Mom and I were sitting in the kitchen the other day when I said, "You know how the Southern Living Holiday Cookbooks always share an entire menu of recipes? Wouldn't it be fun if we could do the same for our customer families?"
She agreed, and we started talking about the foods that normally make up our 4th of July table. I compiled some of our favorite recipes and typed them out. I don't have fancy step-by -step photos or poetic descriptions for you, but I do have tried and true recipes, enjoyed and loved by our family. Here they are: Seasoned Steaks There is a simple science behind steak seasoning methods. The key is to salt heavy and early. We like to salt ours the night before. You can find the blog link here. Grandma's Scalloped Potatoes 10-15 medium sized potatoes 2 T. butter 2 T. flour 1 t. salt 1 t. pepper 2 c. milk 2 c. cheddar cheese Peel and cube potatoes into a large pot. Cover the potatoes with water. Bring to a boil on the stove. Cook until tender (10 to 15 minutes). Drain the potatoes. Transfer to a large, greased baking dish (13x9 or larger). In a small saucepan, melt the butter and stir in the flour to form a bubbling roux. Add the salt and pepper. Stir in the milk until beginning to boil and thicken. Stir in the cheese. Pour the cheese mixture over the potatoes. Cover the dish with a lid or with foil. If cooking immediately, preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and bake for 30 minutes, or until bubbly and beginning to brown on top. If baking the next day, allow to cool and place in the fridge. When you are ready to bake, remove the dish from the oven while preheating the oven. Bake for 45 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Mom's Baked Beans 3 cans of pork and beans 1/2 c.- 3/4 c. molasses 1/3 c. brown sugar 1 t. yellow mustard 3-4 slices of bacon, uncooked Stir together all of the ingredients, except for the bacon, in a medium sized bowl. Transfer to a 9x13 baking dish. Top with the bacon. Cover with foil and place in the fridge if you are not baking them immediately. When you are ready to bake them, preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit and bake for 45 minutes or until the bacon is cooked and the beans are bubbly. Meme's Cornbread Salad 1 box Jiffy cornbread mix, prepared according to package directions 1 can of corn, drained 1 can of pinto beans, drained 1 c. of grated cheddar cheese 2 fresh tomatoes, chopped small 8 green onions, chopped with tops 1 pkg. of Hidden Valley dressing mix, prepared with 16 oz. of sour cream 4 slices of bacon, cooked crisp and crumbled Crumble half of the prepared corn bread into a round glass bowl. Layer half of each item listed above, except for the bacon. Repeat the layers, ending with the Hidden Valley dressing. Sprinkle the crumbled bacon on top. Cover with plastic wrap and place in the fridge until ready to serve. Seasonal Fruit Salad 4 to 5 fresh peaches 1 pint of blueberries or blackberries or both Peel and slices the peaches, discarding the pit. Stir in fresh berries. Sprinkle with a little bit of sugar (or honey), cinnamon, vanilla, and mint leaves, if desired. We hope this menu and recipes can help you create wonderful summer memories. Use it for the 4th of July or tuck it away for Labor Day. The summer will be over before we know it, and we're trying to savor it while it lasts. What are your plans for the rest of the summer? Do you have a family cookout on the list? From our family to yours, we wish you a blessed Independence Day!
