Scrumptious Saturday

As long ago promised, I have made a vegetarian meal.

(Yes, you could add bacon and it would be great, but for today, we are all out of bacon.)

Often I will "accidentally" make too many mashed potatoes.

What is one to do with leftover mashed potatoes.

Mashed Potato Pancakes

2 cups leftover mashed potatoes

2 eggs

1/2 c. flour

1/2 c. cheddar cheese shredded

salt and pepper

Stir everything up in a bowl.  Place on a very hot oiled pan (I love my cast iron griddle for this.) by the 1/4 cup full and mash down into a pancake.  Let cook for a few minutes until golden brown, then flip.  After flipping, I like to give it a little smash so that it is about 1/4 inch thick.  Let cook for a few more golden minutes and serve hot.  I use it as a main course, a side, a breakfast whatever my fancy is that day.  But there is no doubt about it, they are rather scrumptious. 

Scrumptious Saturday

So my last post I decided to meal plan...

Each Saturday I will post what I made for dinner one night during the last week.

Included will be the recipe as well as some pictures.

You can link to what you made, and I will have the hubby peruse your recipes/pictures/etc and decide what will be added to the meal plan for the next month (YOU WIN...the joy and satisfaction you made a great meal.) And if it is super great, I may even write about your wonderful meal as I made it (and share with the world how great your meal was!)

You can peruse as well and maybe you'll find something that you like...That way with meal planning, we'll never get bored!

Without further ado...here's my first Scrumptious Saturday!

GREEK PIZZA

Friday night is glorious...

We are home together with a chance to reconnect after a week of work, school, and other busy activities.

So what brings a family together better than pizza.

Crust

makes about 4 servings

1 Tbs. Yeast

2 tsp. honey

1 tsp each dried oregano, garlic powder, basil and sea salt

1/4 tsp ginger (helps make the dough rise quicker)

2 tsp olive oil+ oil to coat the bowl

1c warm water.

1 3/4 c. flour (any mixture of white and wheat flours)

Corn Meal (about 1/4 c.)

My yeast, herbs and salt mixture

Put the yeast and herbs in a large bowl.  Add in the water, oil, and honey.  Let sit a moment, then add the flour slowly.  Once it creates a ball, turn it out onto a floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic.  Oil the bowl and place the dough back into the bowl (roll around to coat the ball so it doesn't dry out.)

Cover with a dishtowel and let sit in a warm location for about 15 min.

Turn up the oven to around 450 degrees.  If you have a pizza stone preheat it and place a pan of water below it.

All ready to go in the oven!

Sprinkle corn meal onto the back of a cookie sheet/pizza peel (so the rim of the cookie sheet faces down to make sliding the pizza off possible)



Pat out dough into a circle (we make personal sized pizzas so everyone can choose what the want on it and get the kiddos involved.)

Top with whatever catches you fancy.



Yummy!



I made Greek(ish) pizza

(Old Mother Hubbard did not have olives)

Tomato Sauce

Feta

Onion

Tomatoes

Mozzarella

Spinach

Oregano

I had my doubts, but I had everything on hand.  It would have been better with some olives, but they were not available, and I'm not going out to get an item...as per my writing on Thursday.  I was pretty pleased with the nutrition of it...grain (check), protein (check), veggies (check), delicious (check), kiddos devouring it... (CHECK!)

Country Homestead Tour #3: Dairy Goats

Ginny and Minnie

 Dairy Goats.  Alpines to be specific.  Love them.

These two lovely ladies came to us three springs ago at two days old as culls from a local goat dairy.  They were the first mammal that we brought home that was going to really be a long term resident (i.e. we're not going to eat it).  It was an exciting undertaking, riding in the back of our Volvo 240 Wagon with three little goat kids climbing all over me and snuggling in my lap.  (stay tuned for tale of #3).  Our first animal shed that we built from scrap lumber (originally for hens) would become their new home and we would bottle feed them every few hours for several weeks.  The girls (then 1 and 4) were great at holding one bottle each and I the third.  We bonded well and the three of them became more "cat" like than goat like, following us and snuggling in for chin scratches. 

bottle time

We took heed of everyone's warning about goat craftiness and strung galvinized wire fence 5...yes 5 wires high and put a nice strong charge on it.  Knock on wood, we haven't had any trouble with goats getting out, into our garden, or climbing on our cars...or any other number of goat horror stories.  I swear by a really hot charge on your fence..and making sure the fence line is clear of debris so it doesn't short. 

And so they grew all summer long and did an amazing job clearing the underbrush of what is to become a new pasture.  This was purpose #1 for getting the goats.  Low cost bush-hogging.  And it really does work.  They eat every last leaf and twig and pine needle and strip of bark that they can reach while standing on their back legs.  It makes it tons easier to go in with a chainsaw and cut firewood without all of the dense underbrush that crops up in old-pasture-now-badly-managed-woodland.  So, developing pasture has provided goats with food for 2 years and us with heat and hot water for a few winters.  How great is that.  These guys are so useful....and cute. 

