Think it’s not possible?  I mean, Foie Gras.  Come on.  It’s the most inhumane foodstuff available, right? Well, it can be. Most times it is.

Take the time to watch this video and you’ll get your dose of sustainable agriculture inspiration, that’s for sure.

Almost makes me want to get some geese.

This month, I’ve chosen Chili for the pork recipe.  Reason?  I was inspired by the beans!  I’ve been shelling dry beans for next year’s seed and fresh beans for eating this week and wanted to share some of my beany-ness with you.

This is more of a concept than an actually recipe.  For those of you who have a favourite Chili recipe already, you could simply experiment with some of the following ideas:

Add Pork

• Cut your favourite (or least favourite, as it will take on the chili flavour) cut of pork into one inch cubes.
• Season with salt and pepper before browning in hot oil in small batches.  Add to chili before simmering.
• Also, cook bacon till crisp and crumble into chili.  How much bacon, you ask?  It’s up to you.  How much do you like bacon?
• Use the left over  oil to saute your onions, peppers, garlic or other veggie additions.

  

Make Kickin’ Chili

The next suggestion sounded a little odd to me the first time I read it, but then I remembered experimenting with dark chocolate in my chili once upon a time.  Suddenly, coffee doesn’t sound so strange.

• If you’re using your own chili recipe, simply replace some of the liquid with good quality coffee.  Substitute about 1/8 cup of coffee per serving of chili.
• If you like the sound of caffeine in your food , but don’t have a favourite chili recipe click on the picture above for a somewhat complex version from Epicurious.com.

Beef and Broccoli Stir Fry

This is one of my favourite, easy stir fry recipes.  With luck, there will still be some local broccoli around to use in it!

Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 1/4 cup dry Sherry
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 1 tablespoon (packed) chopped garlic
• 2 teaspoons grated orange peel
• 1 pound flank steak, cut diagonally across grain into thin strips
• 1 large head broccoli, cut into florets
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 tablespoon cornstarch
• Cooked rice of your choice

Preparation:

Whisk first 5 ingredients in large bowl. Add meat; toss to coat. Cover and refrigerate at least 1 hour and up to 4 hours.

Blanch broccoli in large pot of boiling salted water 2 minutes. Drain. Rinse under cold water; drain well.

Heat oil in heavy large wok or skillet over high heat. Drain meat well, reserving marinade. Add cornstarch to reserved marinade and mix until smooth; set aside. Add meat to wok and stir-fry until almost cooked through, about 2 minutes. Add broccoli and stir-fry until crisp-tender, about 2 minutes. Add reserved marinade mixture and boil until sauce thickens and coats meat and broccoli, stirring constantly, about 2 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve over rice.

Serves 4.

I say this is a basic recipe because it doesn’t contain any strange ingredients.  However, I’m interested in hearing from anyone who has a similar recipe that can be done without the 1 to 4 hour wait on the beef.

As usual, I love to hear about your kitchen adventures whether you’re using these recipe ideas or not!

For some comedic relief to start and to show that I don’t only read about farms, check out this great daily comic.  Today’s strip is about ear wax.  How does that entice ya? 

Here’s meat – or rather the veggies – of my reading, though.  And oh!  The inspiration to be had in the gardening department!

Click here for Winter Planting Plans on the Observer Organic Allotment Blog

• Check out the beautiful produce pictures at one of my favourite blogs, Throwback at Trapper Creek.
• If you’re interested in extended season gardening specifically, click on the winter garden plan picture to read about this piece of useful art.

• For those of you who get a little overwhelmed with the task of gardening to sustain a family,  (we’re just starting to attempt to grow enough to avoid the grocery store), I found this great resource.  It’s a gardening calendar specifically for hardiness zone 5b but I’ve got to think there are more helpful bloggers out there in other zones.  (Potential future post: compilation of gardening calendars?)

On the livestock front, I had the pleasure of reading about a shockingly smooth pig loading session at Tylerfarm Homestead’s blog.  Yes, it is that time of year.  The cold weather meat producing animals have reached full size.  The freezer will be full soon.

Our pigs are not yet ready for the freezer as they are on the slow, mainly grass-fed plan. Here John is enticing them back to the barn after a successful attempt to escape. Our three year old sounded the alarm while I was cooking lunch: "Mom! The pigs are on the road!"

My pig loading experience stems from long ago and was not that smooth.  When my sister and I were small, our family lived on a small farm near on Blue Mountain.  My mother has been known to tell the story of one loading day when a somewhat coarse talking neighbour came over to help out.  I would have been 3 or 4 years old with my sister a couple of years older.

