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| Wednesday, November 26, 2008 |
| Breakfast complete with shiny sun |
This morning, I decided to have a real morning, instead of going back to bed when Matt left for work. I had already assembled his lunch (homemade bean soup : pseudo recipe below and homemade apple crisp) and made him a breakfast sandwich (fried up a slice of homemade Goetta sausage on toast, and filled up his thermos with some fair trade organic dark breakfast blend coffee). Time for my breakfast. A slice of the Goetta with a fried egg on some lightly toasted whole wheat with a cup of that same coffee accented with some maple syrup and a dash of whole milk. Yum. I pulled up the shades in our office to let the morning sun shine in and decided I should blog just a smidge. I will be posting some photos a little later today, but I still don't have photo software on our main computer and mine is up in the cold cold attic.
And now the recipes.
Homemade bean soup
I started with pork bone broth (used the bones we had frozen from the pig from our wedding reception). Just simmered those bones in some water forever it seems until they were soft and all the remaining meat and cartiledge fell right off. I used dry beans for soup for the first time. Combining Northern White Beans, Pinto Beans and small Red Beans in a pot, washing them, soaking them, rinsing them, partially cooking them and rinsing again before they were ready for the soup.
Cut up some leftover ham, an onion, celery, carrots, 2 cloves of garlic, and some cabbage and sauted it ever so slightly in butter with some sage. Put about 1/2 cup of dry barley into the broth and set it to simmer for about 15 min before adding in the beans and the other goodies. Let the whole thing sit on low and simmer and hour or two. We had some for dinner last night with some crackers and it was super filling. Has to be all those beans.
Apple Crisp
Peeled and sliced 4 huge Cortland apples from Victoria Valley Orchard (bought for us by Matt's Grandma from the cutest little local orchard you would never know was there). Put them in a 9x13 pan with about 1/4 cup sugar (I used raw sugar), a whole bunch of cinnamon, a dash of nutmeg, a dash of cloves, and a dash of ginger. Mixed up the apples to spread out the spices.
In another bowl, mixed up 3/4 cup whole wheat flour, 2 cups oats, and about a cup of milk. (I also added about 2 tbsp butter this time around, but last time I made it without cause I didn't have any and it was still delicious). Stir this mixture up well until it's kinda crumbly. Spread it evenly on top of the apples. Bake until the topping is crispy and the apples are soft and they appear to be syrupy.
I have been eating this warmed and topped with yogurt.
Goetta Sausage
Ok, so this might make some of you go ew, but this sausage is made from leftover meat and oatmeal. It's kinda sloppy, but delicious. We had quite a bit of pork still left frozen from our wedding reception and didn'tknow what to do with it, so when we found this German delight on the internet, we thought it was worth a try.
I ground 2 lbs of leftover roast pork with an onion. Then I mixed in 2 1/2 cups of oatmeal and 8 cups of water. I also added a pinch of cayenne pepper. You take this whole sloppy mix, bring it to a boil and then simmer for a couple hours, stirring occassionally. It does get stuck to the bottom of the pan pretty badly otherwise.
Once it starts to look like it's thickening up some, put it into greased loaf pans and put it into the fridge to cool and set up. It's supposed to thicken up so you can slice it and fry it in a pan, but ours had a little more fat than we planned on, so it was a bit gloppy. I thought maybe baking the loaf or adding more oatmeal per pound of meat next time might be a good idea. But we still have sliced it up a bit, then squished the slices in the cast iron skillet to fry it up for breakfast. Currently this is what Matt is having as a favorite breakfast. If you make this, try not to judge it before you taste it.Labels: daily life, food, wedding, winter |
posted by Jen @ 8:45 AM   |
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| Friday, November 07, 2008 |
| no longer a city girl |
| As much as I have loved the city and living so near to everything, the time came for us to move on and move out. We're in the 'burbs, but it doesn't remind me of what I remember the 'burbs to be. We're still rather close to things. Closer to work by a couple miles which makes biking there even easier. All our necessary things are within five miles, all reachable by human power. We have our own yard in which to play with the dog or plant a garden. We don't have to worry about being a little too loud at night if we get excited about something we see on tv or something we are discussing. It's a little sense of freedom, even if we still don't own anything. And I feel like from here it is just a hop, skip and jump into the "country" which is where we'd both ultimately like to end up. This urban hippie girl will someday just be a happy hippie. Labels: daily life, events, family |
| posted by Jen @ 10:13 PM |
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