Mushrooms and Meatloaf

The mushroom kit is working overtime - a half dozen large portabellos this morning. I decided to turn them into mushroom gravy - the perfect opportunity to use up some of the whey I'd saved from the panir project. Gravy means meatloaf, and meatloaf means potatoes. So Sunday supper was planned before I even had my coffee this morning.

Mushroom Gravy...

1 cup chopped portabello mushrooms
2 Tbs butter
1 cup whey (or water or milk)


1/2 cup whey (or water)
1/4 cup Gianforte flour


Sautee the mushrooms in the butter, then add the whey (water, milk) and heat slowly. In a small bowl, dissolve the flour in the remaining liquid. Stir slowly into the hot mushroom broth. Cook until thickened.

Bounty Meatloaf...
1 lb Drover Hill Ground Chuck
1/2 cut chopped Mizrahi Manor onions
1/2 cup Gianforte 3 grain cereal
1/2 cup Pasta Shoppe marina sauce
1 large egg (or 2 mini eggs if you have bantam hens like we do)
Optional: 1/4 cup diced green pepper (hope you are as lucky as I was to have some in the freezer)
Mix thoroughly. Place in loaf pan and cook at 375 degrees for 35-40 minutes.

Garlic Yukon Gold New Potatoes - Boil small Peaceful Acres Yukon Gold potatoes, then toss with melted butter and fresh crushed garlic.

Finished the plate with a green salad of Fingerlakes Fresh salad bouquet, some Jewitts cheddar and Ramona's sweet Italian dressing.

Did you notice my new dishes? I decided that the photo shoots deserved a better background than my 10 year old plates so I splurged some of my Bounty savings on new tableware. Life is sweet.

Sausage and Sprouts

Thank you Gardner's Gladiolas.

My husband loves brussel sprouts. Me - not such a big fan. But sometimes, when produce is scarce, like when you are trying to be a CNY Bounty purist in the middle of winter, you gotta say - "What the heck, bring on the brussel sprouts." Prepared this way - thin sliced and sauteed then tossed with fresh gala apple slices, well, I might become a convert. The meat is a chorizo sausage from Purdy's. Finishing up with some more cornbread (waste not, want not) and in the glass - Red Jacket Orchard's apple cider.

Bounty-ful Spaghetti Dinner

Let the pictures speak for themselves...

Well, I guess maybe we need a footnote. The cheese in the bowl is the Panir that I made the night before. The mushrooms came from the mushroom kit in our backroom but you can buy mushrooms on the Bounty now. I hear they are precious...order early.

Oh No - Snow!

Friday night's supper. What a snowy couple of days it had been. Our two year old grandson said we got a "Chit Road" of snow. Well, I'm not exactly sure how much that is, but there was over a foot of snow on the ground. We plowed. We shoveled. And then we did it all over again. So cold. So wet. Needed something to warm us up from the inside out. And being cold and tired, cooking just wasn't something I was looking forward to. Off to the freezer to find a quick Bounty supper.

How about a bowl of Poolville Country Store Pureed Carrot and White Bean Soup. For folks like me who have been craving carrots - it is pure joy! Warm, creamy, just what the weather man called for. And for meat, nothing quicker than hot dogs - Drover Hill Beef Hot Dogs - to be exact. But the soup seemed to call for something a little spicier than a plain hotdog. There, in the refrigerator, Primo and Mary's Black Bean and Corn Salsa - Hey, almost a chili dog. Top it off with a little Jewitt's Sharp Cheddar. And on the side - some fresh from the oven cornbread. Warm inside and out now. Let it snow!

Cheese Making - "Hoppy" Cows Come from NY

Cheese fascinates me. I just had to know how they can take milk and turn it into so many different flavors and textures. So I took some cheese making classes over the last couple of years - a full weekend class at Evans Creamery and an afternoon class with my daughter Grace at Shannon Nichols Heamour Farms in Madison. I loved the classes, but I didn't have the equipment, the cultures, or even a cow for the milk. It's hard to make cheese without the paraphernalia - or is it?

