Tag: Cooking

Homesteading In the City

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Homesteading in the city is a practical, efficient, and cost effective way of providing high quality, great tasting, nutrient dense food for your household. It is a method of homesteading that many people have overlooked. Homesteading in the city does not require any land, and you don’t have to move or quit your job. It also avoids a lot of the problems with the traditional method of homesteading, plus it significantly reduces the amount of work required. First we will look at the problems with the traditional method of homesteading and then look at the advantages of homesteading in the city.

What most people promoting homesteading will not tell you is that the traditional method of homesteading is a life of poverty unless you have a source of outside income. Homesteading is a smaller version of a small farm and has little income. The great difficulty of trying to make a living from a homestead is seen in the following statistics from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The latest statistics that the USDA has for farm income is for 2004. While those statistics are not current, what they reveal has probably not changed much. According to the statistics, 82 percent of all the farms in the U.S. had less than $100,000 in sales of farm products, while 18 percent had more than $100,000 in sales, and only 8 percent had more than $250,000 in sales. For a farm to have $100,000 in sales may sound like it is doing well, but the profit margin is very low. After all the expenses are subtracted off – farmland land rent or mortgage, fertilizer, seeds, fuel, equipment costs, animal purchases, vet bills, feed, electric, supplies, etc. there is very little left of the $100,000 to pay the farmer or homesteader for their labor. The USDA report states: “For the 82 percent of U.S. farming operations that have annual sales of $100,000 or less, off farm income typically accounts for all but a negligible amount of farm household income.” (http://www.usda.gov/documents/FARM_FAMILY_INCOME.pdf) This is an incredible and sad statistic. 82 percent of all the farmers in the U.S. make practically nothing off of farming.

The bottom line is that homesteading is not self sufficient financially. A person almost has to have off homestead income in order to have enough income to cover living expenses and medical costs.

Another problem with the traditional concept of homesteading is the economy of scale is too small. A homestead tries to raise everything it needs and has a little of this and a little of that. The homesteader can end up spending almost all their time raising their own food, preserving it, spinning, weaving, splitting firewood, developing the homestead, etc. just trying to exist. For example, it takes almost as much time to care for one beef cow as it would to take care of 50. Each type of animal, type of poultry, each species of vegetable or fruit requires a certain amount of time, equipment, and expertise. The more different kinds of things that one tries to raise, the greater the chance that other things will suffer because there is not enough time and expertise to produce the quality and quantity of food that is desired.

Homesteading in the city (or in the country) that I am recommending takes on a different approach. My mother practiced homesteading in the city and I got the concept from her, even though she never called it homesteading. Our family lived on a small 1/3 acre lot in town with 40 full grown trees on it. There was no place to have a garden. She did have a spot where she was able to have several tomato plants. Instead of growing our own food, my parents sourced some of it from local sources that they trusted. My parents bought a large 20+ cubic foot chest freezer which they kept well stocked with food. They bought a quarter of a beef each year from a farmer. Sometimes they bought a number of jugs of milk from my uncle that had a dairy farm and put them in the freezer. Another uncle planted a number of rows of sweet corn at the edge of his corn field each year. We would go to their farm for corn day and process 1200 to 1500 ears of corn, cutting the corn off the cob and putting it into freezer boxes. It was like a holiday, except we socialized by working together. My mother would go to a local orchard each year and buy three to five bushels of Red Haven peaches. We would help her can them so that we would have great tasting peaches to eat that winter. She would often buy several 20 pound boxes of blueberries when they were in season and put them in smaller containers and put them in her big freezer treasure chest.

Homesteading in the city is not about trying to grow all of your food or even to preserve all your own food. It is about buying food from local farmers and sources that you know that have a great tasting product and that is nutrient dense. It is buying food in bulk in season and freezing it or canning it for the rest of the year. Homesteading in the city is letting others do the hard work of raising the meats or fruits and vegetables, and you reap the rewards of their labor. It is about being part of community rather than being individualistic.

And since you are homesteading, don’t forget to buy “insurance” for your big freezer that is filled with all those delicious, nutritious treasures. If the power goes out you don’t want to lose all that wonderful food. The “insurance” is a generator. It does not have to be a whole house generator, and it only needs to run several hours each day to keep the freezer and your refrigerator from warming up too much. A 3000 watt generator can be purchased for a little over $300 or a 5000 watt generator for about $600 and will last for many years.


