Sometimes dinner doesn't turn out quite as planned :)

Hi All! Well last night I thought I would try something different with dinner. We love enchiladas and I decided I wanted to try to make it healthier by changing up some of the ingredients. I thawed out some of our grass-fed ground beef and seasoned it with taco seasoning. After it was nicely browned, I added some canned, diced green chilies and stewed tomatoes. I then added a bit of shredded mozzeralla to the pan.

Here’s where I really went wrong though. Normally, I make enchiladas using flour or corn tortillas. This time, I thought I would try a different brand that was super high in fiber and lightly flavored with basil. After I loaded the tortillas with the meat sauce, rolled up and placed in the lightly greased pan, I covered it with a “hot” enchilada sauce and more shredded mozzeralla cheese. This was then placed in the oven for about an hour at 350 degrees.

When I pulled it out, it looked great! The cheese was nicely browned on the edges and everything smelled wonderful. We had also decided to try a raspberry/grape Wisconsin wine. I didn’t realize that it was slightly carbonated but thought it still might taste good. Then I read the label closely and realized that I had bought a dessert wine! It is meant to be drunk while enjoying some sort dark chocolate creation. Unfortunately, I had not planned dessert, let alone a dark chocolate one. Our friend, Bob, had brought fresh black berries from his garden to be served with our white chocolate/vanilla ice cream. Ugh!

Needless to say, it was not one of my best meals. It wasn’t horrible but the flavors just didn’t play across the palate like I would have liked and the texture of the high fiber, flavored tortillas just didn’t work for me. My husband and Bob did have seconds but I could barely finish my first serving. While I didn’t like the wine with the meal, I would be willing to try it again with a dark chocolate dessert.

Live and learn. Cooking is not something that comes easily to me but I will continue to try new recipes with locally produced food at least once a week and if it fails, I just need to remember that is part of the learning process.
Have you ever made a meal that, while totally edible, just didn’t taste the way you wanted? Or choose a wine that really didn’t go with the meal? Tell me your failed attempts and what you learned from it. Know your farm, trust your food and bring fun back to the table! Check out www.localdirt.com for local food near you.

News from the Hen House!

Hi all! Locavore Lady here with a story on life on a small farm and how small farmers strive to provide safe and healthy local food. Not only am I passionate about sourcing local food, I love to grow it! I have a large garden that is just coming into its own and my kids and I raise chickens for eggs and meat. The kids also take some of their birds to local fairs as one of their 4H projects. Out of all the different species I have raised over the years, chickens are THE most enjoyable! The kids love them too and it shows in their superior care our chickens get and the championships our kids have been consistently bringing home over the years, for their unique and purebred varieties, crossbred layers and meat chickens.

Our laying hens are never turned into stewing birds, for a few reasons. First of all, they give us big, beautiful, brown eggs for 3-4 years so I feel the least I can give them in return, is a safe and warm place for them to live out their natural lives, which is about 5 years. Second reason we don’t turn them into stew or soup, is that there isn’t much left of the bird after producing and laying eggs non-stop for several years. We keep our birds under lights all winter so they continue to lay. That means their systems never take a break. A typical, healthy laying hen produces 1 egg every 26 hours or so. The older the bird, the longer time it takes to lay an egg and the bigger the egg. My third reason for not turning them into stew or soup is that I love listening to them in the backyard and the fact that when we start new young birds, they are the wise elders that show the young ones how to find food out in the pasture and where to lay their eggs. Not to mention, knowing where to go when it gets dark and you don’t want to get eaten by a coyote, fox, badger, skunk, raccoon, owl, hawk, wild cats or dogs and weasels.

Life on a small farm for most animals is very pleasant due the reduced number of animals and thus less work for the farmer. Most of our friends that also have small farms, allow their animals to be outside as much as possible in order to increase the quality of life for the animals but also to reduce the amount of maintenance and cleanup needed. Animals kept in a barn all the time, or in a cage all the time, need a lot of care in order to maintain their health. My family is active in 3-5 other sports at any given time, involved in school activities and 4H projects so “keeping it natural” is our best fit option.


That being said, one of the things we do every year in order to maintain the safety of our eggs and meat, is to test all adult chickens for Salmonella Pullorum. The test is a simple blood test with a serum that detects the presence of antigens in their system to the S. Pullorum bacterium. I am a Wisconsin State Certified Pullorum tester and thus was crazy-busy this past weekend testing many local 4H kids’ flocks. (Our local fairs start this week.) It is really quite simple, in theory, to do. You catch the bird. You prick a vein under their wing for a drop of blood to appear. Catch the blood droplet with a special tool and mix with a drop of serum.

