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Food

Water kefir farming

I appreciate today’s short attention span theater, I have a lot to say about kefir. If you want the short version, scroll down, you’ll see it. ?

We have known for many generations about the health benefits of consuming probiotics. Fortunately there are many ways to get those good bacteria into our body. Our ancestors used to make their own probiotic rich foods. Things like yogurt, sauerkraut, kimchi (one of my favorites!), miso (another favorite), pickled foods (salt brined as apposed to vinegar preserved), sourdough starters, the list goes on and on. These were often used as a way to preserve foods before refrigeration was common. Foods would only last so long in their fresh state, we needed to introduce friendly bacteria that would prevent any unfriendly (to us) bacteria from colonizing the food. A beneficial side effect of these friendly bacteria, besides preserving the food, is they are often very good for our gut microbiome.

This is something I absolutely believe we need to get back to doing, being more self sufficient, being able to grow and preserve our own food, being able to propagate our own health products/produce, not only for our own personal use, but something that can be shared with family, friends, neighbors… as well as a potential source of income, trade or barter.

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And the pressure is on

Pressure cookers that is, yesterday while surfing the internet, I ran across an article on Mother Earth News about cooking with pressure cookers. It reminded me of how much I love mine, I have a 6 quart stainless steel Presto pressure cooker. Some of my favorite meals to cook in it are pinto beans, potatoes (baked potatoes), chicken soup, other soups, stews, rice, veggies… lots of different foods.

One of the benefits of using a pressure cooker, is it takes so much less time and fuel to cook with, the fuel factor is big with me since we have limited fuel (propane), I just can’t afford to let something simmer on the stovetop all day. Foods cook faster, retain more nutrients and just flat out taste better.

Some folks are afraid of pressure cookers, who hasn’t heard the horror stories of someone’s grandmother (or aunt, or neighbor, you fill in the blank) who was cooking in a pressure cooker and it exploded, beans all over the ceiling? Well I’m here to tell you the pressure cookers you buy today have many safety features built in, you’d have to try pretty hard to get one to actually blow on you. I had a “worst case scenario” happen to me when using a friend’s older aluminum pressure cooker. I was cooking chicken and didn’t put in enough water, it wouldn’t come up to pressure, then it made a loud BANG! Sounded like someone shot a gun off in the kitchen, I went over to it, the seal had blown out. No big deal, the pressure was relieved, so I opened it, reseated the seal, added more water, put the lid back on and continued cooking, lesson learned, make sure you add sufficient liquid for the time you will be cooking.

The other things you can do is make sure the vent hold is clear-not clogged, make sure the rubber parts are in good shape and properly placed, make sure you add enough liquid, don’t overload your pot, just use common sense and you will be perfectly safe using a pressure cooker.

One dish I love making in my pressure cooker is chicken soup, here is my (more or less) recipe…

2-4 raw chicken breasts
enough water to come up at least an inch or two in the pan
2-4 carrots, chopped
2-4 celery stalks, chopped
1 onion, chopped
seasoning

I put the chicken in the pot, add enough water to bring it up at least one or two inches, I bring it up to pressure then time it for about 15 minutes. I let the pressure off, remove the chicken, shred it and place it back into the pot, then I add the veggies, you add what you like, I put in enough water to bring it to the top of the veggies, replace the lid, bring it back to pressure …

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Community

Grilling in the sky castle

01

I love cooking, nearly anything, but until very recently I have kept my cooking adventures within the walls of the sky castle, a few weeks ago I got bit by the BBQ/grill bug. It all started out innocently enough, we had a small, very small table top charcoal grill, it wasn’t really large enough, but it was a good start. Next we dusted off the tall smoker that could be used as a grill by moving the charcoal pan up to the top, it wasn’t much better than the smaller grill, but by then I knew I really wanted to have a more permanent setup so PB went to work building a grill for me.

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Community

Eggs Benedict on a mountain

Eggs_benedict

I read just the other day about some study “they” did that says people who take pictures of their food and post the pictures on social media MAY have a mental problem… well I am about to prove that I MAY have this problem, dinner tonight was special, something I haven’t made since we moved off-grid over 5 years ago now. Eggs Benedict. I used to make this at least once a month. I wondered if the altitude might be a problem, it sometimes works against me, and sometimes a dish does not work out at all.

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Community

Baking without Eggs

Since I live so far from town, it’s a 40+ mile round trip to go to the nearest town that only has one grocery store, it’s 80+ miles round trip to go to the next closest town that has 2 grocery stores, and we don’t have our own chickens, yet! I sometimes find that I am short an egg or two when I want to make something that requires eggs. It’s just not worth it to drive to town just to pick up a carton of eggs. I ran across this article with lots of good info about how to substitute other things for eggs, and the good thing is these are things you probably already have in your pantry. :)

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How to save money on food

Saving money, everyone talks about it, everyone wants to do it, but it’s hard to do. With most of us on tight budgets, it’s more important than ever to save every penny you can.

The main reason saving money seems hard to do is it usually means having to give up something that you would normally want to buy or do. My hubby and I live off-grid, we budget ourselves tightly, that includes food, but we still eat very well, the trick is to find ways of saving that doesn’t hurt so much. Here are some of the ways I save money. Let’s focus on food, something we all have to have to survive.

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Community

Cooking freeze dried style

Lots of things are going on today, the one getting the most news coverage is the president of the US being sworn in today, I read recently that the inauguration ball was going to be scaled down in respect of the bad economy and unemployment numbers being high, then today I read that it’s going to cost over 300 million… THAT’S CUTTING BACK? So, in light of this, today I’ll write about something really important, cooking and eating! A few weeks ago, we were snowed in, fortunately we had enough provisions to get us through.

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Cooking under pressure

I often forget how good a pot of pintos can be. This last Sunday, I had to come up with a dish to take to church for our first Sunday after church dinner. I knew the main dish would be enchiladas, so I decided to make a pot of pinto beans. My recipe is simple, it’s dried pinto beans, picked, rinsed and soaked overnight.

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No knead bread

I love making and baking bread, who doesn’t enjoy eating fresh, homemade bread hot from the oven? The problem is the time it takes to make, the mixing, the kneading, the rising, the kneading again, the shaping, the rising again… it just takes too much time and attention.

 

About a year ago, I started seeing books and recipes for no-knead breads, it looks almost too good to be true, this method makes what is often referred to as “artisan breads”, the kind that cost a small fortune in the specialty bakeries, who knew how easy these breads were to make?

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Community

Homemade Pasta – Yes You Can!

Homemade pasta, it’s easy, it’s cheap, it’s tasty, did I mention it’s cheap? I had found several recipes on line for homemade egg noodles, I had a pasta roller that I had purchased many years ago, I had the ingredients I needed, so why not give it a try?

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Community

Baking A Loaf Of Bread pt 2

Hey, were you curious about how that loaf of bread turned out? If you have been following my messages and read the comments then you already know, if you haven’t followed this thread, then you will have to keep reading to find out. ;)

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