Father's Day

I'd like to dedicate this post to fathers everywhere, especially my father.  And, of course, my brothers, Andrew and Dan.  Oh, and Greg!  Happy Father's Day to all (for whom it is applicable).

In other news, the piglets have arrived!  I found out this morning, but I think they were born last night.  There are eight, of all different colors.  Some spotted, some orange, some pink, all adorable.    

So this morning I woke up, which I took to be a promising start to the day.  I fed my starter, because from days 10 - 14 of growing a starter you feed it three times a day.  Feeding just consists of adding certain amounts of flour and water and stirring.  It's quite smelodious (to quote my father on Father's Day).  Is that a positive statement?  I'm not sure, but it's meant to be one.  It smells pretty good, like apple cider vinegar. 

Then I had breakfast...obviously, I ate chili on a piece of bread with cheese.  Because I'm too cool for cereal.  I worked in the cheese house from about 8 - 12, flipping chévre and pouring crottina/Lake's Edge.  And then I was free!  I fed my starter again, and then started to think about feeding myself.  I had a plan, and that plan involved homemade flour tortillas.  I'd just read, on Orangette (see previous post), about making your own tortillas.  It just so happened I had all THREE ingredients required to make it.  Well, she said to use white flour, but I only have whole wheat.  So they were whole wheat tortillas.  And they were DELICIOUS.  Here is the recipe, adapted from Orangette (Molly Wizenberg), who adapted it from Saveur Cooks Authentic American.

Barn Swallows I

Whole Wheat Tortillas

4 cups organic whole wheat flour
6 Tbs vegetable shortening (Earth Balance)
1 1/2 tsp salt, if shortening is unsalted

In a small saucepan, bring about 2 cups of water to a boil.

Mix together flour and salt in a large bowl.  With there being a dearth of large bowls in my apartment, I used a stock pot.  Mix in the shortening with your fingers until the flour mixtures is a coarse meal.  Add about 1 1/4 - 1 1/2 cups of water (enough so that the dough holds together), and start by mixing with a spoon.  Once it is cool enough, bring it all together with your hands.  

Place the dough on a lightly floured surface and knead for about 2-5 minutes, but no more.  

Cover with plastic wrap and let rest for 30 min.
Heat a 9" cast iron skillet over medium heat, with a tiny bit of canola oil.

Cut ball of dough into 6 wedges.  Cut wedges into 3 to make 18 wedges in all.  Take 1 wedge and roll it into a VERY thin circle about 8 inches in diameter.  Put dough in pan and cook for about 20-30 seconds, until puffed.  Flip and do another 20-30 seconds until golden brown.  Cool on rack, and repeat with remaining wedges.  Don't stack until wedges are completely cool.
Yield: 18 tortillas

I ate these tortillas as part of soft tacos made with more chili (can you overdose on chili?  I hope not), avocado slices, and crottina leftover from the farmer's market.  I am still so full from lunch that I'm skipping dinner altogether.

I lazed about all afternoon...except for the hour I exercised, and the half hour I weeded the garden.  The rest of it was spent reading Orangette and The Paupered Chef (another food blog, check it out.  One of the writers visited our farm yesterday)...and, I confess, on ConnColl Confessional and Facebook.  

The writer of The Paupered Chef has kindly identified those mysterious garlic greens from last post!  They are called "Garlic Scapes," and they are the first young tendrils of garlic plants.  I found a lovely looking recipe for Garlic Scape Pesto from A Mighty Appetite, which I would most certainly make, had I in my possession a food processor.  Someone else must make it and tell me how it is...assuming you could get your hands on garlic scapes, which, come to think of it, is rather unlikely.  Keep an eye out though!  Stop by farmer's markets.

Barn Swallows II

Garlic Scape Pesto

1 cup garlic scapes (about 8 or 9 scapes), top flowery part removed, cut into ¼-inch slices
1/3 cup walnuts
¾ cup olive oil
¼-1/2 cup grated parmigiano 
½ teaspoon salt
black pepper to taste

Place scapes and walnuts in the bowl of a food processor and whiz until well combined and somewhat smooth. Slowly drizzle in oil and process until integrated. With a rubber spatula, scoop pesto out of bowl and into a mixing bowl. Add parmigiano to taste; add salt and pepper. Makes about 6 ounces of pesto. Keeps for up to one week in an air-tight container in the refrigerator

Intense. Like camping.

