I hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year. Ours was fantastic!!! Fun yet mellow. Not quite as relaxing as I had hoped it would be but it never is when you have a 5 year old. She was so wound up for the morning that she expected us to entertain her all day, a theme that has been playing out more often recently. I’m not sure what it is; it isn’t that she doesn’t have an expansive imagination. I’ve watched her carry on 4 way conversations where she plays the part of each one of her dolls. I guess it’s just easier to have Mom and Dad do the entertaining than to do it herself. But when we do the entertaining we short change ourselves as listening to her carry on full conversations, where she plays all parts, is quite amusing, often insightful, many times downright hysterical and sometimes just a bit scary. But, I digress… Overall it was a great Christmas, and although it would have been nice to share parts of it with family, it was very nice doing our own thing.

New Year’s was rather pathetic at our house this year. The wife and kid were in bed by 10pm and I was on the computer, putzing around when I noticed that it was already 12:15am. Yes, I missed New Year’s, but I can’t complain because the day before my wife and I celebrated our 11 year anniversary with a nice romantic dinner, of steak and grilled crab legs, to the sounds of “Phineas and Ferb” playing in the background. Oh well, there’s always next year.

For our Christmas dinner, we decided to do Roast Duck and while normally eating half a duck is no problem for me, with all the other dishes we had we ended up with a decent amount of duck leftover. A few days later I found myself in the mood for breakfast at dinner and knowing that we had duck that we had some duck to use up I decided to marry it with some of the winter squashes we seem to have multiplying on our baker’s rack.

Duck and Butternut Squash Hash
serves 3-4

1 1/2 to 2 cups Duck meat, cooked
2 cups Waxy potatoes, small diced (Yukon Gold or Red skinned work great)
2 cups Butternut squash, peeled and small diced
1 small Onion, peeled and small diced
1 clove Garlic, peeled and minced
2 Tbl. Vegetable oil
3 strips Bacon, preferably thick cut, cut into thin strips
3/4 cup half and half
salt
freshly ground black pepper

Bring 2 small pots of salted water to a boil. To one pot add the diced potatoes and to the other pot add the diced squash. Par cook the potatoes and squash until almost done. They should still have a bit of crunch to them. Drain and rinse under cold water.

Heat a heavy skillet over medium high heat and add the oil. Once hot add the bacon and cook until crispy. Remove the bacon leaving the fat in the pan. Add the potatoes and cook just until starting to brown. Add the squash and the onions and cook until all the vegetables are tender, about 6-8 minutes. Add the garlic and duck and cook for 2 minutes. Add the half and half and cook until most of the liquid has evaporated. Mash the hash down, slightly crushing the potatoes and squash and form into a large patty just smaller than the size of the skillet. Reduce heat to medium and cook, undistrubed for 5-6 minutes. Flip the hash over (don’t worry you won’t be able to do this as one large patty just try to get most of it flipped over) and reform into a patty again mashing it down slightly. Allow it to cook until the bottom starts to crisp up, another 10-12 minutes. Watch to make sure it doesn’t burn.

Divide among plates flipping the hash over so that the browned, crispy part is on top. Serve plain or like I do, topped with poached eggs and accompanied by buttered toast for scooping up the hash.

Just a quick post tonight and a great little recipe for your Christmas Dinner. First, I want to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas!! I hope your holidays are full of family, friends, fun and lots of great food! I’m looking forward to our quite Christmas with me, my wife and daughter so we don’t have to deal with travelling. If you do have to travel I wish safe journeys and a quick stress free trip. It looks to be a relatively quite weekend weatherwise, at least here in the USA, so hopefully no one will have any difficult driving or flight delays.

I my last post I promised a Cranberry Chutney to go along with the pork recipe I posted. The cranberries in this chutney are tempered by dried cherries, helping to mellow out their tart, cranberry kick. The recipe is given a very subtle exotic accent by the addition of coriander and green cardamon. If you can’t find green cardamon pods then you can use ground cardamon or even skip it all together although I like the faint Indian flare it gives this chutney. Besides pork, this relish would pair perfectly with duck, goose, turkey, and lamb.

