We’re starting the farmers market season today! We’ll be at the North Iowa Farmers Market from 3-6 in the Mason City KMart parking lot.
Tomorrow we’ll be at the Osage Farmers Market from 9-11 in the Plaza parking lot on east Main Street.
Looking forward to seeing our farmers market customers again!
Our final Mason City delivery date before farmers market begins will be Wednesday, April 11th. 6:30 p.m., KMart parking lot. Please call in orders to 641.732.4915 or email sugarcreekfarm@osage.net. We will take orders until Tuesday, April 10th by noon, but for guaranteed availability of cuts please have orders to us by Friday, April 6th. We WILL have pork chops back in stock for this delivery!
Our next Mason City delivery will be Wednesday February 29th! Please email orders to sugarcreekfarm@osage.net or call orders in to 641.732.4915 by Thursday February 23rd. (We’ll still take orders up until Tuesday the 28th, but if we’re out of something we won’t be able to restock it for you for this delivery.)
Usual delivery setup – 6:30 p.m. in the southwest corner of the KMart parking lot.
Come see us and all the other great Wellness Expo exhibitors at the Cedar River Complex in Osage, noon until 7:00 today! $2 admission. Door prizes include gift certificates from Sugar Creek Farm!
I wasn’t expecting to like this soup. Which, I know. Why would you make a soup you weren’t expecting to like? But it was one of those things… I wanted soup, I wanted pork and vegetables in it, but I wasn’t hungry for this one on this particular day.
So I certainly wasn’t expecting to be blown away by this soup. And the bonus? You just chop stuff up and throw it in the crockpot. Which makes it perfect for my Sunday modus operandi, which is to get a big vat of soup going after church and then spend as much of the rest of the day as possible doing nothing.
Pork and Vegetable Soup II
1 2-3 pound Sugar Creek Farm pork shoulder roast, trimmed and cubed
2 cups sliced carrots
1 cup diced celery
2 medium potatoes, peeled and diced
1 medium onion, chopped
1 medium head cabbage, chopped
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
4 cups chicken broth
1 t. crushed red pepper
1 t. salt
1/2 t. pepper
28 oz. diced tomatoes, undrained
Mix all ingredients in large slow cooker. (You may have to let the cabbage cook down a while before you can stir everything… my crockpot was completely full by the time I got everything in it.) Cover and cook on low heat 8 hours, medium 6 hours, or high 4 hours, or until pork and vegetables are tender.
You can find all of our recipes here!
Tonight the snow is falling and the wind chill’s at zero. But yesterday it was 53 degrees. 53 degrees! On January 10th in Iowa! So I did something I haven’t done in a really long time – grabbed my camera and took a little walk around the farm on my lunch break.
Some of the calves were hanging out in the shed, some were outside lounging around in the sun.
We’re down to a small flock of chickens. I keep wanting to start some more, but the kids always have my garage occupied with pigs at the time I’d want to be brooding chicks. But the chickens I still have are such a pretty mix. That black and white rooster front left came to live with us after my cousin’s daughter caught him in one of those scrambles at the county fair. Before we figured out he was a rooster, we named him after her. So his name is still “Elsie Rooster”. I love that rooster. And my cousin’s other daughter caught the gold hen front right. So her name is Molly. I love that hen, too.
This rooster was hatched right here on the farm. He was surveying his kingdom from the top of the straw bales that insulate our well pit.
The pigs were all sacked out for a nap.
They gave me a look, but went back to their nap after realizing I didn’t have anything to eat with me. (Thankfully they didn’t see me as something to eat.)
I definitely need to get back into the routine of my noon walkabouts…
Found
I love a new year. In spite of the part of me that wants to stop time so my babies will never leave me, I love the fresh start & clean slate feeling a new year brings.
I’ve been thinking about what the new year might bring here to this blog. I miss writing and taking pictures and sharing things in this space. I was looking back through some old posts circa 2008. What a treasure they are to me now! I wonder how I had time to do all that, but I sure would like to get back to it.
New Years Eve we spent in Minneapolis with some dear friends. As midnight crept up on us, we went around the room sharing one resolution for the coming year. Mine was write more.
Have you heard of the concept of one little word? For 2011 my word was “cultivate”. I chose that word because I was feeling the need to be more purposeful and mindful about my life. I liked the dual meaning of the word – a tool to help propagate growth, and a tool for removing the “weeds” that hinder growth. I highly recommend choosing a word as a new year practice. And if you’re the crafty type (or even if you’re not!) I recommend this online class. My word for 2012 is “wholehearted”. We’ll see where it takes me this year…
1 year ago:
Our latest pork and beef cuts are ready to be picked up! Yay! It is so difficult to cook without ground beef. Well not difficult, I guess, just monotonous. I really miss chili and goulash and tacos and, and, and…
We will be doing a Mason City delivery on Wednesday, December 21st at 6:30 in the KMart parking lot – southwest corner, in the general vicinity that the farmers market sets up. You can email orders to sugarcreekfarm@osage.net, or call 641.732.4915. We need orders by Friday, December 16th.
You can also pick up orders here at the farm anytime after Saturday morning. Email or call in your order, and we can have it ready to go for you!
Wow, can you tell we’re between seasons right now?!? I’m on a roll with the whole cooking thing. And also, trying to use up the last of last year’s cuts before the new cuts are ready. We didn’t have a whole lot of unsold cuts this year (yeah!), and, to be honest, there were some cuts we’ve been hoarding.
