Blog - Page 27 of 40 - Five Feline Farm

2015 in Review

Greetings from Five Feline Farm.

Most people take a moment to reflect on the past year when the calendar passes from one year to the next. We evaluate our history and plan for our future. Often this takes the form of New Year’s Resolutions. Instead we are focusing on goals.

But, first the year in review.

Five Feline Farm moved from a hobby farm to a registered small business in 2015. April found us setting up the legal paperwork, opening a checking account, obtaining a tax id number, and registering with the county clerk.

Huge steps.

Our first major business venture was the 18th Street Farmer’s Market.

Almost every Saturday morning from May through October found us in a parking lot, gathering with others to sell our wares. Out of twenty-one weeks, we missed four. Not bad for first timers. You might say we don’t give up easily.

We learned so much at the Farmer’s Market. What would sell, how to price, how to package, what the competition would be like. We started out knowing almost nothing. But we learned fast. There were surprises at the market. Who knew simple catnip toys would sell so well? Each vendor brought a unique presence to the market in their products and their personalities. Too many lessons to count from them.

Goosenest Prairie Gift Shop at Lincoln Log Cabin Historical Site is carrying our BEEk balm now and is interested in some of our other products. BEEk balm and other products are also available at our online store.

Additional garden space was established this year. Our production for 2016 should be at least double what we saw last year.

Two groups from Eastern Illinois University toured the Farm and we hosted a private tour. It is so much fun to share the things we’ve learned wth others.

One of the highlights for the year was attending the Mother Earth News Fair in Topeka. This event packs enough knowledge into two days of workshops that by the end we are simultaneously exhilarated and exhausted. A bonus was the blogger lunch with some of the editorial staff at Mother Earth News and Grit.

We lost another of our beloved charter felines, Phantom Joseph. It was hard to say goodbye.

Another highlight was participating in the Honeybee Festival in Paris, IL, an opportunity to branch out into another community. We even got to meet Gene Killion, a huge name in the beekeeping world.

There was a lot of laughter, a few tears, much hard work and occasionally some rest in 2015.

It was a good year.

2016 will be even better.

Tabasco Hellcat Sauce

Every year at the end of the growing season, we pull the pepper plants from the garden and pick the last of the peppers. (Admit it, you just heard a childhood sing-song about picking pickled peppers, didn’t you?) Sweet green bell to fiery hot Rooster Spur and Fatali pack the bucket.

Now what?

Some years find us making roasted hot pepper jelly. (More about that in another post.) Delicious, but not a diet staple. Chopped, sliced and halved peppers fill a shelf in the freezer.

But there must be something else to do with all these peppers.

A couple of years ago I made a hot pepper vinegar similar to the ubiquitous bottles at Steak N Shake. Essentially this is sport peppers packed into a bottle, filled with a brined vinegar and allowed to steep. Store in the fridge and shake on fries, fried potatoes, or even homemade chili mac.

We also use a lot of Tabasco sauce, Frank’s Red Hot and Sriracha. Why not make our own version?

I looked at several recipes on line and none of those really suited me. My goal is to use as many of our own ingredients as possible, but also to have a master recipe that can be altered depending on what ingredients are available.

Here’s what I came up with:

Master Recipe

1 cup chili peppers, finely chopped (leave seeds and ribs for more heat, remove to tone down the Scoville Units)

1 cup vinegar

1/2 tsp salt or to taste

Sauté vegetables on high heat for 2-3 minutes, then add vinegar and salt. Simmer for 20 minutes. Cool for 10 minutes, then puree. If using a stick blender as I did, you can do this process while the sauce is still warm. if you need to transfer it to a blender, let it cool to room temperature.

Strain/press the sauce through a fine sieve into a jar. Cap, label and refrigerate.

Variations

Add any additional vegetables or seasonings you have on hand. Try tomatoes, carrots, garlic, onion, fruit, zest, herbs, or something sweet such as sugar or honey.

The one I made added 2 cups of diced tomatoes and a cup of chopped garlic to the above master recipe. It has some nice lingering heat and great flavor but doesn’t completely set your mouth on fire. Tabasco Hellcat seemed a fitting name.

Next up will be a jalapeño sauce. And, some shaker bottles.

To soothe your lips after all this hot sauce, try some BEEk balm available in our on-line store.

It’s Time For Potato Soup!

Many of our followers on Facebook have noticed a trend that I really like to use up leftovers and create something new. This helps keep the tiredness out of just reheating the same old thing with the added benefit of using up bits and pieces of things that otherwise would otherwise grow some colorful hair.

A recent weekend was no exception.

