Happy Halloween!

Posted on October 31, 2011 · 1 Comment

Tom and I got married 2 years ago today. I think our wedding is really what set the stage for our urban farm. I know that sounds kind of strange, but it’s true!

Except for the photography and the cake we did nearly everything ourselves. I sewed Tom’s jacket and vest, my dress, my Mother’s dress, and Paul’s kilt.

Best friends a girl could ever ask for: Allie, Edie, Me, Dawn and Mo.
The menfolk: Dan, Eric, Paul, Tom and Darrin
Apple Pie Cake by Kelly at Glass Slipper Gourmet

We did all the decorations, including making tissue puffs, painting the plastic chandelier black and glittering all those pumpkins and bones.

We even took it upon ourselves to do the food – mostly. My brother-in-law in all his awesomeness roasted a whole pig for us and barbecued all the chicken. It was my first experience dealing with whole meat animals.

Whole spit-roasted pig

It really was the perfect day. We had spent 2 years intensively planning it and when it was all done we needed something new to focus on. That new thing ended up being urban farming.

If you’re so inclined, you can find more of our wedding photos here.

I leave you with one of my favorite photos of the night – our grim reaper statue stalking an unwitting guest.

Earl Stalking the Emcee, Scott
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Filed Under: Farm Diary

Not-So-Green Chili Stew

Posted on October 30, 2011 · 1 Comment
Remember the Red Roasted Tomatillo Sauce? Here’s what you do with it.

So I promised this recipe when I posted the Red Roasted Tomatillo Sauce recipe and I just kept forgetting to post it. Well, here it is finally.

My mom taught me how to make the first version of this back when I was in college. It became a staple for me because it was tasty and easy to make. It was originally made with canned enchilada sauce, canned green chilies, pork, onions and potatoes.

Over time the recipe obviously evolved substantially.  It made it’s largest change when we wanted to make it one day and didn’t have any enchilada sauce but plenty of tomatillos – which we simply threw in the food processor. For that recipe you just replace the sauce with 2 1/2 lbs of tomatillos, 4 tsp chili powder and 4 tsp cumin.

Even though we’ve eliminated all of the commercially canned ingredients, this is still a surprisingly easy recipe to make.

Not-So-Green Chili Stew
1 quart of Red Roasted Tomatillo Sauce
1/2 lb pork loin, cut into 1/2″ cubes
1 c nixtamel or hominy
1/2 lb roasted green chilis, remove skins and seeds and chop
1 lb potatoes, cut into 1/2″ cubes
1 onion, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, minced
2 c chicken broth
2 Tbs oil
Hot sauce to taste
Sour cream and/or cheddar cheese

1. Heat a dutch oven over medium high heat and add oil and then pork and garlic. Cook until pork is browned.
2. Deglaze dutch oven with chicken broth.
3. Add remaining ingredients except sour cream/cheese and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until potatoes are very tender.
4. Serve topped with sour cream and/or cheese.

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Filed Under: Main Courses, Meat, Recipes

Creating More Growing Space

Posted on October 30, 2011 · Leave a Comment

Next to our patio we have a fairly large landscape area and it was made up of ornamental plants – penstemon, daylilies, lavender, ornamental grasses and wild lilac. While it was blooming it was gorgeous, but that was just a short period of time. Since I’m a landscape design consultant, I am always specifying ornamental plants so it was kind of a default landscape for me.

We also have a few trees – olives, apples, oranges, pomegranates and quince – and two raised herb boxes. The herbs in the boxes have been obliterated by the turkeys, so the boxes pretty much sit empty now. Since we freed up space in our vegetable beds when we decided to go with potato boxes we moved the herbs into vegetable garden. Bonus is that the turkeys can’t eat them – except they jumped the fence and ate all our chives. We’ll have to fix that.

Still working on it – the grasses and boxes still need to be removed.