So I was trying to think of something to do with cheddarwurst besides lay them on a bun. I decided to combine them with my favorite macaroni & cheese recipe from Betty Crocker 1955 (my grandma’s cookbook, which I love!) And then, I got really crazy. For some reason, tomatoes seemed like they’d be really good thrown into this mess. I couldn’t quite decide if it really would be good, or turn the whole thing into a big pan of disaster. But you know how we computer programmers are… risk takers! Yeah, that’s right. So in the tomatoes went, and everybody loved it.
First, cook 2 cups of uncooked elbow macaroni according to package directions. Drain and dump into a cake pan with 2 or 3 tablespoons of butter.
While the macaroni’s cooking you can put the cheddarwurst into a pot of water to boil, and start the cheese sauce. Now we’re multitasking, baby!
For the cheese sauce, melt 6 tablespoons butter in a saucepan. Whisk in 6 tablespoons flour until smooth, then cook a minute or so until it’s thick and bubbly. Then whisk in 3 cups milk, and continue whisking over medium heat until it’s also thick and bubbly.
I apologize for the pictures… the lighting in our kitchen is horrible!
Add in 2 cups of shredded cheddar cheese
and whisk until melted and smooth.
Drain the cheddarwurst, slice them up and stir them into the macaroni.
Remember those risky tomatoes?
Stir those in, too. No need to drain them.
Then dump the cheese sauce over the whole mess, stir, cover the pan with foil, and bake at 350 degrees for 40 to 50 minutes.
The moral of the story? Don’t be afraid to take risks in the kitchen. And watch out for computer programmers, you never know what they’re going to do!
(alternately titled, “Reasons my mother thinks I may have been an alien baby”)
(subtitled “wherein I use a lot of italicized comments in parentheses”)
Me: I made mayonnaise today!
My Mom: Why?
Conversations like these are not altogether rare around these parts. I do something retro-domestic (yes, I made up that term and considered copyrighting it until a subsequent Google search told me I’m not the first one to make it up), and she wonders where on earth (or outerspace) I came from.
Blame it on Melissa Gilbert. I was obsessed with the TV show of “Little House on the Prairie”. And then, for my 4th birthday, my Aunt Betty & Uncle Mike gave me the first book in the series
(Funny side-story here. I was an early reader. Except my mom didn’t know it until I got that book. She was reading it to me and, as she puts it, there’s a lot of words and not many pictures so she figured she could paraphrase a little. As a mom myself now, I know that this really means she had a 4-year-old and a newborn and she was sick-and-tired of reading the damn book already.
Anyway, she’s paraphrasing along when I stop her and say, “You didn’t read that word.” She looks at me – probably with the same bewildered expression she had when I informed her I made mayonnaise – and asks, “What word?” I reply, “Indian. You didn’t say the word Indian.” What did I tell you? Alien baby.)
The answer to her question (which, again, was “Why?” in case you got sidetracked up there), is that I’m cheap. Have you seen how much a jar of mayonnaise costs in the store? And if it goes on sale, the shelf is completely empty by the time I get there. And then there’s the alien list of ingredients. I know Ma Ingalls did not put that stuff in her mayonnaise (although, honestly, I don’t recall Ma Ingalls making mayonnaise in any of those books.) Considering the number of mayonnaise-based salads I make in the summer months, and the chickens making daily egg deliveries right to my door, I think the question should be, “Why not?!?” So let’s go!
You will not believe how simple making mayonaise really is. But the most important thing is the eggs you use. Mayonnaise is made with raw egg yolks, after all. So ideally you would use very fresh eggs from free-range hens. If you don’t or can’t have your own hens, find a trustyworthy local farmer to buy eggs from. In a pinch, organic cage-free eggs from a trustworthy company. Never would I make mayonnaise with eggs from hens raised in confinement with hundreds or thousands of other hens. Remember all of the egg recalls just last year? Doesn’t sound like things have gotten any better.
So now that you have some really good eggs in hand, all you need to go with them is oil (I bought a huge jug of canola oil for the price of 2 regular jars of mayonnaise! You can use whatever oil trips your trigger) and an acid – vinegar or lemon juice. A little salt and a blender and you’re all set.
Put 2 egg yolks, a pinch of salt and a tablespoon vinegar (or lemon juice) in the blender. Give it a quick spin to mix those together, then turn it on low and leave it run while you very very slowly drizzle in 3/4 cup of oil. I’m serious! Drizzle. very. slowly. If you enjoy science experiments you’ll enjoy this process! It’s fun to watch as the whole mess turns from liquid into a beautiful, creamy condiment. And it really only takes about 5 minutes. It just seems longer because you’re drizzling. Very slowly. (If you really want the whole science-y explanation of why that happens, read the last paragraph on this website.)
A few notes… One, you can use additional seasonings if you wish, but it isn’t necessary. I like a little garlic powder, a little ground pepper, maybe a little paprika. Two, if you use fresh eggs from free-range hens, your mayonnaise will have a nice yellow color to it instead of that pasty white color of the storebought stuff. And three, obviously, keep your mayonnaise refrigerated. It will keep up to a week, so it’s best to make small, quick batches and use it right up.
And that’s all there is to it! So go! Get your Ma Ingalls on.
