Winter Relief Update

I originally posted a recipe for Whipped Shea Butter over a year ago, and we've been using it quite religiously ever since.  I've made a few changes, though, which I find quite effective.  So here's the updated recipe.

• 10 oz Shea butter (preferably unrefined, cold pressed or however the equivalent works for it)
• 4 oz carrier oil (I used grapeseed oil or calendula-infused sunflower oil, if I've got it on hand)
• 1 oz unrefined beeswax
• 1 oz unrefined cocoa butter
• essential oils - I use about 20 drops each French Alp lavender, tea tree and grapefruit seed extract to help with K's eczema, but a nice smelling combination is peru balsam & cinnamon oils.
• 10 capsules of vitamin E - just the oil inside, I discard the capsules

Prepare your mixing bowl (i.e. if you've got a stand mixer, use that bowl, otherwise get a different bowl to whip the ingredients) by placing in the freezer.  Best not to use a glass or ceramic one, so that it doesn't shatter when you pour the hot liquid into it.

Melt the shea butter, beeswax and cocoa butter in a double burner (I use a ceramic bowl over a pot of almost boiling water, careful that the water doesn't touch the bowl).  Let the temperature of the mixture reach 180F, and keep it there for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Pour the melted mixture into your chilled bowl, add your carrier oil, and place in freezer for about 5-10 minutes, depending on the temperature of your freezer.  Just long enough to start to resolidify the mix, which will make it a little creamy but not solid.

Use stand mixer (if you've got one) or an electric beater to whip the mixture until it forms really thick peaks.  About half way through the process (i.e. it's getting more stiff but still quite creamy and soft), add the essential oils and vitamin E capsule contents, then finish beating.  Scrape the bowl often, because the mixture will solidify at different rates.

When the mixture has reached a nice stiff consistency and holds very strong peaks:

scoop into clean and preferably sterilized containers.  I haven't yet tried, but I bet using a parchment paper icing bag with a big icing nozzle would work really well.  Place the lids on the containers and put away.  Make sure to use up all the extra loveliness stuck to the bowl & mixer parts!

When you go to apply the cream, it will be stiff and hard-ish in the container, but the heat from your hands will melt it really quickly, so as you apply it to your skin, it will soak in beautifully.  Enjoy!

So Much to Tell

We have been very busy in the garden & kitchen during 2011, I just haven't had a chance to share with everyone.  In quick summary:

• Despite the extremely slow start to the season and depressingly cool summer, we had a surprisingly bountiful harvest from our garden, especially potatoes, dried beans, squash, and tomatoes.  Once again, we figured we would have no tomatillos and ended up with a bumper crop (although they didn't ripen very well, and as a result didn't store very well at all).  Even our peppers did really well this year, and we smoked our Guajillo chillies in our new Bradley Smoker!  They are fabulous in soups, stews and sauces, with just a little bite and a lovely smoky flavour to enhance anything they're tossed into.  We also tried dehydrated tomatoes and had enough of our Red Ruffle bell peppers to dry again this year, which I've been adding to just about all of my savoury recipes.
• We have our first livestock!  In July, we picked up 9 young Muskovy ducks: 3 drakes and 6 ducks.  They've been enjoying our orchard & field, and keeping the weeds cropped beautifully.  Plus, they really got into slug duty this summer, so we're enthusiastically looking forward to their slugging abilities this coming spring.  They started to lay in late November, and Dave's been collecting about 3-5 eggs every day since then.  We'll be letting them raise their babies in the spring, in the hopes that we can have duck meat to make into confit, casssoulet, ham, sausage, and just duck!

 

• We participated in a Community Supported Fishery through the Michelle Rose in Cowichan Bay.  As a result, we had about 11 pounds of king shrimp and spot prawns, and a little less than 10 pounds of sockeye and pink filets.  We christened the Bradley by cold-smoking some sockeye, and I made my first batch of gravlax.  The seafood (including the smoked salmon) has made it into a few chowders with our root veggies (rutabaga, potato, parsnip, leeks & onions), smoked guajillo & dehydrated ruffle peppers, home-made chicken stock, our grilled corn nibblets and coconut milk finish - totally yum.
• We had our first "feast of the fields" equivalent - we hosted a mid-winter feast with our friends, and dined on the gravlax with home-made butter (sigh, not yet with our own cream) on home-grown home-made rye bread, spicy pumpkin soup, espresso-braised venison, rutabaga potato gratin, and pumpkin pie, accompanied with home-made apple plum wine.  It was fabulous, and we're looking forward to repeating this new tradition annually (maybe even semi-annually with a summer feast, too!). 
• In dealing with eliminating eggs, wheat & dairy (and now corn & rice for the foreseeable future) due to Kate's eczema, I've been exploring baking with allergy-friendly alternatives.  I purchased allergyfreemom.com's recipe book and have made quite a few of her recipes very successfully.  I recommend trying the cinnamon rolls (they're weird to make but really, really tasty) and the gingerbread cookies (even if it's no longer Christmas).  I used sorghum flour in both to great success.     There are also some great recipes on Bob's Red Mill site.  I'm also now trying to eat a lot more veggies, especially greens (check out the TedX presentation by Terry Wahls), and have discovered that I actually love kale chips (go figure)!  I've also invested in some super food stuff via recipes from Meghan Telpner's Making Love in the Kitchen blog.  After enjoying the Tumeric Tea (actually more like spicy chai tea with tumeric added) and Raw Chocolate Bark yesterday, I am definitely looking forward to some more experimentation in this department.