Sunday lunch was a great example of revitalized ingredients. There is no rule against adding other things. It is kind of like the TV show Chopped except the mystery ingredients are whatever bits of leftovers are in the refrigerator.

So the ingredient list looked like this: salami, a variety of peppers, some potatoes too tiny to use otherwise, a few ends of bacon, and some swiss cheese fondue.

What to do?

My original lunch plan was potato soup. But why make plain potato soup when you can jazz it up?

Scrub the potatoes and boil with skins on in salted water until tender.

Render the bacon and salami bits in a saucepan over medium heat. Add in finely diced garlic and the peppers. The pepper selection consisted of couple poblanos, a sweet red cherry popper, a green bell, one jalapeño and a rooster spur. To mellow the heat some, seed and de-rib the hot peppers. Continue to sauté until the vegetables are tender, then add butter and flour, about a tablespoon of each should do.

This is a good place to acknowledge that there are no measurements for ingredients. I often cook this way and it is almost required when you are using up bits of leftovers. So what if your potato soup has 1/4 cup more peppers than mine? Or no peppers at all. Use what you like and what you happen to find.

Back to the soup.

Cook and stir until the flour is lightly browned. Add a half cup of milk or so and cook until thick. Continue to add milk slowly until you have the consistency you like. At this point, I added in the fondue and stirred until melted. This made a very flavorful base but just adding grated cheese makes a tasty soup as well. I added a bit more grated cheese; a bit of gruyere, manchego and fontina. Stirring until all of the cheeses were melted, the potatoes were added last. Gently heat, at a simmer until everything is heated through.

Serve in low wide bowls with a topping of more grated cheese.

This is a flavorful, hearty and warming soup on a blustery day. Plus it uses up bits of things from the fridge that otherwise would go to waste.

There you have it. One way we use up leftovers to create something new.

While you’re here, check out our new store and pick up our own brand of lip balm: BEEk balm.

Making Tomato Sauce

Making food from scratch can take time. One of the main reasons busy people don’t make food from scratch is this time commitment.

But, there is a way to fit home made food into a busy schedule. Here’s an example of how we did homemade tomato sauce in several stages to fit our schedule.

Think in small batches.

Almost no one has an entire day to devote to processing a large bunch of produce and completing it all in one day. If you do find yourself with a free Saturday and bushels of tomatoes, these steps can all be crunched into one day. That is a rarity for us, so breaking it down into small steps is a necessity.

Pick the tomatoes.

Don’t plan to do anything else. Just pick tomatoes. Tomatoes will keep at room temperature for 3-4 days depending on the ripeness when picked. It is ok to pick a bit underipe and finish on a window sill or kitchen counter.

Peel and seed.

Prepare a pot of simmering water and a pan or sink of ice water. Drop the tomatoes in the simmering water for 30-45 seconds, then plunge into the ice bath. Skins will slip off easily. Slice the tomatoes in half horizontally, squeeze out the seeds (sometimes it helps to dig them out with your finger), cut out the core, and quarter the tomatoes. Unless you are sensitve to tomato seeds, it is not necessary to get out every single seed. Cover and refrigerate the tomatoes for up to 2 days.

Sometimes we stretch this step out over a couple of days if needed to get all of the tomatoes peeled, seeded and cut.

Season and bake.

Yes, bake. Line a shallow baking pan with parchment paper, place tomato quarters in a single layer and drizzle with olive oil. The amount of olive oil is personal preference. At Five Feline Farm, a full baking sheet gets about 1/3 cup of olive oil. Then sprinkle with your favorite Italian herb seasoning. We like strong flavors, so we use 2-3 Tbsp.

If you have a convection oven, convection bake at 300º. If you do not, bake at 325º, and expect about a half hour longer. Stir every hour until the tomatoes are cooked through and most of the juices have cooked off. In the convection oven this takes about 2 hours.

This step sounds like a long time, but the actual active involvement is 15 minutes or so. In between stirring you can relax, watch TV, eat supper, or work on another household task. As a bonus, the aroma wafting from the oven is heavenly.

After baking, pour the tomatoes into a storage bowl and refrigerate. This will hold in the fridge another day or so until you have time for the next step.
Blend and store.

Use an immersion blender to quickly blend the baked tomatoes into a thick sauce. If you don’t have an immersion blender, you can use a regular blender or food processor; however immersion blenders are fairly inexpensive and so versatile that this is really the way to go.

After blending, ladle into freezer baggies, seal and store. We typically freeze in 1 cup portions.

When ready to use, the sauce can be thawed in the refrigerator, defrosted in the microwave and added to a recipe or thoroughly heated in the microwave. You will be tempted to eat straight from a spoon.