If the bird was a carrier or actively fighting Pullorum, the blood would immediately start to clump up into little purple dots. That would be very bad as all the birds would then have to be destroyed in order to minimize the contagious nature of this for other flocks in the area. It has not been seen in Wisconsin in a very long time, several decades, due to the aggressive testing of flocks around the state and nation.

Like I was saying, it sounds like it would be simple, right? Wrong. First you have to corral the chickens, then catch them one by one, band them with identifying leg bands, and then immobilize them in a way that doesn’t hurt them but allows for the blood test. Lucky for me, my daughter is a GREAT chicken wrangler and was able to assist at all the farms we went to over the weekend. We also enlisted the help of some friends Saturday night for our own chickens. We have roughly 50 chickens of eight different breeds, some being easier to catch than others. Some of them are quite big and some are small with some being noisier than the others in their protest of being pulled off their perches for the evening. We had one Sumatra rooster truly sound like he was saying “help” before I even approached him with the needle!

3 hours later, all our birds were done and settled back into their coop for the night, with their feathers a bit ruffled but no worse for the wear. We also maintain a USDA certification for meat and egg production and sales. Some small farmers do this and some don’t. Some small farmers are organic with some just using organic practices but held off getting the certification due to the high cost in obtaining that certification. We are one of those farms. We are organic as possible in our practices but the cost of becoming certified has been cost prohibitive.

Cornish/Rock cross Champion Meat Chicken on R&B Acres LLC farm, Oregon, Wis.Get to know your local farmer by going to www.localdirt.com and finding one near you. Read their biography and order their products. Know your farm, trust your food and bring fun back to the dinner table!

Thanks and enjoy the day – Renee, aka Locavore

Sucess with Seasonal First Foods

Hi all! I definitely like being a locavore and sharing my finds with family and friends. Dinner the other night was another big hit. After a monsoon-like day, and sloppy, wet visits to the Southside Farmers’ Market run by Robert Pierce and the Oregon Farmers’ Market run by David Woodcock, I finally made it home with my “finds” just in time to see the sun come out and witness a beautiful sunset during dinner. Our children are on vacation with their Grandfather this week but our weekly Tuesday dinner was still on and actually had more than the usual visitors.

This week’s mission was to find something that was a seasonal first. I thought it might be a bit of a challenge but I was wrong. Not only did I enjoy the first zucchini, I found the first baby red potatoes, broccoli, beets and kohlrabi! Dinner was coming together nicely. On a whim, I decided to see what yummy, cheesy type of bread the Silly Yak Bakery at the Oregon Farmers’ Market might have. Again, success was mine as I took home a bag full of cream cheese stuffed jalapeño bread bites that were topped with asiago cheese and a cheesy, Italian pull apart bread.

My husband had pulled some of our grass-fed ground beef out of the freezer and mixed it with spicy Indian seasonings to make his ever-popular Shami Kabob. He also whipped up his delightfully delicate mint-garlic yogurt sauce that compliments the spicy heat in the kabobs. He served his kabobs with lightly grilled tortillas and my locally found veggies.

I warmed up the bread in the oven and while he was grilling the kabobs, I prepped the veggie kabobs of zucchini and tomatoes with a mustard, chili pepper vinaigrette marinade from Savory Accents that my son had picked up at the Saturday Dane County Farmers' Market, Madison, Wis. I then steamed my first local broccoli, beets and kohlrabi that were lightly seasoned with Himalayan sea salt that I had purchased at another farmers’ market in Madison a few weeks ago. My baby red potatoes were boiled just to the point of succulent softness and served whole with Wisconsin butter as an option for topping.
The only thing not local on the menu that night was the wine. This was due the fact that our guests had brought the wine and weren’t quite aware about our family’s challenge to source as much of our food locally as possible. When we teased them about it, they promptly suggested that we “destroy” the evidence of a non-local food item as soon as possible. Done!

The only thing I wasn’t successful at for our dinner was the dessert. I had really hoped to have fresh sheep’s milk ice cream using some of the milk from our sheep but I didn’t realize how long it took to make homemade ice cream. After about 40 minutes of shaking and stirring, we gave up and got out the Wisconsin vanilla that was in the freezer which was topped with a lemon-strawberry puree. All in all, there were smiles all around. Know your farm, trust your food and bring merriment back to the dinner table.

Check out www.localdirt.com for locations where you can find seasonal food firsts near you.

Here is our recipe for the mint-garlic yogurt sauce that can be used as a salad dressing, veggie topper or great meat marinade:

1 container of plain, full fat local yogurt (usually 12 oz)
4 cloves of garlic, crushed and minced
1 small bunch (about 6 tender stalks) of fresh mint, chopped fine. For a finer texture, stick to chopping just the leaves.
Salt and pepper to taste
Mix and enjoy!