The right tools make homesteading in the city easier. We bought several of these propane burner units this year and are very pleased with them. They are similar to a turkey fryer burner, but they produce a lot more heat (170,000 BTU’s) than a turkey fryer ( 40,000 BTU’s). It is also much more fuel efficient than the propane weed burning torch that we used to use. You could use a large galvanized wash tub with this burner to can 19 quarts at a time. The burner is available from Agri Supply for only $39.95 http://www.agrisupply.com/carolina-cooker-12-in-cooker-stand-and-burner/p/49469/

In addition to keeping the heat out of the house, we feel this method is much safer than canning on a stove top. A person is not as likely to burn themselves with the hot water when taking jars out of the canner. The burner is only 12 inches high and very sturdy, which keeps the canner close to the ground. It is much easier to take the jars out as well.


You can also make your own mini walk in cooler with a window air conditioner and a Coolbot. I first saw this idea used at Cathy’s uncle and aunt’s house. He had made a closet (about two feet deep and six feet wide) into a reach in refrigerator where they could put things from the garden. He used a small 6,000 btu window air conditioner as the cooling unit. There are many times when a fruit or vegetable is available, but you don’t have time that day to freeze or can it. It needs to be refrigerated so that it can hold until you have time to get it put up. This summer when we put in a new walk in cooler for the eggs, we used a Coolbot controller and a high efficiency window air conditioner. With this setup, we use 30% less electricity than with a conventional walk in cooler refrigeration unit and it is a fraction of the cost.

The Coolbot was designed by a farmer for their CSA farm. It can be purchased here: http://www.storeitcold.com/

Here is a suggestion for a homesteading food gathering trip in the Lancaster Pa. area:
The first stop is Community of Oasis at Bird-in-Hand 60 N. Ronks Rd, Ronks Pa 17572 http://www.reallivefood.org/
Oasis has organic, grass fed, raw milk for a reasonable price. They also have a large variety of cheeses. Their drinkable yogurt is very good.  .

Next door in the same building is Lancaster Ag. There you can buy soft rock phosphate and high calcium lime for your garden or raised beds. They also carry garden blends of organic fertilizers.

Continue north on Ronks Rd. several miles to the village of Bird-in-Hand. There, just down from the corner at 2805 Old Philadelphia Pike is the Bird-in-Hand Farm Supply store. It is an Amish hardware store with prices that are considerably lower than Lowes or Home Depot. There you can buy a quality Amish made pulley style clothes line. But the real find is their food room hidden on the left side of the store. We did not find it until the second time we visited the store. There you can buy raw organic cheese for $4.35 a pound in five pound blocks. The price is a little higher for smaller sizes. They also have some of the best prices on canning supplies. You have to look carefully, most of the food is not organic, but there are some great deals on some other food items as well.

If you need some organic potatoes, continue east on Old Philadelphia Pike toward the town of Intercourse. On the left is an Amish farm with a white house that has a sign for organic potatoes. We have purchased 50 pound bags of potatoes from them several times when we ran out of potatoes. Note: most Amish farms are not organic and do not use organic practices. Just because Amish farms are selling produce along the side of the road does not mean that it is nutrient dense, health giving food.

The last stop is several miles north of Bird-in-Hand on Ronks Rd. On the right you will find Miller’s Natural Foods. It is a large health food store on an Amish farm.

One of the real joys of homesteading in the city is the satisfaction of having a bunch of good food in the freezer, or canned on the shelf. It gives you a feeling of self-sufficiency knowing that you don’t have to run to the grocery store every time they are calling for a snowstorm to make sure you don’t run out of food. It also gives you a satisfied feeling, knowing that you have stored away some really good healthy food for the winter.

Happy homesteading!

How to Make Great Tasting Stuffed Eggs

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Have you ever noticed how popular stuffed eggs are at picnics? It seems they are often all eaten. They are a wonderful way to eat eggs.

For the best tasting stuffed eggs you need to begin with eggs that have been raised right; eggs that taste wonderful because of the wonderful grass and nutritious feed the hens ate. Of course, fresh eggs are the best. But you may have noticed that fresh eggs don’t typically peel well. There is an easy remedy for this. If the eggs are less than 2 weeks old, bring the water in your kettle to a boil before you put the eggs into the kettle. When the water is boiling, add the eggs with a slotted spoon into the cooking pot and bring the water to a boil again. Then immediately turn the burner down as low as possible and cook the eggs for 10 minutes. As soon as your 10 minute timer goes off, let the coldest tap water run into the kettle until the eggs are cooled. If you don’t want the water to run that long, run the water for a little and then add ice to cool down the eggs quickly. This also helps to avoid making the eggs in which the outside of the yolks turn gray. There is nothing wrong with an egg like that, but it doesn’t look as appetizing.

