Tag: Five Feline Farm

Winter Philosophy

At this writing, we are experiencing a Polar Vortex dipping into the middle of the U.S. It brings us some of the lowest temperatures and wind chills in recorded history.

We have taken the steps we can to prepare:

  • Check the propane level for the house and the generator
  • Close off the porch
  • Stock up on birdseed to help our feathered friends
  • Dig out our warmest clothes
  • Make sure the vehicles are full of gas

Like many of you, we prefer long days of warm sunshine, being outside working in the garden or mowing the grass, and sipping cold iced tea in the afternoon shade. We don’t like to be cold or to shovel snow when it piles up in the driveway or drifts in front of the garage door.

Some people cope with the cold dark winter by moving south to warmer weather, but we hunker down and stay put.

There is also a beauty to winter we must not forget. Winter gives us time to do some of those inside chores we put off until after gardening season. It offers us a time to rest from the hard labor that often comes with outside work.

In the midst of the vigilance required to stay safe in bitter cold and snow, while we wait for the sun to drift further north on it’s daily rounds, let’s remember to be grateful.

Here’s a short list to get you started:

  • Long evenings to read a book
  • The beauty of pure white snow pouring a cleansing blanket on the brown landscape
  • When fog freezes on the trees turning everything into a wonderland
  • The blessing of a warm house

What are you grateful for?

Instapot Peasant Stew

Last Sunday, I was hungry for Boeuf Bourguignon.

What is this fancy French sounding dish? It is a beef stew in red wine made somewhat famous by Julia Child. The stew is simmered for 3-4 hours in the oven, developing deep rich flavor.

Before I go further, I must make a disclaimer. For those of you following our adventures at Five Feline Farm, you know we have significantly reduced our consumption of red meat. However, when we do choose to eat beef, we go all out on something high quality, delicious and special.

Back to the Boeuf Bourguignon.

It was already 4:30 PM and not wanting to wait until 8:00PM to eat, there were two choices: make something different or find a short cut.

I made up an Instapot shortcut.

Since I wasn’t following a recipe, I also decided call my version Peasant Stew.

Peasant Stew

1 pound beef, cut into 1 inch cubes (use any cut that has some fat marbled throughout, I happened to have a couple of strip steaks in the freezer)

1 cup dry red wine

1/4 cup minced onion

2 cloves garlic, finely diced

2 cups beef stock

1 bay leaf

2 Tbsp tomato paste

3 large carrots, peeled and cut in 1/2 inch slices

2 Tbsp flour

salt and pepper to taste

1 pound buttom mushrooms, quartered

6 Tbsp butter, divided

2 tsp neutral oil such as canola or grapeseed

Heat oil in Instapot using the brown/saute setting. Add beef in single layer and brown all sides. Work in batches if necessary to avoid crowding the pot. Remove beef and set aside. Add onion and garlic, saute for 2 minutes or until fragrant and beginning to turn transluscent. Add flour, stirring for about 1 minute until browned. Add red wine and continue cooking for 3 minutes to release alcohol. Add tomato paste, carrots and browned beef to pot and then beef stock. Make sure the stock just covers the beef and carrots, using more or less than 2 cups as necessary. Add bay leaf.

Attach cover and set steam vent to closed. Use stew setting or manual with high pressure for 35 minutes.

While stew is cooking, melt 2 Tblsp butter in skillet and saute mushrooms until browned. Work in batches to avoid crowding if needed.

After pressure has released, remove and discard bay leaf. Remove beef and carrots, then set pot to brown/saute to boil broth. Once reduced by half, add remaining butter by tablespoons until sauce is silky. Stir in beef, carrots and mushrooms and stir to coat.

This is best served with a crusty bread and green salad.

Bon Appetit!

For more recipes like this, check out Simply Delicious, a memoir of cooking.

How Do You Treat Your Skin?

You have probably heard that your skin is the largest organ in your body. It is responsible for protecting your delicate insides from the elements. That’s a big job. Taking good care of your skin can help protect the rest of you.

Did you know your skin is porous?

This means what you put on your skin can be absorbed into your body. In fact, there are several medicines that are topically applied. Everything from analgesics to birth control to nicotine to high end narcotics can be delivered to your system through a patch or a cream rubbed on your skin.

What about your lips?

Lips are skin too. Not only does the skin of your lips absorb what you put on them but you are likely licking your lips taking in whatever you have applied as a protectant.

So what is the point of all this?

Take a look at a tube of national brand lip balm. Do you see an ingredient list? No. If you want to know what you are smearing on your lips, you have to search the internet and even then, it is not easy to locate. When you do find the list, the first ingredient is petroleum. It then progresses through a number of ingredients or chemical compounds that are difficult to pronounce.

Our Answer.

Here at Five Feline Farm, we take a more simple approach in our lip balm known as BEEk Balm. We use beeswax for durability and protection, sweet almond oil for soothing and moisturizing, and Vitamin E oil for heathy skin support. Then we add pure honey or food grade essential oil for flavor.

That’s it. Four ingredients. Our list fits on the tiny label of a lip balm tube.

You can take this one small step to living a more pure life. Get yours here today.

5 Ways to Overcome a Challenge

It is the time of year when many of us make resolutions. The new year looms before us, fresh and new, full of possibilities. A lot of people want to lose weight, get fit, eat healthier, get up earlier or change some other habit. Those are worthy goals but often the challenge is bigger than our resolve. Our plans fall by the wayside before the month of January slides into history.

How do you learn from challenges?

For us at Five Feline Farm, the changing of the calendar to a new year is also a time of reflection. A time to remember all we accomplished in the past year and make plans for 2019.  One of the challenges we took on during 2018 taught us valuable lessons about how to face a huge undertaking.

As all of our fans and followers know, we decided to move an old wire mesh corncrib and turn it into a gazebo. Or as we refer to it now: “The A-Maize-ing Granary”.

This was not an easy task. The crib as it stood in the field was 15 foot tall to the bottom of the roof. The roof added another 10’ or so. Plus it is heavy. Not undoable heavy, but not something you just tuck under one arm and carry down the road. Keep in mind, we don’t own the proper equipment to move such a structure and hoped not to invest the cash in hiring those who do.

Here is what we learned:

1. Get Help

Even though we try to do as much for ourselves as possible, we did ask for help from family. (Brothers are a blessing.) We are also blessed with gracious neighbors who offered key assistance at just the right moment.

Know when to ask for help and accept it when it comes.

2. Think Critically

It helps to imagine each step of the project in your mind and even draw out a plan if possible. When I wasn’t sure if the round crib would fit on the square deck, I drew paper models to scale and tried it out. We didn’t foresee every possible obstacle, but we tried to think through what we could.

Plan what can be planned.

3. Accept Changing Plans

Sometimes you just have to get into the project and start working before you find out what will work. We had a plan to lower the roof onto a trailer to move. When we couldn’t get the trailer to the corn crib location, we changed plans.

Be flexible when necessary.

4. Work Hard

Meeting challenges, whether physical or mental is not for the weak. We have a lot of sweat equity in this project as do others. There were several long hot days of hard physical labor involved.

Hard work will pay off.

5. Believe in the Outcome

Any challenge will have an occasional setback, that’s why it’s called a challenge. You have to keep your eye on the goal and push forward, trusting it will all work out and be worth the effort. We now have a beautiful and unique feature at the Farm.

We talked about the corn crib move on our podcast, Episodes 19 and 20. Check out those links, plus the video on Youtube for more details.

We hope you learn from our experiences and meet your own challenges.