For some reason, I had the urge to make cheese this week and I remembered a very simple farmer's cheese that Shannon showed us that only used milk, lemon juice and salt. I could do that. So out came the stainless steel kettle, the thermometer, and the cheese cloth. (Sometimes it is very helpful be a home brewer!)

How to Make "Panir" -
Farmers Style Cheese

Ingredients for 8 ozs of cheese...

1/2 gallon milk - I used Evan's Low Fat
1/8 cup lemon juice (have a little extra handy)
1/2 tsp. salt

The salt dries the curds making it crumbly. See below how to add water to make a soft farmer's cheese.




Place a colander in a large bowl in the sink (to capture the whey) and line it with fine, clean, damp cheesecloth. Heat the milk in a stainless steel pan (not aluminum) to 200 degrees. Stirring often with a spatula so it doesn't scorch.



When the milk has reached temperature, remove from the heat and stir in the lemon juice. Stir the milk until large curds form. If it doesn't curdle after a few minutes, add more lemon juice a teaspoon or so at a time. Very soon your milk will reach the proper pH and the cheese will curdle almost immediately. Let it stand 10 minutes. If you want a softer cheese, add 1 to 2 cups hot water at this point. When the curds have settled below the whey, you are ready to drain.











Little Miss Muffet, sat on her tuffet, Eating her curds and whey... I have no idea what a tuffet looks like, but here are curds and whey!


Tie up the cheeseclothe around the curds and hang them over the sink for an hour or so until the whey has all seeped out. I put the saved whey back in the milk jug and saved it in the refrigerator to use in recipes (See Mushroom Gravy and Scones coming soon).

When the curds are dry, unwrap, turn into a bowl and season if desired. (I used 1/2 tsp salt and a little more than 1/2 tsp ground hops. Love it!) This cheese can be seasoned with herbs, spices, dried tomatoes, chopped veggies, or eaten plain.

The final weight of the cheese using 1/2 gallon low fat milk was 8 oz. Whole milk would yield more cheese.

Eat right away (Who can wait?) or store covered in the fridge for up to two weeks.

MacNCheese with Bratwurst

Hmmmm. Frozen pasta from The Pasta Shoppe. Easy, quick, fresh. Make up a cheese sauce with Jewitt's Sharp Cheddar, Evan's Creamery milk and Gianforte Farms flour. Sprinkle the top with some dried oregano from Heritage Farms and serve it with Bratwurst Sausage from Purdy's. I had a craving for sauerkraut and MacDonald Farm was out, so I bought a can at the grocery. Please forgive me.

My husband couldn't eat both sausages, so one went into the fridge. The next night I made an omelette with eggs from our chickens, some more cheese from Jewitts, a little diced onion from Mizrahi Manor and slivers of bratwurst. Waste not, want not.

Pork Chops and Sweet Potato Fries

Finally hooked up my camera to the computer to get some of the pictures from the last month.

Way back in January I made this Pork chop and sweet potato fry dinner... It was delicious.

• Ingallside Meadows Pork Chops, pan-fried and served with Mizrahi Manor sweet onions carmelized in Foothill Hops Spiced Northern Brown mustard served on greens from Fingerlakes Fresh.
• Sweet potato fries from Mizrahi Manor.
• Whispering Pines White Bread
• Sweet Honey Mead (made by us).

Brussel Sprouts

I had no clue how many brussel sprouts were in a quart. Gotta find some more recipes.

Small order this week. Seems we've filled up the freezer with Bounty meats. One thing I've noticed is that there is absolutely no waste when I shop through Bounty. Since the food is so good, we savor it and welcome left overs. The meat is incredibly lean and not pumped full of water. Therefore a pound of meat seems to go twice as far as grocery fare. Time for some meal planning to use up what we have stockpiled.

This week's order was just over $38.00 - just enough to get my home delivery.
Brussel Sprouts - Gardner's Gladiolus (Glad they are back! More produce - yeah!)
Gala Apples - Split Rail Apple Farm
2% Milk - Evans Farmhouse Creamery
Pasta Capellini - The Pasta Shoppe
Sweet Country Italian Dressing - Ramona's Dressing
Bratwurst - Purdy's
Lamb Loin Chops - Lamb's Quarters Organic Farm

And my weekly staples
Salad Bouquet - Fingerlakes Fresh
White Bread Loaf - Whispering Pines Bakery

So what have I planned?
Well, Wednesday night I think we'll eat the bratwurst with brussel sprouts in place of sauerkraut. I'll slice the sprouts thin and sautee them and the meat - braised in beer of course! Buttermilk corn bread made with Gianforte Farms cornmeal and New Hope Mills buttermilk pancake mix - see earlier post for recipe.