Cranberry and Dried Cherry Chutney
serves 8-10

6 pods green cardamon
1 tsp. whole coriander
1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 medium onion, peeled and diced
2 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
1 Tbl. vegetable oil
1 cup orange juice
1/2 cup sugar
12 oz. fresh cranberries
1 cup dried cherries
1/4 cup crystallilzed ginger

Lightly crush the cardamon pods and remove the seeds, discarding the outer pod. Coarsely grind the cardamon and coriander together then add the ground cinnamon. Reserve. In a medium sized pot heat the oil over medium high heat. Add the onion and cook until translucent, about 4-5 minutes. Add the garlic, and spice mixture. Cook for 2-3 minutes to toast the spices. Add the cranberries, sugar and orange juice. Bring to a boil and cook for 5-7 minutes or until the cranberries start to break down. Add the dried cherries and cook 5 minutes longer. Add the crystallized ginger, cook 1 minute then remove from heat. Allow to cool and store in the fridge. While it is ready to eat as soon as it is cool, the flavors will more fully develop and meld if allowed to sit overnight, in the fridge.

The Christmas season is in full swing, and at our house one of the things that means is the drinking of copious amounts of hot, spiced cider. For as long as I can remember the holidays, both Christmas and Thanksgiving…and many of the days inbetween, were accompanied by the the sweet, heady smells of a pot of spiced cider warming away on the stove top. To this day, it just doesn’t seem like the Christmas season without having brewed up a gallon or two of one of my favorite drinks.

While we’re on the subject of cider, I want to rant just a little (and I think I’ve voiced this rant before so I’ll make it short). It drives me nuts, walking through the grocery store and seeing bottles of clear, amber liquid that companies are passing off as cider. Sorry, but it looks and tastes like ordinary apple juice and has about as much in common with real cider as does Grape juice. Cider should be brown and cloudy with a body and mouth feel that apple juice can only wish it could attain to. I even have a problem with “pastuerized” cider, but I understand that some people are concerned about food borne illnesses. But please, if you have never tasted fresh, unpastuerized cider before, check it out. You’re in for a treat. The real stuff, when made properly has a complexity that is totally lost in the pastuerization process.

It’s the holidays so enough ranting and more holiday cheer! You’ll notice, in the picture, that there is a distinctive red hue to that mug of cider. Don’t adjust your computer monitors, it’s supposed to be that way. I often like to add “Red Hots” candies (you know, those little, red, firery, cinnamon candies). They add a nice festive hue to the cider and help bump up the cinnamon in the drink. If you don’t want to use the candies, and sometimes I don’t, just up the number of cinnamon sticks you add to the cider to compensate for the lack of cinnamon flavoring.

Once made, you can ladel it into mugs and serve as is, for the children and teetotallers in your group or you can do as most of the members of my family do and spice with a shot of bourbon or dark rum. A few of those and I guarentee that you’ll get a party started!

This recipe uses a gallon of cider as I find that it can go pretty quickly, but you can easily adjust to make the amount you need. Also I just toss in all the spices. If you’d rather not fish around trying not to ladel up allspice berries and cloves you can tie them up in a coffee filter and just remove the whole thing after about 30-60 minutes.

Hot Spiced Cider
makes just over 1 gallon

1 gallon Cider
4 each Cinnamon sticks
1 Tbl. Whole Cloves
2 Tbl. Whole Allspice Berries
1 (12oz.) can Orange Juice Concentrate
3-4 oz. Red Hots candies (the little red cinnamon candies)

Place all ingredients in a nonreactive pot and simmer, without boiling for, at least, 30 minutes. Ladel into mugs and serve. Feel free to add a shot of bourbon or rum for a more adult beverage, or experiment with any of the various flavored alcohols out there. If you come across a really great combination let me know. If so desired, garnish the mugs with an orange wheel and a cinnamon stick for stirring.

Back in Feburary 2010 I posted a recipe for one of my favorite Mexican dishes, Carnitas. You can find the post here. While I was happy with the recipe I posted, I am always looking for ways to improve my dishes or do them differently. One of the problems with the recipe is that it cooked on the stove top for quite awhile. This meant that since both my wife and I work, the only time I could make these was on the weekend or on a day that I was off. I decided to do the initial cooking in the slow cooker, allowing us to have carnitas any day of the week as most of the cooking was done while we were working.

It’s been awhile since I spoke of my love of the slow cooker, AKA Crock Pot. In my early days as a chef, I used to look down on these gadgets, associating them with bad casseroles and 1970′s cooking. I quickly changed my tune though when I started playing with them and realized what great vessels they were for slowly braising all sorts of meats and dishes. It allows me to start a dish in the morning, before work, making for a quick but tasty dinner soon after I get home.

