Baked Beans

Winter = Banked Beans. I make several batchs of baked beans in winter - I'm not sure why I don't do them in summer, but it just seems more of a winter thing to do. I make a big batch and then freeze them in small containers or plastic zip lock bags. The easiest way that I have found is to make them in the Crock pot. I now have one that allows me to fry the onions first, so I do that, but it's not necessary. I always add some sort of bone or meat to my baked beans - I especially like the flavour that a bacon bone or even just a pigs trotter gives to the beans. Trotters are great because they add a lot of extra geletin which is really good for you.

Soaking the beans for 12-24 hours is important to improve the nutrient profile and digestibility of them.There is loads of stuff on the internet about the reasons for soaking beans, grains, nuts and seeds, so I won't bother going into detail now. Whole grains, nuts and seeds are really good for us if they are prepared correctly, otherwise the enzymes that are necessary for proper mineral absorption are blocked and we don't get the goodness we should.

Be warned: it's really hard to go back to canned baked beans once you've started making your own!
See the recipe page for my recipe.....

Leftovers

I love using up left overs. It's quite satisfying knowing that you aren't wasting food. I do sometimes freeze them, which grow into plague proportions in the freezer. Although recently I gave my son about a dozen containers, which he will take to work for lunches.

Today I had two meals using left overs.

Chicken and Mushrooms in a blue vein cream sauce. This was simply fried onion, garlic and mushrooms (fresh picked this morning), toss through some cooked chicken and some cream (I managed to get enough milk to separate and get some fresh cream the other day) and add some crumbled blue vein cheese. I bought the cheese on a recent trip to Stanthorpe - it was locally made there at the Granite Belt Dairy. They make beautiful cheese!

Anyway that was lunch served over some left over fried rice.

For dinner we had Corn Beef Pie. Cornbeef sliced and layered with onions in white sauce (with chilli and herbs for extra flavour). It too was pretty good. I've discovered lard pastry and it is so easy to make and a really nice pastry. It's short but easy to work with as it's quite flexible - not breaky like short crust pastry. I've put the recipe for the pastry on the Recipe page.

Roosters

I've been trying to breed chickens for sometime, with only limited success. Last year we bought some chickens from a lovely lady near Brisbane. We were chasing an Aussie Game pair. She didn't have adults for sale (originally), only chickens, so we bought 5 - unsexed. We hadn't seen Indian Game until then and really liked the look of them as they are a lot more squat than the Aussie Game.We were then given 2 Indian Game chickens, again unsexed. We were hoping for a pair!

The photo above is all 7 of the chickens. We lost one after we had started letting them out, I think our cat may have thought they were a wild bird!. We also managed to get an adult Aussie Game rooster (below), who we have since given to my brother, as we ended up with: 1 aussie rooster, 1 indian rooster, 1 indian hen and the rest where all aussie hens.

At home we already had some Rhode Island Hens, who enjoyed their brief visit from the Aussie Game Rooster and we ended up with 5 chickens - 2 hens and 3 roosters. Tonight we have caught the roosters so tomorrow morning will be spent turning them into food. The photo below shows two of them, with their sister in the background.

Indian Game hen with babies

These are some of the chickens partly grown. They take their life in their hands going into the pig pen, as pigs don't mind a feed of chicken! However these chickens will risk it all so that they can pick out the grain from the pig poo....it's already been nicely fermented for them. Growing ethical food is about having happy animals on good feed. In our case we like to let them range free to eat what they want - these chickens can go wherever they like as long as it's not over the fence and into my garden!

What I'm reading now

I decided that since I've decided that Traditional Food is what we should be eating and I've had Nourishing Traditions for well over a year now, and used it often and read it more often, then I'd better read the guy that every blog on traditional eating quotes. So I'm reading "Nutrition and Physical Dengeneration" by Weston A. Price. It really is amazing what he discovered in the early 1930's. He went all over the world to research people still living a Primitive Lifestyle. He was a dentist, so his focus was on their dental health, but what he found was incredible and I can't believe that so long has passed and no one took ANY notice of his findings! He found that people that still lived a traditional lifestyle and more importantly ate a traditional, primitive diet were healthier and had better dental health than those same ethnic groups that ate the "modern diet". So far I've read about Swiss, Gaelic, Eskimo, American Indians, Melanesian and Polynesian groups and where they were in close proximity to shipping/trading routes, the incidence of tooth decay was above 15% and Tuberculosis was rife. Those eating traditional foods were below about 3% tooth decay and no tuberculosis! It didn't seem to make a difference that the swiss tribe ate mostly cheese, milk and rye bread, oh and meat once a week. Vegetables and fruit weren't real high on any menu in any group except the Islanders, who also ate a lot of seafood. The thing was, that as soon as they came into contact with white man food, they got sick! I'll no doubt write more about this book in future blogs. It's a bit repetitive, as time after time, he found the same results, no matter which country, whether it was icy cold, tropical heat or anywhere in between. Our diet should have absolutely NO refined sugar or white flour and we need to eat food that is local and suited to our ancestory.

