Cora's Egg Salad

So this family...we're big fans of egg salad sandwiches, and now that we have eggs galore, we thought we'd make up a batch of Cora's famous egg salad. We let our kids find and try out recipes and this one just stuck - it's so so good.
We took 18 of our farm fresh eggs and boiled them up - we increased this recipe by 1/2 and it was gone by the next day!!! YUM!!

Ingredients:
½ C. Mayonnaise
1 ½ tbsp Dill
1 Small Chopped Onion
1 ½ Tbsp Chopped Pickles
1 ½ Tbsp Mustard
½ tsp Pepper
¼ tsp Salt
12 Eggs

Directions:
Hard boil the eggs. While you are waiting for the eggs, mix all other ingredients together in a medium size bowl. Once eggs are hard boiled, peel and chop eggs into small bits. Add eggs to mayo mix. You can eat right away, but it’s even better the next day.

The trickiest part of the whole process is boiling/peeling fresh eggs. Did you know that the eggs that you get from the store are usually a week or two old? The bonus about older eggs is that they are easier to peel. Since our eggs are just a couple days old - if we were to boil our eggs the standard way, it would be hard to peel and we'd lose a lot of the whites, since they'd peel off with the shell. So I searched the interwebs to find the perfect way to boil fresh eggs and found it HERE!! Let me tell you - it worked! Our eggs came out beautiful - beautiful enough to use for deviled eggs! I'll never go back to the old way!
Enjoy!

Puppy Chow

Jar of golden syrup.

Pancakes and syrup.

Mabel's babies checking out her leftovers :-) She has to eat in the milking stand because otherwise, she'll eat as fast as possible and try to steal Flora's food.

I realized that I never shared a photo of the final product for the syrup - we got a decent amount for the "work" that we had to do. We could have more, if we continued to tap and collect every day. But like I said before, this time was more about the experience and not to have the full blown - collect/boil/store syrup. Hopefully that will be next year.

The night before last, we tried a tasty new "dessert" - David, Kait's boyfriend, suggested something called "Puppy Chow" is was delicious - a little treat (a little goes a LONNNNGGGG way - it's very sweet...but very good. I thought I'd share that here.

Puppy Chow
Ingredients:
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup butter
1 cup chocolate chips
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
9 cups Crispix cereal (any flavor)
3 cups powdered sugar

Instructions:
Combine peanut butter, butter and chocolate chips in a double boiler (or you can do it in a microwave safe bowl).
Melt the peanut butter, butter and chocolate chips together. Remove from heat. Add 1/2 teaspoon vanilla. Stir well.
Place the 9 cups of Crispix cereal in a very large bowl.
Pour the peanut butter-chocolate mixture over the cereal and toss evenly, making sure all the cereal gets a good covering.
Place the powdered sugar in a large zip-lock type plastic bag - we just used a large bowl that has a lid to shake it up.
Add the peanut butter-chocolate cereal mixture to the bag, leaving enough room for the puppy chow to be shaken (you may have to divide the mixture into smaller batches, coating one batch at a time).
Shake the bag vigorously to evenly coat each piece of the puppy chow with powdered sugar.
Once the mixture is fully coated, place in a large serving bowl.
Coat any additional pieces by shaking the mixture in the powdered sugar filled bag.  Add powdered sugar to the bag as needed until all the mixture is coated.


So good!

Recipe :: Meatloaf

Since I had a special request, from my friend over at Living in the Land of Oz, I am sharing my meatloaf recipe with all of you. It really isn't anything too fancy..since we fix food for a bunch of people, it's about quick, easy (preferably cheap...but with the cost of beef going up and up and up...)

Meatloaf
Ingredients:
3 lbs. Ground Beef
2 lbs. Sage Sausage
2 Eggs
A dash a milk
Italian Style Bread Crumbs
Optional: Dice a small onion and green pepper and mix with other ingredients

Directions:
Mix all ingredients together. Separate into two loaf pans. Cover with the sauce below.

Meatloaf Sauce
Ingredients:
6 Tablespoons Brown Sugar
½ C. Ketchup
2 tsp. Dry Mustard
¼ tsp. Nutmeg

Mix all ingredients and pour over meatloaf, prior to baking


Place in the oven at 350 degrees and cook for about an hour - hour and a half...until the center of the loaf is cooked through (remember there is pork in there).

***Many times, I will double the sauce recipe...because frankly we are BIG fans of the sauce.

YUM!!!
Serve up with either mashed potatoes or macaroni and cheese, a veggie (fresh green beans) and some fruit.