Picture 1 : All the things I got at the market today...organic garlic greens (I don't know what they are, that's what I'm calling them), organic microgreens, and lamb's quarters.  

Picture 2 : My chili.  It was intense.

Check out this blog, entitled "Orangette."  It puts mine completely to shame.  I will persevere, however, and continue to update my inferior blog.  NOTE (20 minutes later):  I just found out that this Orangette woman, Molly Wizenberg (she's Jewish!), is a published writer.  I no longer feel like a sad excuse for a blogger.

It was a Saturday, a market day, a morning milking day.  I was out of bed by 3:30...I woke up for some reason.  It happened to be a good thing, though, because I put some rice and water in the rice cooker and then went back to sleep.  When my alarm rang at 4:30, the rice was done.  I mixed it with some rice milk and maple syrup for a breakfast porridge.  Pretty yummy!  Milking was easy, although we had to continue recording the amount of milk each girl was giving.  Then Hannah and I walked the goats out to the woods and I fed the piggly wigglies.  One of the big sows is pregnant, and when I walk out there I keep expecting to see a jumble of piglets lying somewhere.  But it hasn't happened yet!  I'm having daydreams about Charlotte's Web.  

I helped out in the cheese house pouring chévre for a little bit, and then Hannah dropped me off at the Middlebury market to bring reinforcements to her dad (her parents do market duty...her dad goes to the Middlebury market and her mom to the Rutland market).  The market slowed down a lot once I got there, and we didn't sell as well as we had been.  I talked to some pretty cool people though...one guy, Casey, was coming to the Middlebury College language school from Wisconsin.  He didn't come to our tent to buy cheese...he came for our competitively priced Blue Ledge Farm t-shirts.  He left all of his shirts on the train.  I felt a bit used...but he was going to be learning Russian, and I, being of Russian ancestry, was charmed.  Tucker also came by, with some of his family.  They all seem really sweet.

I had $4 left to spend in my wallet...I spend ALL of my money on food.  I just can't help it.  The co-op is so enticing.  I spent $3.50 at the market and was able to buy a bag of organic micro greens and...well, I'm not sure quite what they are...they look like chives/onion grass/scallions, but they're not hollow.  Anyway, they are amazing and taste like mild garlic.  We traded cheese with this adorable old lady and she gave us bags of Lamb's Quarters.  It's commonly considered a weed, but it's actually very nutritious and tastes like spinach.  I can't wait for the market to really pick up and more produce to become available.  

So I went to the co-op in the afternoon because I was DETERMINED to make chili.  I'd seen Hannah and Greg and the kids eating chili and I was like...I WANT IT.  But it had meat in it.  So I made my own!  It is probably has the most ingredients of any chili ever made.

Barn Swallows

Chili con EVERYTHING (but carne, of course)

Minced Garlic

Diced Onion

Diced Red bell pepper

Diced Carrot

Diced Potato

Diced Fresh tomato

Pearled barley

Black beans

Crumbled tempeh

Canned diced tomatoes, squished up a bit.

Frozen corn

Frozen peas

Sliced Button mushrooms

Cumin

Cayenne pepper

...I think that's it.

So, don't do what I did, and use dried black beans that have been soaked.  Cheat and used canned black beans, and your stomach will thank you for not making it wait to eat for an hour or two.  The recipe is pretty simple.  Saute onions, garlic, and bell pepper for about 3 minutes or so.  Season with cayenne pepper and cumin.  Add carrots and potatoes.  Saute for a few minutes.  Add barley, tempeh and canned tomatoes.   Bring to a boil, lower to a simmer, and cover.  Simmer for 30 minutes.  In the last 5 minutes of those 30, saute mushrooms, corn, and peas, and fresh tomato until hot.  Add to chili.  Simmer for another minute, then serve.  Garnish with chopped scallions and cheese of your choice...I used some crottina.  Mmmm.  It was totally worth the 2 hours it took for me to make.  

Whew!  This was a long one.

Yowch!

Picture 1 : This is not Vermont.  It's France.  But I love this picture, and I didn't feel like going downstairs to get my camera to upload the lovely photographs of my damaged digits.  So here are some sunflowers.

Remember how I mentioned my haying blisters and hay chafe?  Well, today in the cheese house we salted the camembrie.  So my hands were covered in salt.  It was a really terrific experience, overall.  But actually, the camembrie is my favorite cheese to make.  The curds are really fun to pour and when you are salting the cheese it's all round and cute and feels like some sort of strange sea creature...in a good way.  