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On Saturday night, Mom and Dad slipped away for the weekend to a cabin on Beaver Lake to celebrate their anniversary. Our brother-in-law Taylor and I milked Sunday morning before Eli and Emma joined us for the rest of our chores. The light was so soft and beautiful in the hayfield where we were moving the broilers to fresh grass. Only one more day before they go in to be processed. I immediately started thinking about lunch. Some might think it odd that I would think about lunch before breakfast. Ok, some might think it odd that I would think about lunch while moving chickens to fresh grass, but such is the mind of Madelaine. My mind jumped to how the light was probably falling on our herb bed at the house, and if I could get the cows moved to fresh grass quickly, I would have just enough time to get a chicken in the oven before Sunday morning Bible class. I also went blueberry picking on Friday with my friend Molly. While that may seem like a rabbit trail to this discussion, it very much played into the recipe I am about to share with you all. Morning light, pastured chickens, garden herbs, and fresh blueberries served as inspiration. I popped the chicken in the oven before church and pulled it out as soon as we made it home. Slow roasted macaroni and cheese was hot and ready to be served with it. I had considered taking Eli and Emma out to lunch, but after we stopped into Walmart after church and dealt with the chaos there, coming home to a hot meal in the comfort of our own home was a nice reprieve. What about you? Do you enjoy coming home to a meal ready in the oven? (Recipe Below) Blueberry Barbecue Chicken
Allow the chicken to thaw. If you are in a hurry, like I was, remove the freezer bag off of the chicken and place the chicken in a clean bowl in your sink. Run lukewarm water over the chicken, filling the interior cavity. Replenish the water as needed to keep the water around room temperature. I did this as I was getting ready for church, checking the chicken every five to ten minutes. Once thawed enough for you to fit your hand inside, remove the chicken from the water and allow the chicken to drip dry in your sink. Place the chicken on a cutting board. Wash your hands and pour a small handful of olive oil into the palm of your hand. Oil the interior and exterior of the chicken. Next, measure a palm of salt in your hand and rub it on the interior of the chicken. Do the same thing for the exterior, and transfer the chicken to your baking dish. We like to use our round stoneware baker from Pampered Chef. This is the closest one I could find in case you would like to purchase it, but any dish such as a dutch oven that lets you seal the chicken tight will work. Then, take the sprigs of sage, pull of the leaves, and stuff them inside of the chicken until they look like they are trying to escape. Finally, mix 1/4 c. of the blueberry jam and your favorite barbecue sauce together and baste onto the outside of the chicken. Arrange any remaining sprigs of sage around the outside of the chicken. Cover and bake. I baked ours at 300 degrees Fahrenheit for 3 & 1/2 hours. Three hours would have been perfect (but Walmart). The chicken was still moist and tender, and Eli and Emma agreed it was a success. Let us know if you give it a try. A scrap piece of paper folded into columns hangs on our kitchen fridge. Penciled in between those columns are our meals- two weeks at a time. It is a familiar sight. In fact, I don't remember ever not seeing it hanging there.
That piece of paper is not just a menu. It’s an outline for our family time around the table. It’s the list we consult before making other dinner plans. It’s represents consistency within our busy life. Like fitness plans, reading plans, and any other kind of plan, we could probably all give reasons as to why sticking with a menu doesn’t work for us. That’s why I called upon the expert herself, my mother- the woman who makes out menu plans even when we are on vacation. That’s dedication. Here are her tips for creating a simple menu you can follow through with: 1. Start with penciling in your activities for the week. You won’t have time to fix a meal you are not home to cook. If you have to be at baseball practice at five, you’re going to need to put a meal in the crockpot that morning or have a casserole prepped that one of your other responsible children can put in the oven while you are gone. Mom plans meals around our activities. If we have a free night, she makes a more time consuming meal. If it’s an extremely busy night, breakfast food is on the menu. 2. Mix up your meats. Mom is big on not having the same or similar meals two nights in a row. If we had spaghetti one night, she doesn’t want homemade pizza the next night. She loves variety when it comes to types of food, and in the same way, she doesn’t like to eat beef two nights in a row, chicken two nights in a row, etc. As she is writing out her menu she balances the week with beef dishes, pork dishes, and chicken dishes. We might have burgers one night, pork chops the next, and a chicken casserole on the third night. This keeps the cook and the eaters from getting burnt out. 3. Have a well-stocked recipe box. Mom rarely runs out of meal ideas because she has so many meals on reserve. Worn recipe boxes, family favorite cookbooks, and Pinterest finds serve as inspiration for our menu. She focuses on meals she knows our family will eat, and she has some family favorite recipes that rotate through the menu every couple of months. As she’s thumbing through her recipe boxes, I often here her say, “I haven’t made that in a while.” More often than not, that meal winds up on the menu. If she is really lacking inspiration, she’ll send out a text that says, “What does everyone want for dinner this week?” and everyone chimes in, or she’ll have us vote on different meals to see if they make the cut for the week. 4. Give yourself grace. The cows get out. The men get stuck in the hayfield past dark, or a last minute activity springs up. Your menu will get mixed up, and you have to go with it. You can switch meals around or save them for the next week. The important part is having the ingredients on hand and having a plan to default back to even if you have to make adjustments. 