Biscuits for Baking Dummies

 Tonight I made biscuits. They smelled good. They were beautiful. They tasted good. It was a first for me. Baking is not my strong suit, and I've ruined biscuits so badly that neither the dog nor the chickens would eat them. If you know any chickens you know that they must have been terrible. 
 My dear friend Mary is a baker and she finally made me realize that biscuits aren't bread (which I can bake if needs be) and the dough needs to be handled more gently. Tonight's advice was, "Just don't overmix, you can do it!!!" 
 So I looked up a recipe on the Betty Crocker website and got started. It was a really simple recipe and I made a few small changes. If I can make these anyone can. 




Tomato Basil Biscuits
   
  2 cups self rising flour
  1 stick butter
  3/4 cup milk
  1 tablespoon tomato powder (dried cherry tomatoes processed into powder)
  1 teaspoon dried basil


Preheat oven to 450. Put flour in a large bowl, cut in butter (I used 2 butter knives and then my fingers) until crumbly, add dried basil and tomato powder, and then stir in milk. Stir just until it sticks together and pulls away from the sides of the bowl. Then put it on a lightly floured surface, dust with flour and kneed 5 times. Roll out to 1/2 an inch thick and cut with a biscuit cutter and place with sides touching on a cookie sheet. Bake for 10-12 minutes. 


Here is what came out of the oven. I served these with a pea and lentil soup with ham, my dried tomatoes and my dried herbs. The only thing I will do differently in the future is to make a bigger batch. Everyone had seconds and wanted thirds.

Have a good night everyone, Blessed Be...

Come visit the Homestead Barn Hop

Dinner

 This is how dinner tonight started...

Mary is very excited that we will be having duck for dinner

 Then it looked like this...

Wild duck breasts

And this...

Dried summer pears being reconstituted

And this...

Dried pears, garlic, celery and onions

And this...

Duck breasts cooking in the pear, garlic sauce

Mary made up this recipe as she went.

Mary, testing the meat

And this is the final product...

Dinner is served

 Seared wild duck breast with a pear garlic reduction, over reconstituted summer pears with celery and onion. It was really good, the twins descended on it like starving little wolves and Mike was thrilled that they turned out so well!

 She also made desert. Starting with the fresh cheese I made this morning.

Fresh cheese, made this morning

Did I mention that Mary is a pastry chef?

Mixed with sour cream, vanilla and honey

So, that plus these...

My eggs

Made this...

The batter

Which then became this...

It's a cross between cheesecake and a custard pie

And here is the recipe for the pie. Thanks to my dear friend Mary Mayberry.

Farmer's  Cheese Pear Honey pie

Crust: 1 individual packet honey graham      crackers from box
        1 tsp honey
        1/2 cup melted butter
Filling:
         1 cup fresh Farmer's cheese
         3 Tbs sour cream
         1/3 cup sugar
         1 tsp fresh honey
         2 Tbs pear honey
        1/4 tsp salt
        1/4 tsp vanilla extract
        5 fresh eggs (3 whole and 2 yolks, reserve 2 egg whites).

Directions: pre-heat oven to 375 degrees

In a food processor, grind the graham crackers to make fine crumbs. Melt butter and add to graham cracker crumbs, pulse for a few seconds. Add honey and pulse again. Butter a glass pie tin, form the crust and bake for 5 min.

Filling;
In a food processor, combine farmer's cheese & sour cream and pulse until very smooth. Add sugar and pulse again. Remember to scrape the bowl to ensure no lumps. Add the vanilla, honey, pear honey and salt. Pulse to combine, scrape bowl and add whole eggs and egg yolks one at a time. Whip egg whites to medium-soft peak and fold into first mixture in three parts. Pour into pie dish and bake in a water bath for 25 min in middle of oven.

Boring day on the homestead

 Last weekend Mike went to a local homestead to get my cheese supplies. He found out that they have several classes, including cheese making. On Sunday I was looking at the list of classes they have, I discovered that there was a 3 day homesteading class that teaches the basics and it was on my birthday next year. I put a link on fb. Something like "I want to do this for my birthday." My friends and I talked about how cool it sounded and then I stopped thinking about it.
 You can't imagine how surprised I was when Mike told me that his mom and grandma were going to pay for me to take the class!! I have amazing in-laws!! Merry Christmas, Happy Yule and Happy birthday to me!!
 So, I didn't get a whole lot accomplished today, just the basic chores. I spent most of my day at their website. http://www.homesteadheritage.com/

They LOVE cedar!

 I did let the goats out to graze on the trees and weeds surrounding their pen. I love to watch them stand on their hind legs to get at the higher branches even though there is a branch brushing the ground not more than 3 feet to their left. Jasper is more interested in romping that eating, but he did stop long enough to nibble on some poison oak. They tried to convince me that they were still starving by making a mad dash to the back porch (where the feed is kept) and it took a flake of alfalfa to get them back into their pen.