When the eggs are cooled, peel them and cut each egg in half lengthwise. Carefully pop the yolks into a pie plate or other flat dish. Use a potato masher or fork to mash the yolks.

Now for the great taste I’m going to give some general instructions rather than exact measurements. It is the cook’s prerogative to taste the food to make sure it is just how you want it.

Add some mayonnaise and a little mustard; enough to make the mashed yolks creamy instead of dry. Add a little onion powder or maybe a little minced onion. Sprinkle on a little salt if it needs it. Stuffed eggs are also wonderful with a little dill weed in the yolks or some curry powder. Be creative and add whatever spices you think you’d like. Just remember that you can always add more, but you can’t take out spices so start with a little.

I like plenty of yolk mixture in my stuffed eggs so I always get rid of a few misshapen egg whites. Fill the egg whites with the yolk mixture so that it is mounded a little over the egg white shell and so that you can’t tell which end of the egg white the yolk was. When the eggs are all stuffed, you can sprinkle some dill or paprika or some other spice on top of the eggs if you so desire.

Happy Egging!

Pulled Chicken

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This recipe is a form of BBQ chicken, but has a unique flavor because of the orange juice and lots of cayenne pepper sauce. Yes, 1/3 cup is the right amount of hot sauce. Cayenne pepper sauce is a milder variety of hot sauce that adds tang and flavor, not just heat. If your chicken is large, just double the amount of sauce you prepare. This recipe is delicious served with mashed potatoes.

2 tablespoons oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 medium green pepper, chopped
1 whole chicken (about 3 1/2 pounds), cut into quarters
1/3 cup cayenne pepper sauce*
1/2 cup orange juice
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup ketchup
1 tablespoon cider vinegar

In a 5-quart Dutch oven or sauce pot, heat oil over medium heat. Add onion and green pepper and cook until tender and browned, about 20 minutes. When vegetables are tender, add chicken quarters, cayenne pepper sauce, orange juice, brown sugar, ketchup, and vinegar. Reduce heat to low; cover and simmer 1 hour or until chicken is very tender.

With a slotted spoon, transfer chicken to large plate, cool slightly. Skim fat from sauce in Dutch oven. Remove meat from bones; discard bones and skin. With two forks, pull meat into large shreds. Return meat to Dutch oven. Cook, uncovered, over medium-high heat until heated through.

From Good Housekeeping Best Chicken Dishes.

Sunday Fried Chicken

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This chicken recipe is a little more involved, but always worth it. There’s always extra coating left after I’ve coated the chicken pieces. I put the extra coating in a ziploc bag in the freezer and label it. Then I use it for a coating for any meat I want to fry.

2 cups flour
1/2 cup cornmeal
2 tablespoons salt
2 tablespoons dry mustard
2 tablespoons paprika
2 tablespoons garlic salt
1 tablespoon celery salt
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon oregano
1 tablespoon pepper (optional)
Chicken pieces from Jehovah-Jireh Farm
Cooking oil (I recommend coconut oil)

Combine all ingredients except chicken and oil. Place about 1 cup flour mixture in a paper or plastic  bag. Shake a few chicken pieces in the bag at a time, coating well. On medium-high, heat 1/4 inch of oil in a large skillet. Brown chicken on all sides; remove to a shallow baking pan. Bake, uncovered, at 350 degrees for 45-60 minutes or until done. Recipe makes enough coating for three chickens. Store unused mixture in an airtight container.

Cathy’s Cooking Corner: The Well Equipped Kitchen Workshop

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I, Myron, am writing Cathy’s Cooking Corner this month for the husband or wife that is not doing the cooking, or that does not do most of the cooking.

You have kicked the cheap food and prepared foods mentality of our American culture and are eating real foods. In the cheap food culture, all that is needed is a coffeemaker, a microwave, a stove and oven and a few pots and pans. The kitchen is not a very important workshop. Most of the cooking is done in a big factory somewhere.

In changing to a real foods diet, your kitchen needs to be properly equipped to quickly and efficiently prepare real foods and health giving meals. View the kitchen as a very important workshop that needs to be properly equipped with quality tools and equipment. The tools and equipment do not need to be expensive, just good quality.

I have tried to make it a priority to make sure that Cathy’s kitchen is properly equipped with the tools that she needs. We keep adding things as we can afford them and when we can find them. Unfortunately, most kitchen stores such as Bed, Bath, and Beyond are filled with electronic gadgets and cheaply made small appliances that are not designed for real cooking with real foods. You can find quality made items, but it takes some looking around.

The take home message this month is: If you want to be healthy and eat right, equip your kitchen workshop so that you can eat right and be healthy.


