One of the things I love about where we live are the many birds. I will often set out seed or suet for them to enjoy.

I do buy suet blocks from the store, but sometimes if I have the ingredients on hand I will make my own. They are easy to make and don’t take much time.

INGREDIENTS

• 2 cups lard
• 3/4 cups peanut butter
• 1 cup flour
• 1 cup corn meal (I have read that masa could work better since it doesn’t tend to sink while the block is hardening)
• 1.5 cups mix of bird seed, scratch, & black oil sunflower seeds
• 1/2 cup grated apple

HOW TO

1. Using a pot on the stove, melt the lard and nut butter.

2. When the lard and nut butter have turned to liquid, add the remaining ingredients. Mix well.

3. Pour the mixture into a half gallon carton. Place the carton upright in the fridge to harden.

4. When the liquid mix has turned to a solid, tear off the carton and cut into individual blocks.

5. Extra blocks can be placed between wax paper and put in the freezer until they are ready to be used.

FEEDING OUR FEATHERED FRIENDS

Place blocks in a suet feeder and watch the birds flock to it.

The blocks could also be given to your chickens as a treat.

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As you can assume by the title of this post, we love crepes.

We loved them before, but we found additional admiration for them during our European vacation. We ate them often on our trip. It’s not that we don’t have crepes here in the states, we just don’t eat out often and I can’t think of a crepe place nearby. We’ve always just made them at home. And, after our trip Farm Kid1 started making them, too. Major score for mom! Eating yummy food that my kid prepares.

Probably part of their charm is that they are time consuming to cook, and therefore we don’t have them as often as we would like.

The ingredients are pretty basic:

INGREDIENTS

• 6 eggs
• 2 1/2 cups milk
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• salt
• butter

This recipe makes about 24 crepes.

MIXING INGREDIENTS

I add the eggs, milk, flour, sugar and salt into a blender. Then, mix everything all at one time until there are no flour lumps. It doesn’t take long.

COOKING THE CREPES

Put a small pat of butter in a small frying pan and set stove to medium-ish heat. The heat is going to be dependent on your particular stove.

Burning butter? Stove set too hot.
Taking forever to cook? Stove set too low.
Perfectly light golden brown crepe? Stove set perfectly.

I use a 1/3 cup measuring cup, fill it most of the way, and pour into warm pan. Tilt and rotate the pan to get the batter to fill the pan with a thin layer.

Cook 2 – 3 minutes. Then, using a spatula, flip and cook other side for about one minute.

Set crepe on a plate and repeat with remaining batter. Bonus points if you actually make all the crepes without someone stealing one before they are served.

They are good by themselves, but the ideas for fillings are endless.

ENJOY!

The kids and hubby eat their crepes as a sweet breakfast item with butter and powdered sugar.

I prefer mine as a savory dish filled with ham and cheese. So good!

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We actually aren’t huge mayo fans. So much so that the store bought jar tends to expire before we use it all. In an effort to have less waste and to use up an egg we always have a plethora of in the fridge, I thought I would try making my own mayo. What I found is that it is amazingly simple and I have no idea why I didn’t try it sooner.

I experimented with a few variations, all which turned out fine. My favorite, though, was this combination of items:

INGREDIENTS

• 1 egg
• 1/4 teaspoon dry mustard powder
• 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
• 1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• 1 cup canola oil

Note: Many of the ingredients can be substituted for like items. You could use dijon mustard, as opposed to the mustard powder. The white wine vinegar could be substituted with red wine vinegar or apple cider vinegar. Salt? Use whatever kind you prefer. Not a fan of canola oil? Using a different neutral flavored oil such as safflower, corn, or  grapeseed, would be perfectly fine.

MIXING

I dumped the egg, dry mustard, vinegar, salt and lemon juice in the food processor and gave it a whirl.

Then, very slowly, while the processor whirled away, I drizzled in the oil.

That’s it!

It literally took only 5 minutes.

The result is a very mild and creamy mayonnaise.

ENJOY!

Now go enjoy your favorite sandwich with a layer of homemade mayo, or whip up a batch of potato salad.

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Typically summer is when I make potato salad since salads and summer kinda go hand in hand. But, this recipe is scrumptious any time of year. It’s especially handy after Easter when I’m trying to make use of the dozens of eggs we dyed.

Since we always have plenty of fresh eggs, this recipe calls for a few more than an ordinary potato salad. It reminds of a potato salad and egg salad mash up.

INGREDIENTS

• 20 red potatoes
• 1 cup dill pickles, diced
• 7 hard boiled eggs, or steam ’em like I do
• 2 tablespoons yellow or white onion, diced
• 3/4 cup mayonnaise, store bought or homemade
• 2 teaspoons mustard
• 3 tablespoons pickle juice
• 2 teaspoons parsley, minced
• sea salt or kosher salt
• pepper
• paprika

THE POTATOES

Scrub potatoes.

Peel them, if you feel like it. Some days I give them a rough peel, some times I don’t peel them at all.

Slice potatoes in half.

Boil until fork tender. For me, that’s usually right around 22 minutes.

Drain.

Smash the potatoes – ideally with a potato masher. Mine, however, has ran away never to return apparently, so I use a fork. You are not making mashed potatoes, so a rough smashing will do.

If you opted not to peel your potatoes, you might want to pick out some of the larger skin pieces. That’s what I do.

ADDING THE OTHER STUFF

While the potatoes are boiling, I prepare the other ingredients.

I mince parsley, preferably the fresh stuff from our garden.

I dice the onion and pickles. I prefer little pieces, so I dice them fairly fine.

I use an egg slicer to chop the eggs.

When the smashed potatoes are cooled slightly, I stir in the mayo, mustard, pickle juice, salt, pepper and paprika.

