Family-Friendly Farm Recipes II

We have tried several new recipes over the past couple of weeks and I thought I would share some the the best.  As I have said in the past, this is just how I prepared the dishes and this should not be looked at as die-hard "recipes" but merely guides to follow loosely with what you have on hand.

PLUM PRESERVES FREEZER JELLY

I got this recipe from the Ball Blue Book Guide to Home Canning, Freezing, & Dehydration.  Chesney's babysitter has a plum tree.  She told us we could have as many as we wanted because they "just run over them with the lawn mower".  The recipe is for regular preserves, but it didn't set so I tried putting a jar in the freezer and it made great freezer jelly!  I also froze some whole plums to use later in smoothies; they can be frozen whole, with the pit still in.

Combine 5 cups pitted tart plums (about 2 1/2 pounds), 4 cups sugar, and 1 cup water.  Bring slowly to a boil, stirring until sugar dissolves.  Cook rapidly almost to gelling point, about 15 minutes.  As mixture thickens, stir frequently to prevent sticking.  Remove from heat.  Skim foam if necessary.  Ladle hot preserves into hot jars, leaving 1/4 inch headspace.  Adjust two-piece caps.  Process 15 minutes in a boiling-water canner.  Yield: about 5 half-pints.

RABBIT POT PIE

No one else in the family is keen on left-overs, so I have to find ways to disguise them as new foods.  This pot pie used leftover rabbit we had from the crockpot earlier in the week and was a HUGE hit.  I adapted the recipes from chicken pot pie recipes on AllRecipes.com, changing them to fit our likes/dislikes and the ingredients we had available.

Crust:  Mix 2 cups whole wheat all-purpose flour, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 stick butter, and 1/3 cup spreadable butter (we ran out of stick butter) with a pastry blender (or use a fork, I don't personally own a pastry blender) until butter is in pea-size pieces.  Add 6 tablespoons cold water and stir until dough forms a ball.  Divide the ball in half.  Lightly flour a flat surface and a rolling pin.  Roll out one half of the dough to fit a standard pie pan.  Place in the pan, make holes in the bottom with a fork, and bake 5 minutes.  Meanwhile, roll out the second half of the dough then set aside.

Filling: Mix approximately 2 1/2 cups shredded rabbit, 10 sliced baby carrots, 1 cup frozen peas, and 1 cup frozen corn in a saucepan.  Just cover with water and boil 15 minutes.  Drain and set aside.  In a sauce pan (or I used a large frying pan), make a roux with 1/3 cup butter and 1/3 cup whole grain all-purpose flour.  Add 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/4 teaspoon pepper, 1/2 teaspoon garlic salt, 1 3/4 cups water, and 2/3 cup milk.  Simmer until thick.  Pour rabbit/vegetable mixture into bottom pie crust.  Pour thickened sauce over the rabbit/vegetable mixture.  Top with second half of rolled pie crust, making sure to seal edges.  Poke several slits into the top.  Cook approximately 30 minutes.  Allow to cool slightly before eating.

CHICKEN AND NOODLES

This is another recipe using leftovers, this time from the white meat leftover from our first taste of free-range chicken.  It was also adapted from recipes on AllRecipes.com. 

Boil chicken bones in 48oz water to create a chicken broth.  (I boiled them while I prepared the noodles, so I wasn't timing the boiling.)  Make noodles by mixing 1 egg for every 1/2 cup flour (we had two friends over, so I used 3 1/2 cups flour and 7 eggs,) 1/2 teaspoon salt, and enough water to make the mixture moist (I used approximately 6 tablespoons for 3 1/2 cups).  Lightly flour a flat surface and a rolling pin and roll out the dough till about 1/2 inch thick.  Cut into noodles using a floured butter knife.  Add approximately 2 cups shredded chicken and salt and pepper to taste to the boiling water.  Add the noodles one at a time (so they do not stick together) and cook 30 minutes.  Can be eaten alone or on top of mashed potatoes.

JOWL AND SPLIT PEAS

None of us had ever eaten pork jowl before, but we were delighted by how good it was with split peas.

Boil 1 pound split peas, 1 pound chopped pork jowl, 7 cups water, and salt, pepper, and garlic salt to taste for 45-60 minutes, until peas are softened (or "mushy" as I call it).  If you have extra liquid towards the end of cooking, remove it and reserve for an additional recipe.  We like split peas with corn bread or corn muffins (which I currently just make from a box).  