While you do most of the cooking, for this dish, in the slow cooker, it does need to be finished on the stove top to evaporate the remaining liquid and fry the meat in its rendered fat. Luckily this doesn’t take too long, just about the time it will take you to get the condiments together and heat up the tortillas.

Forget the bottled salsa with these tacos. I prefer the standard accompaniment of finely diced onion, jalapeno and cilanto, and a squeeze of fresh lime juice.

Slow Cooker Carnitas
serves 6-8 people

5 pounds pork roast (I used a shoulder roast, whatever you use it should have plenty of fat in it as you need the fat to finish the dish)
1 can Rotel (original flavor)*
1 Tbl. chili powder
2 tsp. ground cumin
salt
black pepper

Start your preparations in the morning, before work. Pour the Rotel into your slow cooker. Fill the can 3/4′s of way with water and add that also. Place the pork roast in the slow cooker and sprinkle with the chili powder and cumin. Generously season the meat with plenty of salt and pepper. Turn the slow cooker to “low,” cover and allow to cook while you’re at work.

When you get home, 8 hours later, the pork should be fully cooked and quite tender. Break up the pork into large pieces (2-3 bites each) and transfer the meat, along with all the juices and fat to a large nonreactive pot. Place over high heat and cook until all the liquid has evaporated, leaving just the pork and the rendered fat in the pan. Allow the pork to fry in its own fat until it starts to brown around the edges and crisp up slightly. Stir occasionally as it will want to stick at this point. By this time the pork should have broken down into small, bite sized pieces or smaller. If not break it up a bit more.

Serve with corn tortillas that have been briefly grilled to warm then through. Top with a mixture of finely diced onion, jalapeno and cilantro, and finally, with a squeeze of fresh lime.

*Note: For those of you not familiar with Rotel, you can find it in the store with all the other canned tomato products. It’s a mix of diced tomato and green chiles. While I don’t advocate too many canned products, my house is never without at least of cans around at all times.

I don’t know why I don’t make crepes more often. They are relatively simple to make, don’t take a whole lot of time, and my wife loves them. Besides, like so many of the things I like to cook, they are quite versatile and are easily customized to your own tastes by adding any variety of fillings from savory to sweet.

This week I am looking for some different ways to use up the awesomely sweet corn we have been receiving in our CSA box. Don’t get me wrong, in summer there is nothing better than super sweet corn on the cob, slathered in butter and sprinkled with salt and pepper, or prepared the Hispanic way; coated in mayo, grated cheese, and cayenne pepper. But doing that would make for a rather boring blog.

Today’s post contains 3 recipes, 2 of which many people seem to think are beyond the skills of regular home cooks. As you should know by now I don’t think many recipes are beyond the realm of home cooks. First are crepes. For some reason people have come to believe that making crepes is a difficult process, but if you can make pancakes you can make crepes. Trust me, crepes are really easy to make and should be in every cook’s pantheon of recipes. The second one, butter sauce, AKA Beurre Blanc, is a little more difficult to make. It can be a bit more difficult to make but, all it really requires is a close eye while making the sauce, and even then, if you break the sauce it can be redeemed so there is no reason not to learn this technique. Once you learn to make a standard butter sauce you open up a whole world of variations to compliment just about any dish imaginable.

Corn Crepes with Curried Chicken and Kale
serves 4

Corn Crepes
2 cups corn, freshly cut off the cob (frozen will work if you can’t find fresh)
2 cup flour
1 cup milk
4 eggs
1/4 cup butter, melted
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. black pepper

In a food processor process the corn until somewhat smooth. Add the eggs, milk and butter, pulsing to combine. Add the flour salt and pepper. Again, pulse just to combine. Pour batter into a bowl and allow to rest for at least 1 hour. Heat an 8″ nonstick saute pan over medium heat. Add a scant 1/4 cup of crepe batter, tilting and swirling the pan to cover the bottom of the pan uniformly.

Allow to cook for about 1 minute or until the top starts to look dry. Use a fork to gently lift up an edge of the crepe, then using your hand pull the crepe from the pan and flip it over. Cook 30 seconds longer the remove to a rack to cool. Repeat the process, using up all the batter. Makes 14-16 crepes. Once cooled stack, with wax paper in between and wrap in plasic is not using right away. Store in the fridge for up to 3 days.