We’ve decided to pull everything out but the trees. If it’s not a food source for us or our animals we’ve decided it’s gotta go. The cost of alfalfa right now is astronomical at $25/bale and of very poor quality. While we can’t grow all of their food, we can at least offset some of the cost. Our old landscape area is going to become our livestock feed area.

At first I felt guilty for pulling all the ornamentals because the bees like to use it for forage, however, the alfalfa we plan on growing also flowers and bees absolutely love it. Along with the alfalfa we’re going to also grow orchard grass. I’m also going to save a block and plant it with Sonora Wheat for ourselves.

Unfortunately we’re going to have to fence it somehow to keep the turkeys and dogs out.

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Filed Under: Farm Diary, Garden Planning, Gardening

Meet Hank the Tank

Posted on October 28, 2011 · Leave a Comment

Hank is our newest addition. We traded him for Cranberry, one of our hens. Cranberry was getting bullied by the other two hens so we felt she would do better somewhere else. It worked out well since we were in need of a tom. Isn’t he a handsome turkey? And he’s actually quite sweet. He’s easily handled and isn’t aggressive at all.

When we brought him home though, we noticed he was a little off. He was wheezing a bit but didn’t have any mucus. His eyes and nostrils were clear and he wasn’t wheezing all the time. Then he would run around acting like he was clearing his throat. He would shake his head too, but it wasn’t something I noted really.

I decided to do a little research and from what I could tell, there was really only one cause. But I wasn’t sold on it because from everything I read it wasn’t a common problem. I decided to just go ahead and treat him for it and see how it went. Treatment worked and he’s right as rain now.

What he had was gapeworm. It’s a small blood red nematode worm that attaches to the bird’s trachea. Eventually they grow and multiply until they suffocate the bird, so even though it’s rare, it’s a serious problem. It gets it’s name because birds will stretch out their neck and “gape” trying to breath. They shake their heads to try and dislodge the worms. This shaking of his head sprays the microscopic eggs around him, thus infecting the ground. We had him quarantined from our two hens, but the pen he was in is normally used by the chickens as a axillary pen. So for now, until we can figure out how to clean it, it’s closed to everyone.

Gapeworms are spread through earthworms, sowbugs, snails and slugs, so control can be very difficult with free range birds. They mainly affect turkeys, pheasants and other wild birds. Younger birds are more susceptible. Older turkeys, like Hank who is 2 years old, generally are asymptomatic, but with the stress of moving they were able to get a stronger foothold on him.

Treatment, however, is fairly simple. We treated him with a 1% Ivermectin injectable solution orally. The dosage is .1mL per 10lbs of body weight. Hank weighs 20lbs so he received .2mL. We simply removed the needle from the syringe. Jeanette held him on her lap facing away from her. I opened his mouth and put the syringe as far back on top of the tongue as possible and pushed the plunger.

By the next day the wheezing was gone and he just looked better. He’s now all better and trying to find his place with our bossy hens. They don’t much care for him, but hopefully they’ll grow to be a flock.

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Filed Under: Livestock, Turkey Health, Turkeys Tagged With:

Sweet Potato Harvest

Posted on October 25, 2011 · 1 Comment

The days are getting shorter and the nights colder. As we quickly approach our average first frost date I realize that it’s time to pull out our sweet potatoes. Because of late rains all over the U.S. we didn’t receive our slips until late June, giving them a rather short season. As usual, most of the garden had been planted leaving very little space for the sweet potatoes.

Sweet potatoes do best with low nitrogen, otherwise they put out too much green growth and not enough energy goes into growing nice, large tubers. I ended up choosing to put them in our potato bed, which hadn’t been amended for quite some time, so I knew the nitrogen wouldn’t be high.

The toughest part of growing sweet potatoes was finding the slips. Sweet potatoes are propagated vegetatively by sprouting the tubers and carefully cutting off the sprouts. These sprouts with a small amount of roots are called slips. You can learn more on how to propagate your own here.