  

SPLIT PEA LIQUID RESERVE SOUP

I made this for lunch one day a couple of days after the split pea soup.  It was perfect for a quick meal for one, just add your favorite vegetables.  With a little more time, it would be good made on the stove with potato as one of the ingredients.
Fill a bowl slightly over halfway with liquid reserved from Jowl and Split Peas.  Add 3 sliced baby carrots and a handful of frozen corn.  Microwave till completely warmed through.


JOWL, SPINACH, AND GOAT CHEESE OMELET

I made this as a late lunch one day, around 2pm.  I do not drink a lot of coffee, but the strong tastes all blending together in this omelet had me craving a good dark French Roast so I made a cup...and it was wonderful.  Who needs sleep?

Fry 2 slices pork jowl in a medium-sized frying pan, leaving the melted fat in the pan after frying.  Cut jowl into small pieces and set aside.  Wilt a handful of fresh spinach in the jowl fat; remove and set aside.  Slightly beat 3 eggs and a splash of milk.  Cook in a frying pan.  When eggs are firm, put cut jowl, wilted spinach, and a handful of goat cheese on one side of the egg, flip the other side on top of fillings to create the omelet.  Allow to cook a few minutes longer to heat through.     

Butchering Day: A Step-by-Step First Experience

We butchered our first six chickens (and 12 more rabbits) Saturday.  We had been putting off butchering the chickens till we had a plucker, but we got tired of buying meat (and we finally have a freezer) so Matt rigged up a hand-held plucker and we were in business.  First, Isaac and I rounded up the roosters about to meat (make that, meet) their fate.

Meanwhile, Matt got his butchering gear together.

We started with the chickens.  First, Matt cut their heads off.  I wanted to see one run around with it's head cut off.  My grandma used to tell me they had a chicken run off into the bushes and get lost when she was a kid but I have also read "running around like a chicken with it's head cut off" is a myth and they don't really do it.  I wanted to find out for sure.  Maybe next time.  They did flap their wings a lot and twitch for a few minutes after being decapitated.  Matt tied rope shackles that he had made to their feet and hung them in a tree to bleed out.

While we were waiting, we started pulling feathers from their legs, just to see how hard they were to get out.  We were quite surprised by the Lavendar Orpingtons, they pulled out super-easy!  Like, um, pulling velcro apart.  (It really was that easy.)  The Non-Industrial Red roosters' feathers were a bit harder, but still not has hard as we'd expected.  (My only feather-plucking experience to date was with ducks...which was next to impossible.  Note: skin ducks!!!  You'll thank me later.)  It was a little weird to be pulling feathers off a still warm chicken I had just seen alive a few minutes before...I don't know that's something you get used to right away.  (Nor the smell.  There was a horrible, lingering smell of something.  Probably death.  Two days...and a lot of cleaning...later the smell is still slightly detectable in the butchering area.)

Once the chickens were well-bled and we had the feathers off the legs (and most of the chicken except the wings for the Orpingtons), we took them inside to scald them.  We completely dipped them 10 times (I don't know why, but I tried different numbers of dips and 10 seemed to be magical) in water right around 150 degrees.  

Then we took the chickens outside and pulled the rest of the feathers off.  Actually, on the first one we tried Matt's hand-held plucker, but I found it just as fast and easy to hand-pull.  (If we'd known plucking were that easy we'd have started butchering months ago!)  Soon we had a product that looked more like the chicken I know and love.

We let the chickens soak in ice water for about 30 minutes, then we bagged them in freezer bags, wrote the contents and date, and stuck them in the new-to-us freezer.  The 12 rabbits were next.  (Sorry, but I can only write so much in one blog entry...details on rabbit butchering to come in the future.)  Even though it was enough meat to last 3-4 weeks, it barely made a dent in the chest freezer.

***And here's the rest of the story.  We ate our first homegrown, free-range chicken tonight.  I cooked the dark meat in butter and Lowry's (our go-to recipe for all meats).  The white meat I just put in a baking dish; no one in our family likes white meat, but I figured I would use it for spaghetti or chicken salad or some other leftover type of dish.  Well, let me just forewarn: free-range dark meat is DARK.  And a bit leather-ly.  (Ok, so we had to cut it with steak knives and Matt likened it to shoe leather.)  The meat in the picture is really that color, it is not because of the lighting.

Matt tried the white meat to see if it was any better.  The white meat was tender and juicy and tasted like a cross between store-purchased white and dark meats.  Lesson learned?  (1) Butcher chickens younger (these were just under a year old) (2) Don't bother with a chicken plucker and (3) White meat in a free range chicken is delicious!