Ask a chef

[DwayneNLiz]

C'mon baby

 

[lindalouly]

Thanks everyone, still no baby yet.
Looks like you all are staying busy tho. Some good looking food out there ad some wonderful points about the quality of food. The hands on experience does make all the difference. I remember a while back living on the coast in northern California you could buy a live cow and have them raise it with your choice of feeds and space until slaughter, for a nominal fee of course. This year will be the first I'll be looking into buying livestock from some 4-H'rs at the county fair and I whole hearted agree about the taste of homegrown chicken and eggs compared to that of their store bought kin, we don't really eat chicken as a meal anymore unless it's one of ours. The very reason I decided to raise my own turkeys for the holiday.
Linda that's a great penny saving meal, sounds delicious. If you need to stretch it a little further add some pasta. Tou can also but it up a notch(hope i don't get sued)with some cooked bacon. This is essentially something I make at home although I use heavy cream instead of a can of soup.
Replace the chedder with smoked Gouda and you have a resemblance of a dish we make at work.

A.

I'll try that next time. Thanks! When you just make your cream sauce e do you eliminate the mayo? Cream sauces are always better.

 

[attimus]

I'll try that next time. Thanks! When you just make your cream sauce e do you eliminate the mayo? Cream sauces are always better.

right ya, didn't even see the mayo there. You shouldn't need it.

 

[CanuckBock]

It sounds terrific! I just can imagine that.
Food that come from natural source ( clean and helty ofcors!) Is in my aye the best food, I just think about all the dishes I could have preper for them. Wild fish, and meat, al sorts of berries and mushrooms, herbs, ect ect! In another trade I imagined what will be the menu of a meal that I will preper if I would come for a visit! It could be an magnificent one.

I laughed because my spouse came home...a lady was lost out in the woods and he gave her a hand finding the fishing spot she was looking for. I am so happy to be of the older crowd. She was out because she loved fly fishing but at 30 years of age, could not find any menfolk her age to go fishing with. Good gack! Everyone her age wants to be inside and not out and about. I would go insane. Loved fishing in salt and fresh water...such fun. Best part of that hobby is you can often EAT as part of it too!

Anyway Rick mentioned ling cod and that was another fish we really enjoyed catching. A bottom fish you jigged for and ugly in the face with very intimidating teeth. One time Rick was hauling up a ling on the jig line and right near the surface where we both could see it, a much BIGGER cod had been following up the hooked and spinning cod. CHOMP! So we brought in TWO fish with one attempt. We still laugh because we thought the hooked one was big! HA...it was a land of plenty and not so much now.

I think to truly enjoy a place and what Nature grows there...might be a looong visit to get all it provides. Ha ha ha...mushroom season has hit and no sign yet of boletus...not quite yet...and so it goes...you check often and go for walks and suddenly note something is there!

There are fabulous chefs I hear of that plan meals only around the 100 mile meals (you can use the ingredient if it is near your location).

. I look forward to making you a guest at your own party.

A bit old at Sept 2007, but still, from Ottawa Canada...

In 1999, I made a real effort to plant alot of shrubs for fruit...

Silver buffaloberry (Shepherdia argentea) is producing nicely this year...a bit of frost to sweeten them up (tart) and I can begin picking them.

Blackberry in pail / yellow raspberries about to flower​

Seabuckthorn, replanted strawberries, raspberries in red and yellow, this year, trying a blackberry to see how it does (looks like we will get a taste of berries this),

tiny strawberry...that is a clover flower in the foreground...tiny but tasty!​

There are wild strawberries (the dogs and the sheep love finding these!),

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first plant to flower here are the Russian Haskaps ​

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I have had Russian Haskaps for years (the original plant was a flop, no pollinator and now that I have a few varieties so we can get berries...the original one has berries that taste like TONIC water...hee hee...oh well, so much for early to get on the band wagon!).

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This rowanberry, was shipped to us as like a six inch tall plug...planted two and look at them now...make you feel old, very...

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Even have cherries, hilarious compared to Bing cherries but this is a PINcherry and yes, not big but still a cherry!

Same rosebush as below but in July​

Some wild foods we don't even consider...rose hips...Alberta is known as the Wild Rose province...DO remove the hip seeds as they will pass thru you irritate your digestive tract...not nice!

These are rosehips in FEBRUARY! Sitting there waiting to be harvested... ​

http://homecooking.about.com/library/archive/blrosehips.htm

• Rose Hip Leather
• Rose Hip Apple Sauce
• Rose Hip Soup
• Rose Hip Pudding
• Rose Hip Syrup
• Rose Hip Nut Bread
• Kodiak Rose Hip Tea
• Rose Hip Crumble Pie
• Rose Hip Candy
• Rosehip Jelly

June 23 2014 - Boletes Wild Mushroom - just growing away here!​

My father is an enthusiastic wild mushroom harvester. He was surprise to learn I had boletes here in Alberta (he use to visit my house and pick mushrooms IN my yard there too) but as the link shows below...this is a universal wild mushroom of some esteem in cookery!

http://www.mssf.org/cookbook/boletes.html:

June 2012 wild Saskatoon shrubs​

Heck...here are some flowering WILD Saskatoons I fenced off from the sheep too...when I figured out, these plain bushes but with pretty white flowers were SASKATOONS of the wild sort!

June 2012 - planted two kinds of domesticated Saskatoons​

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Jams, jellies, fresh eating...an all round berry.

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Alot of our fruit goes to feed wild birds...and that is OK too...giving back to help Nature!

April 9, 2014 - jest a little more white of winter for us!​

A greenhouse frees you to grow much more...so wild is good but forcing your climate for food growing...gives you more control

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Never get a horde of tomatoes like this to grow outside a greenhouse...we get frost to kill them every single month of the year...