Most slips are grown in the southern states and are strictly prohibited from entering into California because of the risk of leaf curl disease, which could have a huge impact on California’s sweet potato production. However, I was incredibly lucky to not only find a place that could ship sweet potato slips, but also sold rare heirloom varieties. Sand Hill Preservation Center, located in Calamus, Iowa, has permission to ship slips to California because they grow all their own rather than having them drop shipped from the southern states. Iowa doesn’t have a problem with leaf curl disease so it’s one of the only online retailers that I can order slips from. The downside, however, is that I get the slips later in the year.

This year we grew three heirloom varieties. Since this is the first year growing heirlooms we’ll be looking for what does best here. Frazier White is a white skinned and white fleshed heirloom.. Purple has deep purple skin and purple flesh. Oakleaf has these beautiful deeply lobed leaves that resemble oak leaves. They have pink skin and light orange flesh.

Harvesting sweet potatoes is easier than potatoes. All of the tubers are found directly under and attached to the main plant. Use a spading fork to help pry them up. I found this was better than a shovel because you’re less likely to sever the roots. After pulling them up and detaching them from the plant I brush off the dirt and laid them out on a burlap sack in the sun for a few hours to cure. Then I moved them to the garage to cure for the next week. Curing allows them to store longer as well as increase in flavor and sweetness.

The Frazier White had a pretty mediocre harvest. The tubers were small and there weren’t very many of them. The flavor isn’t that great either. Most likely won’t be growing these again. 

The Oakleaf had even a worse harvest. It’s a bush type rather than a vining type so it wasn’t expected to have a smaller harvest, but I didn’t expect that small of one. The flavor is markedly better than the Frazier White though. I’m not sure if the reason the harvest was so small because of the variety or because of where we planted it. It wasn’t in the potato bed, but rather the zucchini and tomatoes where it got shaded out.

The Purple, however, outshined both varieties. The tubers are huge and the harvest was large. The flavor is similar to the Oakleaf, but I’m sure they will sweeten up in storage. I think this will be the one we stick with.

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Filed Under: Farm Diary, Gardening, Growing Tips, Varieties

Monday’s Guests – Growing Your Own Vegetables Saves You Money

Posted on October 24, 2011 · Leave a Comment

Today’s guest post comes from Jeanne Grunert from Seven Oaks. She spent most of her career as a marketing executive in New York City. In 2005, her and her husband bought a 17 acre former timber farm in Virginia. Two years later they had 3 acres cleared for their house and garden. They have a 30 acre fruit tree orchard now along with a large vegetable garden. She’s now a writer, focusing on gardening books, including Get Your Hands Dirty and How to Attract Birds to the Garden.

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After a fun yet exhausting Sunday afternoon canning, my husband and I decided to tally up all the vegetables I had dried, canned and frozen this year – and put into the basement for storage.

All of these vegetables were grown using 100% organic gardening methods. I am estimating everything; please understand that this in not a scientific, mathematically accurate estimate. It’s just an example to show you the amazing power of growing and preserving your own vegetables.

 The 2011 Tally 
(and there’s more out in the garden, so I’m not finished yet)

  • Carrots:  7  half pint jars pickled and canned;  6 containers of 1 1/2 pints each, frozen
  • Peppers: 26 pint jars pickled and canned, 2 contains of 1 1/2 pints each, frozen
  • Beets:  22 pints canned
  • Dill pickles: 4 pints and 4 half pint jars canned
  • Green beans: 2 contains of 1 1/2 pints each forzen
  • Tomatoes: 4 bags of 24 tomatoes each, frozen
  • Dried beans: approximately 1 pint, dried
  • Potatoes: approximately 20 pounds grown and stored
  • Onions: approximately 5 pounds grown and stores

That’s the 2011 tally to date, as of October 1.  Despite the cool night time temperatures, I still have peppers in the garden, tomatoes, winter squash (acorn and butternut), plenty of carrots, parsnips, turnips and eggplant left.

