Category: local food

Harvest meal

We love getting friends together to enjoy a nourishing meal, especially a harvest meal.  I cooked up an impromptu harvest meal with PFI friends on their way home from a Decorah field day.  I roasted a lamb shoulder infused with rosemary and garlic in the oven for 4 hours. We had rosemary and garlic roasted potatoes, butternut and acorn squash, sautéed green beans in garlic and olive oil, and a little lamb stew meat over onions and carrots.  Everything was certified organic or raised organically. We created a red wine gravy with the drippings from the roast and it was fabulous! My favorite cooking app is Yummly! You have to get it!

A before picture:

  
And an after picture:

  
It was yum yum good! 

Pulling feathers

I had my first chicken processing experience today! My poultry-loving friends who are also our neighbors let us bring our two roosters over to process along with their number of roosters. I never realized how easy the feathers come out after you dip them in hot water. I also never knew the figure of speech, “running around like a chicken with your head cut off” had a literal meaning. And I now understand why processing chickens requires a line-up of people to do different tasks and how quickly it goes when you have all of those hands. 

  

I was a little sad to see the roosters go and not hear their “cock-a-doodle-doo” anymore, but they are slow cooking in the crockpot as we speak, and there is nothing like fresh chicken that we know lived a happy life on our farm.