5. Cook even when you don’t want to. I added this one myself because of all of the times I witness Mom in the kitchen even when she doesn’t want to be. It’s not that she doesn’t ever feed us leftovers or have us eat a sandwich, but nine times out of ten she fixes dinner even on the hard nights. Even when we get in from chores at 9 o’clock at night, even when she has a headache, even when she doesn’t have the energy to do anything else. These are the nights where we make pancakes, fry burgers, or scramble eggs. Having some easy meals on reserve for those nights when you don’t want to cook can still allow you to bless your family. If Mom had a life motto it would be, “Follow Through.” She keeps commitments- a characteristic I have always admired in her. In the next few weeks, I am hoping to sit down with her and ask her some questions about what motivates her when she’s tired. It’s a conversation I want to have for my sake as much as for yours. That’s a good direction to take this conversation. Whether it is writing out a menu plan, cleaning your home, or maintaining loyalty to others, what motivates you in life even when you don’t want to keep going? 5 Tips to Make the Most of Your Drive to the Farm
Whether you are driving fifteen minutes or an hour and fifteen minutes, making the drive to the farm can feel overwhelming at times. There’s no amount of poetic musings or lovely sunsets that can replace time you just don’t have. If you have ever said, “I don’t have time to cook, let alone drive to the farm to pick up” these tips are for you. 1. Write out your weekly menu. I will be going into more detail on this in our next blog post, but if you don’t go into your week with a plan for what you are going to cook, it’s likely not going to happen. Dinnertime will come and you will have nothing thawed and no ingredients on hand. Another night of sandwiches and cereal will come and go. Carve out thirty minutes, write out your activities for the week, and plan your menu around them. A simple menu will save you time and stress later on in your week. 2. Simplify your stops. Once your menu is written, your grocery list is practically already made. If you are already coming for milk, what else could you add to your order from your shopping list? You’ll save time and gas money by making fewer stops. Plus, your meat is already bagged for you. Let us know what you are fixing and/or how many people you are trying to feed, and we’ll find the right items for your menu. If you say, “I’m wanting to make cubed steak. There are four of us, and my husband and son are pretty big eaters,” we’ll know to give you two to three packages. If it is a meal for just you and your husband, one package might do. 3. Plan your trip around other errands. If you are already making your grocery runs a certain day of the week, it makes sense to schedule your farm pickup for the same day when you are already out and about. Many of you like to come to the farm after you run your other errands because you say the farm brings you a peace you don’t get at the grocery store. A friend told me a couple of years ago, “It’s not stressful to come to the dairy.” Yesterday, a friend said she felt a weight lifted off of her shoulders as she walked up the store room ramp. While it may not seem like the most practical advice, take a minute to stop and listen to the sounds of the farm, give thanks for some of your blessings, and head home ready to feed your family. 4. Make fewer trips. If you are coming to the farm every week and that is too much for your schedule, an every other week order might be a good option. Better yet, find a friend who is also a Creamy Hills Dairy customer and take turns picking up for one another. If you picked up for each other every other week, you would only have to drive to the farm once a month. We have several customers with standard orders set where they pick up hamburger for a friend every other week, and it works nicely for them. 5. Redeem your time. When was the last time you called your grandma or that friend you haven’t seen in months? Your drive to the farm is a great time to schedule that call in. Or what about the book you have been trying to get through for over a year? Find it on audio and give it a listen. We even have some customers who pick up their order after date night. A sunset drive to the farm- how romantic is that? If you are not married, bring a friend along to catch up. Now, if only we had coffee for you when you arrived. That would be practical. For those of you who love your regular drive to the farm, what would you add to the list? |
Our Farm's Voice
Hello! I'm Madelaine Paige, and I'm so glad we've met. I love mornings, milk cows, and musings. Archives
July 2021
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