It's Milking Time!

Well, we got a Jersey cow for our little homestead and have been milking her since mid June. This has been quite the adventure and it only gets better.

 We are getting about three (3) gallons a day on average. What am I doing with all this milk? Well, this is where the Internet is handy. While we have no TV, we do have Internet access, so I went to Pinterest and found many pins for things to make with fresh raw milk. I have made mozzarella, ricotta, feta, and yogurt, butter, coffee creamer and ice cream so far. But the possibilities are endless!

(Creamer, ricotta and mozzarella in the making.)

(Ricotta can be made from the whey after making mozzarella or made with milk, cream and vinegar.)

Some of the cheeses are just close enough to the real thing to be called ricotta or feta. The butter and ice cream are churned by hand. I also made some fresh buttermilk biscuits for a strawberry rhubarb shortcake...topped with vanilla ice cream. I baked a cake using milk and I have even frozen buttermilk for use later. 

Adding things like fresh herbs or garlic scapes to the butter is fun. I can't wait to try adding these things to my cheeses!

With an abundance of milk there is no end to what I can and am willing to make. Pinterest is a great resource and many ideas have been used, tweaked and such for the cheeses seen in these photos. Food52.com is also a wonderful place to find recipes and tips for making cheese and this is where I found my yogurt recipe.

This is my milk cake with my vanilla bean yogurt...see the black specks of vanilla?

Even our pigs benefit from the milk...see, bacon does come from milk. This is the leftover whey from all my cheese making. I have used some to boil pasta too and will do so again in the future. But for today the pigs are getting a special treat with their veggie scraps. 

So...this is how I am spending my summer. Getting this making-it-with-milk thing down, so when school starts I can keep up with all this yummy goodness

Oh, and I must not forget..."milk, it does a [human] body good!" Cheers!

Pizza...pizza...and more pizza! Never the same slice twice.

Pizza is something that I love to make, grilled or done in Grace. Making a crust from scratch is so much fun and tastes 100% better than anything from a box, a pouch or even the freezer and it really doesn't take that much time. I have found many recipes for fresh dough in Pinterest. All doughs in this post can be found on my board under "tried it and loved it" and I use many.

The best part about making a pizza is that you really can top it with anything. Some of my favorite toppings are spinach, oven dried tomatoes (similar to sun dried but done in my own kitchen and packed in oil), goat cheese or feta cheese, artichoke hearts, onions and other fresh veggies. I have even made chicken wing pizza and Hawaiian pizza.

I have also found that grilling pizza works best if you lightly toast both sides of the dough first without toppings. Once you add the toppings the pizza slides off the peel better. Grilling with indirect heat once it's been toasted with direct flame is what I have found to be the best method of grilling pizza on a gas flame. Grilling on charcoal is just a s great but you want to be sure your coals are hot enough to cook the pizza but not too hot to scorch it. This will take some practice.

Baking pizza in Grace on my stoneware has been fun. I enjoy learning how to do new things with this stove. My family and friends love trying my experiments. I am finding that the pizza top is getting done and brown before the bottom crust is crisp and crunchy. To solve this minor issue I have taken to finishing my pizza on the top of the stove once the top is done. This has worked nicely. 

So, before you spend the money to buy a pizza, get on Pinterest and find a dough recipe you can make, tweak it by adding herbs or spices and give homemade pizza a try. Yes, grill it when the weather clears. No need to save pizza for winter nights and no worries if you don't have a Grace to make your pizza...the standard gas or electric oven will work just fine.

Comfort food...and the joy it brings!

"Today was quite the day!" That said, having a few dishes that bring comfort are always great to turn to when the last thing you want to do is cook. Tonight's supper was one of those classic confort food dishes after having one of those days. Chicken gravy and biscuits never lets me down. I always think of my mom when I make this dish, though I do it differently than what she did. (I think she would like my version.) And this time around Grace was my go to gal. For those of you new to my blog, Grace is my kitchen wood stove. And she is teaching me a few things as we get to know one another. She was purchased around four years ago and this past October she was vented and ready to go to work.

