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It has been hot, hot, hot here in Wyoming. It is so hot that I can’t stand the idea of using the oven.
Last week I really flubbed my menu plan. I was supposed to take meat out of the freezer on Monday and I didn’t. I was supposed to soak beans on Tuesday and I didn’t. We still managed to eat but it wasn’t any where close to the meals I planned. Here are a few pictures I snapped of the foods we did enjoy. I’m happy to say that even though the meals were on the fly they turned out rather good. All were also pretty quick to prepare and the oven was never turned on last week.
On Wednesday I started to make some cheese. I love making the Queso Fresco that I first discovered in the GNOWFLINS Cultured Dairy eCourse (affiliate link). But on this day I was so scattered that I wasn’t paying attention and did not heat my milk correctly. At that point I decided instead of pressing the cheese I would just do cheese curds. I love the fresh taste of the cheese before it is pressed so thought this might work well. The curds are good but if I was going to do the curds on purpose I think I would add additional lipase to give it more flavor.
The cheese curds went wonderfully atop the salad we had for supper that night. Some of the greens were from our garden. We also had liver and rice with gravy.
We have quite a bit of trout in the freezer. My 18 year old girl loves to fish and has been going several times a week. She even became part owner of a canoe a few days ago! I put together this delicious grilled trout. It is a whole fish (without the head) seasoned with taco style spices and combined with veggies we had on hand. I used tomatoes, carrots, onion, garlic and jalapeno. We flaked the fish off the bone and put it on corn tortillas for something resembling fish tacos. It was super good.
We are just about out of deer and antelope from last fall. I found a small package of deer steaks and a small package of antelope steaks. I turned them into a pretty tasty dish based on the recipe for Bourbon Chicken from Intentionally Domestic. It actually turned out quite a bit different than KerryAnn’s dish (which I’ve made several times before) since I added pineapple to it. We didn’t have any apple juice so I thought I would use pineapple juice and at the last minute decided just to put in the chunks along with the juice. Even though it was different it was very good.
Exciting Events!
This week Joe is on vacation. Originally we had planned to be gone camping for his entire 12 day vacation but our plans changed. Last Tuesday we brought a few goats home to live with us. While we have been talking about getting goats for three years now we were not expecting to get them so quickly. Joe and I had decided over the winter to start looking for goats this summer. Health-wise the winter was hard on me and when I finally started feeling better we were optimistic that I’d continue to get better and be able to handle taking care of goats. I do feel very well now and rarely have days that bother me. My energy is still a little low some days but not bad. Anyway… I was talking with a lady (on the computer) who has two goats ready to kid. They are Dwarf Nigerians which is what we had decided would be perfect for us. A few days later the lady let me know about another person who Nigerians and she needed to downsize. Everything fell together and we now have seven goats. The picture below is of the youngest one. Her name is Knee High and she is just about four months old.
The addition of the goats made me not want to be gone for 12 days. We are going to be gone on two separate two night trips (my 18 year old will care for the goats, chickens, ducks, dogs, cats and garden while we are gone– wow, we have a lot of stuff that needs caring for!) both up to the property we recently purchased (we’ll actually stay with Joe’s parents who live about half an hour from our new property). That is another exciting thing that has happened in the past week. We now own 20 acres a few hours from here. We intend to move there eventually. For now we will use it for vacations, weekend getaways and hunting. It is completely bare land and we will have our work cut out for us. Four years ago we moved to this land which was completely bare also so we know how much work this has been, the difference is this is only two acres!
This week, for the most part, we are still eating out of our freezer (which is getting quite empty) and pantry. The garden is starting to give us a small amount of greens to add to store bought lettuce once or twice a week. I’m hoping this week we might get a little bit more. I’ll harvest the greens for supper on Tuesday night and hope we might have additional when we return from our two days away.
Menu Plan
Sunday- Stuffed Burritos
Monday- Crock pot chicken, sides to be determined
Tuesday- Salad
Wednesday- Joe’s Parents
Thursday- Joe’s Parents
Friday- Salmon patties (one of my favorite quick meals), sides to be determined
Saturday- Trout. Not sure how it will be made and don’t know what side will be with it.
What is on your menu this week?
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Shared at Menu Plan Monday