Lamb is something new to us. Not sure how to serve it. I'm thinking panfried with an Red Jacket Orchard applesauce glaze served with grilled Bounty potatoes and onions. I have a little Whispering Pines pumkin bread left that might make a nice compliment. That bread is delicious - moist even after several days in the fridge.

Oh, dear! Where did my bottle of Ramona's dressing go? I tend to collect half full jars of salad dressings, but not this one - empty and gone. Missed it at the end of this week . More in the cart!

I'm hoping to make some Lemon Hop Ricotta with the milk. We'll see how that goes. Maybe serve it with the pasta and marinara sauce from The Pasta Shoppe, and some Quarry Brook Farms mild Italian sausage - sounds like a good Saturday supper.

Around the farm... Day off from work today - so needed. I cleaned the cellar to set up a workspace for making soap. The fats are heating and the lye cooling as I write this. Got a shipment of bottles in today, so I can now schedule production runs of both mustards, a new Hopped Up Italian seasoning, and Hopped Up Beer Can Chicken Rub just in time for spring. Just need to finish the new labels - I'm in a creative slump! As soon as the soap traces, I'm down to the brewshop to finish up an inventory and restock order. Come on by in a week or two, and brew your own with Foothill Hops, soon to be available through the Bounty.

Been Busy Planning Local Events.

For lunch today: Mushroom Cheeseburger Sandwiches made with Drover Hill ground chuck, Windy Ridge curd cheese, fresh mushrooms from the mushroom kit in our backroom, and Mizrahi Manor onions carmelized in Foothill Hops mustard all served on a Whispering Pine Bakery garlic braid roll. Side salad bouqet greens from Fingerlakes Fresh with Ramona's Sweet Country Italian dressing.

Sorry I haven't posted in a few weeks. We have been celebrating birthdays, babysitting the grandchildren, and just generally enjoying this pleasant winter weather cozied up by the fireplace. We have also been very busy planning and promoting some upcoming events that relate to Madison County Agriculture. We're still buying (almost) all our groceries from CNY Bounty and are very pleased to see La Maison Blanche and Poolville Country Store back. Still miss Circa. These producers supply our version of fast food. Poolville's sausage gravy was so good this week.

If you suffer from gluten allergies, please check out NEW Bounty offerings from our neighbors at the beach, Kielbasinski's Gluten Free Bakery.

Mark your calendars! Madison County "BUY LOCAL" week will be July 18-24 this year. Earlier date means farmers can connect with consumers earlier in the season. It will be a busy time for us at Foothill Hops as we will be working on Buy Local Week, Open Farm Day, and the Stockbridge Valley Community Fair all in the same week. So much to do. So little time.

Lots going on at Foothill Hops this week. Our mustard just got picked up by two additional retailers through the Nelson Farms Marketing Group, so we are stepping up production. We're working on labels and packaging for some additional products that we hope to offer through the Bounty this spring. We also recently sold our mustard online to a restaurant / brew pub in Kansas City that wants to feature it in their signature pub recipes. That means bigger packaging for local restaurant clients as well. Look for them on the Bounty in March. Speaking of March, if you have an interest in Hops, you may wish to attend our first Northeast Hop Alliance hops institute "HOPS 101" on March 20th at Saranac Brewery. Learn all about hop growing and network with growers and brewers. Visit http://www.northeasthopalliance.org/ for more info.


Off to do some work in our store right after I enjoy a breakfast of Evan's Double Maple Yogurt with Upstate Harvest Maple Pecan granola. Dinner tonight? -Well, it is Valentine's weekend, so my wonderful husband is taking me out for a Prime Rib dinner at the American Legion. Buy local. Eat local. Serve local. Support local.