I guess my sister, Gena, and I sat on the edge of the log enclosure the pigs lived in and observed the proceedings.  Later in the day, the weather had turned and we went in to play in our living room while mom worked down the hall in the kitchen.

As she tells it, her ‘mom-sense’ went off and she started listening more closely to us playing.  Finally, certain that she was hearing our attempts at some of the worst language you can think of, she came in to ask us what we were doing.  My sister, always bold and sure of her right to do as she pleased piped up:

“We’re playing ‘load the pigs’, Mom!”

Neighbours.  You take the good with the bad.

On the topic of pigs, click on this lovely Large Black to visit the site of a great little farm that I have recently

Click on the photo to check out Upper Canada Heritage Meat.

discovered not too far from us.  I have yet to approach them about it but I’m dreaming of some of these beauties for our farm next year.

For anyone yearning to hold onto summer just a bit longer, here is the one and only flower on our new hydrangea bush from this year.  It took all summer to brew.

I took this picture two days ago and it is still sitting there, though slightly less fresh.

On a final note of what has been, for me, a leisurely, random post, our co-op student, Kenley, was here on Saturday for what was her last full day.  We did some puttering around in the garden, shelling dry beans, taking down the pea trellis, bundling the last of the herbs for drying and generally enjoying the beautiful day. 

We have enjoyed having her here and are thrilled that our local highschool has seen fit to run an agricultural co-op program that actually give the students the chance to learn from experience.  What a novel concept!

Kenley’s last few hours will be spent next Saturday, preparing our meat CSA packages for delivery.  After that, we’ll be back on our own and richer for having had her with us.

Now, I can cross ‘Sanity saving’ off my to-do list and move on to the marketing. Happily, that is a task that I enjoy, not only because I know that a small farm like ours would never fly if someone didn’t SELL IT!

Hello!

My name is Kenley, and I am doing my co-operative education portion of Prince Edward Collegiate Institute’s new program County Roots at J&C Nyman Farms. In the County Roots program, we learn about three very important sectors of business in Prince Edward County, these sectors being agriculture, marketing and tourism, and hospitality. Part of the agricultural portion of the program, which runs for the full school day, Monday to Friday, is selecting a local farm and going to an interview with the owner(s) to do a 3-week placement at the farm. After deciding which farms we could easily access, we went for our interviews. In my opinion, mine went fairly well and on Monday, the twenty-second of September, I started my placement with the Nyman family. So far I have really enjoyed working with the animals here on the farm, because they are all friendly. J&C Nyman Farms differs greatly from all other farms I have been to because the animals are fed very natural foods that are good for them, and they get to spend the majority of their day outside, which, as a vegetarian and animal activist, I feel is the way they should be treated. Colleen & Johnny seem to really respect the animals and what’s good for their well-being. I have a learned a lot already in my few short days here, such as how to wash eggs, and that eggs need to be stored point down, as well as many things pertaining to raising healthy and happy animals. I’m sure I will continue to learn more in the next two weeks of my placement, and now am off for another adventure on the farm.

Kenley-Ann Noll

I do realize that those who have sought us out and bought memberships to a Meat CSA are probably foodies to some degree and have plenty of great recipe resources.  I like to send them anyway, though, because it means I have an excuse to spend time searching for new ways to make delicious dinners.  And, it seems that the more I send out recipes, the more recipes get sent to me.

And what’s better than searching around the net and the cookbooks at the library and finding something good to make?  Why, having something mouthwatering arrive directly to you inbox, that’s what.  (Hmm… You know what I mean.  The recipes arrive in my inbox.  Although… Having, say, the Garlicky Roast Beef below come fully prepared via email would be pretty Awesome-Sauce.  In case you’re interested, I didn’t make up the very descriptive term Awesome-Sauce.  Here‘s where it comes from.  Funny.)

Alright.  What say we get to said recipes before I get too carried away about email delivery food and funny comics.

This beef recipe has a great rub for almost any type of meat.  Here it’s specifically for a meat platter but it makes me think of the best darn brown bag lunch around.

Garlicky Roast Beef

(as stolen from the Canadian Living website)

A 3-lb (1.5 kg) eye of round oven roast will yield the pound of beautiful slices you need for the platter, plus plenty of leftovers to enjoy on another occasion.

Servings: 36 slices

Ingredients:

9 cloves garlic, minced
1/3 cup (75 mL) minced fresh parsley
3 tbsp (50 mL) grainy mustard
1-1/2 tsp (7 mL) each salt and pepper
1 eye of round oven roast (3 lb/1.5 kg)

Preparation: