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Just wanted to let you all know that Im not going to be able to post for a few more days. I had all four wisdom teeth taken out yesterday. That means only soft foods for me...boring! Dont think you want to see a photo of my scrambled eggs and pudding. :-) I will be back soon!

Hope you all had a wonderful Easter and Passover!

This cake is simply called "Batter cake", which is certainly descriptive, but not very poetic. It is an excellent base for a cream cake - in which case forget the jam and use canned fruit instead and pour a little of the juice into both layers, pipe on whipped cream to cover the cake and decorate with fresh fruit.

1/3 cup butter or margarine, soft
1/2 cup sugar
3 eggs
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp. vanilla essence (this is my addition to the original recipe, as I think that without it the cake tastes eggy)

Separate the eggs. Whip together the softened butter and sugar until light and fluffy, then add the egg yolks and mix well (and add the vanilla if using). Mix together flour and baking powder and add to the batter little by little. Whip the egg whites until stiff and fold into the batter with a spatula.

Pour into 2 round 20 centimeter/8 inch baking pans with loose bottoms and bake at 175°C/350°F (regular oven) until the cakes area rich golden colour, if possible with more bottom-heat than top-heat (if your oven doesnt have that setting, dont worry). No baking time is given in the original recipe, but it took 15 minutes in my convection oven at 165°C/330°F.

Turn out of the pans onto baking paper sprinkled with sugar, and allow to cool (original recipe), or turn out onto a cake rack and sprinkle sugar directly on the top of one layer while it is still hot (my suggestion). Sandwich with jam when cooled, putting the sugared layer on top.

This makes a cute little cake. The original recipe calls for 3 layers, in which case I suggest using 12 or 15 centimeter/5 or 6 inch pans so the layers will not be thin as pancakes.

I used strawberry-rhubarb jam when I made it, but I think strawberry or raspberry jam would probably be the best for this cake. I can also imagine it would be quite delicious layered with chocolate fudge icing.

Ive been so busy this past week with Steves birthday that I havent had a chance to post but I have been taking pictures. Let me start by wishing my other half, Steve, a very Happy Birthday! I love you! XOXOXOX




Now about the food. While visiting with Steves parents this past weekend I noticed a cookbook on the bookshelf that I have never seen before. Its called "Eat Right, East Well - The Italian Way" by Edward Giobbi and Richard Wolff, M.D. There are a ton of wonderful recipes in this book and I look forward to trying more. I made very slight variations to the recipe because I wanted to use what I had on hand but nothing that really would compromise the end result. This recipe can be found on page 138-139 of the cookbook.

Pasta with Chicken Breasts

Serves 6-8

Ingredients:


1 whole chicken breast, cut into strips about 1/2 inches wide and 3 inches long
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon soy sauce
Freshly ground black pepper to taste
Juice of 1/2 lemon
3 tablespoons olive oil
Salt to taste
3 medium potatoes, peeled and cut into bite-sized pieces
1 pound tubular pasta, such as ziti, rigatoni, or penne
6 cups broccoli cut into bite sized pieces
3 tablespoons pesto (page 426)

Directions:

Marinate cut-up chicken breasts with garlic, soy sauce, pepper and lemon juice for several hours.

Heat the oil in a saucepan. Remove chicken from marinade and cook for several minutes over high heat. Add marinade and cook, tossing, for 10 seconds or more. turn off heat and set aside.

Bring a large pot of water to a rolling boil and add salt and potatoes. When water returns to a boil, add pasta. Stir, cook about 4 minutes, then add broccoli and cook until pasta is done al dente. Drain. Reserve some of the water - 1/2 to 3/4 cup - and mix with the pesto until it has a thin saucelike consistency. Add to pasta and vegetables in a large serving bowl. Add chicken and juices and toss.

Pesto - page 426

Ingredients:

5 tablespoons good olive oil
1 cup walnut meats
4 cups tightly packed fresh basil
3 tablespoons chopped Italian parsley
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Directions:

Place all of the ingredients in a food processor and blend. Put in a jar, add 1/2 inch oil on top of pesto , and refrigerate. It will last all winter.


My changes were simple. I did NOT use this recipe for pesto. I included it here because it is a part of the recipe and I want you to have the option. I have my own recipe for Pesto but I didnt follow that either because I didnt have a lot of basil. So I basically just added the basil I did have (less than a cup), 1/4 cup parsley, 1 clove garlic, 1/4 cup pine nuts, 1/4 cup romano cheese, 1/2 tsp salt and extra virgin olive oil. I used my normal recipe as a guide and used less since I didnt have a lot of basil. It worked and it was delicious. So dont be afraid to make this if you dont have pesto or dont have all the ingredients for pesto.

When I cooked the broccoli it broke down a lot, almost to the consistency of the broccoli in a broccoli soup, so to me this was almost like a broccoli pesto. I loved that and I think thats the way its supposed to be but then again there was no picture so I dont know for sure. Either way, I liked this dish the way it came out and I would definitely make it again.

A perfect way to barbecue fresh salmon on a summer day...

Servings: (4)

Prep: 5 Mins. |
Marinade 15 Mins. |
Grill: 10 mins.


Posted by: Sandra

INGREDIENTS:

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon lime juice
1 teaspoon honey
1/2 cup low-fat plain yogurt
1 tablespoon fresh ginger, minced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 green onion, sliced
½ teaspoon dry rosemary
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
4 (1”) thick salmon steaks (if thicker, allow more cooking time)
1 lime, cut into wedges

METHOD:

Whisk together oil, lime juice, honey, yogurt, ginger, garlic, green onion, rosemary, salt and pepper in a shallow non-reactive dish. Add fish steaks and turn to coat with marinade. Cover and marinate for at least 15 minutes, but no longer than 30 minutes, (turning once after 7 minutes).

Preheat indoor grill to medium-high heat, or an outdoor grill. Oil a folded paper towel, hold it with tongs and rub it over the rack, or grill pan.

Coarsely grind pepper onto steaks. Place the steaks onto hot oiled grill rack, turning once at 5 minutes; continue cooking until the fish is opaque, and flakes easily with a fork, about 10 minutes total (discarding marinade). Serve immediately with lime wedges. - Enjoy all!

This morning I got up early and drove out to WoolDrift Farm, home of Chris Buschbeck and Axel Meister. They raise East Friesian sheep for milk. I went early so I could see the sheep being milked.

Axel figures that they were the first in Ontario and maybe even in North America to commercially raise sheep for milk. That was a recently as 1994!

Mind you, in Europe where Axel got his training, sheep have been milked for centuries. In fact, worldwide, sheeps milk is far more common than cows milk - 1.2 billion sheep are kept for milk and "only" about 226 million cows.

Sheeps milk has twice as much calcium as cows milk, and is rich in zinc. Many people find it more digestible than cows milk. You can only buy WoolDrift Farms milk in the form of cheese or yogurt though because it is currently illegal under the Milk Act to sell fresh sheeps milk for human consumption. Axel is looking into the possibility of selling it frozen however, and he sells some milk for cosmetic purposes. It makes great soap.



The farm is a typical-looking one, with a big old barn. A few sheep and some horses were standing out in a fenced enclosure.


Before I entered the milking area, Axel asked me to cover my shoes with these lovely blue booties. As with any dairy operation, sanitation is the number one concern. In this case, the aim is to keep diseases out of the flock.


Before the sheep are brought up, Axel fills the trough in the milking stalls with mixed grains. Axel is milking 42 sheep right now, although 55 is about average. Its still early in the lambing season, and quite a few are still pregnant or have only very recently given birth.


Most of the sheep were hanging around inside the barn. These are mostly nursing ewes and their lambs, with a few ewes still pregnant. When a ewe shows signs of giving birth, she is given her own pen. Once the mother and babies (twins are common, and triplets are not rare) are well bonded, they get moved to a larger pen with other recent mothers and babies. Once that group is interacting well, they all go back to the hurly-burly of the herd.

His flock of 80 sheep produces 110 to 120 lambs per year. Some of these are sold as breeding stock, and some go for meat. I didnt ask, but I assume a couple are kept to replenish the herd. There was one old ewe who could hardly stand up, she had such terrible arthritis. She is 13 years old, which is pretty darned old in the sheep world. Dont think Ive ever seen such an old sheep before!


Once Axel opened the gate to the milking parlour, the sheep stampeded their way into a holding pen, from which they went into the milking stalls in batches of 12. An adult ewe weighs 140 to 180 pounds, and they shove like crazy. Axel has - and uses - a shepherds crook; very useful for snagging stragglers and re-directing traffic.


Their enthusiasm for the process was clearly mainly driven by their desire to get at the grain, although all but a few were highly tolerant of the milking process. Its a somewhat noisy process. Axel plays the radio ("Its what theyre used to.") and the equipment itself runs with a constant clickity-clack.

Before the milking equipment is attached, Axel squirts out a few teaspoons of milk from each udder to test for quality. His two dogs (a miniature daschund and a great Dane/Australian shepherd cross) were happy to hang around and clean up the evidence.



The udders are wiped with alcohol-based wipes to clean them, then the milking machine is attached. Axel set up every second ewe, and by the time he got to the end of the line, it was just about time to go back and switch to the remaining ewes.

In general, the ewes produce 2 litres of milk a day, for about 200 days. Right now, not all the lactating ewes are being milked, and a lower overall quantity of milk is being taken, as many of them are still nursing their lambs. Hes only getting about about 1/3 of the expected amount at the moment.

