Archive for the ‘Home & Ranch’ Category

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Kitchen Hint: Reduce added sugar in fruity desserts

Wednesday, July 11th, 2012

by Catherine Haug, July 9, 2012

This latest kitchen hint comes from Corwyn, and it doesn’t involve artificial sweeteners.

If you have helpful kitchen hints, send them to me and I’ll publish them (if you request, I will not mention your name). See Topic: Kitchen Hints for all the hints submitted so far.

Reduce added sugar in fruity desserts

Recipes for rhubarb sauce, rhubarb pie, lemon curd and other desserts made with acidic fruits (well, OK, rhubarb is a vegetable, but it is used like a fruit) call for a lot of sugar. We’d all like to reduce our sugar consumption, but these desserts are hard to resist. Now you can have your ‘cake’ and eat it too. Read on… (more…)

Posted in Food-Nutrition-Health, Home & Ranch, Kitchen Hints | 1 Comment »

Kitchen hint: Prevent fresh berries from molding

Sunday, July 8th, 2012

Raspberries

by Catherine Haug, July 8, 2012; photo from Wikipedia

Fran sent me this hint, that is so pertinent at this time of the year when berries are ripening. If you have helpful kitchen hints, send them to me and I’ll publish them (if you request, I will not mention your name). I’ve created a new category (topic) called ‘kitchen hints‘ for these.

Preventing berry mold

Berries are delicious, but they’re also kind of delicate. Raspberries in particular seem like they can mold before you even get them home from the market… Now with fresh berries just starting to hit farmers markets, here’s how to keep them fresh! (more…)

Posted in Food-Nutrition-Health, Home & Ranch, Kitchen Hints | Comments Closed

Why ‘Pasture-Raised’ trumps ‘Organic’

Wednesday, June 13th, 2012

by Catherine Haug, June 12, 2012 and David Brown, November 2011

Most of us believe that Organic is the best you can buy, to feed your family. And it certainly is better than commercially-produced fresh and processed foods. But is it really the ‘best’ available?

I’ve posted on this topic before (see Related Posts, below). David Brown (avid gardener, compostor, and health researcher from Kalispell) writes about the advantage of ‘pasture-raised’ over ‘Organic’ when it comes to animal foods like meat, dairy and eggs. (more…)

Posted in Compost, Food-Nutrition-Health, Gardening, Livestock, Organics, Shop Local | 4 Comments »

On Small Farms and a Sustainable Food Supply

Sunday, June 10th, 2012

by Catherine Haug, June 10, 2012

The June 3 issue of the Great Falls Tribune featured a great article: Wanted: Big crop of young farmers and ranchers (9). It speaks of an “epidemic of sorts sweeping across America’s farm and ranch land… The average age of Montana farm/ranch operators was 56 in 2002 and 58 in 2007“. This aging of farmers and ranchers, the reluctance of young people to pursue this career, and a net decrease in working farms and ranches could mean “unspeakable woes” that will descend upon our children and grandchildren if we don’t retain and repopulate our working lands. It could even mean food shortages today.

Depopulation of working lands is only part of the problem; because of world population increase, we could “require 70% MORE food production by 2050“, including a “doubling of animal agriculture” (9). Yet along with the decline in farmers comes the decline of working lands, such as we’ve seen right here in the Flathead, as these lands are developed for housing and commercial interests.

This brings two challenges: inspiring our youth to an agriculture career; and preserving working lands. While the answer to these challenges is complex, one way to encourage young adults to pursue food production as a career, is by  providing incentive to make it pay. And the Farm Bill 2012 can help with that. (more…)

Posted in Agriculture, Food-Nutrition-Health, Home & Ranch | Comments Closed

Curing Meats at Home

Saturday, June 9th, 2012

Brisket in brine

by Catherine Haug, June 5, 2012, and ongoing updates

One way to reduce your energy consumption is to find ways to keep foods without refrigeration, such as curing meats: homemade jerky; pemican or (real) mincemeat; home-cured bacon, ham and sausage; dried beef or pastrami; and so on. We hope to have a presentation on this topic later this year.

Many questions also arise: How long do you cure the meat? What herbs & spices make the best flavor for a particular cured product? How much salt should you use? Is saltpeter needed? When do you use a wet brine vs a dry cure? I don’t have all the answers to these questions, but I’m researching them as I experiment with making cured and dried beef (more on this below).

Subjects addressed in this post:

  • The saltpeter (nitrate) dilemma: Botulism, Cancer,  and Alternatives to saltpeter
  • My dried beef experiment
  • Home-cured bacon
  • References & resource

See also my posts Corning Beef,  Cured vs Processed Meats, and Sugar and Salt in Food Preservation. The book: Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing by Ruhlman, et. al., is an excellent reference with recipes. See Amazon for a peek inside.

(more…)

Posted in Fermentation, Culturing & Curing, Food-Nutrition-Health, Home & Ranch | 3 Comments »

Enhancing your immunity

Monday, May 28th, 2012

by Catherine Haug, May 27, 2012

Each and every day, every moment in the day, we are exposed – at risk – for disease from infectious microbes. You can’t avoid them, and since there are far too many microbes to decimate them all, we’re better off learning how to live with them. They are, after all, everywhere. And the way to live with them without giving in to them, is by building and maintaining a strong immunity.

How does one do that? One way is to start with children. Research has shown that children who eat dirt (as I did – pulling up carrots from my Dads garden and eating them without washing) have stronger immune systems than those who are raised in a sterile environment.

How can this be? Because many microbes – even some pathological ones – are beneficial. Our own native flora prove this true: (more…)

Posted in Ecology, Food-Nutrition-Health, Health, Home & Ranch | Comments Closed

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