  The holidays left us with a refrigerator full of leftover roasted rabbit.  Who knew they produce so much meat!  I modified this recipe to use the chilled, cooked rabbit much like you would turkey or chicken.  Having farm fresh ingredients makes this dish a real treat.

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Recipes and more…...

Bread Short Cut

I work a full time job which is out of state,  so time for bread making is scarce.  I wanted to quit buying bread and really get back into making it at home.  I have a bread machine, but was never satisfied with the results.  I decided to compromise...I make the dough in the bread machine and bake the loaf traditionally in the oven.  I get wonderful bread without all the work.

Maple Syrup Experiment

When I first moved to the farm, I wanted to make maple syrup.  So... 10 years later and after I found out that one of my neighbors successfully made syrup, we’ve tapped our trees.  We collected 5 gallons of sap in less than 24 hours!  Now we’re inundated with sap and making our first attempts to evaporate the sap to get the syrup.  If it works, and we can collect sufficient quantities (it takes 40 gal of sap to make 1 gal of syrup) we hope to be able to offer West Virginia Maple Syrup to our customers.  We’ll see how it goes.

Syrup update:  we had so much sap we had to quit.  We also found an old evaporator furnace that we bought from our neighbor who makes sorghum.  We’re going to attempt to set it up for next year.  Right now we’re looking for an evaporator pan.

Energy Saving Tip

I used to do a lot of freezing of foods, but since our electric bill has doubled, I’ve gradually switched to home canning.  Both hot water bath and pressure canning.  Canned foods can be tasty  when prepared right and they don’t cost anything to store in the cellar.  Pressure canners are much safer and not only are they good for putting up, they can make an old hen tender and tasty for dumplings or soup.