Ginger Butter Sauce
2/3 cup white wine
1 shallot, peeled and chopped
2 inch fresh ginger, chopped
2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, diced and chilled

Combine the wine, shallot and ginger in a nonreactive sauce sauce pan. Place over high heat and reduce until only 2 tablespoons of liquid remain. Reduce heat to low. Grabbing 2-3 tablespoons of butter at a time, add to the saucepan, whisking constantly to keep creamy. Once that first addition of butter is fully incorporated add the next, continuing until all the butter is used up.

Add salt to taste. Keep warm, at the back of the stove. IF the sauce gets too hot or too cold it will break. Also if you add too much butter at any one time the sauce will break. Don’t worry, all is not lost. If that happens, in a clean pan reduce 1/2 cup of white wine and 1/3 cup of heavy cream to 1-2 tablespoons. Slowly drizzle in the broken butter sauce, whisking vigorously to re emulsify the sauce. For a bit of added insurance you can always add 1/3 cup of cream to the original recipe during the first step, before you make your reduction. This makes the process a little more forgiving, although I urge you to try it without the cream first.

Curried Chicken and Kale Filling
1 small onion, peeled and finely diced
2 Tbl. vegetable oil
1 Tbl. fresh ginger, peeled and minced
3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, diced
1 bunch kale, stems removed and julienned
2 tsp. curry powder
1/2 cup water
1/2 lemon
1 container (6oz) greek style yogurt
salt
pepper

Heat a saute pan over high heat. Add the oil and the onion, cooking until the onion is slightly browned. Add the ginger and cook for 1 minute. Add the chicken breasts and cook until browned. Add the curry powder and cook for 1 minute. Add the kale and continue to saute for 3 minutes. Add the water and squeeze of lemon juice. Cover and cook for 4 minutes. Remove from heat. Remove lid and stir in 2 tablespoons of the yogurt. Add the remaining yogurt and season with salt and pepper.

To Assemble
Place 2 crepes on each of 4 plates. Equally divide the filling between the 8 crepes, placing in a line along the center of each crepe. Loosely roll each crepe around the filling and place side by side. Drizzle with about 1/4 cup of the Ginger Butter Sauce and garnish with fresh herbs; either chives or parsley.

Sponsored By Chef Talk

For the next installment of my new feature we meet Chef Ross Kaplan. Ross and I met through the forum boards over at Chef Talk. After quite a career in the world of restaurants and catering Ross decided to give up the Rat Race for a more laid back, more fulfilling career as a private chef. But I should let Ross tell you his story, in his own words. “I started out in the industry as a pot and pan washer in a hotel in Queens New York where we lived. The hotel made their own sausages so it was my job to clean the grinders and stuffers. Some of them were larger than I and I found myself having to crawl inside in order to clean them. I always came home smelling like fresh sausages. Mom was not amused. When we moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin I started high school and got a job as a busboy in a restaurant that my sister in-law’s parents frequented. I can remember watching the guys behind the line as they fried fish and sliced Prime Rib for service. I stayed there for a year and then went to a German restaurant where all I did all shift was fry potato pancakes.
After graduation, I decided to go to a technical college in town to get a culinary degree. At that time the classes were more like slave labor working with elderly woman and cooking quantities of chili, beef stew, or sloppy Joe’s for sale in the school cafeteria….At the time I was working at a bakery in a mall where I was a benchman, making several different breads, and yeast raised doughnuts. My boss would meet me at the door at 6:30 am and I would then go off to school.
In late 1979 I moved to Chicagoland and started out at the Hyatt chain as a Garde Manger. I stayed there for 2 years and abruptly left one day after our Chef knocked out the Food and Beverage Manager. The rest of my experiences include working in hospital food services, another country club as Garde Manger. I worked for Marriott corporation for 10 years in 3 different venues. First was as an executive services Chef creating 3 week cycle menus for the bigwigs of AT&T then I moved to Washington D.C. where I worked as Banquet Chef for their Conference center. I cooked for Senators, Kings and Queens, as well as Bill Clinton’s inaugural ball….I went to work for a dinner theater in Chicago where I was a banquet Chef again. On any given Thursday afternoon I fed between 700-800 people as part of their afternoon matinee. I had a crew of 20 guys and we rocked out the food. Besides dinner theater I also worked banquets for the place.
In 1998, I was gleaning the want ads and found a position for a Private Chef for a family…. I am presently one of 9 employees who work at their house. The place is huge and it is just the 2 of them. I cook dinner only 6 days a week about 245 days a year. They have homes in others parts of the country and when they are not on island, I am off work. I have flown with them and cooked at their other places in Napa, Ca Chicago, South Carolina, and St Augustine Florida.”

