Yorkshire Puddings

Here is my family's recipe for Yorkshire Puddings.  Since I am a first-generation American (my mum and her family all come from London, and she still lives there) you can rest assured this recipe has been made in the "Old Country" for many, many years. 

Very simple and virtually foolproof...and very delicious!

Gannon's Yorkshire Puddings

1 cup milk

4 heaping tablespoons all-purpose flour

1 egg

pinch of salt

1. Preheat oven to 450.

2.  Mix flour and salt together in a bowl

2.  Mix milk and egg together in another bowl.

3.  Add the egg/milk liquid to the flour mix, adding a little at a time, stirring until it has a batter-like consistency.

4.  In a muffin tin, add a small pat (probably 1/2 teaspoon, no more) of bacon fat, butter, or oil of your choice to the bottom of each tin, and place tin in the oven.  

5.  Once the oil is hot, but not smoking, remove from oven and add some batter to each tin.  Should be no more than halfway full, as it will rise when it cooks.

5.  Cook for about 20 minutes.

6.  Remove and enjoy! 

Success

The dinner party for 10 last night went off without a hitch, which was no mean feat, considering my relative inexperience hosting large groups for sit-down dinners and wine tastings.

At each place setting were wine analysis sheets, rating the wines' appearance, bouquet, and taste/texture.  We do our wine tasting first, and then share a meal, and since the theme for this tasting was "Big Reds," I served a Prime Rib with Yorkshire Puddings, mapled yams, a large salad, and chocolate mousse for dessert.

One of my neighbors is an enologist for a westside winery, and since he's in our winery's Wine Club, I invited him and his partner to join us for the festivities.  There were some interesting discussions on corks, winemaking, and Old World vs. New World wines, which I found fascinating. The great thing about wine is that, when the conversation turns to "industry talk, " it's still always happy and enjoyable conversation, filled with laughter and learning.

In order to keep strong smells out of the house (essential when doing sensory analysis of wine) I used the propane barbecue outside to cook the prime rib, and luckily was about to get it to a steady 325 degrees and cook it perfectly.  The Yorkshire Puddings were the big hit of the night, I think mainly because people were pleasantly surprised to learn they were not going to be forced to eat actual pudding at dinner.

An the chocolate mousses were devoured as well, including the vegan ones I made for my guests with dietary restrictions (who bought an incredible grains and mushroom casserole as their main course, which was absolutely delicious -- I snuck a bite!).  I actually enjoyed the vegan mousse as well, especially with the coconut milk whipped cream I used as a topping.

And the big wine winner for the night was this beauty:

Unbelievably soft and full-bodied, full of lovely fruit notes but with enough tannins to perfectly balance the wine.  I am not exaggerating when I say this is absolutely, hands-down, the best Pinot I've ever had the pleasure to taste.  Ever.

Food desert

"Food Desert"

It looks as if our nation has lost its collective mind.  Check out this snippet from a San Joaquin Valley, CA newspaper article today. Keep in mind that Stratford is in the sunny, temperate heart of California's agricultural belt, which grows approximately half of the produce the United States consumes:

STRATFORD — What if you had to pay about $30 a month just to be able to go grocery shopping?

For Stratford resident Christina Johnson, this is the everyday life. With no grocery stores in the community and only one convenience store, Johnson and many others in Stratford must travel 10 miles or more to Lemoore or Hanford in order to buy fresh produce.

“The travel doesn’t bother me, but I do have to spend extra money on gas,” she said. “I go shopping at Save Mart in Hanford twice a week, so it can really add up.”

Johnson said she tries to make the most of her visits, doing other errands to make each trip more worthwhile. However, she said she counts herself as one of the lucky residents of Stratford because she has a car.

“It’s a big task for people here that don’t work and don’t have a vehicle,” she said. “They either have to get rides from someone or ride the bus, which would be a hassle.”

Stratford is just one of hundreds of communities across the country to be considered a “food desert,” areas that offer limited access to supermarkets. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, about 2.2 percent of U.S. households are more than a mile from a grocery store.

No food here!

Isn't one of the lovely advantages of living in a rural area that you can actually grow your own produce?  Most of the time, within unincorporated county islands, the rules for farming and animal-keeping are looser than they are in the city, meaning you could also keep a few chickens and maybe even a milk goat, too.  

None here either.

A hundred years ago, a much larger percentage of our population lived more than a mile from the local grocery store.  They bought their staples there and grew their fresh produce at home.  Nowadays, living more than a mile from a grocery store means you are techinically in a "food desert," because we've literally forgotten how to feed ourselves in any way other than harvesting items off a shelf in an air-conditioned food warehouse with muzak playing in the background.

So many wanna-be homesteaders (and please know I use the term "wanna-be" in the most positive way in this case) living in the cities loathe the fact that they don't have yards where they can grow food, but here you have people with not only yards, but possibly even an acre or ten outside their back door who are starving to death because they can't get to the supermarket.

