Skinning Shins

So, if you haven't been reading the comments on my face book, I'm pretty sure that you probably have the wrong idea about this post based on the title of the message. No one has fallen down and scraped up their precious shins.

So this week's project is to make homemade beef stock. A few weeks ago, I checked the store, and guess what...they don't sell beef part ingredients for making stock. We'll, I just so happened to get to know a new wonderful family at church and her hubby is a butcher, and we found out a few months later that her brother is Baker, although he is not *a* Baker, that's just his last name. For those of you who don't know "Baker" his name is Eric Baker, and he and my hubby have been buddies for quite a while. Obviously, if you know me and my hubby...they both share the same first name which is why we just call him Baker. We had our bonfire wedding in his backyard.

Hu-mongo thanks to our friends, we were able to obtain all of the *ingredients* even at the perfect price! So, Saturday our friends delivered the marrow and neck bones, but the cow shins...or whatever cow legs are called from the "knee" down, would have to wait until Monday. To my surprise the shins arrived...all 21.5lbs of them arrived with fur, WOW...fur makes it a bit more real.

I knew for sure I'd need some back up. So, my other Amish-wannabe friend (note the hyphen to differentiate that she most definitely is my friend and the wannabe links to the other noun in that phrase) and I got together this morning and embarked on a whole new experience for making beef stock. We did reminisce about how easy it was to just measure out at teaspoon of Wyler's bullion granules. But this way, is the healthful way.....you can can learn why here: beautiful broth. We know it will be worth all the effort. Although, admittedly we knew nothing of how to accomplish skinning shins, but we decided that its much easier to get started when you have a friend there that is just as clueless as you.

So, we spread the table with paper sacks and tied on our aprons and got started. About 2/3rds of the way through our project my friend reminded me that the book did say that the hooves were *optional. We laughed about that and decided we would finish skinning 3 of the shins and to just chop the hoof off the 4th one. We did take a few moments to show the kids how the ligaments worked and printed off some information about the anatomy of the hoof, us homeschooling mama's are always looking for ways to incorporate school into our daily life.

Next we obtained permission to use the hack-saw, but before we got started my gracious hubby offered to do the hoof removal. I have to say that was a bit of a relief. Today was prep day, tomorrow we'll start the stock.

The thought of boiling calves hooves isn't nearly as bad after going through the process of skinning them first. Plus, I learned what to ask the butcher for next time....So much for my Amish training.

Unfortunately my Encyclopedia of Country Living book arrived on the front porch this evening. It as a whole chapter dedicated to raising cows and butchering them.

Well my awesomely wonderful husband helped us with the hooves. I sat idly by and read through my new book to see if I could come up with some helpful info. He tried out a few different saws and it was quite entertaining watching him. He decided to go out to his wood-shop and build a "shin-stabilizer". (I think he just wanted an excuse to build something with his new dado set that arrived in the shipment with my book). Next he attached the hoof to the stabilizer by drilling a screw through it, and used 2 clamps to secure it to the table so he could hack-saw through the first hoof section. He decided to try out the sawzall to cut through the second. So very un-Amish like, but it worked well. Round 2: on to separating the joints on the skinned shins....and after a bit of practice he was able to get the 3rd one apart in 2-minutes and 40-seconds...yes, we timed him just to see how good he was! I'd say that's good!

Birthday Boy!

We'll our baby boy is officially 2 years old! We celebrated his actual birthday with his first "birthday dinner" We selected "to the best of our knowledge" his favorites...milk, meat & potatoes...there's no denying it, he is his father's son! You will notice a little green on his plate, because I insisted we have a veggie to round out the meal.

The Official Menu:
Grilled Chicken Breast
Onion Roasted Potatoes- Daddy style
Green beans with homemade raw butter
Goat milk for Corban, Raw whole Cow's milk for Everyone Else

We sang to Corban and let the birthday boy have a "cup cake" so he could practice blowing out his birthday candles. We nearly had a "AFV" moment; if only we had been video taping...but we weren't. Evidently mommy..or was it daddy? Whoever it was, needs to practice not crumbling apart the cupcake and dumping lighted candles on the boy. Luckily, the candle was quickly extinguished by Daddies fingers and nothing even caught on fire!

Corban did however enjoy his "cup cake" Mommy found a special recipe for Grain-free Brownies. I think they will make a great addition to our breakfast rotation. They are made out of black beans, eggs, coconut oil and honey. For the party, I whipped up some raw cream with a little stevia and "frosted" them.

super fast

Well, the Daniel fast is over! 21 days of no dairy, refined grains, processed foods, meat or desserts and as far as beverages go I only drank water the entire time. And boy do I feel great!

