Crumbing Right At Ya!

So here's the close up.  

I'm embarrassed to admit that this is the only piece left (it IS much bigger than it looks, it's at a "skinny" angle!).  But hey, it was made Thursday afternoon, and Paul did take a chunk to work, and I gave a hunk to my Mom.....and, and, and.....

Oh hell, we're just a bunch of gluttons.  And I wonder why I'm thirty pounds overweight.  

So, now that you all have an up-in-your-face but-you-can't-eat-it photo, what say ye about the texture?  I have noticed another thing though; the longer the cake sat, the better it got.  

So, is it that I'm just used to the twinkie-like consistency of commercially sold pound cakes?  Possibly.  But honestly, I no longer care about trying to match that texture anymore.  This cake is good enough as is......imperfect looking as it is!

Saturday Oven Lovin'

I tried making my first Pound Cake on Thursday morning.  I looked up recipes in the old standby's (Joy of Cooking and BH&G Cook Book) as well as online.  The BH&G recipe called for shortening instead of butter; I just didn't trust a pound cake recipe that used shortening instead of butter.  And I though that it was called a "Pound" cake because there was like a whole pound of every major ingredient in it, and many of the recipes did not adhere to this. 

So I did a little web searching and found this one:

3 cups cake flour
6 large eggs
1 pound butter
1 pound sugar
2 tsp. vanilla
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 cup buttermilk

325 degree oven for an hour and ten minutes.

Pound of sugar, check.  Pound of butter, check.  Crapload of eggs, check.  Nothing else fancy or frilly or "new and improved" in order to make the good old version of a pound cake more "modern".   Sounded good to me.

The batter itself was beater-lick'n good so I was hoping for an exceptional baked version.

Never having made a pound cake before (as if I were living on Mars or something where I didn't have access to butter and eggs), I wasn't sure how the batter was supposed to look like, but figured it was going to be thicker than normal cake mix.  Which it was.

The cake itself was very dense, like a pound cake.  And oh so buttery.  And oh so good.  And oh so how many extra layers of cellulite would you like on your thighs, thank you very much.

But the consistency just wasn't right.  Although it was a dense cake, it still had a crumb-like texture.  Not crumbly by any means, but it was definitely not what I would consider a pound cake kind'a consistency.  Unless I've been so used to eating commercially produced pound cakes that I didn't know what an actual honest to goodness real homemade cake was supposed to be like.

Did I beat the batter too much?  Too little?  Did I not have all my ingredients exactly at 70 degrees?  Did I fail to sift the dry ingredients enough?  

I guess I'll not know until I try out another recipe.  But in the meantime, we're enjoying every slice of my first-ever pound cake.

Got a recipe you'd like to share with the blogosphere?  Then go over to Tiny Gardener's blog and share your recipe (possibly for a pound cake???) with her.

Easy as Pie(crusts)

In my seemingly ever-continuing quest to squeeze as many pennies out of a dollar, cram as many seedlings into a raised bed, and make use of almost every part of an animal, I have had to learn new skills.   One of them just last night.

Paul picked up most of our hog yesterday afternoon.  Since we still wont have the ham and bacon for a little while longer, I'm waiting to do the final math for how much meat we got for what we spent. 

I managed to clean out just enough room in the chest freezer to put away the plethora (hehe, plethora) of pork-goodness that was crammed in the trunk of the car.  Seventy pounds of pork chops, roasts and ribs.  Sixty-two pound of sausage - OH YEAH!   Six pounds of liver.  And thirty pounds of fat.

I could smack myself in the head though.  In my haste to tell the butcher that I wanted a shoulder and a ham made into sausage, I forgot to say that I wanted the feet and head.  But I guess that isn't the end of the world.  Especially since I still have the feet from last year's hog in the freezer and I think we just ended up tossing last year's head into the woods for the coyotes when we were scrambling for freezer space for the Cornish meat birds.  Not exactly sure what I was going to do with the head.  Head cheese maybe?  

But I regress (imagine that).

Back to the freezer and our pig-a-licious procurement.

