Baked Oatmeal Breakfast

When Anna was born, my Mom baked a giant batch of this baked oatmeal and she served it to me throughout the day. Anna was born at home and one of my lasting memories of that most-lovely time is of my own Mom - she'd appear in my bedroom doorway with yummy food and a big grin. My Mom got to catch Anna - isn't that cool?!

Baked Oatmeal Breakfast - this came from my dear Aunt Jackie in Maine. I love it.

2 C oatmeal (old-fashioned)
1/3 C brown sugar
1/3 C raisins
1 t baking powder
1/2 t cinnamon

1 1/2 C milk
1/2 C applesauce (unsweetened, homemade or not)
1 egg
1 T oil

Combine dry, stir in wet, pour into oiled 8" square dish. Bake at 375 for 20-25 minutes.

OR, this doubles nicely into a 9x13. My mom always added finely chopped (or ground) almonds, dried cherried, chopped apples.
You can also omit the sugar and substitute 1T more applesauce for the oil.

Serve hot with milk (and syrup or sugar).

Corn Bread we like to eat

You may have noticed that I like making my own version - whether it be my own chicken, my own vinegar. I like making my own. But we really like Jiffy cornbread and the recipes I've tried are too blahhh (I like it sweet and moist and yellow). So - I googled "cornbread like jiffy's" and then made it my own. Here's how I like it. FYI - I do fresh-grind my own flour - I've also done popcorn and that makes it even better - but usually I buy the cornmeal (b/c it is too loud in the vitamixer and we don't have enough ear-coverage for every kid).

This is a giant recipe - I make it in my big casserole dish (10xsomething)- we devour it at dinner, then have leftover for breakfast.

1 C cornmeal
3 C flour (I use equal parts fresh-ground hard white and soft white wheat berries)
1/3 C sugar (usually brown)
2 Tablespoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2/3 C oil
1/3 C butter (can play with this fats ratio - but I like it with at least 1/3 butter)
4 eggs, well-beaten
2 1/4 C milk (I rarely use plain milk. I prefer homemade kefir or buttermilk or clabbered raw milk - today I used mostly clabbered but needed a bit more so added broth!)
(optional - can add 1 C fresh or from-frozen corn for some texture)

Combine all dry ingredients. Pour wet on top, gently stir (it will begin to bubble, so don't over-stir). Pour into oiled casserole dish. Bake 350 for 40-50 minutes - mine is always browned on edges before it is done in the middle - browned is yum.

Season for finishing

This is the season for finishing things.  The trees are finishing their leaves, the garden is finishing its fruit, I am finished cleaning the house (aaah! that was so funny.  I crack myself up.)  Get ready, I should blog more often.  This post is heavy-laden.

Finishing the Apple Cider Vinegar.  I keep blowing through my bottles of Bragg's ACV because I add a tablespoon per gallon of water for the dog, chickens and rabbits.  I think it helps them fend off icky things - who knows.  But I was about to give up on my dosings b/c the good, raw stuff is too expensive. Here's my attempt at making it myself - easy, not hardly stinky.  I'm sold.  I got seconds from the orchard.  They aren't organic (which is bad b/c any pesticides will keep them from making good fermenty vinegar) but since they were the ugly ones, it's likely they got little spray (hence their ugliness).  So we put a half-bushel's worth of cores and peels into that 5-gal bucket, topped it with warm water and banded a thin dishtowel over the top to keep out fruit flies.  It sat in my kitchen for 3 weeks (I am impatient - 6 wks seems ideal), then I strained it out and filled my jars with that appley sour liquid!!  I had to do it, we were out of Bragg's.  But since I think it has more vinegar potential, I saved the mushy scraps, jarred it up with more water and towel-lids, and made a pretty vinegar display next to my mudroom sink.

 Finishing the soup beans.  We didn't weed and we didn't spray and we didn't water.  Hmm, not ideal.  But still we got a load of beans.  We planted 4 kinds:  Black Turtle, Calypso, Jacob's Cattle, and Pinto. We hardly got any of the latter two - maybe because the cows got out one night and munched them?  Don't know.   I do know that this is not cost-effective.  We do this because our daddy thinks it is cool that we can grow soup beans.  We do this to also prove that a lot of great learning/school can occur while one person reads aloud and the rest shell beans.  Also lots of hilarity.  Much more effective than trying to do school while canning tomatoes.

11yr old Peter's hand.

These little hands are cuter, Anna is our best sorter and also our best bean-feeler.

Two cheerful girl shellers.

This is how we dry them on towels on our deck.  Sometimes the shells burst open and the beans fly.

Finishing the hay drama.  We bought a very old, very used set of hay equipment.  I'm still baffled by which is the rake, the crusher-thingy, the cutter-part.  No clue.  I only know I was whispering the h-a-t-e word because my husband was so heart-achy as he and his farm-friends struggled to make the darn equipment work!!  This grass-fed business is hard when it doesn't rain.  So, here is a picture of a beautiful little steer named Tank who is watching his farm-daddies toss 43 beautiful bales of our OWN hay into our barn.

Finishing the chickens.  (warning, don't scroll further if you don't like to eat chicken) We are almost done with our first grandiose chicken raising.  We raised 48 cornish cross and 30 color range meat chickens in pasture-pens.  The spent their first 3 weeks inside (safe and warm), then went out to meet the world of fresh grass and bugs.  Twice every day we (mostly me) hauled jugs of water (ACV included!) up to the pasture, scooted the pens to fresh grass, and refilled their water and feed.  We loved those chickens.  They loved me the most.  We sold all but 5 cornish cross - the color range go in 2 weeks, I'm trying to remember not to sell all of them.  The goal was to pay for our own freezer-filling and make a little money.  I kept forgetting about the freezer-filling when our friends were cheerfully asking if they could buy some.  Next year, we'll just need to do more!!

Ruby is a very skillful chicken-deliverer.  See she's not even worried that the chicken is about to reach up and peck her hand.

I like butchering chickens.  It is simple and satisfying to see your clean bird, ready to eat.  I think it's appropriate that we know what our food ate, where it came from and who made it ready-to-eat.  This is right and good.  Anna and I talked to the Cornish Cross the night before butcher.  We agreed they were probably very excited for their big day - fulfilling the purpose for which they were created.  Anna says she will butcher when she gets bigger.  For now, she swings with her cousins.  We had 7 adults and 15 kids at our house "helping" on butcher-day.  No wonder we think it's fun.

The super-awesome chicken plucker.  See all those feathers?!  This is the men's department - they bleed, dip, pluck and pull. 

This is my table - I like to eviscerate.  It is a personal challenge to get all the inside out  in one piece.  See me concentrating?!  Most of the kids tried this - it's so cool to figure out their organs and see how their system is different from ours.
Chickens are beautifully-made creatures - even these hybrids.

This is my farmer.  He thinks the beard is good camo for bow-season.  We agree to disagree.  I love it when he looks at me like that because it means he thinks my jokes are funny.  This is a serious compliment.

This pen has 7 color range roosters.  These chickens aren't hybrids with giant breasts - they are happy normal birds that don't tip over because of the afore-mentioned giant breast.  They do normal things like crow and scratch for bugs and have beautiful feathers. This one is peaking up at me to say, "water-lady, where did you take my water?"