After burning up several expensive homeowner type mixers, we bought this used 20 quart commercial mixer at an auction. It takes a lot of work out of making bread or large batches of cookies. Cathy can now make seven loaves of bread at a time. She puts some of the bread in the freezer to keep it fresh.

For more on this subject, read the article from last year: Selecting Pots and Pans.

Cathy’s Cooking Corner

Fried Turkey Cutlets 

This is by far Myron’s favorite way to eat turkey. It’s delicious, moist, tender, and so quick and easy. It is sure to get compliments from your guests.Cut turkey breast meat into 1/4 inch slices across the meat fibers. Dip in flour and sprinkle both sides of cutlets with salt. Fry in oil or butter just until no longer pink. Do not over fry it or it will get more dried out and tough.

Fajita Chicken and Vegetables on Rice

1 1/2 – 2 lbs. chicken breast
1 large onion, sliced
3 large carrots, peeled and sliced
1 lb whole green beans (can be frozen)
Rice, cooked
Oil for frying

Sauce:
1/4 c. oil
1/4 c. vinegar
1/2 tsp. oregano
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1 tsp. chili powder
1 tsp. salt

Cut chicken breast into into strips or bite size pieces. Stir the fajita sauce ingredients together and pour over the chicken. Stir to coat. Let set 1 hour and up to 24 hours. Fry the chicken pieces in a small amount of oil. Spoon into a large oven proof bowl. Set in a 200 degree oven to keep warm. Stir fry the carrots and onions in a little oil till crisp tender. Add to chicken. Stir fry the green beans in the remaining fajita sauce until crisp tender. Add to the chicken and veggies. Mix everything together. Serve over rice. (Note: You can also use leftover roasted chicken that you have taken off the bones.)

Have a blessed Christmas and Holiday Season!
Myron and Cathy Horst and Family

Jehovah-Jireh Farm
https://www.jehovahjirehfarm.com/

Cathy’s Cooking Corner: Selecting Pots and Pans

By Myron Horst

Cathy and the girls do the cooking and the boys and I take care of most of the farm work. One of my priorities is that Cathy’s workshop (the kitchen) is properly outfitted with the tools and equipment that she needs to work efficiently and provide good-tasting food. Before we started farming, I worked for 14 years in the Washington DC area in high-end houses, observing people’s kitchens and the pots and pans that they had in their kitchens. Actually, I was a carpenter and cabinet maker, and worked for months at a time in different houses and would see what kind of pots and pans that they were using. It was very interesting seeing firsthand how wealthy people lived. That lifestyle was not as appealing to me viewing it from the inside as it looked from the outside. One of the things that amazed me was the poor quality cookware that many people had. Some did not know how to cook, and felt a certain amount of inferiority because if it. Cathy’s pots and pans were better quality than what many of those people had, even though they had many times the level of income that I had.

Pots and pans do not make a good cook, but poor quality cookware makes it much more difficult to achieve good results. Poor quality cookware burns the food much more quickly and requires closer attention during the cooking or frying process. If the food doesn’t burn on the bottom of a pan, it is much easier to wash up. Price is not necessarily a good indicator in buying good cookware.


One of the most important things to look for is a thick, heavy bottom. You can see that the skillet on the left and the pot on the right have extra metal attached to the bottom. A thick bottom is important to distribute the heat evenly and prevent “hot” spots that burn easily. The center pan is a Farberware pan and is a good choice also. It has received a lot of use. It has a layer of aluminum to distribute the heat evenly over the bottom. Handles on pots and pans are attached by welding or with rivets. The best attachment is heavy rivets like what is on the skillet on the left.


The stock pot on the right is the best designed with a thick bottom and riveted handles. The glass lid is a nice feature also. I purchased it at the Asian grocery store, H-Mart, in Gaithersburg for a very reasonable price.


The stock pot on the left is a piece of junk as cookware. The bottom is very thin. I bought it at a thrift store for $3 and it had a spot of burnt food tightly stuck to the bottom. I bought it as a stainless steel container for making cheese and uses other than cooking. The stock pot on the right has spot welds that hold the handles in place. So far they have held up well, but it is a weak point that is not as strong as rivets.


This is Cathy’s favorite roaster pan. The lid can be used as a skillet. Both the pan and the lid have thick bottoms. It is also attractive enough that it can be set on the table to serve from.