What is your favorite part about being a private chef?

I enjoy the ability to cook anything I want and have Carte Blanche to make my own menus as well. My position is quite unique in that I am able to grow my own food. I live on a working farm as part of my living arrangement. It is over 500 acres and contains an orchard, a vineyard, and a huge garden. There is also a maple syrup “sugar shack” to process maple syrup each spring. In the fall I attend a 4-H animal auction at the county fair where I bid on a lamb and a hog. I will send them to slaughter and butcher them myself. I vacuum pack the meat and place it in the deep freeze. I can and preserve fruits and vegetables from the orchards and garden. I also smoke my own fish and meats in the smokehouse that is on the property. (continue reading…)

A few days ago, I got it into my mind that I wanted to try making an oatmeal souffle for breakfast. I know this is not an original idea, but for the life of me I couldn’t think where I had heard of this concept before. Luckily we have the Internet, that bastion of all knowledge. I figured that the web would be full of recipes and that I’d be able to get the general gist of how to make one and then come up with my own recipe, although I had already pretty much figured out how I would do it.

***RANT ALERT****

Okay, I’m going to rant a little about something that has been bothering me for awhile, but with my most recent search for recipes for oatmeal souffle, I have decided that I have to say something. It drives me freaking nuts when I come across the same recipe, on site after site, that is exactly the same. Sure the wording of the directions might be slightly different, but in all honesty they are completely the same. It’s obvious that people are just “stealing” recipes and just changing the directions enough so as to not get busted for copyright infringement. Now, being the cynical guy that I am, I am not surprised by all these websites that have page after page of stolen recipes, but what really surprised and bothered me was the number of blogs that have done the same thing, and don’t give any attribution. Come on people! At least have the decency to twist a recipe a little bit to make it your own. Some blogs didn’t even bother to change the order of the ingredients and/or only changed or omitted a couple of words from the directions. Here’s an idea; if you are so lacking in cooking skills that you can’t alter a recipe to make it yours then you have no place in the blogosphere and need to give it up. Or at the very least man up, and let your readers know that the recipe you are offering is not yours. Give credit to those that take the time to create those recipes.

***RANT OVER***

The recipes I did find told me I was on the right track and helped me to refine a couple of the ratios I wasn’t so sure about and last night I had my recipe done. I told my wife that I would be cooking breakfast, which she wasn’t thrilled with. Normally she’d love for me to make breakfast but today is my birthday and she wanted to cook me a special breakfast with the help of your 4 year old daughter. As I really wanted to try out this recipe I convinced her that tomorrow (Sunday) would be a better morning for cooking me breakfast as I am planning on going out tonight, for my birthday, and probably wouldn’t be in any shape to cook breakfast tomorrow.

Overall, I am very pleased with how this turned out. It didn’t rise like a normal souffle does with all the heavy ingredients I didn’t expect it to, but it did come out much lighter than standard oatmeal or most of the baked oatmeal recipes I have had. It had a different texture, but not it a bad way. In fact I really, really enjoyed the fact that it wasn’t as heavy as regular oatmeal is. If I had any issues with this recipe, it might be just a little too sweet. If you like your oatmeal really sweet then keep the recipe as is, but if you prefer it not so sweet, or need to watch your sugar intake I imagine you could cut the maple syrup in half, from 1/2 cup to 1/4 cup and still end up with a very good dish. Also, while I often like my oatmeal heavily spiced with cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, etc. I keep the spices to a minimum so that they wouldn’t mask the maple flavor, which I would would be subtle.

I hope you enjoy this as much as we did. It is definitely the prefect breakfast for a cold winter’s day, when oatmeal sounds good, but you’re looking for something just a little different.

Triple Fruit Oatmeal Souffle
serves 4

1 cup milk
1 1/2 Tbsp. butter
1/4 tsp. salt
3/4 cup oats, not instant
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/3 cup dried cranberries
1/3 cup raisins
1/3 cup dried apricots, diced
1/3 cup chopped pecans
3 eggs, separated

Preheat your oven to 350°F. Butter and sugar a 1 1/2 quart ramekin or baking dish. In a small sauce pot combine the milk, butter and salt. Bring to a boil and add the oats. Cook the oats for the amount of time specified on the container then remove from heat.

