Curried Pork and Pasta Pleaser

In a perfect world, or perhaps I should say...In my perfect world, all of the ingredients for all of my dishes would come from either my garden, barn or coop or at least from a nearby neighbor's garden, barn or coop. Sadly, today we live in a different world than our Grandparents did. Food comes pasteurized, irradiated and  injected with up to 10% beef broth solution or has been brutally assaulted through some other process deemed necessary by the USDA Gods.

In a war against the horrors committed against our food in the name of safety and nutrition, I will continue to provide healthy meals for my family, using as many homegrown ingredients as possible. I will not purchase Hamburger Helper. Ragu and Prego will never pass beyond my pantry door. You will not find frozen entrees of any sort in my freezer unless they are in a tupperware and have been salvaged as leftovers from a recent homecooked meal.

I am not so foolish as to believe that I can provide for my family solely off of the 2.11 acres here at Camelot Farm. Even I enjoy an occasional trip to Dairy Queen for a Blizzard. However, I can do everything in my power to use fresh ingredients that come directly from the dirt of Southwest Virginia, not from South America, Mexico or any of the other countries who make a fortune from feeding America.

Please take a moment to visualize this concept of feeding America. One of the world's richest countries, top of the line defense system, a veritable Super Power amongst its peers and it CAN NOT feed itself. If our borders were to close tomorrow, to all incoming food products and those products required to produce food, we would starve sooner than the government wants us to think. New Yorkers, Los Angelenos and Chicagoans may eschew at us 'backwards country folk' now, but when push comes to shove, we'll be sitting down to a homecooked meal of pork loin from the smoke house, beans from the canning room shelves and potatoes from the root cellar. Where will they be? Chewing grass along the roadside.

Friends, learn to feed your families from the basics. Bring yourself and your pantry back to the days of our grandparents when food came from the backyard, not from across the ocean. This Farmer's Granddaughter will never worry about feeding her family in challenging times. In fact, the recipe for today, 'Pork and Pasta Pleaser' occured when the concept of 'paycheck to paycheck' fell apart a few days shy of that next paycheck. I hope your family enjoys this dish as much as mine did.

Pork and Pasta Pleaser

Brown 6-7 cuts of pork in the frying pan after seasoning with S&P and a dash of garlic powder.

I say cuts rather than specifying a particular portion as this recipe is extremely versatile.

I happened to have a couple of pounds of chops on the bone handy, but boneless cutlets would do just as well. Once the cuts are sufficiently browned, places them side by side in a deep dish.

While the meat is resting, Open a large can of cream of chicken soup. Mix with 1 cup of water, 1 cup of milk and 1/2 cup of mayonaisse. Add 1/2 tsp curry and stir well. To this, add 2 cups cooked chopped broccoli and 2 cups cooked pasta. I happened to have elbows in the cupboard but feel free to substitute shells, penne, rotini or anything you have on hand.

Pour all this mixture over the pork. Finally, sprinke 3 cups of prepared stuffing over the top. Cover with foil and bake at 350 for 30 minutes.

The broccoli in our dish came from the local farmers market. Mayo is a bi-product of all of the eggs our hens produce. The stuffing was made from day old artisan bread baked here at Camelot Cottage. So, while the entire meal is not from our own backyard, enough of it was to make this Farmers Grandaughter proud to feed it to her family. Do what you can with what you have!

Homestead Hypocrite

I take pride in being from a farming family where ‘waste not, want not’ was one of the golden rules. Waste was not acceptable. You used something until it couldn’t be used any more. Homesteaders were recycling and upcycling long before those terms were coined. A simple glass pickle jar from the market might become a home canning jar or a chicken waterer. A tin paint can may be reincarnated as a minnow bucket. Nothing went to waste.

I have long attempted to follow the golden rules of our family and have thought that I was doing a fairly decent job of it, until today…I began my day with a quick trip to the supermarket for a few things. My list was simple, bread, milk and a pack of gum. $24.50 later I was out the door with a $4 loaf of sourdough, a bag of Portuguese rolls, a package of buttermilk biscuits, gallon of milk, 4pk of yogurt, 3 packages of gum, a half-pound of peppered turkey breast and a half-pound of oven roasted turkey breast from the deli. When I arrived home, I was quickly reminded that I had been meaning to clean out the refridgerator for some time. There was no putting it off or the food that I purchased today would be sitting on the counter getting warm due to lack of space.