This is Cathy’s favorite non-stick skillet. It is a cast iron skillet with a wood handle. The wood handle is nice because you do not have to use a pot holder to handle it. It is probably over 50 years old and will last many more years of hard use. We have tried many kinds of non-stick skillets. Some were guaranteed to last 25 years. Before long, they got scratched and the coating started coming off. After hearing about the dangers of the chemicals in non-stick pans, we abandoned them. To make a cast iron skillet non-stick, “season” it by coating it with oil and let the pan get hot until the oil starts to smoke a little before you put food into it. Do this any time the cast iron gets the oil washed off. It has to have the oil to make it non-stick. A cast iron skillet is so easy to wash. Do not wash it with soap, because it will remove the oils in the metal. Just scrub it with a stainless steel scrubbing pad while running hot water over it. Dry it with a paper towel.


We do not have a microwave because of what it does to the food when it cooks it. To cook things quickly, Cathy bought this new style of pressure cooker that is much easier to use than the old style of pressure cooker, and it cooks food in a short period of time. If you buy one, get a cookbook that explains how to use it. One that we recommend is Cooking Under Pressure by Lorna Sass.


When it is hot, Cathy sometimes uses this large electric roaster and sets it on the porch. That way, she does not have to use the oven and heat up the kitchen.

Cathy’s Cooking Corner

Brunch Casserole

3 cups bread cubes
3 cups cheddar cheese
3 cups meat of your choice
6 eggs, beaten
3 cups milk
1 Tbsp mustard
2 tsp. onion powder
1 tsp. salt

Layer bread cubes, meat and cheese in a 9 X 13 pan in that order. Mix the rest of the ingredients and pour over the top of the bread, cheese and meat. Refrigerate overnight. (Or bake immediately.) Bake at 300 degrees for one hour.

Cheesy Eggs on Toast

4 eggs
1 Tbsp. butter
1/2 cup cheese
2 Tbsp. mayonaise
1 Tbsp. onion, minced
4 pieces toast, buttered

Mix cheese, mayonaise and onion. Melt butter in skillet. Add the eggs. Fry on one side. Flip eggs and top with cheese mixture. Cover skillet with lid. Cook eggs to desired doneness. Serve eggs on buttered toast.

Cathy’s Cooking Corner

In our family we eat lots of eggs for breakfast. Broth poached eggs are a favorite of ours.

Broth Poached Eggs

Pour chicken or beef broth into a kettle or skillet to a one inch depth. Bring to a boil. Crack each egg gently into the broth. Simmer till they are the done to your preference.


Broth poached eggs have rich flavor.

Barbeque Chicken
After selling fresh chickens in May, all the chickens that were left were on the smaller size. So we cut them into split halves. We sell them as grilling halves for $5.29/lb. We think they are fabulous grilled with the following recipe.

2 cups vinegar
2 cups water
1 stick butter
8 tsp. salt
4 tsp. Worcestershire sauce

Bring to a boil. Marinate the chicken in this sauce for one hour before grilling. Brown both sides of the chicken well on the grill. I recommend grilling each side twice. Put into a hot crockpot on high for two to three hours, until the meat is very soft. You can also bake the chicken in the oven in a tightly closed casserole dish at 300 degrees for one to two hours instead of in the crockpot.

Have a wonderful Spring!

Myron and Cathy Horst and Family

Jehovah-Jireh Farm
https://www.jehovahjirehfarm.com/

Cathy’s Cooking Corner

This month I’m going to give you a recipe that I believe I’ve put in the newsletter before. I decided, however, that I wanted to put it in again for those of you who didn’t receive it the last time and for those of you who might like to add it to your recipes. It is probably the all around favorite way of baking chicken in our family. This recipe is super fast and easy to prepare. Butter chicken stars with pasture raised chickens because the butter enhances the superior flavor of the chicken so well.

Butter Chicken

1 chicken, whole or cut into halves or pieces
1/4 c. butter, melted
salt

For a whole chicken, brush the chicken with the butter. Sprinkle the whole chicken with the desired amount of salt. Set into a roaster and cover. Bake at 350 degrees 1 1/2 to 3 hours or till the chicken is tender. (The time will vary quite a bit between a 3 pound chicken and a five pound chicken.) You can add vegetables such as potatoes, carrots, onions, squash or sweet potatoes around the chicken and bake them with the chicken for a complete meal.

For chicken halves or pieces, sprinkle the underside of the chicken pieces with salt. Place them in a baking pan. Pour the butter over the chicken pieces and sprinkle the tops with salt. Bake, uncovered, at 350 degrees for1 to 1 1/2 hours or till fully baked and tender. For an optional idea that we positively love, slice the desired amount of potatoes and place them in the bottom of the baking pan. Top the potatoes with onion slices and then with a little thyme. Place the chicken pieces on top and bake. Absolutely delicious!