Bacon, Lettuce, and Tomato (and Cucumber) Salad

The last of our bacon was smoked this week (that is a whole other story!) and with the garden coming along nicely, I was craving a BLT sandwich.  Problem.  We are not eating bread right now, and still only eat anything with wheat only about once a month.  I don't want to buy or make bread that won't be used up or that will tempt us.

So....BLT salad was the solution.

Then I discovered that we are almost out of good, organic olive oil so I had nothing to make mayo with.  Gaah!  I wanted my taste of BLT!

Then I remembered reading about "wilted" salads in some of my very old cookbooks.  A dressing would be made with hot fat and tossed with lettuce, wilting it.  I would make a version of this using hot bacon grease.

It was amazing!

And amazingly simple.  For four dinner plates full of salad, I used:

1 head of leaf lettuce
2 tomatoes
3 medium pickling cukes (optional, but they were so fresh and crispy I couldn't resist)
Bacon, at least 1/4 pound, diced, more if you have it and want it extra bacon-y

Dressing:
Grease from cooking the bacon, 1/4-1/3 cup
Apple cider vinegar, preferably raw and organic, 1/8-1/4 cup, to taste
Black pepper to taste, maybe 1/4-1/2 tsp
Salt to taste if needed, as the bacon and grease will be salty


I cooked the bacon bits on low until quite crispy.  While that was cooking, I washed and cut the veggies.  I use a salad spinner to get the lettuce nice and dry.  I also run the tomato slices through the spinner to remove excess liquid....this works like a charm.  If you want to almost completely seed your tomatoes, dice them, then run them through the salad spinner, giving it a few good up-and-down shakes while it is spinning.  You'll end up with seed-free tomato chunks that are not the least bit watery.  If you have chickens, be sure to give them the seedy liquid, and watch them go nuts over it.

Put the cut and washed salad into a big mixing bowl, much larger than the serving bowl, as you will need to toss it quickly and vigorously once the dressing is made.  You also want the veggies to come to room temperature so the bacon fat dressing doesn't congeal on the lettuce.

When the bacon is cooked, drain the hot grease into a heat proof bowl or Pyrex measuring cup, and add some raw, organic apple cider vinegar and some black pepper and whisk it until well blended.   Pour immediately over the salad and toss, toss, toss.  Add salt if your bacon grease was not salty enough.

The recipe I used came from an older version of Joy of Cooking and called for 2 Tbsp bacon grease and 1/4 cup vinegar, but I didn't measure and I also used far more dressing than that for a head of lettuce.  I probably reversed the proportions with twice the grease to vinegar ratio.  This just goes to show that this is a very, very forgiving recipe.  Use what you have and don't worry about it.  It is bacon grease.  How can you go wrong?

Mayonnaise is made using about a cup of oil to a tablespoon or two of vinegar along with raw egg, so my dressing was more in line with those proportions, just no egg.  Although egg probably would have been wonderful, too, now that I think about it.

I would not refrigerate leftovers of this type of salad, as the bacon grease will harden in the cold.  This is a salad to eat up in one sitting.....and it was so delicious, we had no difficulty eating two large platefuls each!  To make it a heartier meal, you can add cheese and cold leftover roasted meat, either in the salad or on the side.  We used some leftover pork roast and home made goat Gouda.

The hubster enthusiastically requested that this recipe be repeated....often!  I have to say that I whole heartedly agreed!

Hugelkultur raspberry update

Another hugelkultur update!  Remember last spring's raspberry project?  Here is what it looked like on May 1 this spring:

Most of that lush growth is raspberry shoots.  The sticks are prunings from the apple trees, strategically placed to keep the hens from digging in the rich hugelkultur soil.  Nutmeg is photobombing.

 

Since discovering the wonders of woodchips, I decided this would be a perfect mulch for my raspberries and for the apple and pear trees behind the raspberry row.  First, though, I needed a small wall to keep the woodchips off the lawn.  An inexpensive option is patio blocks.  We will see if the frost pushes them all out next winter/spring.  If it does, I'll simply redo it some other way.  I needed something quick for now.





The beginning of the wall to hold the woodchips off the lawn.

 

Weeding and carefully putting chips around and under the plants.

 

I dumped lots of chips on the lawn after putting down several layers of newspaper to kill the grass.

 

 This entire area will ultimately be covered in woodchips so no mowing will need to be done around the fruit trees and raspberry beds.  This should also dramatically reduce the need to weed the raspberries.  More chips will likely need to be added, especially the first few years.  We will see!

 

 

 

As the woodchips break down, they will feed the fruit trees and raspberry canes with mineral rich compost.  I'm so excited about this project!

Hugelkultur update

Remember the berry project from last spring?  Here they are on May 1!

A year later and the currants are flowering!

 One of the two surviving gooseberry plants has a few flowers, too.

 

One of the gooseberries has filled out nicely. 

 

Only 2 of 8 gooseberries survived...but they did arrive from Burgess dead, after all.  All the replacement plants they sent were also obviously DOA.  They sent more recently, my third shipment, and about half looked completely dead and two of the maybe-alive ones were broken off just above the roots.  Order anywhere else.  One plant marked as a gooseberry was actually a grape, too.  Sheesh!  The aggravation and time lost was definitely not worth the perceived savings.