Celebrating Life

This weekend we celebrate a few things, but the most important celebration is Mark's 49th Birthday. WOOT! For 49 years, my handsome hubby has made this world a better place and we celebrated him by never letting him get his own cup of coffee, extra snuggles, great presents from the kids (Gage gave him a Science Game, Cora made him an awesome frog out of her very cool and colorful duct tape, Drake hand knit a case for Mark's pocket knife, Kait/David gave him a Spider Man Comic from 1979 and a gift card to Pizza Hut - his favorite eatery :-)), and yummy food. In our house, the birthday boy/girl gets to choose if they want to go out to a favorite place or if there is a special homemade dinner that they would like. Mark chose to have meatloaf (I make a mean meatloaf), macaroni and cheese, green beans, strawberries, rolls and for dessert - homemade Carrot Cake (the recipe follows). It was a long day, but a day of comfort foods and sharing so much love for Mark. I hope he realizes how awesome we think he is.

Mark’s Carrot Cake
Ingredients:
4 eggs
1 1/4 cups vegetable oil
2 cups white sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
3 cups grated carrots
1 cup chopped pecans

Icing:
1/2 cup butter, softened
8 ounces cream cheese, softened
4 cups confectioners' sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup chopped pecans

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour a 9x13 inch pan.
In a large bowl, beat together eggs, oil, white sugar and 2 teaspoons vanilla. Mix in flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. Stir in carrots. Fold in pecans. Pour into prepared pan.
Bake in the preheated oven for 40 to 50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Let cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack and cool completely.
To Make Frosting: In a medium bowl, combine butter, cream cheese, confectioners' sugar and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Beat until the mixture is smooth and creamy. Stir in chopped pecans. Frost the cooled cake.
SO DELICIOUS!!!

Ta Daaaaaa!

Celebrating Spring...I've definitely got a case of Spring fever - being cooped up in the house is never good for me. It's cold and snowy outside. The water is often frozen in barn and we (by "we", I typically mean Mark) need to carry out heavy pails of water when we go out. Our fingers are painfully cold, by the time we come back in. I don't get to visit with our animals as long as I would normally like...I miss them.

I miss green things too - everything is sleeping outside - although the silhouettes of the naked trees look beautiful against the sky on sunny days, it's hard for me to go several days without seeing the sun...gray skies...UGH.

I'm trying to counteract the winter blues/cabin fever with planning and dreaming about spring. We have a lot of projects planned for the spring - most I've already mentioned here (the bees, the chickens...) but I haven't talked garden planning. We went through and evaluated our gardening from last year. With all the stress that happened last Spring, we really got a late start on planting. Most of our seed starts outgrew their containers (and unfortunately died), before we could get them planted in the ground. We had our neighbor till the garden very late in the year and really didn't get a good crop of anything. Sure, we enjoying homegrown potatoes, peas, onion, cucumbers, beans and zucchini - but not nearly on the scale that I was hoping for. Also, I realized that we really left our zucchini on the plant longer than we should, making the skin tougher. We also used a green bean seed that I wasn't very happy with - very stringy. Now, we have a lot of leftover seeds - some to get into the ground for this year and others we will hopefully be able to trade for other seeds or provide to someone who needs them more than we do (maybe we will plant some of the green bean seeds for donation??).
Seed starts - soon we'll need to move from the planning what to plant to the actually seed starting. Last year, we put our seeds on a table in front of our dining room window - which unfortunately also acted as a cat bed (Grrr) - they would actually lay on the plants to look out the window (brats). So this year, we are going to set up an area in the basement with a couple of grow lamps overhead - this should hopefully keep the animals away and provide sufficient lighting. In another exciting/different move, we've always purchased potting soil in the past - but this year, we are going to be able to take advantage of our "homegrown" potting soil. This week, we'll be digging out some of the bottom of the pile compost mix that has been baking in the back yard since we moved here. There should be some pretty good compost under there - we are also adding bunny and alpaca poo (which we have PLENTY of around here) to the mix. The GREAT thing about bunny and alpaca poo is that they do not need to be composted (aged) to put on plants, as long as they haven't been mixed with too much urine. I don't know if any of you are aware of this - but bunnies and alpacas will set up a restroom area - the poo berries are typically piled up in one area, easy to find, easy to shovel off a bit and the pee is fairly separated. We also have Cora's worm garden this year and perhaps we'll be able to make some compost tea to put over our seedlings as they grow and as we transplant them outside. SO we should have FREE soil/fertilizer for our plants!! Awesome - this helps us in two ways
1) We don't need to pay for any of this awesomeness
2) We don't need to figure out how to dispose of any of our compostable waste
The perfect solution.

