Bone Broth

Bone Broth is the new super food, and when you read up about it, it really is an incredible product. I've been reading Sally Fallon's "Nourishing Broth", which she co-wrote with Kaayla T. Daniel. When it's made with a mix of bones, it fits all the criteria, for health benefits. These bones  should include, cartilagious bones, which are those that are from the feet or knuckles (pig trotters, chicken feet, shanks) and marrow bones which will come from the back or shank/shin bone. I use a mixture of species when I make my bone broth, however if you are a purist, you may like to stick to one species. I just think that you get a better chance of getting all the good bits if you use different bits from different animals. To get lovely gelatinous stock, chicken feet or pigs trotters are almost essential! It really doesn't alter the flavour too much, in fact, it probably makes a tastier stock.

So is it called stock or broth? Bone broth is the trendy word, and suits me and I think it covers what I do. However, according to Sally Fallon, broth is a thicker, soupier texture and stock is the thin watery liquid. So technically what I make is stock, but I've chosen to call it bone broth.

Some of the examples given for healing using broth are:

• osteoarthritis
• rheumatoid  arthritis
• scleroderma
• psoriasis
• wound healing
• infectious disease
• digestive disorders
• cancer
• mental health
• sports and fitness
• anti-aging

That's an exhaustive list, and while there are lots of antidotal examples of healing, there hasn't really been a lot of scientific research done. But, it tastes good, I'm sure it's helped me with curing colds and I'm not really sure what other benefits I've received, but I figure that it can't hurt! I make a very simple broth. 

Bone Broth

Selection of bones - I typically use a pigs trotter or chicken feet, chicken carcass, pork back bones and beef marrow bones. If I've cooked a roast chicken the night I'm making stock, I add those picked over bones to the broth as well. I cover the bones with water, add a bay leaf or two, some peppercorns, a teaspoon of salt and a splash of apple cider vinegar. Simmer gently. A crock pot is great for small amounts of stock.

The vinegar (and any type will do) is to leach all the goodness out of the bones. I prefer not to put a lot of vegetables in as I don't think it needs it and I get a lovely clear stock out of it this way. And it sets beautifully.

I cook mine for 24 hours, allow it to cool a little and then strain and store in plastic containers in the freezer or glass containers if keeping it in the fridge to use.

I use it in soup - we have soup for lunch about every second day in cooler weather. I cook rice, mashed potatoes, congee, add it to stir fries and stews. And if I'm feeling ill, I heat it up with a clove of garlic, some ginger and half a teaspoon of turmeric and fish sauce per cup. I drink this as often as I can.

Not Lasagne

I do promise to write about Peter Andrews, and I have started.....but I don't have photos because I took them on my camera and I can't find a usb cable....so, I will get it done eventually. So tonight is about our dinner again!

My family love Lasagne, however, Maitland should be gluten free and I didn't have any lasagne sheets anyway (nor did I have the inclination to make fresh pasta)! So using the same princples I made a mince and vegie bake. I originally thought I could call it paleosange, but I eat dairy and true paleo doesn't, so that wasn't going to work.

But think Lasagne and replace the sheets with vegies. I used dry roasted pumpkin slices (cut less than 1cm thick), fried eggplant, fried green paw paw (if you don't have a pawpaw tree, sub zucchini), and some comfrey (sub spinach or silverbeet). This was layered with a bolognaise mince and cheese sauce, and finished with grated cheese on top. It was pretty tasty, but a bit fiddly with all the bits, but once it's in the oven, you can do what I did, grab a beer and sit outside around the fire for a while.

Dinner Tonight.....Chicken Tonight!

Dinner tonight was supposed to be a bit of a fancy affair, as one of our French Backpackers had French Champagne and Foie Gras and the other had French red wine and some rillette to sample. Their mums sent a care package and we were to benefit, but alas, one of the girls (Marie) has caught the dreaded lurgy from me and is not well enough. I had already planned dinner so we had that anyway, and it was pretty tasty!

Ducken - you may have heard of Turducken, which is Turkey, Duck, Chicken all boned out and rolled. Well, I didn't include the turkey......I boned out a duck and a chicken and did a lovely job (even if I do say so myself) of it and both were perfectly boned out. I chose to do the duck on the outside so we could get all the yummy fat that is just under the skin. I took the chicken meat off the skin and separated the breasts from the rest of the meat. With this meat, I minced it in Thermie, mixed in an onion and 4 cloves of garlic, 1 egg and salt, pepper and rosemary.

So we have the duck boned out and lying flat, then the chicken mince mixture and then I laid the breasts in the middle. I then collect the edge bits and "sewed" them together with kebab sticks - this is where a very large needle and baking twine would work really well. I then tied the entire roll with the twine. It cooked perfectly in about 2 hours and made the best tasting gravy I've had in a long time!

This is a terrible photo, but I forgot!!! I am not a very good food blogger - I'm more interested in eating than taking good photos.

You really can't see the layers very well in this photo, but the middle bits of the roll were perfect and fantastic! 

We need to get busy and process some more poultry, as this is a our last duck and I think we only have one more chicken in the freezer. Tomorrow night will be collecting night - we have to go out just on dark and see where all the roosters are roosting and then start collecting them.