I feel like a gymnast again!  My hands are all blistered and my biceps are nice and sore.  

I worked in the cheese house from 8-12, salting and then wrapping and pricing for the market tomorrow.  I ate lunch and then made some vegan peanut butter oatmeal cookies.  They're pretty good...but I am not going to put the recipe up, because I don't remember it.  I kinda just made it up.  I really must start measuring when I bake.  I don't have dry measuring cups with me, so I keep eyeballing everything/substituting/making things up.  That's fine for cooking, but with baking it's a bit more dangerous.  After my cookie adventure, I had afternoon chores.  A week-ish ago a big tub came in the mail, containing these crazy contraptions that measure how much milk each girl is producing.  It helps you figure out if your goats are "earning their keep."  We used them tonight, so after each goat was done milking, we took a milk sample and recorded how much milk they had produced.  We have to do it tomorrow morning as well. 

My favorite part of the day?  When Hannah chased the goats up into the parlor yelling, "THIS IS NOT A PETTING ZOO!!!"

After chores, Tucker told me what he was doing during chores...half the baby goats got out of their pasture and he had to get them back in the new barn.  He got them in the barn, but not inside the fence.  So we spent about 15 minutes fighting with these little kids, shoving them through a door without letting any of the other ones out.  I would compare the experience to wrestling with an octopus.  Not that I've ever wrestled an octopus, but imagine it would be similar.  Then one of the milkers, Ember, got in with the non-milkers, and we spent about 20 more minutes trying to catch her and put her in the correct pasture.  GOOD GOD ALMIGHTY!  JESUS MARY AND JOSEPH!  CRAZY TOWN!

Then I made dinner...I had broiled zucchini and potatoes with some LaLuna on top and some sauteed spinach and kale.  Just lots of vegetables today.  I actually don't think I had any protein today...hmm.  I'll have to have lots of beans or lentils tomorrow.  Tomorrow is farmer's market day!  WOOOOO.

As Cool As I Am

I'm tired.  So I'm not putting up pictures or writing what I ate or doing any of that superfluous nonsense.  

Today I woke up.  At 7.  And then I worked from 8 until maybe 2 or 3 (?) salting chévre, washing moulds, and pouring camembrie.  When I emerged from the temperature controlled cheese house I found that it was a beautiful day!  Breezy and in the 70's.  Now that's what I imagined a Vermont summer would be like.  I weeded the garden for about 45 minutes...I could have seriously done it for a few hours, but that was when the first wagon of hay arrived.  Duh duh duhhhhhh.  I'd unloaded hay once at my horse farm camp, SMA, and it was not the most pleasant experience.  Although they did take us out for ice cream afterwards.  Hey, Hannah and Greg, why didn't you guys buy me ice cream?  Oh, that's right.  I'm a vegan.

Anyway.  

One person has to stand in the hay wagon and load bales onto the belt that carries the bales up into the hay loft.  Two other people are up in the hay loft, grabbing the bales and stacking them.  I wasn't really too much help because I can only lift one bale at a time and each bale is almost as big as me.  I got some cool haying blisters, though.  And some lovely hay chafe on my arms.  It's really attractive.  And I got to ride in the hay wagon!  Hay rides never get old, apparently. 

In other news, I climbed halfway up the silo.  It was a beautiful view.

I ate some stuff for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  It was good.

Good night.

Burlington

Picture 1 : I stopped at a pick-your-own-strawberries farm on the way up and bought some strawberries.  They were yummy and pretty and sadly not organic.

Picture 2 : IT WAS SO GORGEOUS.  I almost drifted into cars in the other lane because I couldn't stop looking at the views.  So beautiful it was nearly deadly.