We did a little experiment.  We added up the cost of buying in all of those vegetables if we purchased the canned or frozen equivalent at the store. I know that prices vary drastically, and if you have coupons or there’s a good sale going on that can change things. To make things simple, I estimated the value of a pint jar and a half pint jar the same.  Here is what we came up with in terms of the value of what’s in the pantry, freezer and storage cellar today:

  • Canned vegetables and pickles: estimated at $1 each = 63 jars = $63
  • Frozen vegetables:  10 containters (I estimated the bags of tomatoes as 1 container each) = $10
  • Potatoes: Estimated 5 lb bag at store, $3.99 each so 4 “bags” worth x $3.99 each = $15.96
  • Onions: Estimated weight, about 1 bag of onions, $3.99 = $3.99
  • Dried beans: One bag at the store is about $1.49

Total: $94.44

That estimate doesn’t include all the fresh vegetables we have consumed since planting the garden this year and the potential cost savings there.

Now we looked at the expenses. We did NOT include the cost of the canning jars and freezer containers. Why? Because these things can be used year after year until they break, so there are an unknown number of times of use out of them. The only cost is replacement seal lids, which are $2 for a package of 12, and that’s negligible. I also did not include costs of vinegar, sugar and spices used to pickle and can the food.

Seed costs:
Beets = $1.99
Green beans = $2.29
Cucumber seeds for pickles: $1.49
Dill herb seeds for pickles: $1.49
Heirloom bean seeds for drying: $4.99 (two packages)
Peppers:  four pack of plants, $1.79 bought from a local farmer, plus two seed packages at $1.49 each
Tomatoes: Two seed packages of $1.99 each
Carrots: Two seed packages, $1.49 each
Onion set: $2.99
Potatoes:  half a bag received at no cost from friends; $2.50 for bag of seed potatoes from local store
Total of seeds and starter plants: $24.50

Round up all these numbers, here’s the bottom line. Again, these numbers omit the investment into the canning jars and the costs of ingredients such as vinegar, sugar and spices. I’m also rounding up and estimating a lot, but I think it makes my point:

An investment of $25 yielded for me $100 in organic vegetables.

No special equipment…after planting the vegetable seeds, the only time I spent is tying and staking tomatoes, thinning vegetable plants, and harvesting potatoes (which was more labor intensive than I’d thought it would be).  All of the vegetables were grown organically, so I am guessing that buying the organic equivalent at the store would be more expensive than the conventional brands.

Not only do I know precisely WHAT is in my food, I have grown it all less than 30 feet from my house in a backyard garden.  Instead of fossil fuels burned trucking it from California, Florida, and other parts of the country, by growing my own food I have reduced some of that burden from the environment.

You might not have the space that I do to grow vegetables. But you can really grow quite a lot in small spaces.  My dad grew many vegetables in a tiny area in our yard; when I moved to another house on Long Island, we had dense shade in the yard and only some direct sunshine onto a patio and deck, so I planted tomatoes, peppers and many other veggies in pots on the desk.  You CAN grow vegetables no matter where you are.

In the fall of 2008, I wrote on this blog about my first efforts at canning. I was so afraid to try it. I was afraid I would do it wrong and poison my family.  Now I feel confident with the hot water bath canner – so confident that I have asked for a pressure canner for Christmas!  With the pressure canner, I can can garden vegetables without pickling them.

We harvested our first fruit from the orchard this year – one pear, and about six peaches.  When we planted the fruit orchard trees in 2008,  we read that it might take up to 5 – 10 years, depending on the trees, before we saw some fruit. Once those trees begin producing abundantly, I will be able to dry and can that fruit too.

I was born and raised in the big city. I grew up on Long Island, and worked most of my career in New York City.  Canning was foreign to me. It was a skill only one generation removed; my grandmother canned her garden produce and canned sauces and soups, but she moved when I was 8 and died a few years later, and I never had the chance to learn from her.