Since I can't seem to keep up with what I'm doing in the kitchen, you can always have a look at my SpringPad site to see what recipes I'm collecting and trying out.

I'm sure there's been more activity - of course there has, Kate's now 18 months and there's been a year's worth full of development and exploration in that department.  The addition is now mostly complete, certainly Mom has been living there since about May, and really enjoying it.  We're now turning our thoughts towards getting Dave a shop built, so that he can get back into making his beautiful furniture.

Visitor

Dave discovered, quite ironically, a little visitor this morning:


He and Mom had just been discussing how the deer snuggle up against the house in the heavy snow, and why don't they take rest in the barn or tool shed? Well, one must have been listening, for in the tool shed it was!


It finally stopped snowing, but only yesterday afternoon. Today the melt has begun. Apparently, it's a disaster in the Lower Mainland, with roads flooding everywhere. We're hoping that the snow drops off our roof (here and in the Lower Mainland) before the weight from the melting snow and rain gets too heavy.

Last night, I put together a very tasty meatloaf for dinner. In addition to these ingredients, I also had about 1/2 cup of lentil sprouts that were almost past their prime, so I stirred them in too. It was a very nice addition, although not necessary. And the sweet potato topping, while not necessary either, was delicious.

Meatloaf

1 lb ground meat (I used a mix of pork & beef this time)
1 egg, beaten
1 tsp ground peppercorn (I used green, but black is just fine)
1 tsp ground sea salt
2 tsp crumbled dry oregano
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp toasted sesame oil
1 tbsp tamari or soy sauce
1 tbsp molasses or maple syrup
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
dash (or more) of Louisiana hot sauce (to taste)
1 tbsp Dijon or regular mustard
1/3 cup cornmeal

Beat the egg in a mixing bowl. Add all the sauces, spices and flavourings, and stir until well mixed. Blend in cornmeal. Add ground meat and combine until well incorporated. Spoon into a greased quickbread baking tin or Pyrex casserole (I also lined with parchment, with enough sticking out as wings to lift the meatloaf out after cooked), and cook at 375F until reaches appropriate inner temperature for the meat you've used.

Optional Topping: Cook and mash one sweet potato (orange-fleshed root vegetable). Mix a little butter & milk into the mash until it's creamy. Add a dash of cloves, if you wish. (We have since discovered that cooked squash is also lovely as a topping; treat the same as the sweet potato)

After the meatloaf has cooked for about half an hour, spoon the mashed sweet potato on top, and cook for remaining time.

Snowy Sunday

Last night we started getting a dump of snow, but then it changed to rain and started to melt. So I reckoned we'd be free & clear of the white stuff in the morning.

Not so much! This was the view from our front doorstep at about 11 am this morning.

So on such a crappy weather day, I thought it'd be nice to bring some sunshine into our house in the form of lemon muffins. There's nothing like having a bit of lemon zest zing to clear the drab dull winter blahs, and lavender to revitalize the ugliest of morning grumpies.


Lemon Muffins (originally from The Complete Harrowsmith Cookbook: All Three Harrowsmith Cookbooks in One Volume
, but adapted, of course!)

2 cups flour (you can use 1 cup unbleached and 1 cup whole wheat, for a nice hearty texture)
1/2 cup honey
1 tbsp baking powder
1/4 cup oil
1/4 cup plain yogurt
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice (2-3 lemons)
zested rind of those lemons
1/4 tsp cardamom
1 tsp lavender florets finely chopped
2 eggs

Combine dry ingredients. Combine moist ingredients. Stir moist into dry until just incorporated. Spoon into greased muffin tin about 2/3 full, and bake at 400° F for 15 minutes. Makes 12 muffins.

Dave just finished the lighting last night in the kitchen, so we've got track, ambient and also light over the stove top because of the range hood (installed about a month ago).

Hmmm, with this much light, I can really see what needs cleaning! Sigh.

Trip to Horsefly

I forgot to post about our recent trip to visit the Hillaby Ranch up in Horsefly.


View Larger Map

We took the Greyhound up to save stress on driving; it's a long bus ride though, because it takes so long just to get out of the Fraser Valley. It stops at a bunch of places before it hits Hope. Past that, it's not too bad, but the scenery was somewhat obscured by the schmutz on the windows from the salt etc. off the highway.

We had a great visit; Dave & I went snow shoeing and cross country skiing across the pond & fields a couple of the days we were there. Had a lovely dinner with the Kaeppels, friends of Dad & Judy. We also wasted a ton of time playing on Dad's Nintendo DS system (puzzles & Simpsons), and decided that we definitely need one for the ferry crossings to & from the Island. One day! We also read through the last Harry Potter; great book! Judy built a great roaring bonfire out in the horse paddock on our last day & we roasted some smokies for dinner. It was a great fire, but tricky to negotiate to in the knee-deep snow in the dark (yeah, a flashlight might have helped...).

Here are some photos:

Pretty lacy seed head

Winter wonderland - out on the frozen pond

Amie X-country skiing - I like flat bits!

Dave 'n' Sadie

Action shot!

'nother action shot!

Cold Muscovy ducks - Maggie & Lavender