Economic Struggles and Encouragment From the Past!

Once Upon a Time, The Government Encouraged Self-Sufficiency ......

Now, they require our dependency, through GMO crops, GMO seed patent laws, fast foods, regulations on raw milk/eggs/meats, taxation, flu shots - and the list goes on.

With the economy, especially in Alberta, being extremely tight and most of us balancing a budget tighter than bankers fist, we need hope. Hope that even though things are tough, they weren't as tough as Wartimes - and even THAT wasn't s bad as the Dirty 30's depression.

So what did folks do? They grew. And they shared. Then they survived. So too shall we!

I came across these War Time posters from the US, and suddenly realized - holy crap - in just over 50 years we've come full circle in our mindset ... and that is ALL it is: a mindset!

Living Right, Living in Balance, takes patience and hard work.

Tuna Helper From Scratch

Tuna Helper From Scratch! 

Ahh the aroma of simmering hamburger and tuna helper! It's the stuff of legends, no?

But, if you're like me, there is now a big red X over it on my shopping list due to the enormous amounts of MSG, sugar and other multi-syllabic chemicals.

So. I've taken all my favorite Helper recipes and replicated them.

Tuna Helper Scratch Style

Ingredients

Basic White Sauce

How to make a basic white sauce, or a "roux".

I Want Chickens! Now What?

For Peeps Who Want Cheeps!

With Spring officially here we are getting excited for our boxes of chicks to arrive at the airport. So the first step in any adventure, even crazy ones like ordering 200 chicks (no they aren't staying in town, they will be on a farm). Is usually doing some research to figure out what you're going to do with them once they get home. Being a City Girl I never knew there were so many Regulations for keeping birds, how many crazy breeds there are or how much I would LOVE having chickens.

Read the fun stuff! I have included bylaws and the boring dry stuff at the end.


How big do you want them?

Dutch Tomato Meatball Soup

Dutch Tomato Meatball Soup 

Aka Groenten Soep with tomatoes (by my Moeke)
Aka Best Soup in the World (by my kids)
Aka Mama's Time Saver Soup (by me)

So our supper meals basically revolve around our crazy busy lives. Between 4 days a week at lacrosse, Cubs, fire hall for the hubby and bag pipe lessons we are busy! This soup is great to make massive batches of freeze and pull out later, or if you're like me feed your family for 4 days straight. You can even add more other random veggies to it later to change it up a bit, and not have your hubby groaning it's soup again. So here's the lay out of this recipe, I wrote out what I used tonight and at the end what you can substitute if you don't have everything. My Moeke (my grandma) told me once 'to start any good soup you must have onions, carrots and celery'. So I use that as my starting point for everything.

Veggies 

Get a bunch of veggies

Seriously almost anything works (however beets are awful)

1 yellow onion

6 or a large handful of carrots

1 head of celery 

A bunch of potatoes (I think I used about 5)

I have also thrown in... Peas, corn, shallots, garlic, green onions, tomatoes, zucchini, turnips, mushrooms, rutabaga. Seriously versatile.

Meatballs 

1 lbs of ground beef 

1 egg 

1 handful bread crumbs 

Salt and pepper

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp onion powder

1 pinch nutmeg (trust me)

Use any kind of ground meat. Beef, pork, Turkey, deer. Seriously your choice of meat is up to you, I won't judge.

Extra stuff 

Olive oil

2 cans of diced tomatoes (if you have them. No biggie if you don't)

Either 2 big cartons of stock or a big pot of home made. Any flavour works

1 can coconut milk give it to the kids to shake, busy for hours. Do not get the 'light' coconut milk its nasty. 

1 package Vermicelli noodles. Skinny rice noodles. If you're making a small pot you can use pasta noodles, but heed my warning they turn your soup into nasty slop in you freeze them.

Bullion if you want choice is yours 

Alright now to the good part, making all my crazy ingredients (and wonky directions) make sense:

1. Heat olive oil in your big pot. 

2. Add your chopped up veggies starting with onion.

3. 'Sweat' the veggies and add a box of stock (or about 4 cups of your homemade stock) so the veggies soften 

4. Make the meatballs and leave them aside 

5. Add diced tomatoes if you want. Or don't

6. Blend up the veggies with a blender or your stick blender (only reason I bought a stick blender) It does splatter so be careful don't wear white. Or don't blend it if you want it chunky, no biggie.

7. Add meatballs to the pot

8. Once the meatballs (they will start to pop up and float when cooked) are cooked add the vermicelli. It takes about 5 min for the vermicelli to soften and cook

To Serve 

(because even though I'm in a rush I still like my food to look pretty)

Put some coconut milk on your soup, yup drizzle that on, see if you can make a picture. A little parsley and boom awesomeness in a bowl.