Next I fold in the eggs, pickles and onion.

The final step is mixing in the parsley.

This recipe makes about 7.5 cups of smashed potato salad.

ENJOY!

Find a fork and dig in. It’s delicious!

Save

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The big news this month is that we finally harvested a couple tilapia!
We’ve been waiting a year and a half for this day.
It’s been a fun learning experience growing produce in our aquaponics system. But, the thing I’ve been most looking forward to is getting to eat a fish.

As exciting (and yummy) as it was to eat this fella. He’s really not all that big for being in the tank for a year and a half. He only weighed about half a pound. Statistically he should have been 2 – 3 pounds by now.

I have two theories on why our fish aren’t growing as quickly as we expected. One – We aren’t feeding them enough. Or two – Their water is slightly too cold for optimal growth. This breed tends to grow larger in year round warm water.

Farmer John fried one fish for lunch. We fried the other for dinner. One small fish for a family of five wasn’t exactly an over abundance, but we made it stretch and enjoyed every bite.

We shredded up the fish fillets for tacos. Because we needed more protein for our tacos, I also diced and sauteed homegrown chicken.

One of my favorite meals just got better.
I could eat street style tacos for weeks and not get tired of them. I always make them with chicken. Now I can enjoy them with tilapia, too.

These tacos are so simple to make and so delicious. I always eat too many.

Ridgetop’s Chicken or Fish Street Style Tacos

• corn tortillas (fried in vegetable oil for about 30 seconds on each side)
• chicken (sauteed in vegetable oil and taco seasoning)
• fish (we used tilapia fillets, fried in butter)
• lettuce (chopped)
• shredded cheese (we like cheddar or jack)
• black olives (sliced)
• salsa (we use homemade, but whatever you like will work)

I can’t express enough how thrilled I am to harvest these fish. It is very rewarding to feed my family in this way.

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I love having farm fresh eggs. The taste, the shell color, the lovely ladies who produce them.

However, it took me awhile to figure out how to hard boil them without shredding the white part during the peeling process.

The trick is…

Don’t boil the eggs. Instead, steam them.

WHY IS IT SO DIFFICULT TO PEEL FARM EGGS?

Without getting too scientific, the reason boils down to age. As the egg ages, the white part becomes more acidic. This acidity causes the white part to stick less to the inner membrane of the shell. The older an egg is, the easier it is to peel. Eggs sold in super markets are generally a couple weeks older than eggs fresh from the farm – making store eggs easier to peel… Until now.

COOKING THE EGGS

I use a pasta cooker that has a strainer and lid to cook the eggs.

Cover the bottom of the pot with water, but not enough that the water sneaks through the strainer.

I typically steam 2 dozen at a time. We are a family of 5, 24 eggs get devoured pretty quickly.

All 24 eggs are placed in the strainer. The lid goes on and the burner is set to high.

Once the water starts boiling, I turn the burner to low and set the timer for 22 minutes. We have a propane stove and our elevation is about 1300′. Your stove and elevation may affect your cooking time.

Once the 22 minutes are up, I take the strainer out of the pot and run cold water over the eggs.

That’s it. Super simple, easy to peel farm eggs.

STEAMED EGGS PEEL BEAUTIFULLY

I have tried the method of adding baking soda to the water when I hard boil eggs. This works sometimes, but not often enough.

Steaming works perfectly on nearly every egg.

Now I can use my beautiful eggs for deviled eggs without the embarrassing demolished white.

Of course they are also perfect for eating plain or adding to your favorite recipe.

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Mint simple syrup is an easy way to enjoy all that mint growing like crazy over the summer.

We have an obnoxious amount of mint. They aren’t kidding when people tell you to keep it in pots.

Originally I was so happy with how well mint grows. When we bought bare property one of the first things I did was create flowerbeds. I wanted quick growing, cheap plants to add to the beds while I waited for the foundation plants to grow to their full size. Mint grew so well, I transplanted some here and there. Soon I had it everywhere. EVERYWHERE.

Slowly but surely I’m getting rid of the mint. My goal is to only have it grow around our main chicken coop. I have read mint keeps mice away. I don’t know how much truth there is to that. But, for us, it’s a good place to have our mint plants anyway. It’s away from my flowerbeds and the chickens can eat the herb when it grows close enough to their run. We don’t happen to have a mouse problem in the coop. I really don’t know if it’s because of the mint or if the chickens enjoy a mousey meal when one scurries nearby.

One of my favorite methods to use up all the mint is making a flavored simple syrup. It really is simple to make. It’s quick and requires only basic ingredients.

INGREDIENTS

Equal parts:
• water
• sugar
• fresh mint leaves

PREP

Pick mint from your garden or grab a bunch at the store or farmer’s market. If you wait too long to harvest your mint and it has flowered, like I have done a time or two, chop the flower off. I feed the flowers to our chickens.

Give the mint a quick rinse.

Pull the leaves off the stems. If you want, you can coursely chop the leaves. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t.

COOKING THE SYRUP

Add the water and sugar to a pot or saucepan. Over medium high heat, bring water to boil. Stir sugar until dissolved.

Just as the water starts to boil, add mint leaves.

Place a lid on the pot, reduce heat, and simmer about 10 minutes.

Remove from heat.

Strain syrup into a jar. Keep the leaves in the sieve/strainer, but give them a smoosh to get out the last of the liquid minty goodness.

STORING THE MINTY SYRUP

I can several jars at a time in a hot water bath.

You can also store in air tight container for a couple weeks in the fridge.

ENJOY!

The syrup can be used in a number of culinary ways. However, I always use it for summertime drinks, both kid friendly and adult versions.

Also, check out our other site for a how to on making mojito cream jello shots using the mint simple syrup

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