Butter...

A new thing that our family is beginning to do, is make our own butter. We buy our milk and eggs at a local farm and after a conversation with the farmer...I ordered some cream from him...and tried my hand at making butter! It came out wonderfully! I have since ordered more cream and have made 1lb of butter (which I measured into 1/2 cup molds and are in the freezer) and plan to make more, soon!! It really is so easy! 

We had our first taste of our butter at breakfast with toast from freshly made bread, and everyone was pleased!! So hooray for butter!!!

Love,

Mon

Goat Cheese I love you!

BUTTERMILK BISCUITS WITH GOAT CHEESE AND CHIVES!!!!!!!!!!! HOLLLLLER.

This was the day that goat cheese completely rocked my existence. I've always know that I liked goat cheese, who doesn't???? It is wonderful, creamy, and delicious. But this recipe solidified why! I mean they were amazing. Please try them. You will not be disappointed. We served them with our soup for dinner, and we all loved them!!!

Love,

Monica (aka bread freak)

It starts with bacon.

(Sorry, my photos are not always the best. Hooray for bad lighting, but they were delicious. I promise )

So, my five year old daughter seriously loves bacon. Like a lot! She always wants it and suggested that we have BACON for dinner one day a couple of weeks ago. I don't mind bacon (in moderation and I usually don't eat it...how funny), I prefer the uncured and more natural types, and I had some so I thought I'd incorporate it into our evening meal. We also had corn in our fridge, sweet-lovely-local-fresh corn so my first thoughts were revolving more along the corn chowder type recipes. I stumbled across a recipe for corn pancakes on my most fav food blog. So I thought I would go with that, and make it like a savory, evening, type breakfast thing.  So I made home fries, like of the roasted variety with onions,  and green peppers, and then cooked the bacon....the main ingredient of course. These pancakes were so delicious! I urge you to try them...please!! They are the ultimate comfort food, slathered with fresh organic butter and maple syrup.  

Enjoy!
Love,
Mon

Cast Iron Cooking

On our first camping trip, Joe packed one of his cast iron pans. It was like a foreign object to me. I had never really used anything like it (not that I used anything at all....meaning I did not cook). After our trip the cast iron pan was just packed away with our camping stuff. Coming across it I noticed they were very rusty, and seemed like trash.

I had recently been reading about the benefits of cast iron cooking compared to other pots (namely of the non-stick variety) and pans. The only cast iron type pot we have is our trusty Le Creuset, that we adore and use all the time. Only after doing some more research I noticed the pans I wanted were strangely similar to the three pans we already had, only without the rust that accumulated on them. I asked Joe for a set for Christmas, and had my eye on the Lodge Cast Iron products. My dear husband who is always looking to save some cash, urged me that he could re-season our pans and they would be just like the ones I wanted, maybe even better! So Joe cleaned the three pans we had, and rubbed them with oil, placed them in the oven on a very low setting...this seasons them and seals in the oil so your food won't stick. Once he was done, they were gorgeous! I have been using them for all three meals since. They are different to clean than other pans, but once you get the hang of it, they are no problem. They add so much flavor to our food, and are really great! So I urge you to go replace your pans with cast iron! You will love them! We recently added a dutch oven to our collection, and I am now wanting the casserole dish!  I don't even think about my other pots and pans anymore :)

I pulled it off!!!!!!

I made truly yummy, and utterly delicous pancakes!!!!!!!!  I like to mix breakfast up for the family, so this morning I thought I would make pancakes.  So I found a recipe:

INGREDIENTS:

1 egg

1 cup flour

3/4 cup milk ( I usually add a bit more to my desired consistency)

2 Tablespoons oil

1 Tablespoon sugar

3 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

Only I made a few tweaks to the recipe. I had some unbleached pastry flour so I decided to use that. I also used I Tablespoon of pure 100% maple syrup instead of the sugar. I then added 2 Tablespoons of butter instead of the oil!  Oh, and one more thing: I used raw milk since that is what we had this morning.  The result: FABULOUS!

A perfect light consistency, and yummy butteriness!!!!!!  I only had my phone so the picture is not all that fabulous...but the pancakes were great!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Love,

MON <3

Strawberry Cupcakes

I made strawberry cupcakes for Hazel's birthday playdate. They came out yummy, so I thought I would share.  In retrospect, I did not add the two egg whites in the recipe (guess I was a bit preoccupied and didn't notice that ingredient...oops), now that I read it through.  Guess what? They came out ok. I used raw sugar, and unbleached cake flour.  A simple vanilla frosting recipe later, and we had strawberry cupcakes for 6 kids!  Very simple!  Very yummy!  Try it!

Love,

MON