It's that easy. And soooooooooooo yummy! Its easy to refrigerate or freeze and great for lunches. 

I serve with torn up some bread because we are 'dippers'. Or grilled cheese sammies

Factory Farmer Exposes Industry

Factory Farmer of 22 Years Exposes the Truthful Horrors of the Industry.

When CompassionUSA got the call from Craig Watts, they were shocked. 

Not only is the factory farm normally restricted and off limits to the public, but certainly a no-go for farm animal rights advocates, like CompassionUSA.

You may wonder why he made that call,  since factory farms such as Perdue claim complete transparency in their practices. 

This video, produced by CompassionUSA and narrated by a Perdue contract factory farmer, Craig Watts show precisely why.

It also shows why groups like Moms For Real Food Initiative promote and educate consumers to seek out and buy from small, local and sustainable farms - going to them, seeing the animals KNOWING where their food comes from.

If we all start doing this, it will stop the horrid conditions seen in this video.

Alberta Egg Farmers - Organic and Small Flock Listing

Eggs. We all (well, ok, most) eat them, love them and find them as a staple of our diets. So we've taken some time to compile a (somewhat) spread out list of Alberta Egg Producers who view a holistic and natural way of chicken brooding, raising and laying.

Why? We have a growing concern for egg production. The thousands of birds who sit their entire lives inside a cage or barn, without sunlight and in cramped conditions. These birds also endure massive antibiotics and injury due to these close quarters.


We wish to promote the smaller farmers who use free range, free run and organic methods of egg production - because not only are the eggs better for you, the lives of the chickens are the primary focus instead of how many eggs they'll produce.

We contacted Egg.ab.ca to get some information on what being CFIA certified means, and why there aren't more of these farms around;

"The way the egg industry operates across Canada, is that individual egg farmers sell their egg to graders (they operate the CFIA-certified grading stations), who then clean, grade, package and sell the eggs to grocery stores and restaurants.  In Alberta, most eggs are graded by Burnbrae or Sparks Eggs.  All free-range or organic eggs would be from one of those graders, or provided by them to the grocery stores for their private label eggs.

At the end of 2015, about 2.4% of eggs laid in Alberta were from farms using free-range hen housing.  I’m not sure what % of those farms are producing organic eggs (free-range housing is a requirement for organic eggs, along with the requirement to use only certified-organic feed). 
There are basically two reasons why free-range/organic hen housing is not more widely used in Alberta: first, only about 4.5% of eggs sold at grocery stores in Alberta is free-range or organic; second, Alberta’s climate is not ideal for free-range housing (we import the missing 2% of free-range/organic eggs from BC egg farms).  Most of the year, when it’s too cold for the birds to be outside, the free-range/organic housing is converted to free-run housing.


Of course, there are some registered egg farms in the province that grade their own eggs and sell direct to consumers, usually at farmers markets.  One such farm that produces organic eggs is Sunworks Farms"

 -David Webb


Marketing and Communications Manager
www.eggs.ab.ca

Pressure Cooker Beef Stew

Pressure Cooker Beef Stew Recipe

Mmmmmm Comfort Food.
For us beef stew, like chicken soup, is good for the soul! Sometimes though, our preparation is a little wanting ... as in, I totally forgot to take anything out to thaw.
#AmIRight ???

So - that is where the handy dandy pressure cooker comes in handy! We use the Fagor Pressure Canner that also doubles as a regular pressure cooker.

Top 5 Seed Companies

 

 

It's Spring, Now What?

Well spring actually kicks off in 10 days (but who’s counting), spring is definitely in the air here in Didsbury. The snow is almost all gone, weather has been above 5 degrees for almost 2 weeks, the gophers are out scampering across the road, bears are coming out of hibernation in Banff National Park, and I have busted out my Birkenstocks. So I would say spring is here!

This year we have spent 25+ hours planning our gardens, and then scrapping the first round and re-planning it all over again. So now with our minds set of what we want to grow. We are on the big kick of we want to know what we eat and grow what we love. I have found a few pre planning websites if you need them www.almanac.com/vegetable-garden-planning-for-beginners, and of course the lady who knows everything (or so it seems) http://www.marthastewart.com/275017/planning-your-vegetable-garden. If you are a go big or go home kinda person (we won’t judge) here’s a great resource which is the one we are using this year. Be prepared to lose days or weeks to planning the massive amount you want to grow (you’ll thank us come fall and you’ve harvested the last of your 900 bed feet of squash, pumpkins and root veggies) http://cog-shop.myshopify.com/products/crop-planning-for-vegetable-growers.

So with your info in hand here’s our TOP 5 Seed Companies to get you GROWING. I’ll do a count down to leave you in suspense: