Zero waste restaurant - UNBELIEVABLE

There is a lot of trash out there and we try to do our best to keep our trash to a minimum at home.  We reduce, reuse and recycle as much as possible.  Still, there is only two of us and one dog and we have weekly trash to take to the local dump.

When I came across this article I could not believe it.  This is a whole restaurant and they have managed to cut their trash back to one very very small pile in a whole TWO YEARS!

You have to read this article to believe it-

www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/28/zero-waste-restaurant_n_5215019.html

~Sue

Peasant Bread baking

So, my Peasant Bread baking today resulted in one nice size loaf and 11 small size biscuits. Everything is very tasty!

So if you make the bread (recipe below) you can also make them in to smaller biscuits. I used a muffin tin and just greased it very well. Same rise time and same cooking time.

~Sue

Peasant Bread

Note: This is a sticky, no-knead dough, so some sort of baking vessel, such as Pyrex bowls (about 1-L or 1.5 L or 1-qt or 1.5-qt) or ramekins for mini loaves is required to bake this bread.

4 cups all-purpose flour (do not use bleached all-purpose)

2 teaspoons kosher salt

2 cups lukewarm water

1 tablespoon sugar

2 teaspoons active-dry yeast

Room temperature butter, about 2 tablespoons

1. In a large mixing bowl whisk the flour and the salt. Set aside.

2. In a small mixing bowl, dissolve the sugar into the water. Sprinkle the yeast over top. There is no reason to stir it up. Let it stand for about 10 to 15 minutes or until the mixture is foamy and/or bubbling just a bit — this step is just to ensure that the yeast is active. * To make fool-proof lukewarm water that will not kill the yeast (water that’s too hot can kill yeast), boil some water— I use my teapot. Then, mix 1 1/2 cups cold water with 1/2 cup boiling water.This ratio of hot to cold water will be the perfect temperature for the yeast.

3. Gently stir the yeast/water/sugar mixture and add to the flour bowl. Stir this mixture up with a spatula or wooden spoon. Mixture will be sticky. Cover this bowl with plastic wrap or a tea towel and let rise for at least an hour.  If you have the time let it rise for 1.5 to 2 hours as this will help the second rise.

4. Preheat the oven to 425ºF. Grease two oven-safe bowls (such as the Pyrex bowls mentioned above) with about a tablespoon of butter each.
Using two forks, punch down your dough, scraping it from the sides of the bowl,which it will be clinging to. As you scrape it down try to turn the dough up onto itself if that makes sense. You want to loosen the dough entirely from the sides of the bowl, and you want to make sure you’ve punched it down. Take your two forks and divide the dough into two equal portions — eye the center of the mass of dough, and starting from the center and working out, pull the dough apart with the two forks. Then scoop up each half and place into your prepared bowls. This part can be a little messy — the dough is very wet and will slip all over the place. Using small forks or forks with short tines makes this easier.
 Let the dough rise for about 20 to 30 minutes or until it has risen to just below or above (depending on what size bowl you are using) the top of the bowls.

5. Bake for 15 minutes. Reduce the heat to 375º and make for 15 to 17 minutes longer.Remove from the oven and turn the loaves onto cooling racks. If you’ve greased the bowls well, the loaves should fall right out onto the cooling racks. If the loaves look a little pale and soft when you’ve turned them out onto your cooling racks, place the loaves into the oven (outside of their bowls) and let them bake for about 5 minutes longer. Remove from oven and let cool for 10 minutes before cutting.

Productive Easter Weekend

How was your Easter long weekend? Still not over for you?

Friday was pretty quiet for us. Saturday we went to the GP SPCA in hopes of finding a farm dog or two. It was very busy and though we met a cute pitbull mix we didn't come home with any new friends for Vixen. Maybe next time.

Sunday was busy clearing up some deadfall. I got to use the chain saw for the first time and drag some trees out of the bush with the tractor so that was fun!

We finished our weekend with a very non-traditional Easter dinner - BBQ beer-can chicken, roast potatoes and creamed corn.

Some photos and a short video on our web-site...

http://www.homesteadingalberta.com/#!clearing-trees-chopping-wood/cgik

~Sue

You CAN farm and/or garden anywhere!

Found this great story of a family growing their own food and raising chickens and goats in a small back yard in a large city.

Proof that you can do it anywhere!  
http://www.takepart.com/video/2014/04/16/woman-has-itty-bitty-farm-city-heres-amazing-way-shes-making-it-work?cmpid=foodinc-fb

~Sue

Home!!

It is so nice to come home and sleep in your own bed after being away!

We went down to Edmonton and Red Deer over the weekend.  We drove to Edmonton Wednesday night after the Farmers Market workshop and Thursday morning we went to Tandy's.

If you have never been it's an experience. Ray wants to get in to leather crafting so this was definitely the place to go.  It's like a small warehouse and you can easily get overwhelmed in there but they were so helpful.  I had a list of items Ray wanted from their web-site and one of the guys took my list and found everything for us.  This gave us time to wander around and look at everything.  They have a pretty good collection of books and a lot of different leather hides.

We left with a nice big order that included their deluxe starting kit and some free leather samples for Ray to practice on.  After Tandy's we headed to Cabela's.  Easily one of my favorite stores in Edmonton.

We headed to Red Deer in the afternoon and met some friends for supper and a Jeff Dunham show that night.  So much better live than the videos and he had some new stuff too.  We had a blast!

Friday and Saturday was full of appointments with lawyers, accountants and life insurance agent.  But we still made time for some fun stuff and, of course, visited Wolverine.  There we picked up a Ranchman's rifle for $70 less than GP.

Our big purchase this trip was our new dumping trailer.  We had found it over Kijiji and the timing was perfect to pick it up when we had to be in Red Deer anyway.  Our beautiful new trailer is in pics below.

On Saturday we headed home after another stop at Cabela's when we got a competitive shooting target, some rubber boots and a camo jack for me and more ammo for Ray.

A fun weekend and now there is lots of work to do!

~Sue

Getting into Farmers Markets Workshop

Today was the Getting into Farmers Market workshop in Grande Prairie.  It had been re-scheduled from an earlier date and this one was better for us anyway as we both got to attend.

It was a day long seminar with a lot of great info on what you need to do to start selling food products at Farmers Markets in Alberta.  Besides all of the great info we learned we met some wonderful people.

The managers of the Rycroft Farmers Market were there and we look forward to going to their market in the future.  We also go to meet Kreg from Broken Tine Orchard.  We have been following his story on his haskap berries for a while so it was nice to put a face to the facebook page.

If you are considering selling at Farmers Markets this workshop is a definite plus. This was a first for them but they do plan on more in the future.  You can get more info at http://www.albertamarkets.com.

~sue

Yummy Stuffed burgers!!

Yummmmy stuffed burgers for supper last night! They turned out delicious and for those that asked.. here's how we made them with a little review of the "Stufz burger press"...

http://www.homesteadingalberta.com/#!stuffed-burgers/c21j1

~Sue

Nuts about squirrels

Ray disappeared this morning after breakfast for a bit. When he came back he told me to go to the window with the camera. That's when I seen this.... I love it!..and so do the squirrels!! lol 

Caught on video! The bird seed thief!!

We've noticed that our bird feeder has some damage. We figured it was probably the deer coming over and shaking it to get seed to fall to the ground. Well today I caught this little bugger on the feeder lol 

Video on our youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxLc5GTKdLA

~Sue