We're baaack!

Greetings good gentles, it's been a few months since we have posted any updates so we'll try to include everything we've done since January.

JANUARY

Get ready for the sugaring season
Wood (as always)
Livestock (chickens and sheep)

FEBRUARY

Rent a restaurant (yes you read that right)
Get things ready for the restaurant

MARCH

Open the restaurant (called MAGGIE'S)
Make upgrades to the restaurant
Maple sugar (late April)

APRIL

Finish the boiling for maple sugar
Start the spring chores

MAY

More spring chores
The Restaurant

In January Margaret and I spent our time dealing with the livestock, getting wood in for the month and making sure the maple sugar pots and pans were ready for sugaring. I finally got a very sweet little sugar pan made up at a local metal fab shop called VANDEX Inc. I dealt with a chap named Fred who was very helpful and he had a stainless steel sugar pan made up about a week after I ordered it. It is 32" X 18" X 8" and boy does work a treat. I used less fuel to boil the same amount of sap as last year. I also used a couple of the big pots from last year to preheat the sap before it went into the pan. This kept the boil going fairly constantly. It takes about an hour to get the sap to steaming temps and another 30 minutes to full boil. I processed about 750 litres of sap and got 11 litres of syrup. That's a ratio of 68:1 which is not great, however, we did reduce the syrup to a fairly sweet syrup so our actual ratio is more 35:1 which is really good.

Sugaring this year was a little disjointed with us being involved in getting the restaurant ready to open. I will say however, that new pan made all the difference in boiling time with actual time spent firing the pan was only 40 hours instead of the previous 60 or so hours. Time saved,  fuel saved and we have a sweet, somewhat bitter syrup to enjoy over the year.

Till next time (which will be tomorrow), take care
Margaret and Ken

Just a report on the sausages. I brought them to Guelph for the family to taste test and they are nummy...they are drier than store bought but tastier with the thyme and apple. Being pure meat makes them drier, guess adding a bit of fat to the mix might help with this..But over all very nice indeed.

We have spent the morning making sausage . Pork legs were on sale so we took advantage of the opportunity. These sausages are flavored with onion, apple,honey and thyme. They are lovely. It is cold enough outside to freeze them but we will have to eat them before the weather changes again.We will give lots away. Somehow we have to adjust to the weather changes that are happening. We cannot rely on some of the old methods that have worded so well in the past. We used to be able to freeze easily now the weather is not reliable ...what is it like in your area?
We in fact have started to research warm weather area preserving techniques. Odd for us here in Canada huh?

We now have a freezer

We have a freezer....
Now i am sure you are wondering how we have a freezer  while we are living as close to the year 1865 as possible and do not use hydro. Well let me tell you. My beautiful husband has converted a window in the cold room into a freezer box. He took out the window glass and boxed the frame in. He covered the outside end with fine wire mess and screening to keep critters out. On the inside or inside of the cold room he added a door to his box and voilla we now have a freezer.It will of course be temporary , winter only but it will be wonderful to use for the time we can. Mother nature will provide us with the necessary cold free of charge , no hydro. So we can safely say...we now have a freezer,

Part 3 Cooking up the offal...kidney

Kidney....According to Mrs Beeton veal kidney is much more tender and much more preferred than cow. All of her many recipes for this organ gives instruction to remove the core after slicing .This is easy to do . Although I rarely if ever remove the core I will have to do that and see what the difference is . Kidneys are lovely stewed slowly . I do mine, stewing slowly with beef and a variety of vegetables and spices.Heavy on the mushrooms. I also generally add a cup or two of red wine to this stew. After everything is beautifully tender I drain the meat and   thicken  the drippings, I add this back to the meat and put all into a baking dish.Cover with a puff pastry and serve as a beef steak and kidney pie, What do you do with kidneys??

Part two cooking up the offal.......liver

Mrs Beeton's book of household management written in 1865 describes liver as "often used for frying, As it is  very lean it is often cooked with some of the inside fat or crow or with bacon"
Served as an entrée.
But I have also found recipes for liver pate especially chicken liver pate.
Liver can be eaten from any beast,cow/calf, chicken ,sheep,or pig.The tenderest is of course calves liver.
We still fry liver today but have learned to add other ingredients to perhaps liven the taste. I cook mine very quickly dredged in flour and fried in butter. I marry this with a creamed bacon,mushroom,onion white wine sauce.
Anyone have liver recipes they would like to share??
M 

Waste nothing.Cooking up the offal.... Sweetbreads

I had a lovely visit in London this afternoon, in a beautiful home with wonderfully progressive people making a difference in the world. They were Rotarians boxing cookies to give to people in the city..Wonderful way to spend the afternoon.

As usual talk turned to food. Why is it that always happens?
We discussed sweetbreads which is one of my favourite foods if cooked correctly. Hard to find today because in my opinion we have forgotten the rules of "waste nothing"
Sweetbreads are described as either  Heart sweetbreads or throat sweetbreads which comes from the thymus.
Mrs Beeton's book of household management written in 1865 describes sweetbreads as a delicacy ,sold at fancy prices.Cooked in variety of ways and served as an entrée.
Sweetbreads come from cows.Either calf's or full grown. They also come from lambs . Naturally calf and lamb sweetbreads are much more tender and require less cooking . Whereas beef sweetbreads need to be cooked longer and slower.Often in stages.Sweetbreads are boiled gently or braised.Cooled and peeled and finished according to your recipe.
Anyone wishing a few varieties of period sweetbread recipes please ask and I will be happy to post.
This is a wonderful food and it is a shame that these parts are being turned into animal feed because we have forgotten their loveliness as an entrée.