Quinoa Swish Chard Skillet Recipe

I went out to my garden box yesterday and realized that my swish thought it was going to bolt. I cut of each of the stalks real low. Hopefully they will grow back. Then I was left with what to do with the chard. It was not enough to actually both with blanching and putting up so I set to thinking up a recipe that was good and skiffbaby would eat.

I headed for the pantry, I knew there was Quinoa in there and that sounded good also.

I made the Quinoa according to the directions except I increased the amount x2. So instead of using a half cup of uncooked quinoa I used a full cup and 2 cups water.

While that was cooking, I put the cut up chard in a smaller skillet with a touch of olive oil, about a 1/2 cup of white wine, 1 Tbs of sesame oil, 3 Tbs of Bragg's liquid amino's, and 1 Tbs of chicken bouillon.

Then I covered the smaller skillet and let that wilt. Once it was done I I moved the quinoa out of the large skillet and added about 1 Tbs of butter,  1 Tbs of olive oils, 3 more Tbs of chicken bouillon and a 1/2 cup milk to the pan. Then I moved the chard mixture into skillet with all its cooking juices and added the quinoa back in. I cooked these together just long enough to the milk to cook into the quinoa and not have any standing in the pan.

The final picture does not really look that great but I promise you it is SO good.

NOTE: All of these measurements are approximate. I am really bad about measuring things when I cook so feel free to adjust to what you think is needed.

BW says I cook by feel and there are no hard and fast rules. It drives him crazy when I am trying to tell him how to duplicate a recipe.

Homestead Blog Hop #70

Drying Rhubarb

I am on a drying kick so after last weeks post on Drying Kale I decided to try drying rhubarb. I have read in different places that it should rehydrate fine and we can use it to make pies or sauces.

This was taken after I had harvested my rhubarb for drying. I was going to try to take a picture before hand but it ended up being an emergency harvest because my CHICKENS were eating the leaves down to NOTHING. Sorry I was very annoyed. Anyway I went ahead and harvested it then rigged a temporary cover for some of seine web and a couple spruce poles. I am sure when BW gets home he will laugh at it but it was what I had on hand. Then I cleaned each stalk and cut into pieces.

Then I laid the pieces out on my Excalibur dehydrator racks

Then I turn the dehydrator on to 135 degrees or the fruits and leathers setting and let is start drying.

It is a REALLY long time. It took 2 days to get it nice and dry. Granted the weather here unlike much of the rest of the US has been very wet and cold. but when it came out it looked great.

I will do a post on when I actually end up making with this.

So what is your favorite rhubarb recipe?

Homestead Barn Hop #70

Frugal "I Did it!" Tuesday #1

Salad Anyone?

I wish there was some way of preserving the goodness of salad. I always end of with way to much for just me to eat because I plant thinking the BW will be here to help me eat it then he is always gone working. Skiffbaby is still a little young to be able to eat salad. Not enough teeth yet

So what do you do when you have an over abundance of salad greens that you can't preserve?

Drying Kale

I love the nutritional benefits of kale the the actual act of eating it for me leaves a little something to be desired. I blanched and froze a bunch of it last year and while we did eat it this winter I always wrinkled my nose a little when we would have it. I am not sure if it was to mature but it is always way to fibrous for me to truly enjoy. This year I thought, "there has to be a better way!"

I got to talking to one of the farmers at our farmers market and she said to try drying it and putting it is soups and stews. Ok, here goes nothing.

First I harvested the larger outer leaves of the kale, saving the smaller inner leaves for a later harvest.
Then I brought them in and rinsed them (ok, actually I didn't rinse them but YOU should. We had just had a good rain and they were clean anyway)

Then I started to de-rib them and put the leafy part in my steamer. You need to blanch them before you dry them the same as you would if you were going to freeze them.

Once my steam baskets were full I steam blanched the kale for about 3-4 mins

I love my bamboo steamer, It works great for these types of things. Once the 3-4 mins was over I laid the steamed kale leaves on the trays of my dehydrator.

I have an Excalibur dehydrator so it really does not take long to dehydrating things. I only let it run for like 4-5 hours and it was dry as a bone.

There you have it, a "how to" on drying kale. I will do an update post when I actually make something with it.

So tell me, have you ever dried kale? Or what is your favorite kale recipe?

Homestead Barn Hope #69

Home is where the heart is #1

Fresh Milk and Butter Making

We did it, we took the the plunge. We bought a share in a cow. What does that really mean you say? Well it means we own a little bit of a cow so that we can have fresh raw milk. We have been talking the idea around for sometime. Me longer than BW. BW has in the last year developed a disturbing intolerance to milk. Anything with much milk in it send him straight to the outhouse, and for someone who LOVES milk this is a very disheartening turn of events. I was listening to a podcast last fall about raw milk and one of the things they said was that a lot of people who have issues digesting milk have no problems with raw milk. Well when we were giving the opportunity to try this we jumped on it. Low and behold he has no problems digesting this stuff.

Now he is all excited about the possibilities. So last night he got to thinking... Can we make our own butter out of this. Well I said, give it a whirl. So he sucked the cream off the top of the jar with a turkey baster and put it in a smaller jar and shook it. And shook it, and shook it. After about 15 Min's we opened the jar and this is what there was

So we pulled the lump of butter out of the jar

And proceeded to make toast and have butter and toast at midnight because we couldn't wait to test it out. Now BW wants to know if we can get just cream also to start make our own butter all the time.

Barn Hop #66