About my Ingredients

Check back often as I’ll probably update this page regularly.

Beef

We eat locally grown grass-fed beef.

Chicken

Of all the meat we eat, chicken is the one we buy at the grocery store the most often. I try to buy pastured chicken from my neighbor but he doesn’t always have it.

Homemade Butter

Uses: anything baked that calls for butter

The cream from our milk gets made into butter. Big surprise, right?! Because I often don’t get around to making butter until the cream has begun to sour a bit, my butter is often a little tart tasting. This isn’t too pleasing to spread on bread so I always use it in baking. I also use store-bought butter because we don’t use enough milk to get all the cream I’d need for my obsessive baking needs.

Honey

Uses: baking, in tea, drizzling on cereal, etc.

Up until now (January 2011) I have been buying local honey. My source recently quit selling it so I’m on the lookout for another one. I highly recommend purchasing local honey if at all possible. Not just honey that someone local is selling but honey that actually comes from bees in your area. The closer, the better. There are many health benefits.

Pork

The pork we eat is raised by our neighbor.

Raw Milk

Uses: anything you need milk for

We use the milk from our cows. It’s not pasteurized or homogenized. Want to know the benefits of raw milk? Check out this website, and this one, and also this one.

Salt

Uses: anything

I use Morton Coarse Kosher salt. I prefer the flavor.

Swiss Chard

Uses: soups, casseroles, as a green veggie, etc.

I freeze fresh chard every summer. I chop it up and throw it in bags. When I want some, I take the bag and crush it, thereby smashing the chard to smithereens. Then I add it to whatever concoction I am currently making. It looks like herbs. Since we don’t enjoy chard, this is the perfect way to use it and get those healthy greens into our diet. Keep in mind, I’m just using this as an extra boost of leafy greens…we still eat other veggies even when I hide this in different dishes.

Whole Wheat Pastry Flour (sprouted and regular)

Uses: usually used for things containing baking soda and/or baking powder. Use in cookies, cakes, biscuits, pancakes, waffles, pie pastry, muffins, quick breads, etc.

Whole wheat pastry flour has a higher starch, lower gluten content than whole wheat bread flour. This produces a very tender, flaky product.

Now, I used to always just grind my wheat as is, straight from the bag and I still do sometimes. But a while ago, I was reading about sprouted wheat and came to learn that grains that have been sprouted (or soaked in something acidic), are much easier for our bodies to digest. The sprouting or soaking minimizes phytic acid in the grains, which inhibits your body from absorbing certain minerals, iron, magnesium, calcium, and zinc being the major ones. This was news to me. Oatmeal, whole wheat flour, etc. weren’t healthy as is? I guess not.

So I began sprouting most of my wheat and soaking a lot of my oats. It’s really quite simple, just takes some forethought. And now you know what I mean when I say “sprouted whole wheat pastry flour” or something like that. If you don’t have sprouted whole wheat pastry flour, just use regular whole wheat pastry flour. You’ll still get great results!

Whole Wheat Bread Flour (sprouted and regular)

Uses: usually used for things containing yeast, though there are a few exceptions. Use in yeast breads, tortillas, and pasta.

Whole wheat bread flour is lower starch but contains more gluten than whole wheat pastry flour, yielding that lovely stretch that makes yeast bread so yummy.

While we don’t grow our own hard wheat, I do purchase the grain in bulk and grind it myself when I need it. As with the pastry flour, I’ve begun experimenting with sprouting it prior to grinding it. Again, if you don’t have any bread flour that’s sprouted, use regular whole wheat bread flour.