Pete & Teri’s Next Big Adventure

At this moment:

• bread with flour we made in our Country Living grain mill this afternoon
• spicy yellow pear tomato jam
• gjetost
• chevre
• tomato sauce

Now it’s time to start making something for dinner…

As is usual this time of year, posts have been sparse right when there’s the most cool stuff to blog about – 36 hour days would be just about right for August and September.

We do have one milestone to report – with a borrowed cheese press and a copy of the excellent Home Cheese Making by Ricki Carroll, we have created our first hard cheese, a farmhouse cheddar that should be edible in just a month or two.

But who can wait a month or two? The cheese has been sitting out for a week to form a rind (really should have been a few days), and today we waxed it for storage, but one end was uneven enough that we worried about the wax being able to form a good seal…so we cut it off and ate it, and after only a week it’s already….CHEESE!

Here’s the cheese before waxing:

Here’s beeswax in a can, on top of some canning lids in a small cooking pot to make a double boiler. The brush is a “chip” brush – they cost almost nothing at a hardware store, and their natural hair bristles won’t melt in the wax.

…and here’s the finished product, an inexpertly made and waxed yet already tasty cheese from our good little mini-Oberhasli goats:

What? The cheese wasn’t the stinky part? No, it smelled quite nice. My tobacco, on the other hand…it’s coming out barely tolerable when dried over the course of a few weeks…probably intolerable to any non-smokers in the area. To make it really smooth requires a year or more of careful aging, actually a fermentation process.

Here it is in various stages of the first slow drying (greenish ones are just picked, some in the upper left have been drying for 2-3 weeks already)

Sausage/Kale/Goat Feta Scrambled eggs

Click image to enlarge

• 1 big handful of kale from our cold frame
• 4 big eggs from a neighbor’s chickens (ours have better things to do than give us eggs these days)
• 1/2 lb ground Italian sausage from Deck Family Farm
• 1/4 cup goat milk from our morning milking (thanks Drama Queen!)
• 1 tbsp butter
• A few slices of goat milk feta from yet another wonderful neighbor
• Salt and pepper to taste

Thoroughly mix eggs and milk (plus salt and pepper if you like) in a jar. Extra points for using a Kerr/Ball jar.

Wash and chop the kale while the butter warms up in a hot frying pan over medium heat. I guess medium heat; this was made on a woodstove. Once butter is bubbling a bit, quickly saute the kale, keeping it moving, just until it becomes a darker green and wilts. Remove kale to another dish, leaving pan on medium-high heat (or rather, adding wood and opening the air inlet a bit).

Break the ground sausage up into small bits in the pan and keep it moving till well browned. Reduce heat to medium and (after a final stir) pour in the egg/milk mixture. Let this cook until it’s solid about halfway through, then mix in the kale and scramble it up.

When it’s close to done, drop the cheese slices onto the top.

In the middle of our waiting-for-goat-babies night, I realized I was absolutely famished and needed animal fat NOW! The following took about 10 minutes of hands-on time to prepare (including running out to pick kale) and will definitely be repeated.

Kale-wrapped mint lamb burgers – 4 servings

Ingredients:

• 1 lb grass-fed free-range natural ground lamb*
• 1 tbsp crushed fresh mint leaves (from our garden last year)
• 8 big leaves kale (from our cold frame)
• 1 small egg (from our chickens)
• 4 tbsp rolled oats
• 3 tbsp shelled sunflower seeds
• pinch or two of sea salt
• several apple wood twigs, soaked in water if dry
• olive oil

Instructions:

1. Start the BBQ on high (keep at about 400°-500°)
2. in a large mixing bowl, combine ground lamb, nearly-powdered mint leaves, sunflower seeds, salt, rolled oats, and egg. Make sure the egg gets thoroughly mixed in, it helps bind the burger together and keep it fluffy & moist.
3. coat a dinner plate with olive oil
4. shape mixture into 4 patties, putting each one on the olive oiled plate when it’s done. Not too thick; we want to cook these at high heat, actually flame-broil them a bit, and the inside should be cooked before the outside is charcoal!
5. get a little more olive oil and make sure the patties are completely coated
6. put dry applewood twigs into the grill…I drop them on the lava rocks, on the OPPOSITE side from where I’ll put the food (there will be enough flame from the olive oil dripping!)
7. plop the patties on the grill. the dripping oil will probably burst into flame; that’s ok. close the lid to keep the applewood smoke in.
8. cook until done – the outside should be a bit seared, even slightly charred. USDA blah blah blah standards blah blah blah specify 160° internal temperature. That recommendation is geared toward the filthy, diseased CAFO stuff at the supermarket; I cook ground meat to about 145° for myself but am not advising you to do that because you will surely poop yourself to death or something. The gov’t says so! I guess I died years ago.
9. Take patties off the grill and let them drain a bit on newspaper. Wrap in fresh-picked kale leaves and enjoy!

To make a portable, one-hand meal, I wrapped some sheets of newspaper around the finished product. The oily newspaper is wonderful stuff for starting the woodstove later.

Sorry no photos; these got scarfed right up!

*“Lamb” refers to meat from a sheep under 1 year of age, not little tiny babies. Generally, the older it is, the “sheepier” it tastes, and the more salt and mint you will want to use.

Here I am with Drama Queen…that’s Koko’s ear and nose behind Drama’s head, and Aberdeen behind me.

It might sound silly to someone who always got eggs from a supermarket, or who always had chickens, but today we ate “homegrown” (home laid?) eggs for the first time, and it was a thrill. It’s amazing that these pigeon-sized bantam hens lay such big eggs.

The shells were very firm and thick, so they cracked neatly with no shrapnel. Yolks were the deep orange, high-domed ones we’ve gotten used to from real free-range eggs, and unsurprisingly the omelet was delicious.