New Year - New Opportunities

As I say goodbye to 2015 and move into 2016, my heart is filled with hope.  The past year has been extremely difficult - health problems, living 400 miles from the DH and the critters for an entire year, moving a farm 400 miles with winter threatening, squeezing the contents of a 2600 square foot house (and four large dogs) into a 1700 square foot house built in 1905.  But now 2016 presents a world of opportunities for us and I can't wait to get started. Change is powerful.  It is uncomfortable and often frightening, but it is also transforming.  I am excited to see where it takes us!

In December 2014, we made the difficult decision to move.  We knew it was likely to be a losing proposition from a real estate perspective, but we knew business opportunities would always be limited where we were.  I was tired of the long cold winters and the short summers.  I didn't want to live 3 hours from the closest amenities or equine veterinary care anymore.  Although where we lived was strikingly beautiful with unlimited outdoor recreation opportunities, the stress of my job and trying to eek out a living there made life extremely difficult.  We needed a change and when the opportunity presented itself, we really had to take it.

The move took a total of 9 months.  As the house lingered on the market with no offers - even after two price reductions, I began to lose hope that we would ever escape.  I had to move for work so DH was stuck taking care of the farm, trying to keep the failing house in 'showing shape' and still find time to work.  I moved into a 400 square foot isolated cabin with just the basic amenities and a lot of arachnid roommates.  On a positive note, I had lots of time and motivation to train for my first sprint triathalon which I completed (in 2 hours!) in July.  This was a major accomplishment for me as I was diagnosed in October 2014 with exercise induced asthma and an over-reactive respiratory system - basically I suck at breathing and any kind of irritant (smoke, dust, etc) or exertion causes a reaction.

We finally accepted a very low offer on our home and were so fortunate to find 44 acres of heaven to purchase.  It was late September - we had no money or time to build a house - so we bought a little house in town to hunker down in for the winter.  The chickens live in the backyard, the dogs are crowded and not big fans of all the 'town noise', most of our things are in storage - but we are all in one place.  Winter was coming so hay had to be bought and secured, a well had to be dug, fence installed, water lines buried and stock tanks installed.  Thankfully, fall lingered on enabling us to construct all the critical infrastructure.  It's a little inconvenient to drive 30 miles roundtrip to feed horses twice a day but we are managing.

And now - the wheel of the Earth is turning, bringing us into a new year and new opportunities.  I am bursting with excitement over the many ideas and choices for our blank canvas of land.  Which brings me to the point of all of this!  With all the cool things we plan to accomplish in the upcoming years to turn our bare ground into a self-sustaining farm - I thought - heck!  I should start an online blog to share our experiences good and bad.  Our new website is under construction - the blog will be located at www.ourprairiefarm.com.  We will have stories of our adventures, gardening tips, recipes, pitfalls we encounter, solar energy, sustainability - who knows what will end up there.  I really hope you will join us on our journey!  I think it will be fun and there will be interesting tidbits of information that you may find useful.  Let's GO!

Happy Thanksgiving peeps!
I hope this post finds everyone well and happily smelling good things cooking.  This is a day of thanks. Today I am very thankful for my family.  I am so happy to have everyone living in the same county again.  I am also thankful for my gainful employment which allows me the luxury of owning a home, having beautiful black horses, and the ability to do crafty things.  I have really been enjoying the exploration of my crafty side lately.  But on this day of thanks - we won't discuss that.  More to come so stay tuned! Gobble gobble!

Gluten-free Experimentin'

Hi y'all!
Been a few days since my last post.
I've been working on gluten-free CRACKERS.
We are cheese and cracker kind of snackers - hey that rhymes!  So I decided to try out a few recipes and see what I think.  My first impression is that crackers are WAAAAAYYYYY easier to mess around with than cakes.  Cakes are for advanced gluten-free bakers.....I learned that the hard way...always trying to be a high-achiever...but I digress.  Back to crackers.  Yes, many yummy recipes out there and I have even been changing things up a little.  So far my fave is the parmesan cracker I made first and messed with most.

