Loaves, Fishes and All Things Abundant

Zeke's Dinner Rolls

We had a really nice Thanksgiving. And I don’t say that lightly. Normally, we’re pretty much homebodies and we don’t really enjoy being away from home for long anymore. But my mom and stepdad live in northeastern Oklahoma just on the border of Arkansas and we decided we were long overdue for a few days away. It’s BEAUTIFUL country up there in the Ouchita mountains so other than the long drive, it wasn’t too much of a hardship. J

This is actually the first time in 10 years we’ve been able to go away for more than an overnight stay somewhere without getting someone to stay here to take care of the animals. Our neighbor’s daughter is finally of an age where we trusted her to come over and let the chickens out every morning, feed them and close them up at night. She also fed the rabbits and dogs. We paid her a little to do it, but they’re not really the kind of people who understand how we live so trading the service wasn’t an option.

Chicken on the Hoof

We had our Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday. My step-dad Zeke has 5 kids. Counting them, their spouses, their kids and grandkids, we had about 25 people who showed up for dinner. All of Zeke’s kids brought a dish which helped a lot, but Mom and I spent most of Friday getting all the prep work done so there wasn’t so much to do on Saturday. I’ve never cooked for that many people before. It was fun and everything turned out well. Meanwhile….

The fish were biting! Zeke has a couple of well-stocked catfish ponds and Curtis loves to fish more than just about anything in the whole world. He and Zeke spent most of Friday fishing. They brought in 5 nice catfish and 8 assorted sunfish, mostly crappie. Needless to say, after cooking most of the day, then cleaning fish that evening, I slept like a rock that night! But I don’t ever mind cleaning a few fish. If you can’t go to the trouble to clean a simple little fish, you don’t deserve to eat.

Channel Catfish

After cleaning the fish, I hauled the heads, guts plus vegetable trimmings over to their next-door neighbors. Mom was baffled as to WHY I’d want to do such a thing, but old habits die hard and I can’t remember the last time I had so much as a potato peel that didn’t go into the compost pile or get fed to the chickens or rabbits. I just can’t tolerate waste and throwing such things into the garbage is wasteful to me. Hans and Cathie are permaculture enthusiasts and sure enough, there was a compost pile just waiting for those treasures!

Oh, and we got to share some of our chickens with Hans and Cathie. I ended up with a few too many pullets this year and most people around here want more colorful chickens than the White Rocks I’m so fond of for egg-layers, so they’re very difficult to sell. I really HATE butchering hens of any age, so I was relieved to find someone who’d take a few of them. Those were some MAD little hens after a 5-hour drive though -- their eyes were shooting daggers at me by the time we arrived! J

It rained all day Saturday so we didn’t get to see much of Hans and Cathie’s garden or farm. But I’m just in love with their dog! They have a beautiful Great Pyrenees named Bella. She’s everything a farm dog SHOULD be and I’m not going to be happy until I have one just like her! Truth be told, I’ve wanted a Pyr for awhile, but seeing how protective she was of her cats and chickens and how friendly she was to us really cemented that for me. Our own dog is getting really old, so it won't be long before I go in search of one.

As we were leaving, Hans gifted me with a couple of his favorite books: “Secrets of the Soil” by Tompkins and Bird, and “Seeds of Change” by Hobhouse. I’m looking forward to a snow-day when I’ll have time to read them!

Mom and Zeke also have a couple of friends we’ve been trading with for years. They spend a great deal of time trout fishing and we’ve been trading processed chickens for trout for quite a few years. Apparently, one of their kids brings her Cortland apples every year from Ohio and she happened to be in possession of quite a few of them this year. She gifted us with about 25 pounds! I realize now that I’ve never smelled a REAL apple before. I set them in the cab of the truck that evening and the next morning when I opened the door, the wonderful, intoxicating smell almost knocked me over! Sadly, they aren’t very good as a fresh apple as the texture is too mealy, but she assured me they make the best applesauce. We’re not really into applesauce, but apple butter is something I can live with! (That snow-day is looking better and better!)

She also gave us some pear preserves and applesauce she had made. I took her and Mom half a case of wild plum jam I made last year.

Over the summer, Mom bought several bushels of sweet corn from a local woman and put it all in the freezer. She sent me home with an ice chest full. I was really thankful to get that as our corn did not survive the drought this summer. It’s not going to last long though – we LOVE sweet corn!

Anyway, we had a great time. Now that we’re back home, it’s time to start butchering chickens in earnest as they are just the perfect age. I just got done butchering all the males from our own hatches and "The Hundred" are officially 17 weeks. There’s not a lot of meat on them at this age, but they’re so tender and juicy we’ll gladly eat 2 of them to make up for that! (Not really, ONE is the perfect size for two people.) At this age, they take about an hour to roast. I brush them all over with melted butter or chicken fat, then rub them with garlic or rosemary or lemon pepper and bake them uncovered at 350, basting again every 15-20 minutes. Sometimes I bake them on a bed of rice or dressing. What an incredible treat they are!