I let my food nazi-ism slide the last week. We ate some wonderfully de-lish tortilla soup...which I had to get the recipe. It ended up being way beyond my personal guidelines....I just couldn't wrap my brain around dry ranch dip being Daniel fast friendly, and ultimately it is so full of preservatives I think I'd rather come up with a wholesome replacement in the future.... so I skipped that ingredient and just turned the other cheek as I poured in the ranch beans with its "less than 2%" banned ingredient content...and oh yes, the whole wheat tortillas with all those preservatives are definitely a no, but we've managed to almost finish off the 3rd package in less than a week. I had migraine headaches every night I ate the stuff though. hmm, chemicals I imagine. Can't wait on working to reinvent this recipe in a nourishing traditions way and add it to our food menu...in the future...the distant future since we've eaten it about 6 times in the past 10 days and still have leftovers in the fridge. I did find out that its pretty good after being put in the blender and used as burrito filling.

Physically speaking we lost weight (those hard to get rid of, last 8 pounds for me and Eric lost 15 pounds....though he says "I didn't loose weight; I gained health" ), we broke food addictions (chemicals and sugar) and we've seemed to encounter a natural portion control in our eating habits IF we choose pay attention to our bodies and not focusing on the food in our mouth....let me tell you it is so much harder with my favorites.

I broke the fast about 15 minutes after PB called it done...I tested a few crumbs from Corban's birthday brownie cupcakes. It is a new recipe that is friendly to Corban's gluten and dairy free diet. I'll share the recipe AFTER everyone has taste-tested them tomorrow. Eric brought home my favorite..Mr. Mambo's cheese enchilada's. Oh it was hard to not just gobble it all down, but I focused on eating it slow and saved half of my enchiladas for another day. After the first few bites I noticed an odd feeling in my gut, but dismissed it. But 2 hours later my tummy had it's own ideas about the food and afforded me some quiet reading time you know where. I checked out my Nourishing Traditions cookbook and reconfirmed in my mind WHY I need to make changes in our dietary lifestyle.

The fast was the easy part. Holding ourselves to our own standard (and finding a new standard) is a whole new ballgame. But I've been preparing for this day and all last week was quite productive in the kitchen, so I feel at least I'm getting a good start!

We tried out soaking pecans, walnuts and pumpkin seeds and making "crispy nuts" that were very good and nutritionally superior to raw nuts and seeds. We also tried soaking brown rice over night and it was much fluffier, the kids didn't even notice that it was brown rice. I bought a sprouting lid for my mason jars so I can try soaking and sprouting our legumes and other whole grains, but it may be a little while before we introduce them back into our diet...we consumed about 10lbs of beans the past 3 weeks!

Tuesday, I made some garlic-lemonade for the boys who haven't been feeling so great. The dragon breath and burps leave little to be desired, but it seems to really help with the symptoms.

We got our Dairy delivery, raw whole milk, raw cream and cheese on Wednesday from a great friend who let us "hitch-hike" in on her co-op order. THANK YOU!!!!

Thursday, Parker and Perry helped me make a 10 day supply of butter. It's been a while since I last made it, so hopefully it won't take an hour and a half on the next go around! We made it in two batches, as I'm not sure how much is too much for the mixer...maybe next go around I"ll whip up the butter in separate batches, then "clean" it all together as that seems to be the most time consuming part. We made 38 ounces of butter and got 24 ounces of buttermilk out of 4 pints of cream...I think those are decent results. I have one pint of cream that I'm saving to make whipped cream for Corban's birthday cupcakes. Next dairy run, I plan to try making cream cheese and whey The whey will be used to make lots of lacto-fermented vegetables and condiments which provide essential nutrients for proper digestion.

Wednesday, we got our first shipment of coconut oil. I couldn't help but grin at the thought of asking Eric to open it for us as I struggled to lug the 5 gallon bucket through the living room and heft it up on the kitchen table. The kids were as excited as me and wanted to test it out by the spoonful....which of course we did as soon as dad got the lid off for us! He detests the stuff, but I sneak it in when I can. It's tricky.

I made a gallon of yogurt on Friday and a half-gallon of Goat Yogurt for Corban on Saturday. It is amazing to me how much switching to goat dairy HELPS him! With in 5 hours of consuming the milk things start changing for the better. I need to get better at regularly making trips to the Goat farm. I really have no excuse considering its just over 1 mile from the house.

We already use vinegar and water for most of our cleaning, and make our own laundry detergent on occasion, so I decided to try my hand at making some body-care products starting with toothpaste and shampoo. I think both recipes will need some adjustments..but they work wonderfully well. I brushed my teeth before bed and they still felt "dentist-clean" this morning (I guess that is actually hygienist clean, huh?)

So, I guess we're still in progress in figuring the new and improved Johnson family diet. Mr and Mrs Johnson seem to have conflicting different ideas about what is important. So, for now we have our raw dairy, introducing lacto-fermentation and soaking grains, legumes, nuts and seeds and acquiring ingredients for making healthy beef stock. My other endeavor is finding true farm fresh eggs with chickens who are able to be truly free range...and seek out some of their own food, rather than walk outside onto a concrete slab for 5 minutes a day....