Something's wrong here, people.

Eureka!  Found the food!

Dinner for Ten

Dinner party and blind tasting here at the homestead on Tuesday night for ten friends, including one vegan and one lactose-intolerant guest.

The dessert solution?  Vegan chocolate mousse, using.....wait for it.....avocadoes.

I will let you know how it comes out.  This recipe calls for Stevia, but I am going to use sugar instead. So sue me.

Vegan Chocolate Mousse

Ingredients (serves 1-2):

• 1 large ripe avocado
• 1/4 cup raw cocoa powder
• 1/4 cup coconut milk or almond milk
• 2 tsp stevia (or other natural sweetener)
• 1 tsp natural vanilla extract
• Optional extras: toasted sliced almonds, chia seeds, frozen mixed berries, almond butter, cocoa nibs, coconut oil

Directions:
Purée the avocado until smooth.

Mix together the cocoa powder and milk until combined and add to the avocado.

Stir in the stevia, vanilla extract, and any extra ingredients (toasted almonds add a lovely crunch, and frozen berries give the mousse a great fruity twang!) and mix well.

Transfer the mousse to individual bowls and store in the fridge until ready to eat.

mindbodygreenveganchocolatemousse

Spring Animal Plans

Right now we're in conversation with the couple down the road, David and Ray, to raise a few hogs and possibly some chickens together.  They have an ideal, flat-ground pasture with stables that were on the property when they bought the house.  So we are thinking between the four of us we think we can handle feeding and cleaning without it taking up too much of any one person's time, since we all work off-property at least a few days a week.

Until recently, Big Ag and I were buying shares of my nephew's FFA hogs, but he's graduated now and is out of the program, so if we still want a freezer full of pork we're going to have to raise it ourselves.  And we were buying store-bought organic, free-range chicken, until we discovered even organic chicken has the same bacterial loads of salmonella as factory-farmed birds do, which is not encouraging.  So meat birds are a definite possibility.  One of the chefs at the winery even offered to do all the butchering of the birds if we give him a few to take home with him!

I feel lucky to be going into this proposition with not only Big Ag, but also two other strong men, who will be strong enough to wrangle the hogs once they get large and potentially unruly.  I am hoping we can do all this animal raising before the heat comes, since hot animals are stressed, and I don't want to have to worry about their well-being when it's over 100 degrees.

It will be a lot of work, but I know I will truly appreciate the bacon, chops and sausage in the freezer come summertime.

Our state bird!

The California Quail.  We see them a lot in the yard, along with roadrunners.  And they love running in between the rows of the vineyards at work, popping in and out of our line of sight and delighting our customers with their scurrying antics.  But of course I love seeing them at home more, because there I can just relax and enjoy watching them for as long as they want to hang out in the yard.

Cute, huh!

Wolf Moon Nights, Working Days

The last two mornings I've slept well and woken up early, unusual because generally on the nights when the moon is full our room is so bright I often have trouble sleeping. January's Wolf Moon has been good to me, though, and I'm currently very well-rested.

 The weather has been freakishly warm -- 82 degrees was our record-breaking high temperature yesterday -- so the mornings are also warmer than usual (44 right now).  It seems strange to stand outside on a January morning in a t-shirt and not freeze, but I'm not complaining. It seems stranger still to be working at the winery and have to throw open all the doors at 2 p.m. because it's actually hot and we need a breeze, but again, I'm not complaining -- the warm weather and breezes feel sooo nice.

The one specter looming on the horizon is our lack of precipitation.  We've had absolutely no rainfall since before Thanksgiving, and are already in a drought situation.  everyone in our area relies on some sort of well water, but it has a high mineral content, so rainfall is necessary to wash away the salts and accumulated mineral build-up from the ground to keep the crops healthy.  Without rain, we're looking at reduced crops here on the homestead as well as out in the area vineyards.

This week I worked three days in a row, so other than hanging wash and putting some water on my winter crops (the lettuces are tasting lovely right now, carrots are growing strong and onions are still getting started) I haven't been outside checking the property much.  I pretty much do what I have to do then start getting ready to go down to the winery.  We are bottling white wines right now, so the tasting room is a hub of activity...bottling volunteers (mostly from our wine club) coming in and out, the usual lunch-and-tasting crowd, then a big meal and wine outside on the sunny veranda for the volunteers late in the afternoon, once the work is done. 

These days are lovely, filled with sunshine, nice people, good food and of course plenty of great wine.  It makes me appreciate living here all the more.  I just hope we get some rain soon.

This next week I will be back, on-property, full-time, so pens will get cleaned (including the one we live in lol).  And we're in discussion with our neighbors about doing a pig share, and getting a couple of hogs raised and butchered before summer's heat sets in.  The chest freezer is alarmingly empty at this point, and my sister-in-law is taking a break from hog-raising now that her kids are done with FFA.

Not sure we can live without chops and bacon.