Everything fit in the freezer, with not much room to spare.  And there was still a thirty pound box of pork fat staring at me:

So I was up until almost midnight rendering the fat.  There are four ways (at least that I recall) this can be done.  But they all start with cutting up the fat into nice little pieces, or you could even run the chunks through your meat grinder and I'm sure it would speed up the process.

Once you have your pork fat in the desired cut or ground state, then you have to decide how you are going to melt all this piggy goodness into lard.

Stove top, oven, crockpot or microwave.  I chose the stove top and crockpot as I wanted to compare the two methods.  The microwave may seem easier, but it didn't seem feasible as I'd have to do over a dozen batches as I'd only be able to do a pound or two at a time.  I just couldn't see having the oven on the entire night (electric bill is bad enough).

Basically, you just want to warm the fat up to the point that it melts, not fry it up.  I put my chunks into a thick-bottom pot on the range and set it to medium/low, or just to keep the temperature of the oil around 220 degrees.  You don't want the bottom to scorch so at the beginning you'll have to stir it around a bit.

Hmmmm.  Why does this make me want to get back on the treadmill?

While my pot on the stove was warming up, I chunked up more fat and tossed it into the crockpot and set it to medium:

My stove top fat was finished in about two & a half hours.  I let the oil cool a little bit, then strained it through a sieve lined with a coffee filter:

Then poured it into jars:

Notice how the middle jar is a darker color?  That's because I got hasty.  I drained some of the lard thinking it would speed things up, so the lard in the back jars weren't on the stove as long.   And then the remaining lard and cracklings got a little too hot, therefore burning it a bit and changing color.  I'm not sure if this will affect the taste or stability of the finished product or not.

The cracklings are what you are left with:

Basically, homemade pork rinds.  Grab a beer, a salt shaker and chow down; arteries be dammed!

The crockpot rendering is taking much longer.  I say "taking" as it is still in the crockpot as of 9 am this morning and looks like this:

At least I didn't have to babysit it like I did with the pot on the range.  And since I didn't mess around with the heat in order to hurry things up, the lard is looking like it has a lighter color.  We'll see as time goes on.  Because it seems as if it's definitely going to take more time before it's finished.

Going Whole Hog!

Literally.

Normally we only get 1/2 a hog each year, but this year the guy we get our hog from had an "excess" of piglets (i.e. the boar got out of his pen) so we agreed to take the entire animal.

Although I wish I could take credit for this magnificent
work of art, it was just a pic I saw online.

"Our" hog went into the butcher last week and I got the call yesterday that the fresh meat would be ready for pickup anytime.  The bacon and ham will have to wait a bit.  But we'll still have plenty of sausage right away.....or more like a plethora.  (...would you say I had a "plethora"?.....anybody remember that line from Three Amigos?)

As much as I love, love, love bacon, I'm also a sausage freak.  And since I cannot do much about upping the amount of bacon we get from the hog (oh wouldn't it be just heaven if you could get an entire hog in bacon???), I do have some control over the amount of sausage we get.

So I got one shoulder and one ham made into sausage.  Yes.  I "ruined" a perfectly good ham in order curb my cravings for breakfast sausage.  Paul claims that this was not what was planned when we were discussing how to have the hog cut up, but I think he misunderstood, or at least underestimated my desire to have as much sausage crammed into my freezer as space would allow.  

Anyways, the last ham we had cut into 1" steaks and it lasted almost a year, so I figured we really didn't need that second ham anyways.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it!


Paul's Take
There was no "misunderstanding".  We can talk, discuss, yap, chat, whatever about something and she just goes ahead and does whatever she wants anyhow.

Seeds? Planting? Hugh?

With all this goat stuff going on, I have neglected my seed-starting obligations.  I had my gardening calendar all filled out, dates highlighted for which types of seeds to start, containers accounted for and seed starting medium acquired.  But Nettie's kidding had me in a tizzy the end of last week and then this weekend I cleaned up the goat yard and we disbudded Nettie's kid yesterday.

My oregano, parsley and mints were supposed to be planted already.  And my peppers, eggplant and cabbage need to be planted in like, this week.  I'm trying to plant by the Moon Signs this year.  But then we get a beautiful, warm and sunny day and I just want to plant right NOW!