As I lay down to sleep last night, it wasn’t the thought of saving money that made me smile. It was the thought of self sufficiently. There is a deep, strong appeal to me of the thought that I am beholden to no one for me food. I can grow it and preserve it on my own. If at some point we decide to raise some chickens and other animals, we can reduce our dependency even further.  It’s definitely a lifestyle choice, but if self-sufficient living appeals to you, I urge you to try whatever you can in your little corner of the world. When I lived in the equivalent of a big city, I grew vegetables in pots on the deck.  I started small with my canning projects and now I can can close to 20 pints in one day and feel confident about it.  Each time you try something, you’ll learn.

Yes, you CAN!

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Filed Under: Guest Posts

Hot Sauce to Blow Your Socks Off

Posted on October 23, 2011 · 9 Comments

We love all things spicy. REALLY spicy. I was pissed when Sriracha changed their formula and became milder. That shit was the bomb and now I have to slather it on my food just to get some heat. We go through Tapatio like it’s going out of style. It’s only taken about a month for me to go through half a large bottle of it at work. Only I use it for maybe 4 meals per week. We have hot sauce on eggs, pizza, soup, and salad. I put cayenne in hot chocolate and flourless chocolate cake. Yes, we LOVE spicy.

We’ve been fairly unsuccessful growing hot peppers. The summers just don’t get warm enough. Our jalapenos arrive sweet. But Esperanza gave me a tip this year and it worked like a charm. She told me her grandfather’s secret of getting hot peppers. Plant a habanero with your other hot peppers and they’ll pass their magic onto them. Hot diggity dog, we got hot peppers – and lots of them.

We’ve been using them as needed in dishes, but I wanted to make sure to preserve some other than just pickling them. I searched for a great hot pepper sauce recipe. I thought I had found one. It didn’t say anything about it being a hot and sweet sauce but I should have known that it would be as I dumped an equal amount of sugar into the vinegar. I ended up cooking it down so far that it turned into more of a hot pepper jam than a sauce. While it’s really tasty, it wasn’t really what I wanted.

I wanted a vinegary concoction that had great flavor but wasn’t sweet. I looked quite a bit and never really found any that I liked. Another problem I was having was that I had a TON of peppers and most hot sauce recipes didn’t really convert well as they were based on volume measurements rather than weight measurements.

I decided to wing it and I’m really glad I did. This came out fantastic while also being incredibly hot. You can, of course, mix in sweet peppers so it’s not as hot. I used some sweet peppers like Red Marconi and mild peppers such as Anaheims, but I mostly used fish, Fresno, habanero, serrano, Thai Dragon, Kung Pao, and Aci Sivri varieties.

The secret to a really good hot sauce, and actually any good condiment or pickle is to always add a touch of sweetness. Not so much that it would be considered sweet, but just enough to cut the acid. This was one thing I found missing in most of the recipes I came across. While you can use regular sugar, I like the deepness of brown sugar for this sauce.

Ingredients: 
1 lb peppers – mix of hot and sweet depending on the amount of heat you want
1 c cider vinegar
1 Tbs salt
1 Tbs brown sugar
5 cloves of garlic – pressed

1. With gloves on, cut off stems of peppers and run through food processor until the juices begin to release. Put puree into a heavy stock pot.
2. Add the remaining ingredients and over medium high heat, bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes.
3. Using a stick blender, puree even further until there are no more lumps.
4. Fill hot, sterile, 8 oz jars leaving a 1/2″ head space.
5. Process in a water bath canner for 10 minutes.

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Filed Under: Condiments, Preserving, Recipes Tagged With: ,

Time to Just Suck it up and Do it Already

Posted on October 20, 2011 · Leave a Comment

We made a mistake by scheduling a trip in September. September is not only our biggest season for harvesting, but also the month we have to do all of our planting for Fall. After mid September plants will just languish and not grow enough to be harvested.