As the oatmeal mixture is cooling slightly whip the egg whites to stiff peak. Do not over whip and make the whites dry!! Add the maple syrup, cinnamon, fruits and nuts to the oatmeal mixture and stir to combine. Add the egg yolks and mix well. Take about 1/4 of the whipped egg whites and stir that into the oatmeal mixture to lighten it then pour mix into the remaining whites and gently fold to combine. Do not over fold the mixture. It is okay to have a few streaks of whites remaining. Pour into the prepared baking dish and place in the oven. Cook for 30 minutes without opening the oven door. After 30 minutes remove from oven and serve immediately.

Voting is now open for Project Food Blog’s first challenge. I encourage everyone to head over to Foodbuzz and vote for me. Of the over 1700 food blogs entered, only 400 will advance to the next round. One way to advance is to win the Reader’s Choice award-the person with the most votes from regular readers. Help support Onceachef and take a minute to vote.  Below is a link to where to vote.  Voting is open now, through mid evening on Sept. 23.  Thanks for the vote!!!!

Vote Here

This past Spring a good friend of mine purchased 4 piglets for his kids to enter into the county fair. Soon after I got a call from him to see if I would be interested in half of a hog. With visions of home cured bacon, homemade sausages and succulent barbecued ribs, I jumped at the chance. He also invited me over to see my potential holiday ham. Of course, I couldn’t resist. When I finally had a chance to drive over to his family’s place the pigs had grown from the 25 pound piglets shown above to full grown hogs weighing in at over 230 pounds. This in just a matter of a few months.

Now I know many people would have a problem meeting their potential dinner, but I have grown up around farmers for a good portion of my life and it does not bother me. Some might think I am cruel, but I don’t see it as such. Most people don’t like to think of their food in terms of living beings and prefer to remain ignorant of where that steak or that pulled pork sandwich came from. Instead, it’s much easier to think of that meat in terms of always being an inanimate object. While this type of mindset might ease people’s conscience, I totally disagree with this “head in the sand” approach to blind consumption. If the only way you can eat meat is by convincing yourself your ribeye was never a living, breathing thing then maybe you should become a vegetarian. It just seems hypocritical, to me, for someone to continue to eat meat, but not think about its origins as a living being. I know this sounds harsh, but I think if more people would think about where their meat came from the better off both us, and the animals we eat, would be.

Our refusal to contemplate the origins of our food, meat specifically, has lead to large, industrial farming practices. These practices are not good for the environment, not healthy for the animals, are often considered inhumane, and ultimately I don’t believe can really be healthy for us. These practices often include packing animals so tighly together that they have very little space to move about. Because they are so tightly packed they are often pumped full of medications and antibiotics to stop rampant disease that can spread quickly through herds housed so closely together. They are also pumped full of growth hormones to help them achieve market weights in a shorter amount of time. Not only are these practices inhumane, one has to wonder about how much of these chemicals are passed along to humans in the end.

On the other hand, I have seen, first hand, how my pig was raised. I know the person who raised him. I have seen the large pen in which the pig lives, with only 3 others, and know he has plenty of room to roam about and lounge in his mud pit. I also know that this animal has been fed on a diet of all organic grains and the only drugs that have been administered was a shot of penicillin give once because of an eye infection.

I can feel good about knowing I have purchased meat which has been humanely raised and in return I know that the product I will be receiving will be more flavorful than anything raised using factory farm methods. I have also contributed to a person who farmers in a more sustainable, environmentally sound way.

I see it as a win-win situation, by getting to know my food. I win because I am guaranteed a wonderful, flavorful product, the animal wins because it is raised in a more humane manner and we all win as such small scale, sustainable farming practices are less detrimental to the environment.

I hope to have my half hog by the end of September, just in time for some cooler weather. Stay tuned for my experiments with pork!

Here is wishing everyone a very happy and safe 4th of July!! I hope your day is full of fun and great food! Unfortunately, I have to work so I won’t be able to participate in any of the festivities. The joys of working a job that is 365 days a year. I can’t complain too much though as I do get most holidays off.

Here’s a simple little recipe that I thought I’d share with you all, especially if you have kids. Kids love popsicles, but younger kids often seem to wear almost as much as they eat, at least that is the case with my daughter. This recipe, I pulled off of the internet ages ago (can’t remember where) solves this problem. Using jello in the mix keeps these popsicles from melting all over little hands. Enjoy!

Dripless Popsicles

1 package Jello, fruit flavored, small package
1 package Koolaid
2/3 cup Water, boiling
2 cups Water, cold
1 cup Sugar

Combine jello, koolaid, sugar and hot water and mix until dissolved. Add cold water and pour into popsicle molds. Freeze overnight.