Ok Peeps! It's recipe FRIDAY!

This one is one of my favorites - easy peasy and oh so good!

Southern Fried Cabbage.....

Ingredients
1 head cabbage shredded
1 package Tennessee Pride HOT sausage
1 can Rotel tomatoes

YEP that is IT.

How do you assemble this fabulous dish?  Easy.

Cook the sausage.  Add the Rotel and the shredded cabbage.  If you like it HOT (and we do!) add cayenne and black pepper.  Cook over medium heat until cabbage is tender and ENJOY.

Have a great Friday!

The Incredible World of Cover Cropping

So - we are taking a sustainable farming class offered by our local agricultural extension office and a cool not-for-profit group called Rural Roots (www.ruralroots.org).  Anyone local to the Moscow area should check them out.  They offer and support a variety of farming classes and seminars.  This happens to be a six class series on starting a sustainable farm in Idaho.  It's pretty cool because it is simultaneously being offered at a bunch of locations across Idaho - so it is a mix of webinar and classroom modules.  And it does of course have homework.  

Anyhoo.....our second session was yesterday.  It was about cultivating crops.  I have to say - I learned SO MUCH about farming I can't hardly believe that I was so uninformed.  DH and I have spent the last few years in feverish pursuit of weed-free bare soil everywhere except where our food plants were.  In the process, we were KILLING our soil.  That's right folks, we are murderers.  As a by-product of our dead soil, we had increasingly smaller yields from our garden.  We kept blaming the weeds but really - it was us.  We did it.

I am a little disappointed in myself for not seeing this.  I am, after all, a trained biologist.  But I never really took the time to learn about growing vegetables naturally - because I thought I already knew how.  Boy was I wrong!  I mean, I knew that healthy soil was necessary for plant growth, but I really had no idea what 'healthy soil' actually was.

Probably the most important lesson I took away from our session yesterday is that sometimes you have to grow 'weeds' to improve your soil.  I know, right?!!  Terms like green manure, live composting, and cover crops - if I had heard them before, I certainly didn't understand them and how they can help me grow better, healthier, more productive plants.  I want to share this shiny  new, amazing, incredible, and mind blowing information with YOU.  But remember, I am a neophyte.  So this is just the introduction to these topics.  I am going to learn as much as I can in the months remaining before garden season - then I will try things and share with you my book learnin' and my hands on experiences.   I'm so excited!

Here is the 10 second sound byte:  cover crops are things that you plant for the main purpose of killing them.  Yep - that is right.  Their purpose in your garden is to die.  But before they do - they do all kinds of other great things.  They shade out weeds, keep the soil from eroding or blowing away in the wind, hold moisture, add nutrients to the soil, and.....they can even help decompact hard soil types.  Amazing right?  There are lots of complexities to the use of cover crops - what to plant, when to plant, how to kill, till in or leave on top........but because of that - the potential is unlimited for incorporating them into your garden.

Some of the common suspects for use as cover crops include cereals, ryegrass, sudan grass, hairy vetch, and winter peas.  There are many more.   They can be planted in summer after early crops are harvested or they can be planted in fall to over winter.  It all depends on what you are trying to accomplish with cover cropping.  You can even incorporate cover crops into your garden while it is growing - between rows and even between plants to help deter weed growth.  I can't wait to try this!

No more neat rows of plants with bare dirt in between - no sir!  Our garden is going to look more like this......messy is GOOD.  More later....

Ok folks - so I am thinking that maybe this is the best thing I have ever eaten....if you like Indian food, holy cow!  Let it simmer all afternoon for tender tasty chicken with a lovely sauce.  Enjoy!

New Delhi Stewed Chicken

Ingredients

3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

2 boneless skinless chicken breasts

1 cup (1 medium) yellow onion - chopped

4 cloves garlic – minced (or pressed)

1 tbsp fresh grated ginger root

1 cup frozen peas

1 cup cooked garbanzo beans (chickpeas)

4 cups chicken broth

1 small can tomato paste

2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped

1 tbsp garam masala

2 tsp cumin

1 tsp ground coriander

1/2 tsp cayenne

Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Fresh cilantro, for garnish

Instructions

Boil the chicken breasts until they are cooked through.  Set aside the broth for later.

Heat two tablespoons of olive oil in large saucepan over medium heat. Season chicken breasts with salt and pepper and brown on each side for 4-5 minutes. Set aside until cool.

In the same pan, heat the remaining tablespoon of oil and add the onion, garlic, and ginger. Sauté for 6-8 minutes until soft. Add a tablespoon of the tomato paste and the dry spices. Stir to mix well and cook for 3-4 minutes.

Shred the chicken into large chunks and add it, the chicken broth, and the remaining tomato paste. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 30 minutes.  Add the sweet potatoes. 

Simmer for another 35-45 minutes, until the sauce is thick and the potatoes are tender, stirring occasionally. During the last five minutes, stir in the cooked garbanzo beans, and the peas. Season with salt and pepper to taste (I don’t usually put any salt in it).  Garnish with fresh cilantro.  Serve warm over cauliflower rice or basmati rice.

SIMPLIFY TIP:

Chicken and garbanzos can be cooked ahead and frozen.

Cook a large quantity of chicken and shred ahead of time.  Place 3-4 cups into large Ziploc freezer bags and freeze.  Also freeze the broth in 2 cup quantities in freezer containers.

Cook garbanzos and freeze in 1-2 cup quantities.

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!