Simple Living: Renew Your Mind

In the pursuit of simple living, it's important to remember why exactly you're attempting to slow down and lead a more deliberate life. Often growing your own vegetables, hanging out your laundry, baking your own bread and other valuable simple pursuits take up a bit of time and it's easy to find yourself getting too busy being simplified!

Every schedule can use periods of built in, productive down time. I think one of the most rejuvenating forms of rest is reading a good book. If fiction is your preference, good literature abounds and can afford you the opportunity of thinking about different places, times, and sorts of people. Perhaps you always wanted to read the classics and you could give yourself a little bit of time each day to become acquainted with the canon of great literature. Alternatively to fiction, or perhaps interspersed with it, you might take time to research a new skill or a topic of particular interest to you. We hope that some of the book reviews we've offered on this site might be a good jumping off point for you to learn more about natural living, and there are other books we have enjoyed linked in our Amazon page.

Whatever you decide to read, we think that taking a little time to renew your mind and pause to sit with a good book is a good investment in simple living. If you run across books on natural living, supporting sustainable farming, organic food or the like, please feel free to leave us a comment - we're always looking for good book suggestions too!

Cultured and Fermented Foods

If you're interested in trying cultured or fermented foods before you decide to try your hand at making them yourself, the farm shop carries sauerkraut and cultured vegetables already made the natural, wholesome way! These wonderful traditional foods will help to build your family's immune systems and provide a whole host of other health benefits.

If you're new to cultured and fermented foods, be sure to let us know what you and your family think, and how you integrate these foods into your diet!

What To Do With Whey

I have recently begun straining my homemade raw milk yogurt to get a thicker product by placing a colander over a large bowl, lining the colander with a thin towel (cheese cloth would be even better for the task), and letting it drain, covered, in the refrigerator overnight. The whey that drains into the bowl is also a useful food product.

What do you do with whey? I have used it with great success in baked goods like pancakes and muffins, enjoying the slightly tart flavor. You can also use whey in smoothies, or as a healthful drink when sweetened slightly like lemonade.

I'm planning to use whey this fall to make my own fermented fruits and vegetables. Inspired by an article on the Weston-Price Foundation website and Sally Fallon's excellent book Nourishing Traditions, I think I will try my hand at making lacto-fermented chutney and kimchi.

The process of lacto-fermentation, aided by the addition of whey, has wonderful health benefits as it aids in digestion and supports the immune system.

If you're interested in using whey in baking, for drinking or for making your own fermented foods, you can also buy it by the quart at the farm store. Let us know how you like it!

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.

Eric Brende Interview

If you've read Better Off or were just intrigued by the idea of such radically simple living, you might be interested in the above video clip of a recent television interview with the Brendes, who now live in St. Louis and are applying their idea of simple living to a more urban setting.

HT: Like Merchant Ships Tumblr Page

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.

Book Review: Better Off

In his excellent book Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology, Eric Brende, then a MIT grad student studying the costs and benefits of technology, undertook an 18 month experiment with his new wife to leave Boston and go live in a Mennonite community without electricity, gas, or modern conveniences. The book is well written and full of great stories that will be of particular interest to you if you are pursuing simple living.

The real strength of the book, in my opinion, is Brende's discussion of his thought processes on the philosophy of technology. His measured and throughtful approach is both insightful and piercing as he suggests new ways to think about the impact technology makes on our lives for good and bad. Brende concludes that technology is not inherently evil, but that in our day and age, technologies that are supposed to be making our lives easier are more often than not making them harder when you really consider the expenditure of resources, your stress and lack of true leisure, and so forth.

Better Off is a compelling and entertaining book, and I highly recommend it.

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.

My Favorite Meatloaf Recipe

Sometimes a recipe comes along that is so wonderful that it spoils you from making any other way, no matter how badly you want to. I have a recipe that falls deeply into this category: meatloaf. Sounds crazy, I know, but since I adapted this recipe from the The Williams-Sonoma Cookbook using grass fed beef, pastured veal and grass fed lamb I have been forever spoiled.

It almost seems that the stars must align just right for me to have all three meats in stock at the same time. As it is impossible for me to purchase meat from the grocery store I seek out local farmers when some special occasion or another has warranted meatloaf and no other recipe will do.

At times like this though, early in the summer when the first flush of grass is waning and our animals are beoming fat enough to butcher, is when I have all three meats in abundance in the store. I make several meatloaves at one time and stock the extras away in the freezer. I cook the extra meatloaves as stated in the recipe and freeze once cooled. I reapply another 1/4 cup ketchup when I reheat.

The uniqueness of this recipe is that the grass fed lamb gives this meatloaf such a wonderful, rich flavor and the pastured veal makes it tender beyond words.

Organic Cooking: Meatloaf From Grass Fed Beef, Pastured Veal, and Grass Fed Lamb

Ingredients:

1 Tbs. olive oil
1 yellow onion, chopped
2 celery stalks, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
3 or 4 slices white bread
1/4 cup raw milk
1 lb. grass fed ground beef
1/2 lb. grass fed ground lamb
1/2 lb. ground pastured veal
8 oz. tomato sauce
1 egg, lightly beaten
Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
1/4 cup ketchup

Directions:

Position a rack in the center of an oven and preheat to 350º F.In a large fry pan over medium-high heat, warm the oil. When the oil is hot, add the onion, celery and garlic and sauté, stirring occasionally, until tender and translucent, 6 to 8 minutes. Set aside.

Tear the bread slices into small pieces, transfer to a food processor and pulverize the bread into crumbs. In a large mixing bowl, combine the bread crumbs and milk, stir until blended and let stand for 2 to 3 minutes.Add the onion-celery mixture to the bread mixture and stir until blended. Add the beef, lamb, veal, tomato sauce, egg, salt and pepper and fold together gently until blended.

Transfer the mixture to a 2 1/2-lb. loaf pan and, using your hands, shape the mixture into an oblong loaf. Spread the ketchup evenly over the top. Bake until an instant-read thermometer inserted into the center of the meat loaf registers 165ºF, about 1 1/2 hours.

Serves 4 to 6.

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.

Everyone Loves Free Range Chicken

With 175 potentially delicious girls out on pasture it was only a matter of time before all the skunks, raccoons, red fox, hawks and dogs came out for a dinner of chicken. We lost a few girls two nights in a row and knew we needed some added protection for our precious free range chickens. Enter Kitty our wonderful Great Pyrenees momma.

Although we have trained many of her babies to guard chickens we have not tried to put grown dogs in with the chickens for fear of the exercise being misunderstood as a chicken banquet beyond their wildest imagination. Kitty has been charged with caring for cattle for years.

Well desperate situations called for desperate measures and we decided to try Kitty out with the girls for added protection at night. What we found in the morning was Kitty surrounded by chickens who seemed calm and alive but a beautiful Kitty with the strong stench from an angry and thankfully disappointed skunk.

She has been out with the chickens for 2 weeks now and we have not lost a single chicken to predators although we have detected skunk scent each and every morning.

Stop by anytime and take a look at Kitty doing her job faithfully and diligently.