So arrived the first fall and the first heat cycle of our two female goats.  And here is where #3 comes in, the buck.  OH the buck.  The buck we intended to castrate and just never got around to it.   The buck that, thankfully, bred our ladies....and bred, and bred.  Oh dear.  And well, that is truly what bucks do.  It is their one mission in life.  It also results in them being 'buck-like' which you could also call 'jerky', 'annoying' 'smelly', 'rude', 'dangerous around small children' and any other number of unpleasant things.  We were those people.  The one's that don't really prepare for owning a buck.  And, after I forgave myself for being a bad farmer, I called our friend who gave us the kids and she gladly took the buck back to her beautiful large meat goat farm.  His future was probably somewhat limited, but since we had named him and become rather attached, we chose not to contemplate that too much, at least around the kids.  They deal with enough animal processing, this was one hard lesson that we would shelter them from a little.

Purpose #2 came along that next February when I fulfilled one of my life fantasies and became a midwife...well a goat midwife.  It was an amazing birth and we all participated.  My oldest was amazing, giving mama Minnie her energy drink and comforting her post-delivery, helping to blow-dry and name little Liza who shivered against the 20 degree February chill.  And my husband out stapling up typar and grain bags around the outside of the house to keep out the drafts. 

Home dairying that year was insanely satisfying.  I, being a bit of a lactivist, left Liza with mom and just milked once a day, sharing the milk.  We had pounds of chevre and felt so extravagant eating it on everything and in everything.  We had more milk than we could use for baking and drinking.  It was an easy chore that I never dreaded, even on the coldest or buggiest of days.  The peaceful satisfying rhythm of the milk stream hitting the pail and the steam rising from our breath.

Liza:  The next generation

Well, Liza, at 1.5 years old, is still sneaking 'nursies' now and then...crouched under her very patient mother.  And fall is coming again.  In the next couple weeks the girls will be taking a little vacation at a farm down the road.  We're hoping they'll like the male company there.  Looking forward to some more midwifery and piles of chevre next spring.  It'll probably be our last freshening before we switch over to cow dairy.  But the girls have made a permanant home here and their contributions and companionship we are grateful for.

Country Homestead Tour #2: The Family Cow

Meet Daisy

Daisy right before loading

This weekend we brought home our 3 month old heifer (girl) calf whom the girls promptly named Daisy.  How perfect.  Why the cow?  So after milking a dairy goat for a season (goat intro to come) we decided that we have a house full of chevre lovers(and oh how we loved the pounds of fresh homemade cheese) but truth be told we all really prefer cow milk for drinking and whatnot.  So, we endeavored to find a dairy cow that would fit our needs as well as our land.  Enter the Irish Dexter.  The Dexter is the triple threat of the cow world, good for dairy, meat and teamwork.  It is a miniature breed so it naturally produces less milk (2 gallons per day versus 4-6 gallons like a Jersey cow) than a full sized dairy cow.  Perfect--we are only a family of 4 and we have day jobs so can't be tied up in the kitchen processing milk for hours a day.  It needs less pasture since it is smaller.  Ding Ding again--since we only have about 2 acres of quality pasture to graze right now.  And the real deal sealer for the minority leader of the house was that we can breed her with a beef style Dexter and have a beefy offspring for the freezer and still get quality butterfatty milk from mama moo.  This is a rarity since most dairy cows aren't the best for beef and most beef cows don't make very decent milk.

daisy: adjusting to her new barn..and the camera flash

So...trick #1 will be to halter train her really well.  Get her to walk with us, follow us around, and be OK with us scratching and snuggling and eventually, milking, her.  We learned our lesson the hard way with our little goat kid who is now a major social misfit.  We let her go the "natural" "attachment parenting" route. Just left her with mom.  The "other way" of raising is to pull the kids away from mom after they are born and bottle feed them.  Ack!  I mean, what an injustice to pull a little goat kid away from her mama.  And since I nursed my own human kids to 3 1/2, you can bet there was no way this lactivist was going to get between that kid and that udder (except to steal some milk every day for my precious cheese addiction) Well guess what--big surprise--the only thing she attached to was her mama goat.  So now we have two lovely alpine dairy goats (whom we bought and bottle fed from 2 days old) and one unruly free range crazy alpine goat that we can hardly touch.  This will not happen again!  Daisy thankfully had 3 lovely months of mama's milk and now it's time for her to "attach" to us.  Fingers crossed!

So here is Daisy.  She's about to get a ton of lovin' and if all goes well she'll be making us milk (and yogurt and cheese) in just 2 short years!