Food!

I never realized before how much I really LOVE food. I mean, I've always said that I do, and that I enjoy eating good food, but I'm realizing that my life just revolves around it. I've been a restaurant server, a pastry chef, and now a cook, and I just love creating good food. I read about food, I watch travel shows that center around food, I love experimenting with new recipes, I want to farm and grow nutritious food to share with people, I go crazy looking at all the gorgeous food at the farmers' market, and I take lots of pictures of food. I am passionate about food. 

So don't be surprised when many of my posts contain some food-related topic. 

Happy eating!

~ Hannah Elise ❤️

October!

 

 

 

October is finally here!!!!

 

My favorite month, in my favorite season.

I have had a great start to the month, and I hope that you have too!

I haven't had much time this year to work on any new farming skills, and I wasn't able to garden this year, but I have big plans for next year, and I still planning on widening my knowledge and being as self-sufficient as possible this Fall and Winter, starting with the harvest.

So as a start to my October, the twins and I went apple picking.

 

 

We ended up picking 105 lbs of apples, although 30 of those went to the restaurant, and 10 or so I gave to my mom, so I have about 60 lbs left to use for sauces, and rings, and pie filling.

Now I just have to figure out how to make room for all of the canned goods I will be making.

 

I also was able to spend some time on my boss' farm, learning to drive a tractor, and playing with chickens, and I finally was able to break in my boots.

 

Me holding "Freaky Eye"

 

Be on the lookout for more posts on this blog, and if you are in the mood for a good cup of cocoa, check out my French Style Hot Chocolate recipe on my Bel Sogno blog.

 



Applesauce

I can proudly say I tried my hand at canning, and it was (mostly) a success. I have meaning to use my canner for the better part of two years, and I finally decided to buy some apples and try it out. I wasn't sure how many to use, and I figured that I should make a huge batch my first time, so I ended up buying around 20 apples to start off with.

 

After barely fitting the apple slices into two large pans, it definitely seemed like I was going to end up with more applesauce then I did, but I guess I didn't realize how much they would boil down.

 

 

I did have to adlib a little here and there. For example, I didn't have a foodmill, so I ended up using a sausage grinder/stuffer attachment on a mixer for this, and it did work surprisingly well. I also completely forgot about my canning funnel, and couldn't find it in time, so I did get a couple burnt fingers when I dropped boiling applesauce on them as I was trying to ladle it into the jars.

 

 

Luckily though, I didn't make any major mistakes and I ended up with for jars of delicious (if I do say so myself), homemade applesauce. I will just have to remember to be a little better prepared next time, in order to save my fingers.

Kiwi Picking

 

 So I haven't posted in a while... I had been recovering after getting out of a toxic relationship, becoming better acquainted with myself again, and as a result, my schedule became busier and I always seemed to think of a topic to write for a blog post when I was out and about, away from a computer. Anyways, after half a year, everything finally seems to be falling back into place, and I am so much happier, and just more content with myself and my life, than I have been in a long time.

 

 

 So back to homesteading/homemaking/things-I-created-this-blog-to-write-about.....

 

My friend, Ellen, and I decided to spend a morning a couple weeks ago picking kiwis at a local u-pick kiwi farm. They grow two different types of kiwi there, Hayward (the fuzzy ones) and kiwi berries, or hardy kiwis. I had never eaten hardy kiwis before, but they are just delicious as the bigger ones, about the size of a large grape, and fuzz-less, so you can pop them in your mouth whole. I read somewhere that hardy kiwis are not techniquely kiwis, but I am unsure of the details there.

 

 

Hardy kiwis

Hayward kiwis



After picking a couple buckets worth of kiwis, we headed to a farm stand for some more local fruit (and honey), and then spent a couple of hours making our way through an antique mall.

 

Needless to say, we enjoyed ourselves.

 

 




 

Hardy kiwi freezer jam

 I was sure that I had overcommitted kiwi-wise, but after Ellen removed her share of them and I started mashing the hardy kiwis up for freezer jam, I realized that I probably could have gotten a few more, because three jars of jam isn't going to last very

 long...

 

Kiwis ready for ripening

 

 The Hayward kiwis were hard as rocks when we picked them... and two weeks later they still were. Luckily, on the back of the farm's business card there were directions on how to ripen them, so they are now sitting in a brown paper bag with an apple for a few days.



 

 

 

Farmageddon

I recently got around to watching a few documentaries that I'd been meaning to watch, and I thought I would share reviews of them, in a series of posts. The documentary that I definitely had the biggest reaction to, was Farmageddon.

 

 

Farmageddon, delves into the corruption within the food industry, and the unjust way in which government officials have treated small farms and co-ops, many times without just cause, while hiding behind their claims to be working in the interest of public health. The events related in this documentary were definitely eye opening, and caused me at least to really become enraged with the way in which these people, and people like them are treated. No one, whether a government official or not, should have the right to go into a person's home or business and seize animals or products that make up their livelihood, without a dang good reason! And what makes me sick is the fact that the people who they attack are normal, hardworking people, who are trying to make an honest living, and end up having everything taken from them, without even a valid explanation. I am really amazed sometimes that people can be so heartless. It's almost as if the power that these officials have desensitizes them, and makes them able to separate themselves from the people whose lives they are destroying. What is the point of spending millions of dollars on building cases on innocent people, or removing and killing their healthy, disease-free animals? Small farms should not be punished just because the USDA doesn't do their job monitoring or inspecting foods from factory or industrial farms.

I would consider this documentary a must see, and would recommend it to anyone, whether they are interested in farming and food, or not. It is an excellent film and does a very good job of getting the point across.