Needless to say, we’re behind. The spinach and lettuce haven’t been planted yet. Not to mention the cabbage and cauliflower have been decimated by cabbage worms and snails/slugs. The Brussels sprouts and kohlrabi, on the other hand are doing fantastic, go figure.

By now it’s too late to just put stuff in the ground and let it try to grow. I know what I have to do, I’ve just been putting it off.

I’m going to need to re-start the cauliflower and cabbage in my mini greenhouse and then allow them to get big enough to transplant. I’m then going to need to build a hoop house over the bed they are planted in to help increase the temp until they have a big enough head start. Fortunately have a bit of time on Saturday to get this started. I just need to get on it!

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Filed Under: Farm Diary, Garden Planning, Gardening

You Do Not Have a Fundamental Right…

Posted on October 19, 2011 · 6 Comments

While I wrote this, I do want to give credit to Evren Seven, a lawyer, who provided some information for this post.

“no, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to own and use a dairy cow or a dairy herd;”
“no, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to consume the milk from their own cow;”
“no, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to produce and consume the foods of their choice”
source 

These are the words of Wisconsin Judge Patrick J. Fiedler in his clarification of his ruling against the Zinnikers who were running a herdshare and ordered to stop because the state claimed it violated law. 

Do you think you have the fundamental right to produce and consume the foods of your own choice? This isn’t the first time this has been said. The FDA said almost the exact same thing not that long ago.

“There is no absolute right to consume or feed children any particular food.” [p. 25]

“Plaintiffs’ assertion of a ‘fundamental right to their own bodily and physical health, which includes what foods they do and do not choose to consume for themselves and their families’ is similarly unavailing because plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to obtain any food they wish.” [p. 26]

Unfortunately they are right. Technically the Constitution doesn’t say that you have a fundamental right to eat what you want. However, the FDA doesn’t care much about the Constitution when they stated ”(observing that “it is within HHS’s [United States Department of Health and Human Services] authority . . . to institute an intrastate ban as well”).” thus trampling over the 10th amendment. 
This doesn’t affect just those of us that choose to drink raw milk. It can have a much further reach than that so it’s important that even if you don’t drink raw milk that we take a stand against the outright ban of it.

Have you ever heard of Wickard v. Filburn? Chances are you haven’t, but it has the potential of affecting all of us that grow and raise our own food.

The quick and dirty story is that in 1938 the Federal government set quotas on the amount of wheat put into interstate commerce to try and stabilize the price. Roscoe Filburn, a farmer, grew wheat for commercial and also for personal use. Unfortunately, combined the amount was over the quota so he was fined. He refused to pay the fine and was taken to court, eventually ending up in the Supreme Court. The ruling, based on the Commerce Clause*, stated that the Federal government, can indeed, regulate what is grown for personal use and not put into commerce and it it can also regulate intrastate commerce because it can indirectly effect interstate commerce. It is important to note, however, that Wickard never dealt with whether or not growing food for your own consumption (or being able to obtain whatever food you see fit) is a “fundamental right,” since the statute wasn’t a total ban but rather a maximum production limit that far exceeded what a family might require.  Should the Supreme Court decide that growing one’s own food is a “fundamental right,” it becomes extremely difficult for a state to regulate it.  Once you get “fundamental right” status, Congress or a state legislature would have to show that it is “necessary to achieve a compelling government interest” to regulate raw milk production for one’s own use (or purchasing), and that’s never happened.**  Given today’s business friendly SCOTUS, it’s essentially guaranteed that such a case, should it get there, would not get that protected status.

Personal use affects interstate commerce because if you can produce it you don’t buy it, thus reducing the demand. One person doing it is trivial, but when a lot of us are producing our own food it can have a huge impact on interstate commerce.

We better be careful because us vegetable gardeners may be the next ones with targets on our backs. 