Today is Wednesday, and it was my day off.  (So, have you memorized my schedule yet?)  I woke and up and had breakfast...I'd run out of rice milk and cereal so I did this weird thing where I took leftover brown rice and mixed it with organic peanut butter, maple syrup, and ginger.  It was pretty good.  Then I got in the car and made my way north on Rt. 7.  I was heading toward Shelburne (about 40 minutes away), where there is a gym that offers $5 open workouts.  (That's a ridiculously good price, btw).  It took a while to get there, because 1. it's far away and 2. they were paving and painting lines on the road.  Once I got there...funny story.  I walked in the door and the first thing I saw were five 3-year-olds bouncing on a trampoline.  The second thing I saw was that the ceiling was about 9 feet high.  And the third thing I saw that the "gym" was about the size of the cheese house.  And it was at that point that I realized this was a gym for people that do not exceed 3 feet.  AKA small children.  AKA not me.  So I kind of giggled to myself, and then walked right back out.  I sat in the car, a bit miffed, and then called my dear mother, who always knows what to do.  She told me the addresses of three other gyms in the area (at this point, I wasn't just going to drive back to the farm) and I plugged them into my handy dandy GPS and went on a tour of the Burlington area.  The first gym I stopped at was Champlain Valley Gymnastics (CVG) in South Burlington, and they had a nice sized gym with all the equipment.  They don't currently offer open workouts though, but they might call me about working out with their team.  I left and went to Hruska Gymnastics Academy in Winooski...but they were closed.  They do offer open workout on Sunday from 1-3, and it's the home gym of the UVM club team.  They're kinda a bit deal.  After Hruska's I went to Green Mountain Gymnastics.  I almost gave up on finding it, but I'm so glad that I didn't.  It was a clean, beautiful gym that's set up very much like my gym at home.  The woman I met there, Robin, is probably the nicest person on the face of the earth.  They have an open program for middle and high school students on Tuesday and Thursday nights that I could come to, and she gave me the forms and the prices and all the information and I'm totally set EXCEPT that I have to call Head Over Heels in Rutland to make sure it isn't just for little kids.  Because it's way closer than Green Mountain.  But yay!

 I headed into downtown Burlington for lunch.  I ate at a restaurant called Zabby and Elf's Stone Soup.  It's mostly vegetarian/vegan (which is why I ate there) and it was really quaint and delicious.  It's buffet style with lots of different options.  I had a tempeh stew, kale, brown rice, sweet potatoes, and a little bit of salad.  I was in macrobiotic heaven!  I walked around after lunch and shopped a bit...it's the biggest city in Vermont but it's probably smaller than Penn State's college town.  I walked into the Burlington co-op but it was so big that I got really overwhelmed and fled.  I stopped at the Middlebury co-op on the way home and got some miso paste.  

For dinner, I had a bowl of homemade miso soup, some seaweed salad, and some quinoa salad.  The miso soup recipe...I think either I need to perfect it, the recipe isn't very good, or that's just how traditional miso soup tastes.  I'm thinking it's option 1 or 3...I trust Christina Pirello, although sometimes she scares me a little bit.  Either way, I'm not going to post the recipe quite yet.  

Barn Swallows

Seaweed Salad

Arame (soaked 3 minutes, boiled for 10)

Sesame seeds

Toasted sesame oil

Soy sauce

Brown rice vinegar

Red pepper

Combine everything.  And eat it.

Quinoa Salad

1/2 cup quinoa

1 cup water

Tomato

Peas (fresh or frozen)

Scallions

Olive oil

Sea salt

Nutritional yeast

I tried SO HARD to resist putting in curry powder, but I succumbed.  I love it too much.

Bring quinoa and water to boil, simmer for 15 minutes.  Dice tomato.  Slice scallions.  Boil or steam peas until tender, then drain.  Mix all ingredients together.  

Such a busy day!  I left at 10 and got back at 6.  Craziness.  