 

The currants are doing better, although the biggest one is still smaller than the gooseberries.  The bricks in the photos are to keep the hens from digging them up....they are obsessed with any area of disturbed soil.  The plan is to eventually woodchip this area, in the spirit of the film, Back to Eden.  More on this coming up soon!

Sweet Nutmeg

I gave in.  I kept a doeling this year.  How could I not?  Look at that sweet face!

Princess of the Bricks!

 

This was Plum's second...her first was a single buckling, born in the wee hours of the night, snuck out without any assistance between my frequent peeks two years ago.  Plum didn't have a pattern yet, having only delivered one baby, so I wasn't sure if she'd do the same thing again.  She did.

 

Nutmeg was a singleton, born between barn checks around 3 AM on an unusually cold night.  I always get nervous about deliveries and checked about every hour.  I swear Plum checked her watch and knew my pattern, and purposely crossed her legs and looked unconcerned, then quickly shot that baby out the second the door closed behind me.  Plummy officially has a pattern now.  It is a pattern of easy births, so even though it is in the middle of the night, I can live with it!

 

As is usual here, I got her right onto a bottle.  Many people have expressed concern about this, thinking it has a note of cruelty to it for both mother and baby.  Let me tell you, it is far easier on everyone concerned to keep them apart right from the first moment than to separate them two three months later.  There is barely a whimper when the baby is "pulled" from the momma within minutes.  The wailing and crying two months later is heart wrenching and can be heard throughout the entire neighborhood.....and it is not just mine!

Nutmeg comes on well-supervised walks with the dogs while she is less than a week old.  At this age, she does not wander far from us and will come immediately when called.  All I have to do is call her and start to run, and she is at my side in a blink.

Since she is a single baby and has no siblings on the farm right now, she spends a lot of time with me while I garden and do spring clean up.  Since she is not eating solid food yet, I can take her everywhere on the property without fear of her destroying my plants.

Nutmeg likes to supervise building projects.

 

"Your wall is crooked!"  She is a hard task-mistress!

 

 

(Nutmeg is a couple of days old in these pictures, taken a few weeks ago.)

Coming soon.....

Got a new computer!  As soon as my picture files are loaded, I'll be back to posting....I have some great new projects going, updates on old ones (hugelkultur is amazing!), baby goats, and a broody hen so chick pics soon!

Please stand by.....

Economy and the ick factor

My goal is to add something new to my repertoire each year.  Harvey Ussery wrote that it is respectful of our animals to use everything that we can, to not waste any part of their valuable life.  OK, that is how I interpreted it for myself, but that is the gist of what he said.  The "ick" factor is pretty strong in today's society, and I'm no different.....except I am determined to change.  One bite at a time.  Shudder.

Last year we made use of heart and livers by making our sausage 20% organ meats.  After the first meal, we forgot it was in there.  Organ meats from healthy, pastured animals are amazingly good for us.  It was time to put on the big girl pants and learn to eat them.

This year I added the chicken feet to my broths.  That wasn't as bad as I'd anticipated.

This fall, we bought our very first side of beef.  I highly recommend saving up for this.  Freezers are cheap to come by, especially if you know an busy real estate agent or realtor.  Getting rid of a freezer in the basement is often on the to-do list of their selling clients and can be had for very little cash, or even for free.  I also see them listed in local "for sale" ads for bargain prices....or free!  They don't cost much to run, and the savings of buying an entire side will more than cover the cost of the freezer and the power to run it.  If you live where the winters are cold and it will be full mostly during winter, put it in the garage and it will barely run at all.

The butcher will ask you how you want it cut up and packaged.  Do some online research in advance.  Many small farm websites have detailed information.  Think about what you usually cook as far as beef goes.....actually, you can get pork this way as well.....and order mostly those types of cuts.  It is ok if you eat ground beef most of the time!  We like roasts and ground beef, and rarely cook steaks.  So I got mostly these cuts, and asked for a few steaks so I could expand my cooking skills.  I've always enjoyed steaks at restaurants, not at home.  If the steak is not cooked right at a restaurant, you can send it back.  Not so at home.  But that will change....this year.

Buyiing an entire side, or even an entire animal, can be economical in more ways if you are adventurous and aren't afraid to rattle a few pots and pans.  Most people don't want the bones, fat, organs, and unusual cuts, and these are actually thrown away!  When I got my side of beef, the person taking the other half didn't want anything but standard grocery store style cuts.  Know what that meant?  Yup.  I got to have ALL of the other stuff, at NO additional cost to me.  That's right.  You pay a set fee, called "hanging weight," which means the weight of the side before it is cut and wrapped.  How much of that actually ends up in your freezer is up to you.

We got many, many more pounds of great food for free along with our purchased beef.  With the bones from the entire cow, I canned 54 jars of beef broth!  You can't buy broth of this quality or nutrient value in any store, no matter how many times you see words like "organic" or "natural" or "free-range" on the label.