I quickly got down to the task and began emptying the shelves. Within a few moments, the ‘toss’ pile had grown too large to fit on the countertop. I began filling the kitchen trash can, which in fairness to me, was already half full. I made short work of filling it to the top. Stop emptying, replace trash bag. Continue the clean out. Twenty minutes later I had filled the trash can about half full again and still had nearly a dozen glass canning jars to empty into the compost, most of which contained the remnants of jelly, salsa, sauces etc.

After all was complete, I had thrown away nearly 15 pounds of outdated, unusable food. Perhaps the saddest toss outs were the half loaf of moldy bread found in the bread drawer, the 3 containers of high end yogurt desserts and the half pound of spoiled deli turkey. All of which I had repurchased this morning. This from the household of a woman who boils down ham and turkey carcasses to can broth and make soup. In this house, we make our own cheese, jellies and bread. Unacceptable? Ludicrous? Wasteful? YES!! Unusual? No!

Statistics abound on the internet regarding the amount of food wasted in this country on a daily basis. My 15 pounds was a mere drop in the bucket. But what if we all took our ‘drops’ out of the collective bucket? What if we all began changing the way that we saw food? What would that do for our personal lives? Our families? Our communities?

I can tell you that it would put a small cushion in my savings account. It would free up a few dollars each week for a trip to the ice cream parlor. It might even pay for a gallon of gas each week.

What am I going to do differently? Well, for starters I have inventoried my refridgerator shelves. Does anyone really need four varieties of mustard? Apparently we did….traditional, spicy brown, stoneground and raspberry honey. Seven flavors of salad dressing…ranch, spicy ranch, poppy seed, green goddess, Italian, French and bacon ranch. In the words of my nine year old….Seriously? Even the tartar sauce gave me pause to rethink my purchasing habits…our shelves have both traditional and lemon flavored. To look in my refridgerator, you would think that I had a bottomless shopping budget. To look in my checkbook, you would know that I don’t.

As a conscientious homemaker, I must take a stand. As a homesteader dedicated to simplifying life, I am being forced to rethink and restructure my spending habits. To spend hours hovering over jars of apple butter, salsa, tomatoes and jellies only to toss out any savings in the form of misused produce, outdated sauces and molded cheeses is at best….wasteful. At worst…hypocritical.

I challenge all of you to rethink how you look at food and its use and misuse in your own home.

Blessings,

The Farmer’s Grandaughter.

In for a penny, in for a pound

Urban Homesteading is not a case of 'in for a penny, in for a pound'. Not all Urban Homesteaders live solely off of their own fresh eggs, garden produce and trap line. In fact most of us do not. Urban Homesteading for many begins in bits and pieces.., a bedraggled tomato plant that provides one single, succulent orb of juicy perfection or a window sill covered with pots of favorite, fragrant herbs. For some of us it is 6 chirping chicks picked up spontaneously at the feedstore or that first taste of an aromatic artisan bread from the local farmer market. Whether it was a fresh red ripe tomato, a sprig of thyme, fresh eggs or warm crusty bread that hooked you into digging into the dirt or covering your kitchen in a floury cloud, you are now participating in Urban Homesteading.

Urban Homesteading:
v. 1 the act of transforming a city or suburban home into a property that produces some or all of its residents own food and other subsistence needs.

v. 2 participation in home-based activities such as gardening, raising poultry or small livestock, producing simple products through cottage industry, minimizing consumer purchases, and generally seeking ways to increase self-sufficiency in a city or suburban environment.

Defining credit to http://www.thisurbanhomestead.com/

Urban Homesteading isn't a destination, it is a journey.A journey whose first step can be as simple as planting a patio peach tree, raising a few hens for fresh eggs, preparing a hanging basket of strawberry plants. Dont be afraid. Take the step. Get dirt under your nails. Make a mistake. Learn something new. Share your success (loaf of bread, home grown peach, new found knowledge) with someone else.

Join us on the journey to Urban Homesteading.