Resolutions on the Food Front - An Update

farmhouse chive cheddar cheese, made by Travis

Last month I mentioned that we're really changing the way we do food.  Switching over to local organic whenever we can and first and foremost growing and doing what we can ourselves.  So far we've done pretty good but there's always more to do.

Here's what we've done lately.

These lovely Rose Hips are currently fermenting into some (hopefully) delicious wine.  We did a little taste test a few nights ago and I was pleasantly surprised at how good it was.  I'm sometimes a little bit sceptical of Travis' experiments but ninety nine percent of the time His stuff turns out amazingly.

rose hip wine

no that's not olive oil, just proof you don't need a lot of fancy equipment to make wine, that's more rose hip wine in there.

the wine rack Travis built, as of now there are more empties than full bottles but once all those carboys get bottled up we should be good for a while :)

Our freezer is now totally full. I had planned to buy a few chickens from a local free-range farm but I just don't have space for them right now.  We still have a decent amount of beans, zucchini, and carrots from our garden last year, they should last us until harvest time again.  We've also got some venison in there and a few kg's of flour from Highwood Crossing.  Travis made some sausage a while bag so we've got that as well.  In all honesty we could probably eat out of freezer alone quite comfortably for a while.

We've ordered a bunch of seeds in for this Springs garden.  We've planted some carrots already in one of our cold frames so I'm curious to see when those will start coming up.  I'm actually really excited for this years garden, we're trying lots of new things so it will be fun to see what does well and what doesn't.

So there you go, that's where we are at so far!

Maple Blueberry Muffins

I've been working on cutting out white sugar from all my baking and one of the big things I've been replacing it with is maple syrup.  Don't get me wrong, it's much more expensive than white sugar but it's also much better for you.

I made these muffins this morning and they turned out so good.  I used 3/4 cup of maple syrup which ended up being a bit sweet for me so next time I'll only use 1/2 cup.

Maple Blueberry Muffins

1/2 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup maple syrup

1/2 tsp salt

2 eggs

3/4 cup buttermilk (or sour milk)

1 cup all purpose flour

1 cup stone ground whole wheat flour*

1/2 cup quick oats

2 tsp baking powder

1 cup wild blueberries

*you could use regular whole wheat flour of course, but the stone ground really gives a good texture.  I get mine from Highwood Crossing

Beat together the butter and maple syrup and add in the eggs and salt. 

Mix together flours, oats, and baking powder.  Add to the wet ingredients alternately with the buttermilk until it is all combined.  Fold in the blueberries.  If you don't want your blueberries to "bleed" into your batter turning it purple, then mix them in with a bit of the flour mixture first.

Scoop your batter into muffin tins and bake at 375 degrees for approximately 20 mins, or until golden brown.

**to make sour milk add 1 tbsp of vinegar to your 1/2 cup milk and let stand for about 10 mins.  I recently started making butter so I find myself with buttermilk all the time but I really can't tell the difference in baking between sour and buttermilk.

This Winter's February

Not much snow, lots of sun, and lots of time spent outside.  I'm not complaining.

Painted Leather Bracelets

Last night, while the guys watched Football, my sister and I decided to get our creativity on and paint some leather bracelets.  We got the idea from A Beautiful Mess (which is an amazing blog btw) and after scanning her DIY instructions we painted away.

 It was super fun and considering I'm not even the list bit artistic I'm pretty happy with the results.  I still have to put snaps on mine but I plan to do that today.

We used acrylic paint which seemed to work well, so far I don't have any cracking anywhere but I have a feeling it might a bit eventually.  I'm guessing you can probably use some kind of paint sealant over top but we were going for a "use what we've got" kind of project.

My sister cut thin strips of leather and sort of stitched them together to make one big long wrap around bracelet which looked pretty cool.

She also braided one and you can wear it suede side up (like above) or the shinier leather side up.  Either way it looks awesome.

What did you do for the Superbowl?  Or should I ask, what did you eat?