Breathing Tornado

I actually caught a picture of the lightening!  After maybe, 45 tries.
It was another crazy Tuesday!  I milked in the morning, so I was up before the sun...probably a good thing, because it ended up being about 1,000,000 degrees again.  I'm really starting to like the goats.  Once you get over the fact that they're stubborn and sometimes very unintelligent, you see that they each have their own distinct personality and are often reminiscent of people that you know.  Or maybe it's that most days, I see more of the goats than I do of people, and they are becoming human in my mind.  Either one.  Anyway, after I milked, I fed the pigs.  It was getting quite balmy by that point and I was all sticky and gross.  While I was filling buckets of water and whey for the pigs, I poured all this cold water over my head.  Greg noticed that I was soaking wet and asked me if I was okay...I think he thought I was dying of heat stroke and sweating to death.  But no.  I had just stuck my head under the spiget.  I gave the pigs lots and lots of water because it is so hot, and I gave myself a nice workout bringing those buckets back and forth about 10 times.  I took a break and then helped Hannah bring the goats out to the woods where it's nice and shady.  Some silly goats refused to come with us and they stayed in the barn all day.  After that I worked in the cheese house until 1:30 packing restaurant tubs, wrapping Lake's Edge and crottina, pouring chévre, washing moulds, and cleaning the bulk tank.  
We heard there was a tornado warning in the area, so we brought the goats in from the woods early.  Right after they were safely in the barn, the wind really picked up.  Every unlocked door kept banging open and shut...I felt like I was in some sort of goat farmer horror film.  You could actually see the wall of rain coming towards us.  Pretty creepy.  It ended up being a short-but-intense thunderstorm and then it was sunny again.  No worries.  And now it's a lot cooler and it's supposed to be in the high 70's tomorrow, I think.  That would be great, because I'm planning to head up to a gym (as in gymnastics, not like, treadmills) in Shelburne and take advantage of their hour of open gym.  I'd rather not have it be like PGC where it's 100 degree in the gym and the bars are dripping wet BUT WE STILL HAVE A 5 HOUR PRACTICE.  Yeah...fun times at summer workout.  
So after the non-tornado, I made dinner.  I feel like I've made something exactly like this, but it was really good.  So I'm going to post the recipe anyway.
Barn Swallows
Brown Rice With Many Things In It
A handful (literally, I took a handful) of cooked brown rice
Kale of any sort (I used some from the garden...mmm)
Arame 
Mushrooms(shitake would be more authentic, probably, but I used button)
Onion
Garlic
Fresh Ginger
Sesame seeds
Nutritional Yeast
Sesame oil
Red pepper
Soy sauce
Cut the stalks out of the kale and drop leaves into boiling water.  When they turn a vivid shade of green, fish them out and put into an ice bath.  Take them out of the ice bath and slice into strips or smaller pieces.
Cook arame according to package...soak in cold water for 5 minutes, drain, and boil for 10.
Dice onion, mince garlic and ginger.  Put in pan with sesame oil and sesame seeds.  Saute until onions are soft.  Add mushrooms, saute until soft.  Add kale, arame, and rice.  Cook until everything is hot.  Add soy sauce, nutritional yeast, and red pepper.  It would be good topped with avocado...don't know what I didn't do that.  Oh well.  Yummy healthy goodness!  SEAWEED...CRUCIFEROUS GREENS...FIBER...EAT IT....
 
I hear thunder in the distance.  When I was little, I used to call it "wonder."  Wasn't I cute?

Cinnamon Bell

I WANT TO GO TO SLEEP so this is going to be short.  I hope.  

Daily Blue Ledger:

I woke up at 7 and went out to the cheese house at 8.  I flipped crottina in RECORD TIME and then put together some Lake's Edge.  It was weird, I've worked with the ash at least 3 other times, but today I could smell it.  Very odd.  Then I wrapped camembrie until 12.  After that, I ate some of the camembrie that I'd be saving in my refrigerator since last weekend; it was so perfect and delicious!  I'm glad I waited.  I kinda moseyed (that's actually how you spell the past tense of "mosey"...does that look strange or is it just me?) around until it was time to milk.  I think that's what I did, at least.  The heat may be affecting my memory.  I had Tucker to help me milk, which was lovely.  It's easier with two people.  Feeding the pigs, especially, is so much faster.  We had no major mishaps, although when I looked in during the 2nd to last group, there were 5 girls instead of 7 in the holding area.  I don't know where these girls go!  It's a mystery!  Anyway, I went out and immediately found the two that were missing.  Finding them, however, is one thing.  Catching them is quite another.  One of them is really old and adorable and wears a bell around her neck and just submitted meekly to being led back inside, but the other one decided that she didn't want to be milked today.  So I ran around after this goat in my spotted boots for a little while.  She tried to hide herself in a group of three goats.  Really?  Three?  Like I'm not going to see you?  So I caught her then and brought her back in.   In general, though, it was very successful.  I had a light salad for dinner...

Barn Swallows:

Avocado Tomato salad with Lemon Ginger Dressing

Avocado slices

Tomato slices

Cooked/canned chickpeas

Any kind of sprouts...alfalfa, pea, sunflower, etc

Lemon

Olive oil

Salt

Fresh Ginger

Nutritional yeast

Put avocado, tomato, and chickpeas in bowl.  Top with sprouts.  Grate ginger, squeeze juice into a small bowl.  Add lemon juice, olive oil, and salt to ginger bowl.  Combine.  Pour dressing over salad and sprinkle some nutritional yeast on top.  

Night night, my vast readership.