More on Peter Andrews

We have just had another day with Peter and it's been so good. I've read his books and I've listen to him talk, but it really isn't until you are standing in the paddock and seeing what he's seeing and listen to what he's saying that you really get the full appreciation for his knowledge - his knowledge is formidable. He's very good in the actual doing stuff and we built another weir this afternoon. We now have 4 that still need a little work on and we hope to just continue building. I will write more about the weirs later. Today I was going to explain a little bit about what we did in half an hour this morning.

We have a contour bank that runs between two sections of pig paddocks. This forms a lane way and we also use it to slow up any nutrient run off that may happen off the pig paddocks. Our aim is to not have run off, but with the sort of down pours we get in summer, we do get some. Peters suggestion was to put some mini ponds into the contour. The contour bank is more of a level drain than a contour. This will work like a series of ponds to filter any runoff. This could also work on any existing contour bank to just slow up the water and hold it on the paddock for longer.

First load of dirt at the base of the existing contour bank.

Taking the dirt from the grassed part of the flat outside edge of the ditch. We took about 3-4 bucket loads and tried to  place the grassy side up.

This is the finished product. Looking back towards the contour bank. We tried to smooth it all over and we'll get grass growing along the bank to hold it firm. Peter has suggested Kikuyu, so we'll have to find where we can get some runners.

There's a little rain around at the moment, so it would be perfect if we could get about an inch of rain tonight!

Stay tuned for more.........

Peter Andrews

We have a special guest staying with us tonight (and the next two nights!). Peter Andrews is doing some work with us and the Baralaba Landcare Group. We started today by having a look at a creek that goes through our place and have started three leaky weirs. We'll work on them more yet, so I won't post too many photos until they are done.

We are having a field day here on Thursday to show what we've done and why and then Peter will build more while the participants can watch and help. There's a bit of manual work involved, so it'll be good to have more hands.

I will write more about Peter and Natural Sequence Farming later on. In the meantime, you can read more here.

Calories and Nutrients

I wrote a few days ago about supplements and something I've been reading in "The Third Plate" has given me pause for contemplation.

Back in the 1930's a gentleman called  Albrecht worked out that "cows grazing from well-mineralized soils ate balanced diets. But when kept in a barn and fed a predetermined grain ration, they never stopped eating, overindulging in a vain attempt to make up with sheer volume for what they weren't getting in their food." He also thought that humans would do the same thing. "starved of micronutrients, he said, we will keep eating in the hope of attaining them."

Basically that all means that if we eat food that has no nutritional value, even though we may be eating the correct amount of calories, we will be starving ourselves and our health will suffer. I've never been a fan of calorie counting, but I know a lot of people still do it. Hopefully they just do it for fun and not to influence what they eat!

Doesn't this make you mad that they worked it out in the 1930's but we still moved on to doing exactly what they did with those cows and we now have obesity as a leading cause of death and disease in the western world.

Weston A Price was also around in that time and he was ignored too! Well until now that is. As an aside, I've actually considered starting a chapter in Central Qld. So if you are interested, please let me know.

Another interesting snippet - Joan Gussow who was a former chairwoman of nutrition education at Columbia University, believes that soil minerals are the building blocks of human nutrition. A sentiment that I couldn't agree with more! We don't really know how much of each nutrient we all need because we are all different, so we need different things at different times. I personally think that we need to listen to our bodies and eat a balanced diet that our bodies agree with and we should be healthy and well. When I say balanced, I mean lots of whole foods (opposed to packaged) of different persuasions - be they grains, dairy, meats, vegetables, fats.  We just need to know that the soil used to grow those foods also have a good balanced nutrition!

Poddy Goat

One of the backpackers came up the other day and said that there's been a baby goat crying a lot and it is often on it's own. Well I went to investigate and found this little one.

She was trying very hard to find her mother and would suck any nanny that would let her. She's managed to stay alive for about a week now, so she must have been getting something. I couldn't quite work out which one was her mother but the one I thought it was was not friendly enough to catch easily and she showed absolutely no interest in this gorgeous little thing. It would have taken a fair bit of work to get the mother to take her back on, and I had four backpackers that thought it would be wonderful to hand feed a baby goat. Just for those that don't know, a poddy animal is a baby animal that has lost it's mother for some reason and you hand raise. Not exactly sure where the term came from.

Colette the Kid has taken to the bottle really well and considers any human as her mum. Whenever one of us walks outside she is quick to run over and try to get a feed. It's cute now, but I keep warning that it's going to become annoying! She will live in the house yard until she discovers my garden or that she can climb stairs!

It often happens if a goat has triplets, one gets left behind - we did have that trouble earlier and we tried to save one, but she died on us. I don't think she'd ever had a first suck of the colostrum milk. This milk contains all the antibodies that the babies need to get them through the first part of life. This nanny however had only had the two - if it's the one I think it is.

Anyway, Colette will make a very cute pet for a little while and because she's a girl, will grow up to be a nanny herself one day! Even Kim has a soft spot for a baby animal! This is our couch outside by the fire last night. She was very comfortable in the warmth!