Things I am looking forward to this Spring/Summer:
1) Peep Peep Peeps of baby chicks
2) Shearing our animals
3) Cleaning and spinning the fiber and creating a masterpiece from them
4) Buzzy bees and warm honey
5) Eating homegrown food, right off the plant
6) Goat milk - making cheese, soap, lotion
7) Oh! Goat babies boinging around the barn and back yard area :-)
8) Our first egg (...and every other awesome egg)
9) Eating backyard raised chickens
10) Making our yard cute/pretty again - plants, gardens, chicken coop
11) Seeing which of our fruit trees produce fruit this year
12) Seeing our finished, big, red, barn
13) Sitting on the porch with a glass of sun tea.
I'm sure this list will grow, but for now, that's a pretty good start.

Celebrating Football???...Finally - today is the Super Bowl...49ers vs. the Ravens. In honor of Mark's 49th birthday, I'm rooting for the 49ers. Honestly, I do not care about football - we only watch one game a year, this one and it is more for the commercials, the snacky food, the razzing each other about who is going to win etc.
Soooo Go NINERS!!!!

Recipes :: Sloppy Joe and Macaroni and Cheese

So I've never really considered myself much of a cook. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy making food for my family...cooking delicious meals, baking yummy sweets - but I've never been one to create something on my own. Having a large family, we tend to find comfort in foods that we know we love and that people will be excited about - rather than working to convince our children how good the next meal is going to be. Over time, I've been making a Word document/cookbook to hold all of our tried and true recipes..Note that not all of the recipes are mine...they are versions of ones that I find online or old family recipes...but I thought I'd share some here with you.

One of our family FAVORITES are the combination of Sloppy Joe and Macaroni and Cheese. Sometimes the kids eat the Sloppy Joe mix on a bun and other times they just mix a scoop right into the Mac and Cheese.

Sloppy Joe
Ingredients:
1 pound lean ground beef
1/4 cup chopped onion
1/4 cup chopped green bell pepper
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon prepared yellow mustard
3/4 cup ketchup
3 teaspoons brown sugar
salt to taste
ground black pepper to taste
Directions:
In a medium skillet over medium heat, brown the ground beef, onion, and green pepper; drain off liquids. Stir in the garlic powder, mustard, ketchup, and brown sugar; mix thoroughly. Reduce heat, and simmer for 30 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.
**All of these are "to taste" - if you like more green pepper, add it. If you don't like mustard, remove it...SO EASY.

Macaroni and Cheese
Ingredients:
1 (16 ounce) package macaroni
1 stick of butter
½ cup flour
2 cup milk (we've used goat milk in this and it's amazing)
2 cup cream
1 teaspoon salt
Fresh ground black pepper, to taste
4 cups shredded cheddar cheese, good quality (or if you like other cheese, go for it)
In a separate bowl, beat two eggs together
Small squirt of mustard
Sprinkle with Italian style breadcrumbs
(**For cheese, you can switch the 4 C. cheddar to 2 C. cheddar, 2 C gruyere (shredded), and ¼ C. Parmesan Reggiano)
Directions:
Preheat oven to 400°F.
Cook and drain macaroni according to package directions; set aside.
In a large saucepan melt butter.
Add flour mixed with salt and pepper, using a whisk to stir until well blended.
Pour milk and cream in gradually; stirring constantly.
Bring to boiling point and boil 2 minutes (stirring constantly).
Reduce heat and cook (stirring constantly) 10 minutes.
Add shredded cheddar little by little and simmer an additional 5 minutes, or until cheese melts.
Turn off flame.
Add macaroni to the saucepan and toss to coat with the cheese sauce. Add two eggs and small squirt of mustard – continue to stir until mixed well.
Transfer macaroni to a buttered baking dish.
Sprinkle with breadcrumbs.
Bake 20 minutes until the top is golden brown.
(You can also freeze this recipe in zip-lock bags for later use - once you have mixed the macaroni along with the cheese sauce allow to cool to room temperature before adding to your freezer - I generally pull it out the night before and allow macaroni and cheese to reach room temperature; I then add the macaroni and cheese to a buttered baking dish, sprinkle with bread crumbs and then bake for 20 to 30 minutes, until golden brown on top and bubbling.)

SO SO SO delicious and very easy and feeds a crowd. We actually triple or quadruple the Sloppy Joe recipe. Try it out!
**Our children will actually request this for their birthday dinners.