I also rendered all the trim fat into tallow, which is the best fat for deep fat frying.  I reserved the best for this, and made some into a batch of very, very premium soap.  A bit more will go into the very best moisturizing cream, although with my dietary changes over the past few years and using only goat's milk soap to wash with, I have very little need for skin protection.

I'll admit that some of the liver.....a beef liver is HUGE....was given away (it was reported to be heavenly by liver lovers) and some will be fed to our dogs....hey, they also need good food!  It was FREE.

The heart is in the freezer...well, half of it is.  Half went into our sausage this year.  The other half is waiting for the rest of the ingredients needed to make a mincemeat recipe I found in one of my antique cookbooks that looks very promising.  I love mincemeat pie, and the spice, fruity recipe will likely hide any ick flavor.

Something terrible happened with my beef, though.  There was a mis-communication and the tail and the kidney suet was tossed in the trash.  That turned into something wonderful, though.  When you talk to the actual farmer who raised the animals, you are no longer just a number in a ledger.  It is not the same as buying meat on foam trays in the grocery store.  You develop a relationship.

So something fantastic came from this goof.  The farmer felt bad about this, and promised to give me these items from the next cow.  I got the call this week.  I will not only get the tail and the suet, but all the usual things that are tossed in the trash....all the bones and trim fat, all the organs, anything else that will be thrown away.

Meanwhile, I spent some time with the butcher, who works in his own small butcher shop.  We are also developing a relationship that will be mutually beneficial.  He is setting up a mobile slaughter truck.  (Ick, I know, you don't want to think about this.  But animals die to feed you and me, and isn't it better that they die with the least amount of stress, fear, and cruelty?  Mobile slaughter units are a way for smallholders to deal with this unpleasant task right on the farm....just by writing a check.  I think it is a brilliant solution.  And far kinder to the animals.)

Best thing ever.....I had a conversation with the butcher about getting the "trash" from other animals once he is up and running.  There are legal ins and outs to this, so not all can do it.  For example, if I send a pig to slaughter and don't want the bones and fat, the slaughterhouse can't sell them.  If the farmer sends an animal and gets it back all cut and wrapped and then sells it piece by piece, he can sell the bones, fat, organs, etc.  But he usually doesn't, as nobody wants them, so they can be purchased for a song, in bulk, if he knows in advance.  I've set myself up to be able to do this.  Ask and you shall receive.

Today's story, though, is really about the beef tongue.  Ick.  Double ick.  It LOOKS like a tongue.  Nasty.

So I corned it, like corned beef brisket (recipe here).  Once it was peeled (shudder again) and sliced, it was the most tender corned beef I've ever eaten.  It was marvelous on sourdough bread with home made fermented mustard, and later, hubby diced it up and scrambled it with his breakfast eggs.  A beef tongue is HUGE, by the way.  Several pounds of tender, succulent meat.

In the brine for 10 days while I try to forget.....

What will you be creative with this year?  Can you find a way to be a bit more brave and honor the animals a little more?  

Or let the dogs do so....they have to eat, too!  Nothin' wrong with that!










The shameless commerce portion of today's post:  My next get healthy/stay healthy class starts soon!  January 28, 2013, to be exact.  All via telephone, and you can sign up, put the phone on speaker mode, and invite as many to listen with you as you can fit in the room.  Twelve weeks of great information and some great give-aways, too.  For details, click here.

Oh, and you never have to eat any ick if you don't want to, promise....but there will be bacon!

Three little videos

A few videos I took early last month:

This one is under two minutes and shows a silly little hen that decided to go broody in late November.  Silly girl, spring is the time to hatch chicklets!  Although it is very dark at times, be patient, she moves into the light a few times.  There is a black hen from this spring's incubator hatch, from one of the Icelandic eggs.  I got these for their broodiness, and she was so determined to sit on nothing...nope, she had no eggs under her.... that I gave her four eggs to hatch just so she'd survive.  Some hens are so determined that they won't get off the nest until the babies hatch.  She was one of them.  I knew survival of chicks in December was not likely, but wanted to save the hen.

Sweet baby chicks and sweet mama hen clucking!

In the background of the hen and chicks video, you can hear Peach loudly complaining about something.  Here is a 9 second video to show you what the problem was:

Determined little bugger, ain't he?

And finally, about half a minute of what our farmlet was like about a month or two ago, every morning until everyone was too tired to run.  I didn't know it yet, but Plum was newly pregnant and the buck sure knew it!  Gentle giant Ginger was not, nor was she ready for Charm's advances.  Worry not about goat molestation, dear readers.  When Ginger finally wanted Charm's attention, she was rather pushy about it.  Quite the hussy, actually.

But not today!

Jan 28, 2013, is the start date of my next teleclass series, Foundations of Vibrant Health  What does this have to do with reproduction on the farm?  Not much!  Well, sorta.....reproduction on the farm leads to nutrient-dense food.  But you don't need a farm to be healthy.  You just need to be armed with information that you won't find elsewhere all in one course!  There are some cool give-aways, too!  Click here for details.