The recipe looks like this:
3/4 c flax meal
3/4 c almond flour
2 egg whites (I substituted 3Tbs water and 1Tbs tahini in round two - yummy!)
1 Tbs parmesan cheese
1 Tbs coconut oil
2 Tbs nutritional yeast (found at the health food store in bulk)
1/4 tsp sea salt
black pepper, onion and garlic powder for flav-ah

Line cookie sheet with parchment.  Place ball o dough in center and using a wax paper shield, roll out til impossibly thin.  Thinner than you think you can go.  Score with pizza cutter - bake at 350 degrees for 15- 20 minutes.  Break apart when cool enough to handle.   These are super tasty and really easy.

Very yummy with the homemade hummus - will post that recipe tomorrow.

Cake Disaster

It's a cake, it's pile of goo, it's delicious!

Okay so the first attempt at gluten-free cake did not go so well.  Tastes great but is just a pile of cake with no shape to it.  It fell out of the mold in pieces.  A mound of gooey, albeit incredibly tasty cake mess.  I probably should have started with a bona fide gluten free cake recipe but not me!  I used a regular pound cake recipe and just substituted coconut oil for part of the butter and a combination of almond and coconut flour for the flour.  Of course it was a recipe I'd never tried before so I probably should have done something safer - but who wants to be safe when charging forward into gluten-free eating!

Introducing - the Breakfast Bowl!

Weekends at Black Dog Ranch are breakfast bowl days.  My husband is used to finding all kinds of weird things in his bowl.  Breakfast bowls are awesome!  The foundation of the breakfast bowl is eggs but for the other ingredients - all bets are off!  I essentially clean out the fridge and call it breakfast.  These are tasty, filling, and an awesome way to use up leftovers from the week.  I'll give you the basic recipe but really the Breakfast Bowl is about experimentation!

Sunday Breakfast Bowl

some kind of meat - this can be traditional breakfast meat like sausage or bacon

or

chop up leftover chicken, pork chops, steak

vegetables - today I used fresh spinach, tomato, avocado, and leftover squash

eggs - 2 per person is about right

cheese - feta, cheddar, blue - whatever you have around

Cook the meat in a large frying pan.  Add the veggies.  Get everything nice and warm, then dump in the lightly beaten eggs.  Cook until eggs are done.  Split into bowls - add some cheese and a dab of salsa.  ENJOY!

Some of my favorite combos are chicken/avocado/mushroom; sausage/spinach/feta; bacon/tomato/avocado.....you really can't go wrong!

My Gluten Free Life

So I decided to take Matt and I into the gluten-free zone.  Why?  Because I noticed that my stomach would hurt a lot of times after a meal.  I woke up each morning with a stuffed up head and swollen joints.  We're in week two.  So far it hasn't been too hard.  We weren't big gluten eaters to begin with and we don't eat much in the way of processed foods.  I ordered some almond flour and coconut flour - but haven't really needed it yet.  Mostly just eating fresh veggies and meat.  Lunch has been a bit challenging for me at work but sticking to yummy soups.


Knowing me, experimentin' is in my future so I'll keep y'all posted on any new and wonderful recipes I come up with.

The Mighty Clay Pot Cooker


So, my mom and I found a terra cotta clay pot at a yard sale in Atlanta several years ago for $5.  Have you seen these?  They are a terra cotta pot shaped like a large loaf pan with an overlapping lid.  It looked interesting and for $5, how could we go wrong.

I didn't get a chance to try it until I moved to Idaho.  We pulled it out of the cabinet one day to do something a little different with a pork loin.  OMG.  YUMMY!  Since then, we've done a variety of things with the cooker, including whole chickens.  Meat comes out so nice and moist and veggies don't over cook to mush.

It's a little scary at first, but really easy to use.  You just soak it in water for 15 minutes, fill it with meat and veggies, and put it in a cold oven set at 425 degrees.  Then ignore it for 90 minutes or so and enjoy.