So, which adage to I adhere to?  

"Plant by the Moon" or "Make Hay while the Sun Shines"?

According to the Moon, I should be planting my above ground crops this Thursday and Friday and I missed the date for planting root crops by two days (supposed to be the 20th).   So can I manage to NOT plant any root crops until the next Moon day, the 9th of March?  Unlikely.  But I will try to busy myself with other homesteading chores in order to keep my mind off carrots and turnips and parsnips (oh my).

According to the weather though, I should have planted stuff yesterday and today. Because the weather has been just beautiful, and how can I not dig into that dirt when it's just calling my name??   

Maybe I'll get working on building the frames for another couple of raised beds.  Or start collecting rocks (i.e. boulders) for terracing the side of the house for my new garden area?  Maybe burn some leaves.  Or gather them up and use them as a smothering-kind-of mulch for a lasagna type garden somewhere?  Move all the little piles of compost into one big compost pile?  

All this planning is exhausting.  I think I should just sit down on the porch, watch Rhiannon play in the front yard and do some reading:

Nice looking book, isn't it?  Jealous?  You should be, because I WON this big honkin', full-color, homesteader's dream of an encyclopedia!  Kim over at Jabez Farm hosted a giveaway for this book a few weeks ago and I won!!  Aren't giveaways great?!?  Isn't Kim great!?!  Isn't life great?!  The FedEx man brought this up to the doorstep just yesterday and I ripped into it.

  

It not only has the obligatory chapters on livestock, preserving and gardening, but also includes such "artsy" stuff like blowing & painting eggs, jewelry making and basic furniture making.  And the photos are just gorgeous!  If this 888 page book didn't weigh fifty-two pounds, I would keep it on the little side table a it's beautiful even just as a decoration, but the sheer weight of it might buckle the table legs!  Thank you so very much, Kim!!

So I think I will get myself a glass of sweet tea (yes, it's going to be that warm today) sit on the porch and flip through this beautiful book.

Maybe I won't get any planting done today. :)

BTW, if you haven't been over there yet, go check out Jabez Farm.  Kim is currently working on gluten-free goodies, so if you have any awesome recipes you'd like to share with her, go over there.  Oh, and don't forget to scroll down a bit until you get to the  " # 3 - You Should Know" post.  You'll never be able to look at a turkey egg without flinching!!

My First Quilt

....and more likely than not, my only quilt, was finally finished last week.  

I have a girlfriend back "up north" who just recently celebrated her birthday.  About a month ago, I was racking my brain for some sort of gift to send her.  We usually don't exchange birthday gifts, but she is constantly sending Rhiannon books and clothes and I just never know how to repay her.  Then in January (about a month before her birthday) I had this insane brilliant idea that I would make her a lap quilt for her cottage get-away.  I found a picture of their living room and figured I would make the quilt to match that room and the bright red couch, so I was off to do some fabric hunting.  

I love shopping for fabric!

Except it took me like two whole weeks to find the colors I wanted.  Mom was with me on most of the trips and I think I about drove her nuts.  I found several fabrics that I just loved, but then couldn't get three of them to look good together.  I originally wanted to do a red, blue and green block pattern, but after going into every fabric store within a 25 mile radius I just couldn't find what I wanted.  I think the employees were told to keep an eye on me because I was not only in each store several times, but was shifty-eyed, anxious and unsettled while in the store.  The signs of a thief, or signs of a frustrated and burned out fabric shopper?  I finally settled for just red and blue Batik and a Mossy green.

Because if I saw another bolt of fabric I was going to vomit.

My Mom has been quilting for a few years now and she has all those nifty little quilty helping things like the wheelie-bob cutter, plastic squares, rules and the squishy mat for cutting.  With her help I cut out the main blocks for the quilt, nice and square.  How the hell did people do this before the wheelie-bob cutter?  There's no way that you can get anything square with just plain ol' scissors.  Mom showed me how to sew the blocks together and I was pretty happy at how quickly it went together and how nice it looked.  

I wanted this quilt!