First tomato starting up - Centennial Rocket is the variety ​

In keeping with that 100 mile diet...I can add variety I could not have had without a greenhouse!

Jun 23 2014 - half the Man Porch...come in, have a sit down​

In the sheltered Man porch...flowers

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Some years, good conditions for garlic...some, not to much.

April 15, 2014, still snow from winter in my veg garden


I TRY to make my veg garden pretty to look at
so even if destroyed...I got enjoyment out of it right to the end ​

Aug 23 2014 - some veg I gathered to give to our son​

Sep 5, 2014 grew a decent garden​

covered the plants but hit by snow on sept 14



Still a harvest on Sept 24...​

We battle cold and things like snow and hail...wild gathering could make better sense but growing your own is challenging but rewarding when it does produce.

Aug 11, 2015 beans​

I planted a mess of beans and was quite miffed with four days of killing frosts left me with what looked like seven plants. My Hero told me to leave them when I wanted to tear it all out...and glad I did, may yet get some beans this year...I should have more faith.

sugar peas for...dogs!​

I grow a little of lots...so if one fails, you can look to something else to have a good year.

Aug 2015 - peas for puppies! ​

I think I grow food because it makes me feel more secure

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If I can grow a small amount of oats like this, means if hard hard times hit...this could be my breakfast if I had more time than money to do the work to prepare it for food!

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Yes, maybe silly but not so much...basic food, basic to living

Benny, I think it would be best to combine growing agricultural type crops at home...than scavenging in the wild. But I do get what you mean by making meals out of the more exotic wild foods...it would taste unique and prepared with care, marvelous. I have to be careful not to over enhance the subtle flavours in food like that...not cover it up with too much cooking or sauces or seasonings!

Time to visit my herb garden and maybe pick to dry some of the bounty there​

Hard not to be heavy handed when a flush of fresh herbs is on the grow! LOL


Quote:
Originally Posted by perchie.girl


I know people who raise them just as plain old chickens allowing them to free range and forage and feed them fermented feed rather than the prescribed high protien diet. They grow slower but healthier....

But yeah they are like FrankenChickens.... (a play on the word Frankenstein)

deb

We cannot easily buy the broilers commercial growers have now. So much invested study to make them what they are today and there are even licensing difficulties...guarded secrets these birds. They can sneeze and have heart attacks...very compromised immune systems...we are what we eat and alot of that meat would not make any being well themselves! Sigh...

I am a whole hearted advocate of someone that takes a Heritage Cornish and a Heritage Plymouth Rock and makes a meat hybrid from those...that is a heritage chicken and worthy of our attentions.

I don't like the artificial methods used to make factory farmed broilers...so people that make their meat birds by good animal husbandry methods...hats off to them for that!

I live in the great northwest and there really isn't much better than freshly drugged clams and baby geoducks.

As a child, I loved clam chowder...the white kind (New England), not the red (Boston) one.

I liked it so much I could even stomach the clam chowder served on the ferries (blah...not always the best food...the Jello was rock hard and tasted like they used dish water to make it!).

Unfortunately, my father was a tad too enthusiastic when we moved up the Coast of Vancouver Island...he found some Horse clams (Tresus nuttallii and Tresus capax) and decided instead of the (delicious and SMALLER!) clams Lindalouly speaks of...to make a chowder of these huge ones and very likely, he did not prepare the clams very well because there was a lot of sand (I think you put the clams in bucket of water and add something like cornmeal (or perhaps oatmeal?) and they will clean themselves of the sand...I think?). It would take like maybe four to make soup from...I became very ill from that meal and even today...just the smell of any clam (even the good ones) sets me off. Memories of smells...they can ruin a meal or make it marvelous...ha ha ha.

I so wish I could find that love I had as a child of clams...they were indeed delicious!

Doggone & Chicken UP!

Tara Lee Higgins
Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm, Alberta, Canada

 

[chickadoodles]

Akrnaf2 your meal looks wonderful.

CanuckBock Your meals and pics are always such a delight.

 

[chickadoodles]

Feeling like I missed something.
Yes I'm currently very busy, baby is due today, I've incinerated my third pullet that's passed from a very recent Marek's outbreak and am finishing up the busiest part of the season at work. I started this thread to learn myself as well as spread my own knowledge of food. There is quite a lot I don't know, we are talking about a literal world of food after all, but i find the inspiration to learn and cook new things as ideas and topics come up. I am merely one brain in an ocean of thousands focused on making something taste amazing and am just offering it up for the picking. Apologies if my responses are not immediate or thorough enough for the liking.

Wish you all best.

A.

I hope all is going great and your all settled in with the new baby.

 

[Akrnaf2]

Akrnaf2 your meal looks wonderful.

CanuckBock Your meals and pics are always such a delight. 

Thanks!

 

[Akrnaf2]

Feeling like I missed something.

Yes I'm currently very busy, baby is due today, I've incinerated my third pullet that's passed from a very recent Marek's outbreak and am finishing up the busiest part of the season at work. I started this thread to learn myself as well as spread my own knowledge of food. There is quite a lot I don't know, we are talking about a literal world of food after all, but i find the inspiration to learn and cook new things as ideas and topics come up. I am merely one brain in an ocean of thousands focused on making something taste amazing and am just offering it up for the picking. Apologies if my responses are not immediate or thorough enough for the liking.


Wish you all best.


A.

I hope all is going great and your all settled in with the new baby. 

X2!

 

[Akrnaf2]

Tara, I cant grow vegetables, don't have land, but fruit I do!

 

[chickadoodles]

Your fruit trees look great!

I am working on a small family orchard on our farm.