On this farm we have a few chickens that find their way to our freezer and ultimately our table. This chicken was not a meat bird, nor was it a spring chicken. He needed to boil for a while if I wanted him to be tender. My son gladly started this process around noon on our living room wood stove before my husband brought the stock pot out to Grace around 3:30. Around 6:00 I was pulling meat off the bones, quite easily. This old bird was nice and tender.

Once I got all the meat off the bones I added some of the stock.

  (The remaining stock, water from boiling the whole chicken, carrots, onions and celery cooked down and blended a little with my emersion blender,  will be stored for later use.) This is where my recipe differs from my mom's; I don't use canned soup to thicken it. I simply add a cup of milk and then mix some of the hot stock with corn starch to thicken my dish.  It isn't super thick, just thick enough to call it a gravy. 

I also added a bag of frozen peas to this batch and I will do that again.  It was super yummy. I let the chicken gravy simmer on the hot stove while I prepare and bake the biscuits.

I admit that on this night my biscuits were not made from scratch, but from the trusty stand-by box of Bisquick. This is another aspect of what makes this dish comfort food. Growing up my mom tried numerous times to duplicate my grandmother's baking powder biscuits.  She never seemed to get it quite right and thus she used Bisquick.  So, tonight I too pulled out the yellow box and within 5 min had a baking sheet ready for Grace. 

 I just didn't feel like playing with biscuits tonight and there is nothing wrong with that.  (My husband and I did bake a custard pie together later. I used my mom's crust recipe (keep scrolling for it) and he found a custard recipe somewhere...I wasn't paying attention to where he got it sorry.)

So, what can I say about making chicken gravy and biscuits with Grace? I enjoyed the simplicity of cooking a dish of comfort on a simple fire.  Baking the biscuits and then later the pie was also a joy. I just love using this stove. I can only imagine what living that simple life was really like.  I often find myself wishing I were back in that time. With Grace I can get a glimpse of the 1920s in the convenience of 2016. I mostly use cast-iron pans and pots to do my cooking these days.  I also have some stoneware but this dish was started in my heavy bottom stainless stock or pasta pot. I am learning to be versatile but rustic.

So here it is: the recipe, sort of:

Chicken gravy:  Boil a whole chicken until the meat falls away from the bones. Part way through the boiling process, add carrots, onion and celery to the stock pot.  Once the chicken has been pulled off the bones, add some of the stock back to the chicken.  Add one cup of milk and bring to a boil.  Remove to lesser heat and take some stock from the pot and add some corn starch.  Stir completely so there are no lumps and return back to the chicken and stock. Allow to simmer stirring occasionally. Add a bag of frozen peas.  While this continues to simmer make and bake your biscuits according to package directions.  Serve warm.

Mom's Pie Crust:

2 cups sifted flour.
1 tsp salt
1 stick unsalted butte
1/2 cup Crisco
1/4 cup cold water

Sift the flour and salt into a bowl.
cut in the butter and Crisco until it looks like fine sand
add the cold water and bring together forming a ball.

This will make a top and bottom crust for an 8-10" pie.

Roll on a floured surface.

Oh the joy of cooking comfort foods on a kitchen wood stove!

Sloppy joes and squash!

Grace is hooked up and cooking up a storm! I have baked breads, muffins, pies; roasted veggies, turkey, lamb, prime rib and even a goose! Several casseroles and various other dishes later I am writing my first blog post. I am hoping to post more regularly here rather than on my Facebook page. (I am using the phone so for this post to try it out so hang with me while I figure it all out.)

So Tonight we took a frozen package of burger, some onion, peppers, celery and seasonings and within a half hour to 45 min we had  dinner.

Cooking in and on a wood stove has been quite the learning curve for me. I love to cook and this level of cooking and baking has been fun for me to say the least. The squash was roasted in the stove this fall and frozen for use later and tonight I am warming it up to serve with my sloppy joes.