Wrapped in cheesecloth

Unwrapped

 Tomorrow night I will start another cheese. This time a soft goat cheese that doesn't need to cure. Mike is happy that he get's to eat it right away. Speaking of cheese, here are a couple of pictures of the cheese I have curing. It got a little bit smooshed in the cheese press but I don't think it's going to make one bit of difference in how it tastes. For a first try, and one that seemed doomed to fail I'm really happy with how it turned out.
 So that's it for tonight, y'all. Blessed Be

Good things come to those that wait

 This morning I opened the giant pot that the milk had been sitting in so that I could figure out what the heck to do with it...and it had finally separated! It smelled like the yogurt I inoculated it with and it had stopped forming bubbles. I guess I just needed to give up all hope before it would cooperate. Maybe it was trying to humble me. Whatever the reason, I pulled my recipe up on the computer and got to work. I cut the curd, brought the temp back up and cooked the curd to help expel more whey. Pouring it into the strainer was a bit tricky, it was seriously heavy, but I managed. I let it drain for a few minutes and then wrapped it up in cheesecloth and put it in my press. Since I haven't gotten any bricks to weigh it down with yet, I ended up using books. Luckily I have LOTS of heavy books.
 

This afternoon I pulled out the half-gallon of cream I had saved from the milk and the twins and I made butter. They thought it was great fun to use the mixer and loved getting to taste "their" butter. We got a chunk of butter about the size of a softball. My favorite part was washing the buttermilk out of the butter. I froze the buttermilk that I drained out and will be taking it to my grandpa at Christmas. He used to drink it all the time as a kid and he's excited to get some after all these years. I'm excited to be able to do something special for one of my favorite people in the world.
 

Epic Cheese Fail

 The cheese making process has driven me to drink. Granted, it's only Dr Pepper, but still...

 On Saturday Mike made me a cheese press for our 15th anniversary. I was thrilled! I was even more thrilled when he brought me home 5 gallons of fresh raw milk from a local dairy. That night and the next day the milk stayed outside on the back porch in it's sealed bucket because it wouldn't fit in the fridge (luckily it's been cold!) Last night I had finished my research, found a recipe to turn 5 gallons of milk into 5 pounds of farmer's cheese and was finally ready to start. I skimmed some of the cream off the top of the milk to make some butter later. I had a minor hiccup when I found out I couldn't fit 5 gallons of milk in any of my pans. After a frantic few minutes I realized that it would fit in the turkey fryer my mother had given me. Whew. I sterilized the giant thing and had my big, strong hubby pour in the partially skimmed milk. I turned on the stove and gently warmed the milk to the exact right temperature before adding a cup of plain yogurt to inoculate the milk with good bacteria. I put the lid on and went to bed feeling like I totally had this whole thing down pat.
 This morning I got up at 6, took a peek at the milk, got the three big kids onto their school buses, milked Sweetie, cleaned out the car some and then got Lilybug up. With my very own tiny cheerleader looking on I measured out the rennet, added it to some water, stirred it in and put the lid on. Now, at this point it needed to sit undisturbed for 1-3 hours (according to both the rennet package AND the recipe I was using) so my munchkin and I headed out to get new tires and meet Mike for breakfast. Getting the new tires on the car took forever and I was dying to get home to check on the cheese (and because I'm antisocial and being out in public makes me slightly crazy.) 11 o'clock was the 3 hour mark and I made it home just in time. I expected to have a big mass of solid curd and a bunch of liquid whey in the pan. Instead I had...slightly thickened milk. Hmmm, maybe the house was too cold. I turned the heater on and waited a couple of hours and checked it again. Slightly thicker milk. I did some research online and checked it again, now it looked like cream. Some more research and another couple of hours and it still hadn't separated into it's component parts like it was supposed to.
 By now it was 3 o'clock and it had been sitting for 7 hours and I was getting more and more frustrated, but it was time to clean up some so I wouldn't be embarrassed by my house when Gabe's therapist showed up at 4. After cleaning the kitchen I took the trash out and found Tiger the kitty eating one of my young chickens. All that was left was the head and she was gnawing on that and looking at me all like, "What? I'm a cat remember." I threw my hands into the air and walked to the end of the driveway to wait for Gabe's school bus. Gabe got off the bus without his shirt again, having pulled his Incredible Hulk routine during a meltdown at school. I got him settled in with a snack and checked the milk again, still nothing doing.
 Gabe's therapist showed up and the twins got home and things got hectic (including a minor meltdown from Gabe), but I kept checking on my milk. By 5pm I was passed irritated, past frustrated and headed right for pissed off. The kids were running around like The Lord of the Flies and I had no idea what was for dinner...because I was so focused on the milk.
 At 5:30 my husband walked through the door, (carrying pizza, thank goodness) and amid the chorus of "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, pizza, pizza, pizza!!!" I told him that it didn't work. He took the lid off of the pan and started to move it across the stove. I snapped at him not to move it and he snapped back with something and then I burst into tears. He immediately came over to hug me and said, "It's just milk, baby. No big deal. You can try again."
 So I will try again. And I haven't quite given up hope on this batch, it looks more like custard than milk now. Maybe by tomorrow morning it will decide to get it together and become cheese!