Most commercial milking operations remove the lambs at birth and raise them on formula. At WoolDrift, they are left to nurse naturally for 30 days or so. Axel figures that while he gets less milk this way, the lambs are healthier and hes not out as much as you might think, due to the cost of the formula. Theres also the labour involved in making sure that all those lambs get fed properly. This way, he just has to keep an eye out for problems - there is always a ewe or two who rejects her lambs - and those few lambs can be hand fed.



This one isnt being milked! Axel got most of the lambs separated out from the ewes coming in to be milked, but this one was determined to stay with Mama and snuck through. At that point it was easiest to let it wait out the process, since it was in the last batch of ewes and the milking stalls werent all needed.


This is the view from the other side of the milking stalls.


Once the milking is done, the fence is raised and they thunder off back into the barn, and make room for the next set of ewes waiting in the holding pen.


Once all the milking was done, Axel washed up and set the milking equipment up to be washed. It looks like its just hanging there, but its basically run through a "dishwasher". First its flushed with water, then soap, then an acid solution, then finally, just before being used again, a mild bleach solution.


The milk is taken from the holding tank, put into plastic pails and weighed, and stored in the 10 x 20 freezer. Sheeps milk will store, frozen, for a year or more, but it must be kept very cold: -22°C. If a batch of cheese is to be made, Axel will take the milk directly to the cheese maker, but otherwise it is frozen until wanted.


And this is the freezer, full of pails of milk.


Thats the manure pile back behind the fence - regular readers of this blog will know I take a keen interest in manure. It sits there for a year or so, then is taken and spread on the pastures.

Once the ewes are milked, Axel walks round the barn and feeds a ration of grain to the other animals, and there are lots of them! In addition to the sheep, there is an emu, a llama, 3 horses, 2 dogs, assorted cats and 20 rams.


"Isnt that a lot of rams?" I asked. Most places just seem to have a couple or so. However, Axel sells breeding stock, and he also keeps his flock genetically diverse. Rams start at about $1,ooo and go up to about $15,000 or more, at least in Europe where sheep dairies are well established.


They do like that grain!

The sheep get sheared twice a year, but as Ive noted before, thats a money-losing proposition, with wool currently bringing in about .30 cents a pound, which doesnt even cover the cost of the shearing.


This picture gives no idea of how enormous this horse really was. Its a Clydesdale, and that apparently little sheep sharing the manger with him is actually a good-sized ram. I was amused to discover that the rams have a much deeper and hoarser "baaaa" than the ewes do.


The llama was back in the barn with the ewes. Llamas are often kept by shepherds, as they are very protective of the flock.

I asked Axel about coyotes, and he had a very interesting response. Apparently, there are quite a few coyotes around - the farm backs onto 500 acres of wild land - but he has had no problems with the coyotes thus far. He figures the local coyotes dont know that sheep are tasty, and since they are very territorial animals, they are keeping out other packs of coyotes which might know that sheep are tasty. He never disposes of dead sheep by leaving them out in the woods; that would risk the local coyotes discovering that sheep are tasty...



And finally, of course no barn is complete without a few cats!

I did not meet Chris; although the farm does make a profit, it isnt enough to support a family so she was at her off-farm work. Axels dream of a 100-sheep farm being enough to live on may not be here, but the dairy sheep picture has surely changed a lot since he first started out with about 50 frozen embryos brought over from Europe. The Ontario dairy sheep industry is now producing about 1 1/2 million litres of milk every year. From zero to 1 1/2 million is a big change in less than 20 years! And theres no reason to think that there isnt a lot more room for the sheep dairy industry to grow.

Theres really nothing particularly unusual about this za. Its topped with marina (sugar and soy free, of course), pepperoni, mushrooms, olives, and lots of mozzarella (which isnt technically paleo, but Im weening myself, here!!). All the "paleo" in the pizza is coming from the crust, made entirely from cauliflower and mozzarella.
 See?? It even LOOKS like crust:
 Cus I like to keep it rull witchall, I will say it doesnt taste like the traditional pizza dough we all know, love, and curse our thighs about. But it is REALLY good! I mean, its cheesy, herbed cauliflower baked into a bread-like crust. You literally cant NOT like it. And if you dont, my guess is you dont have a soul.

I imagine Ill be making iterations of this non-stop over the next several weeks.

Cauliflower Pizza Crust For People Who Have Souls
Makes one pizza crust, roughly 8 large slices

• 1 head cauliflower
• 2 cups mozzarella cheese
• 1-2 eggs, beaten 
• 1 tsp. oregano
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. pepper

 When you live out in the country, the chances are that the nearest pizza takeaway is not going to deliver.  So I tend to rely on keeping a few pizzas in the freezer for those moments when you need food fast.









The Sloppy Joe is the new Limited Edition from Chicago Town Take Away its loaded with mozzarella, spicy beef, red onions and green pepper with spicy seasoning and topped off with tasty tomato stuffed crust.





I was provided with vouchers to purchase Chicago Town Take Away Pizza.  I was not paid to write this post and I was not obliged to give a good review, my opinions are my own.