Food again

This blog is supposed to be all about the link between healthy farming and healthy food, but I seem to be concentrating more on the food a bit lately. My daughter is out again this weekend, so we are cooking again! Last night it was a very nice chicken pie. She wanted to make puff pastry, but we really didn't  have the time, so we made a Rough Puff Pastry, which was very nice, although not as flakey as puff pastry - used nearly as much butter though! The pie included cream from my cows, mushrooms from the freezer that we collected last year and some herbs from the garden. It's nice when at least some of it's home grown.

I made butter this morning. I'm now milking three cows, so have heaps of milk so it's worthwhile separating. It's lovely having so much milk available, but I just don't have the time to do enough with it. I would love to spend the Easter break making cheese but it's a bit hard on your own as there is so much stirring to do. I also have so many other jobs to catch up on while I'm not working. Boring things like book work! I also want to get into making some fermented products. I've made a pickled beetroot before, which was really good, so want to do that and also some fruit and nut kimchi. These are fermented using whey as a starter culture and are supposed to be VERY good for you. The older cultures around the world used fermentation as a way of preserving foods and most of the attempts I've made have been good. If it doesn't ferment properly you know it straight away, so there is no risk of eating something that's going to harm you.

You might think it a bit yuk, but we commonly eat a lot of fermented products - cheese, yoghurt, cultured butter, buttermilk are the obvious ones. I've been making my own yoghurt for quite some time now and find it hard to go back to store bought stuff. Anyway, my daughter has just discovered that I'm not doing my bookwork and is cracking the whip!