*The Commerce Clause was also used against California’s Medical Marijuana legalization because it said that making it legal in California effected the prices in other states. Nevermind that it’s illegal in other states though.

**OK it happened once regarding Japanese internment but the Court later admitted it was wrong. 

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Filed Under: Current Events

Making Rabbit Sausage

Posted on October 16, 2011 · 4 Comments
Mmmmm, rabbit

 We’ve got so much rabbit and so very little freezer space right now, with more rabbits on the way. We needed to do something with all this rabbit and let’s face it, I’m getting a little tired of just braising it.

Rabbit’s a very lean meat and can be quite tough if it’s not cooked right, which usually means either cooked very quickly or cooked for a very long time at a low heat. Since Tom is rather squeamish about rare or even medium rare meat, we have to go with the long cook time.

Grinding is a great way to deal with tough meats

However, there is another way you can prepare tough meat. Tough cuts from any animal whether it’s beef, pork or rabbit lend themselves very well to grinding.

Not really wanting to make rabbit burgers and being that the current Charcutepalooza challenge is stuffed sausages I decided that rabbit would be the meat of choice for this challenge.

Pork fatback

But of course it wouldn’t just be rabbit. Because sausage needs 25-30% fat I needed to add pork fatback. But I didn’t stop there. My goal was a very flavorful sausage so it had to have asiago cheese and porcini mushrooms. But wait! It needed something more! Garlic! Yes garlic.

Unfortunately, Tom proclaimed that it smelled like a foot. He said the cheese smelled like a foot. The mushrooms smelled like a foot and now the fridge smells like a foot. Tom does NOT like stinky cheese, which, in my opinion, is quite a shame. I’m hoping this recipe works for him.

Unfortunately we’re out of fresh garlic, but we have some really good dried garlic. So here’s my recipe:

Rabbit Sausage with Porcinis, Asiago and Garlic

2 Whole Rabbits (3-3 1/2 lbs each), deboned and cut into 1/2″ chunks
1 1/4 lb pork fatback, cut into chunks
1/2 lb Asiago cheese, cut into chunks
1.5 oz dried porcini mushrooms
3 Tbs dried minced garlic
3 Tbs Kosher salt
10+ feet of pork casings (optional)

1. Rehydrate mushrooms in 2 cups hot (not boiling) water. Put mushrooms in water into fridge overnight to chill.

2. Drain mushrooms reserving 1 cup of liquid. Return liquid to fridge.

3. Combine everything but the liquid in a large bowl and put in freezer until very cold, just short of freezing solid. Also freeze the detachable parts of meat grinder that will be coming into contact with the meat.

4. Reassemble meat grinder and run meat mixture through and into a bowl set in ice (I use the bowl to our stand mixer). I use the smallest die that came with the grinder.

5. Using my stand mixer (mine is the smaller Kitchen Aid mixer so I have to do this in batches), I quickly mix half of the ground meat adding 1/2 fo the reserved mushroom liquid to evenly distribute the spices. I repeat with the second half and then combine it all in one large bowl. Don’t overmix or you’ll end up with an emulsified sausage – mix just enough to distribute everything evenly.

6. Cook a small patty to check and adjust seasonings as needed. Return to the freezer to chill again.

7. You can choose to stop here and use it to make breakfast sausage or you can stuff it into casings.

I have to admit, or more like my husband has to admit, smelling like a foot can sometimes be a very good thing. The porcinis I feel are a bit overpowered by the garlic and asiago though, so I think next time I’ll save my money and omit them.

So what did we do with the sausages? We’ve added them to spaghetti sauce and lasagna. We’ve eaten them on homemade rolls with homemade sauerkraut and eaten them as snacks when out and about. I even add them to soup. Sometimes you don’t need a special recipe to use them because they are the special recipe.

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Filed Under: Appetizers, Main Courses, Meat, Recipes Tagged With:
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