Let's Talk Feast Foods...

Do you have must make recipes for holidays?  Foods that if they weren't part of your gathering it just would not be the same?  Foods you just have to make, whether anyone else eats them or not?  Do you potluck your holiday feasts or does one person do the majority of the food prep?  I adore hearing all about other folks holiday traditions when it comes to food.  Just yesterday I learned of two different families traditions that include Friday Pie-Day and a communal scavenger hunt.  I love these ideas and am gleefully working on figuring out how to work these in to our traditions in the future.  I mean Friday Pie-Day???  Seriously, this needs to become a phenomenon!  The woman I heard about this from told me she makes six pies of all sorts for Thanksgiving with the explicit intention of enough leftovers for many days of pie-for-breakfast for her and her kiddos to enjoy as well as a few extra pies for Friday Pie-Day.  They use the turkey leftovers to make turkey pot pie and have friends over for game night with loads of pie, sign me up.

For me I love to make fresh cranberry sauce, this year I found a game changing recipe that I do believe will become the keeper from here on out, it is like a cranberry sauce meets marmalade meets cocktail.  The red wine gives such a depth of flavor and cuts the tart of the berry just right.  We held some back from what we took over to my in-laws house just to be sure we had enough for home leftovers.  I also am often put on veg side dish duty for our family gatherings as I love coming up with tasty ways of sharing vegetables with others.  This year there were specific requests for waldorf salad and layered pea salad.  Leading up to Thanksgiving my youngest and I made candied yams to take to a friends-giving event at her school.  I discovered that when one reheats candied yams the marshmallows pretty much melt away, so we turned the leftover sweet yams into a new favorite meal by adding them to some big delicious sautéed brussel sprouts and chopped bacon for an amazing day-before-thankgsiving-eat-lots-of-veggies dinner here at home. My husband and I even enjoyed this for breakfast the day after with some leftover wild rice and a friend egg on top while our girls where off taking in all the Black Friday fun.  I am still thinking of that delish combo and hoping to recreate it soon and often.  This year I also experimented on a whim with a wild rice and sun choke dish that I really loved.  This started with sautéed leeks and sun chokes then added wild rice, pine nuts and dried cherries.  No recipe to share, but I do hope you will try combining these ingredients on your own,  the nutty flavor of the chokes and the rice made me very happy next to the turkey.  We even used leftover rice in soup the following day, repurposing leftovers makes me ridiculously happy.

I would love to hear about your favorite holiday foods to make and share as well as your family traditions, so please share them in the comments below, let's have a virtual feast together.

Goat Love...

So, after milking goats at a neighbor's house for 7 years now, I finally warmed my family up to the idea that we could raise our own goats too.  We have officially taken the leap from casual gardeners and chicken raisers to dipping our toes into the world of urban homesteading.  We now have two beautiful Lamancha doelings, Maizy-Ann and Tula who totally have us smitten.  I am finding all sorts of reasons to stay close to home these days, as I could sit and visit with them all day long.  Looking out the kitchen windows to the chickens and goats grazing about the awesome pen my husband spent the better part of the summer building, brings a ridiculous amount of joy to my heart.  A side benefit that I wasn't fully prepared for has been the way they have brought so many friends, neighbors and even strangers into our yard, everyone loves a good visit with these girls and they are beyond happy for the raisins and treats being shared.  We are loving all the visits as well, it is so much fun when a neighbor stops by with a bouquet of bay leaf branches for our kitchen and a pocket full of saltine crackers for these sweet girls, or when we get a last minute call from a friend in the south end asking if now is an ok time for a meet and greet, and all those that I have heard love to stop in when we are off at work and share smiles and raisins with these two.  Thank you all for sharing in this new journey with us!  I am dreaming of yogurt, ice cream, cheese making, and learning the ins and outs of making our own soaps once these girls are old enough to breed and become milk producers, but until then I am happy to settle for sharing the last of our garden's kale and chard in exchange for the affections of these little ladies.

Where have I been???

Oh my, how many post ideas have I started and abandon over the last many months?  Truth be told, more than I care to admit, but here we are deep in the days of mid fall in the Pacific Northwest.  I do love so much about this time of year, the cool and crisp air, the deep appreciation for every ounce of blue sky and sunshine that shows up, all things orange like squash and satsumas, vibrant and crisp leaves piling up along the walkways of my morning walks, and particularly the feeling of wanting to settle in for the impending winter.  Now that I am rooted in working life as well, my days off are something I am learning to really treasure and put to good use.  So today, after a quick trip to the dog park I am home and in the kitchen prepping several things that have been piling up for a bit now.  I had some extra milking shifts recently so there was a bit of a milk stockpile which I am turning into ricotta for an upcoming lasagna dinner, a bag of tomatoes from my in-laws garden which are being oven dried for soups and sauces in coming weeks, sprouts in various stages waiting for some love and the not so glamorous but oh so needed cleaning out of the fridge.  There were just a few too many last little bits of leftovers that have sat ignored and needed to go to the chickens before they become science experiments.  I do so love sending my compost out to the ladies knowing they will be transformed into lovely eggs for us very soon.  I could spend an entire day finding ways of keeping myself busy in the kitchen; maybe baking something for friends or family, prepping for the week's lunches and dinners, making some staple item like ricotta/yogurt/granola/kombucha etc, or just chilling on the window bench with a cookbook doing a bit of meal planning.  Here is a peek into my prepping today...

To make ricotta I follow the directions from Smitten Kitchen, heating the milk slowly and adding salt and lemon juice, letting it sit, then straining.  This is my first go around making sprouts, I started with alfalfa and broccoli and just today am starting a salad mix for the next batch, the strainer lids make it so easy.  And last, I am simply leaving the cut tomatoes in a low temp oven for many hours to dry them out, I have done this in the past and it seems to work really well, once they are dry to my liking I just put them in a jar and store in the fridge.  None of this is monumental or earth shattering stuff but there is a odd joy and satisfaction I feel when putting things to use and minimizing the waste going to the landfill.  Happy Monday all, I hope your week brings you some joy and satisfaction as well!