Thank Goodness

Remembrance Day today. My family was lucky. My Grandpa fought in the first world war, and came home safe and sound, and so I am here with my fingers moving across the keyboard, due to sheer good luck. It is a day to remember those who did not come back, and their descendants that did not come to exist.

A typical weekend here, and thank goodness there is a typical weekend!

Yesterday the second bag of beef bones dragged up from the bottom of the old chest freezer. It was from the organic, grass-fed, half quarter of beef that we purchased from Terra’s neighbour, back in October of 2013. Yikes, that is five years ago!

The day was cold and windy, so the Nesco portable oven was placed indoors, in the kitchen, to do its magic with the bones. The heat from the Nesco helped to heat the house, instead of the freezing winds on the porch. This is quite the opposite of summer us of the Nesco, when it is used on the back porch, to avoid heating up the house. The biggest disadvantage to having waited until the weather turned cold to make bone broth, is that it will have to be done indoors, and the aroma is not pleasing, not in the least. Onward though, time to make bone broth, and continue making use of the vintage foods in the freezers.

To the bones in the Nesco were added: 2 onions, skins on and halved; 2 carrots peeled and sectioned; 1 stalks of celery, chopped into sections; 1 teaspoon of peppercorns; 2 medium bay leaves; 1/4 cup vinegar; filtered water to within 1 inch of the top of the pan. The temperature was set to 350F for two hours, then turned down to 225F until the following morning, Sunday morning, this morning.

This afternoon the Nesco was turned off, and tongs were used to remove the bones from the broth. The broth was poured through a sieve into the 16 quart stock pot, and the pot was covered and set out on the back porch to cool completely. The temperature is hovering around freezing, so as the broth cooled the beef fat hardened into a thick brittle crust, which was easily removed. The fat was discarded, as were the bones and vegetables from the broth. At this point I do not have a method of using the fat or the bones, just the broth.

Tomorrow the broth will be reheated, then canned in the pressure canner. This winter it will form a base for soups.

The dinner menu contributed to the depletion-of-vintage-food project. Taco soup in the Instant Pot called for a jar of tomatoes, so the last frozen mason jar of tomatoes from 2016 were thawed and into the soup they went. Those tomatoes were the rejects from Terra and Lares garden that year, they had a bumper crop and were just going to leave the split tomatoes on the vines to rot. With their permission we grabbed them, stewed them, and froze them in mason jars. Found food is so much fun!

To serve with the soup, a new recipe for biscuits will be followed. The last batch were less than stellar, so back to the drawing board.

While I am busy with all this activity in the kitchen, Attila is working on the garage roof, the last phase of his project. The blocks between the roof rafters are being custom cut and nailed in. He worked on this yesterday and is working on it again today.

There is a lot of activity outside on the street lately as well. Flags to mark Bell (telephone) yellow, Gas green, and Water blue, have popped up all along the street, with spray-painted colour-matched lines across the front of the yard. There is one other line painted onto our property, of unknown definition, and it is coloured green.

When I was talking to one of our neighbours, she said that she heard, I know, reliable information right, that fiber-optic lines were going to be installed for the new subdivision. Our yard will be torn up for the third time since we bought Mist Cottage eight years ago. This time I am worried they will kill the trees close to the edge of the property, by cutting the tree roots as they dig their trenches. The trees were planted too close to the property line! I have my fingers crossed that the trees survive, I would sorely miss them!

Worldly

Weather

2°C
Date: 2:00 PM EST Sunday 11 November 2018
Condition: Mostly Cloudy
Pressure: 102.7 kPa
Tendency: Falling
Temperature: 2.3°C
Dew point: -6.5°C
Humidity: 52%
Wind: WNW 19 km/h
Visibility: 24 km

Quote

“Men have become the tools of their tools.”
David Thoreau
1817 – 1862

I wonder if it is possible for a truth to become more true!