BTW, I've be come a "foodie"

for my online novices..BTW = by the way :)

Our little Corban would eat and eat and eat then poop and poop and poop, but never getting fed. His food went strait through his system without absorbing the nutrients from his food, staying in a constant state of hunger. His diapers were overflowing and a huge mess multiple times a day and Mama needed a solution. Our pediatrician said he didn't know a whole lot about special diets, so I took some friends' advice and called up a nutritionist.

When we first tried giving him dairy (at 11ish months) it didn't seem to go over very well, even when we used raw whole milk instead of the dead milk they sell at the grocery store, interesting concept. Pasteurization isn't really for our health, but actually for the convenience of shipping milk all across the country.

Corban has been on a Gluten Free and Dairy free diet for the past 4 months....it seems like it's been forever though! He's been wheat and dairy free since April and started an enzyme as well which really helped his appetite. Two days before we went to see the nutritionist we tried giving him some Goat's milk, to see how he would react and he had his first "solid" BM since...maybe ever!

The nutritionist (Lorrie Metford) did a finger prick and we looked at his blood under the microscope. His cells were 3 different sizes and clumped together so she advised that we start a few things. The gluten free diet helped his appetite and nutrition absorption issues some, but she advised that we continue the enzyme as well as the gluten free diet but keep doing the goat's milk, she also added in a pro-biotic, zinc and b complex whole food supplements. Things were shaping up nicely...especially in his diapers! They were what I think is "normal" and only once a day for a change. Which is great when he was having 5-6 a day that were a complete mess!

Well a few weeks ago, I didn't make it over to the dairy to pick up the goat's milk...which is much cheaper there than the store ($9.50 vs $16 per gallon) and I started noticing that his diapers were going back to how they were before we started all the supplements. The past few days we stopped doing the supplements also just to see how he reacts and we aren't seeing much of a change, so I think all in all it's the goat's milk that is really helping the most. Come to find out, interestingly enough Goats milk is the most closely realated to human breast milk and what people have been consuming as "milk" all over the world, and it's mentioned in the bible. Imagine that, God knows what we should be eating, maybe we should ask Him instead of the food network?

I'm prayerfully considering taking him to see a pediatric-dietitian or an allergist. Meanwhile he will continue the healthy diet, and hopefully help get the rest of the family off processed food and sugar....which leads me into my food rant, you have been forewarned: enjoy!

Researching all this nutrition information has made thinking about food very frustrating. We've been convinced over the past 50 years that what we are supposed to eat was based on balancing the profit margins of the main areas of the food industry rather than our nutrition. They have won us over by chemically addicting the American people to THEIR idea of "food" which means as long as it only kills us off slowly, is shelf stable, cheap to make and sell all they gotta do is slap some bold and misleading label...like "all natural flavors" or throw in the tiniest amount of "fruit or vegetable" in the recipe and call it Yogurt Blends or Sweet Potato Puffs....so we feed it to our infants and Voila....our babies are slowly drawn into this unhealthful addiction as soon as they are off of 1st stage foods (that's the little jars that they eat for the first 2-3 months, at least they only contain water as an extra ingredient.)

I knew that processed foods were not the best, everyone does, I think. What about baby formula which is also a culprit and represented as the "only" option (it is not) besides breastfeeding. Since I make my own "baby food" I know for sure what is going into the food and thought using "basic" ingredients would be enough. Nope. I found that I didn't even realize that some things are processed that seem natural. I found that I could get puffed wheat by the bag, the only ingredient listed was red wheat, and it was cheap...Score!! I fed it to Corban around 9 months of age and he loved it, it was a great alternative to cheerios, which daddy is not fond of, even if anyone tries to convince him that they have a "breathing hole". One choking episode with his niece a few years ago was all he needed! Anyway, a few weeks ago, I read about a little study on puffed wheat. you can read it here: should we eat puffed grains? Evidently lab rats are better off eating a card board box than what the grocery store sells as cereal. The ones who got cornflakes died before the ones who got cardboard box and the ones who ate puffed wheat lived 2 weeks, while the ones on regular whole grain wheat lived over a year. I didn't really think about puffed wheat even being processed...who knew, don't I feel stupid! Then there's also the sugar issue, even the rats addicted to cocaine chose sugar over their drugs. We wonder why we're the most unhealthy people in the richest nation in the world. Forget health care, we need an overhaul on the food industry, maybe if we stop filling our bodies with garbage we'll feel better and live longer....but then again it means more time and work and getting past that addiction. I think unfortunately most Americans would rather die and enjoy it while lasts, so sad.

For more information on food check out the Weston Price Foundation its a great resource, very interesting reading.