I still didn't have a backing for the quilt, so back to the fabric stores I went.  Of course, I then found a green Batik that would have gone with the red and blue blocks.  But the hell if I was going to rip out the stitches for the work I already finished so I just settled on using the green I already had as a border strip.  I picked out a blue flannel for the backing.

This quilt was going to look awesome!

Putting on the green border wasn't as difficult as I had imagined.  Neither was getting the front, batting and backing sewn together (although I did cheat and used some fabric adhesive to keep the pieces from moving all over).  There were some puckering problems, and I admit that some swearing accompanied the actual "quilting" of the blocks.  At first I wanted to use a fancy patterned stitch for the quilting, but the foot of the machine kept hanging up on the flannel backing.  I tried several fancy stitches before finally giving up.  I had taken out no less than three-thousand-eight-hundred-forty-two stitches with the seam ripper.  My eyes were beginning to tear up half-way through taking them out, not sure if it was because I was straining them too much or because I was going to have a breakdown and just uncontrollably sob.  I ended up using just a straight "stitch in the ditch".  Good enough.  

I loved this quilt!

The binding, however, was a frekking nightmare.  At first, I thought I was going to use a red binding.  Mom said how easy it was to make binding, but I was going to go the really easy way and bought some pre-made binding.  No cutting, no ironing, just bam!, put the binding on and sew away.  Except when I laid the red binding on the quilt I didn't like the look (yes Mom, I know you liked it, but too bad, I didn't).  I tried to like it.  I reasoned that it really didn't matter.  But I just couldn't embrace the red binding and it drove me nuts.  So I threw the easy-peasy pre-fabricated binding in my fabric bin and asked Mom to show me how to make binding.  Since I liked the green border I decided to use the same material.  I guess making the binding isn't really that hard (of course, assuming you have the wheelie-bob, an iron and my Mom) but I was still distraught that I wasn't able to go the really easy route and just use the store bought stuff.  

Mom.....will you finish this quilt for me?

I hated the homemade binding.  It wasn't as stiff as the other stuff and we had to piece a bunch together to get the correct length.  There were also six hundred straight pins required, at least half of which ended up being run through my fingers or thigh and causing much blood loss.  I also made a slight binding error so we had to do some creative folding and tucking to get it to look halfway decent.  At this point I would have used a store bought binding even if it was cat-puke-Meow-Mix-orange; I didn't give a rat's ass what color it was just so long as it wasn't the homemade stuff I was working with.  

I couldn't wait to finish this quilt.

Then there was the thread color.  The thread was a little too bright and didn't blend into the green border, so I figured if we were going to see the thread, I may as well make it stand out like I had wanted it to be seen (brilliant logic, hugh??).  So I tried the fancy stitch pattern again and it worked ok as it didn't have to contend with the flannel material anymore.   It was difficult to get going, but after a while it worked out.  Not perfect in any way, but it served the purely functional purpose of holding the edges together and hiding the raw seam underneath.  

I wanted this quilt out of my sight.

Finally finished, I shoved the damned thing in a box packed it up lovingly and sent it off to my friend for her belated birthday present.  I hope she likes it.  I hope it matches her cottage living room.  I hope she doesn't notice the obvious quilting technique faux pas and evident sewing mistakes made purely in an act of desperation.

I hope I never see that stinking quilt again.

I'm going to go crochet something now.

Unbelievably......

Freaking

Cute!!

Susan over at e-i-e-i-omg! saw my pathetic attempt at sewing up a last-minute, butt-ugly goat coat out of an old blue towel for this guy and took pity on me.  She not only sent me the beautiful wool sweater the kid is wearing in the above pictures, but also another one made from Llama hair (wool? fiber? angora?  What is llama fuzz called anyways?).  

It fits him perfectly, and with some room to spare!  I will no longer worry about the little guy getting cold at night or having to endure being the laughing stock of the barnyard.

I have to admit, after admiring the beautiful fibers of these handmade items, I was more than a little bit jealous that my livestock was going to be wearing a hand-knit sweater made of Llama wool.  I'VE never had a llama sweater!!  I mean, come ON!  What the hell is up with that???

The things we do for our critters.

And the things we do for our blogging buddies. 

Thank you so very, very much Susan!

(Wonder if Susan can knit Cat's Pajamas???)