Sugar

I've been reading quite a bit lately about sugar and the addiction many people have to it. I fully agree with the idea that "we" eat far too much sugar and refined carbohydrates. Sugar used to be a food item that was eaten in moderation, something that was used sparingly as it was expensive and relatively hard to get. It's really been since the introduction of the concept that fat is bad that sugar has increased in consumption. Take the fat out of a product and you need to increase the sugar to make it edible - eg yoghurt. There is sugar in burger buns so that when they get zapped in the microwave they freshen up perfectly! There is ALOT of sugar in processed food, so when that is what most people eat, then it follows that people are eating more sugar. Now, I did seriously consider going off sugar entirely and this may seem a lousy excuse, but a) I don't think I'm addicted and b)I don't want to as we don't eat much processed food in our house and if we do it's usually in the form of chips and crackers. I try to label read to make sure I make good choices with these. We don't eat them often either. We use Rapdura sugar, organic raw sugar, maple syrup or honey for sweetening. I do bake cakes and biscuits for Kim (occasionally). But really, sweet treats are just that - treats. It's not sugar apparently that's the problem, it's fructose. We eat a lot of fruit. In summer it's fruit salad and yoghurt and soaked oats for breakfast, winter means grapefruit (with a little sugar on it) and orange juice and then fruit for lunch as well. Juice is bad as it's pure fructose. Our oranges are ripe and they make the most delicious juice! We are currently eating home grown oranges and monsterio deliciousio, local bananas and pineapples (fairly local anyway) and I'm still eating dried mango from last summer - dried fruit of course is another baddy. I will try to only eat local fruits (goodbye apples and pears) but I really do think all food should be eaten in moderation. The secret to good health is a balanced diet and for me, fruit and sweet things will be part of it. Having said that, good luck to those that have a sugar addiction and want to get over it!

Nutrient Dense Food

I was travelling with one of my sons the other day and we HAD to pull up at a service station to get some food - it was a two hour trip and we were already half into it, so of course he was starving! He is also an adult (well almost!), so I really can't rule his life and stop him from eating what he wants. Anyway, he bought several items out of the hot box and promptly ate them. When finished he said "I feel full, but I'm still hungry!" He's been living with us for a while now now, so I think his body is starting to realise that what he had bought wasn't food. It was garbage and his body was saying "hey feed me some food!" What we eat at home is FOOD. It's real food, not some "food like substance". I believe that this kind of food is nutrient dense and when we eat it, our body accepts it as such and we can feel full when we aren't. Food like substances encourage the body to mis-understand hunger signals, so people keep eating - the body is looking for the nutrients it needs to keep operating correctly. Is it any wonder that cancer, diabetes and heart disease are still on the increase. We need good, healthy food from healthy animals and plants - as close to the original food as possible, not packaged or processed.

Harvesting Pigs

We are just about to sell another 9 of our pigs. As we are still in the early stages, and trying not to spend too much money before we earn it, we are just using word of mouth to sell our pork. This is obviously working, as we sold out in a very short period of time and have even had to knock some people back. It's really positive too, because we have a lot of new customers this time. Each time we get a few more, so that bodes well for the future. Of course we are only selling 9 a month on average, and to make a living we are going to need to sell about 30 per month! We are slowly growing our breeder base to get to this sort of production by next year. We are having a go at nitrate free ham and bacon this time around. Hopefully it'll taste as good as the conventional ham, but just won't be the same colour. Of course it'll be much healthier for us! This day and age with fridges and freezers, nitrates aren't really necessary, it's just that it's what people expect. All in all the future for this kind of food product is really good. It does help that the product in question tastes so good! The last lot we sold were quite fatty, but as we still have some of the same customers coming back for more, it can't have been too bad. One of the problems with the type of pigs we are breeding,heritage breeds, is that they tend to get too fat. They are the only sort to be practical though as the white pigs can get too sunburnt. And of course, fat = flavour! They live a very happy (albeit short) life - they run around playing and just seem to be content. That's what free range is all about!