Soup Noodles

It’s been a rough couple of days in our household. My mother came down with a stomach flu on Tuesday, and Austin and I were copycats and decided to be sick on Wednesday. This morning, Austin was better, but I wasn’t, and Ryan was.

Usually when I’m sick I can still read about food. I think maybe its because when I read about food, its more of a fact-finding process rather than an imagining-what-it-tastes-like process. I read food blogs and cookbooks for the articles, not the pictures.

But yesterday, I couldn’t even do that.

By about 10:30 this morning, however, that all changed. I got hungry and food sounded good. And I even wanted to get up off my butt and cook something.

So I made soup noodles.

I pulled out a quart of frozen homemade chicken broth, dumped it in a pan with 2 cups of water, some chopped onions, a crushed clove of garlic and a couple of chopped up carrots. When it came to a boil, I added soy sauce until it tasted salty enough, then two “bunches” of my favorite organic udon noodles. Boil 5 minutes to cook the noodles, and we’re good to go. Better than packages of ramen, but without all the crap.

Little Bundles of Pigginess

Three weeks ago we woke up to the site you see here on the left. Mama pig had six little piglets. Actually, when we woke up, she had only five piglets. Paul was lucky enough to witness the birth of the last little red piggy.

And since that moment, I have struggled.

You see … piglets are cute!

I’ve gotten used to the big pigs wandering around, and while they’re nice looking pigs, there’s not cute. Not really even attractive.

In fact, when I look at them, I find it very easy to thing of the ham and bacon that they will someday become.

But it’s weird to look at these little red and black and spotted pigs and see them running around, rooting their little snouts into the ground, playing with each other and acting like any other little baby animal … and then come back into the house and take a deposit for the butchered half-hogs that they will be in a very short amount of time.

This experience has definitely made me think even more than I had before about how critical it is that animals we eat are treated with respect and raised humanely.

And I am so thankful that my family is able to be a part of this process.

The Problem with Raising Chickens

“What’s for dinner?”

“Chicken”

“What kind?”

“Cooked.”

Approximately two nights a week, that is the conversation in our house. And most of the time I’m not intentionally being vague, I just don’t know what I want to do for dinner.

I am a little hindered by the fact that I’m almost always cooking a whole bird. Very seldom do I cook a meal of chicken breasts, let alone boneless, skinless chicken breasts. After all, it’s a biological fact that there’s no chickens that are made up entirely of breast meat. And I found out the first year we raised birds that if I part out too many of them, we use the breast meat first and are left with a lot of dark meat as we near the end of our freezer storage.

A lot of dark meat.

So, dinner last night was, you guessed it, chicken. What kind? I didn’t know. One idea was shot down because it was too spicy. Another bit the dust because I didn’t want to fry. “What about…” …nope, don’t have the ingredients.

I googled “chicken for dinner” and eventually came to this recipe that hit the trifecta:

1) It sounded good

2) I had the ingredients, and

3) It would work for a whole chicken.

So last night’s dinner for this chicken-raising family was Orange Hoisin Chicken. It was a good, delicious choice.

Orange Hoisin Chicken

• 1 chicken, cut into parts
• 2 T olive oil
• 1/4 c orange juice concentrate (the frozen stuff in a can)
• 1/2 c honey
• 1/4 c soy sauce
• 1/4 c hoisin sauce
• 2 t dried ginger
• 4 cloves garlic, crushed
• 2 T sesame oil
• 2 T rice wine vinegar
  

Heat olive oil in frying pan. When hot, add chicken skin down a few pieces at a time. Cook on med-high heat until skin is dark golden brown on both sides. Place skin-side-up in 9″ x 13″ baking pan. Repeat until all the chicken has been browned.

Mix remaining ingredients except rice wine vinegar together and pour over chicken.

Bake at 375 degrees until chicken is cooked through. (Use a thermometer!)

Set chicken on serving platter. Pour sauce into small sauce pan; add rice wine vinegar. Boil to reduce until thickened. The sauce is delicious served over rice.

Enjoy!

Served our family of 7.

The Words I’ve Been Waiting to Hear

Paul and I have been together for a long time and over the years, we have built up a million zillion memories.

I remember our first date when he told me he was going to marry me. I remember when he did.

I remember the first words out of his mouth when we found out I was pregnant the first, second and third times. I remember his phone call when he told me that he wanted to start a home business, and the phone call three years later telling me he had found a warehouse for us to move the business into, and five years after that when he told me we had a buyer for the business and we were free to move to Washington.

I remember Paul’s words when he told me that Ryan had run into a metal shelf and had split his knee wide open and the only thing in the world that Ryan wanted was me. And when Paul called to tell me that a mailbox had tackled Nick and broken his front tooth and that Nick wasn’t upset until he heard how much it cost to fix a tooth.

And then this past Monday, I got a phone call that started with even more words I won’t forget for a very long time: “We Are a Feed Mill.”

It seems like such a little thing, but the road to this moment has been long and windy. Check out Paul’s blog for more information, and the farm website for information on buying feed.

And leave your own words of congratulations for Paul.

We Call it Schnitzel

In my childhood home, we would have called this fried pork. In Paul’s house, it was pork cutlets. In our home now, its schnitzel.

Yesterday morning when I pulled out a bag of pork chops for dinner, I was just thinking of dinner. I didn’t realize what this simple dinner would do for my “Mom” rating. Each one of my kids, after they heard what was for dinner, began singing my praises.

One of them even went so far as to give me a hug.

Its amazing what simple ingredients can do when combined.

Pork Schnitzel

• Pork chops
• Panko
• Eggs
• Salt and Pepper
• Oil
• Lemon

Remove all the bones from the porkchops, cutting as close to the bone as possible. One at a time, cover each pork chop with plastic and pound it until its pretty thin…maybe 1/4″ or so. I usually have one of my kids do this. They like having permission to beat on things.

Lightly season porkchops with salt and pepper.

Mix Panko (For 6 chops, I used about 1 1/2 cups) in a pie plate with salt and pepper – I measure by taste here…once the panko tastes suitably seasoned, I stop.

With a fork, mix 2-3 eggs and a couple tablespoons of water in a 2nd pie plate.

Heat oil in a large flat-bottomed pan until its hot enough that a when you drop in a few pieces of panko they begin sizzling immediately.

When oil is hot, dip each pork chop in the egg mixture, then in panko and gently place in the hot oil.

Cook until golden brown on each side, maybe 3 minutes for each side.

Squeeze a bit of fresh lemon juice over each cutlet and serve. I usually make a quick mushroom gravy to go over the schnitzel.

And if you don’t know what to call them, just call them delicious.