Roasted Broiler

A few weeks ago, I set up a butchering area on my backporch so I can do the job out of the cold. I had a ceramic-tiletop rolling kitchen island I wasn’t using in the kitchen so I moved that over by the big washtub. It’s nice having a sink and warm water for doing the job and cleaning up afterwards. I hung a chain from the rafters and I pluck the chickens into a big trash can that sits diretly under them while they hang. The backporch isn’t heated so on REALLY cold days I’ve been turning on a small space heater, but I like the cold for the most part. There are windows on all sides of the porch, so the view is nice and I can watch for coyotes trying to sneak up from the woods. I also have a cheapie CD player out there I can plug my MP3 into to make the job more pleasant. It’s really nice to have a good butchering setup – it’s all the difference between looking forward to the job and dreading it!

18-Week-Old Broilers

This week, I’ve butchered 9 chickens already. I’m trying to do four a day, six days a week until Christmas, but had to take a couple of days off to plant garlic. I finished putting 2773 cloves in the ground yesterday. I’m running a little late on the garlic, but only about a week later than I planted it last year and lots of that turned into nice big bulbs. And it can only turn out better than last year: as of November 10^th last year we were already under burn ban and that didn’t get lifted until this October! At least we’ve had quite a bit of rain this fall. And it’s raining this weekend, so I’m hopeful about the garlic. Quite a bit of what I planted was from seed stock I expanded last year in spite of the drought. Garlic doesn’t take much room to grow intensively, so I’m hoping to turn it into a small cash crop.

Garlic for Eating

The garden is doing well, though there’s not a lot of variety. But just this week, we discovered a patch of volunteer collard greens. I didn’t know collards would grow through a hard freeze, but these are doing just as well as kale or cabbage. We LOVE greens and were thrilled to find them. I picked a big basket of them for lunch today.

Zeke is a really good cook when it comes to roasting the holiday hams and turkeys. In fact, his is just about the only turkey I’ve ever liked. He normally makes the rolls as well, but his daughter brought some this time. They were good, but I really missed his. But turns out I got the recipe last year so I made some when we got home to go with a pot of stew. I make several different types of dinner rolls, but these are hard to beat. I’ve fiddled around with them trying to use ingredients I’m used to putting in bread (like whole wheat flour, potato flakes and real butter), but I’ve not managed to improve them. You can’t fix what’s not broken!

Zeke’s Dinner Rolls

(makes 24)

*2 packages yeast (I just use a heaping tablespoon)

*2 cups warm whole milk

*3/4 cups warm water

*3 tablespoons sugar

*3 tablespoons melted shortening

*1 tablespoon salt

*about 7½ cups unbleached all-purpose flour

Mix and knead dough. Let rise 2 times. Divide 24 times and form into “buttons.” Place in well-greased 10”x14” pan. Rise, then bake at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes, or until golden brown on top and bottom. Brush with melted butter or fat while still hot.


My Stepdad Zeke



Oktoberfest: Making Sauerkraut

3-Gallon Crock of Sauerkraut

My grandmother, Christine Weiler, came from a beautiful little town on the Rhine River called Engers, Germany. She was born in 1903 and met my grandfather while he was stationed in Germany during WWI. They married in 1918 when she was 15 years old. I can only imagine the shock she must’ve experienced when he dragged her home to the 80-acre hardscrabble cotton farm in Chalk, Texas, that was to be the beginning of her adult life. (She probably felt a lot like the Elizabeth Taylor character in “Giant!”)

It was there in the arid, barren sandpit of the world that they raised 5 boys, one of which was my father. He continued to farm that 80 acres until he retired, along with another 147 acres he managed to buy across the road from it and we still own most of that property today. Our own homestead was about 10 miles away, but I grew up playing among the old house and outbuildings his family had built there in Chalk.

I never got the impression that they were “poor” although I suppose they probably were by today’s standards. But then, money didn’t really buy very much of value back then. Most everything they needed was readily available from their own land and their own labor. Lumber was cheap and my grandfather and his sons built a beautiful little house there. It is so well built that if hunters and poachers hadn’t destroyed most of it by turning it into a deer stand, it might still be liveable.

My grandfather died in his 50’s, leaving my grandmother to raise the 3 youngest alone. I can’t imagine how hard that must’ve been, but she managed well enough and I never heard my dad or any of my uncles complain about hardship. By the time I came along, she lived in a small house in town and valued her solitude and privacy above all else. She was a respected woman about town who attended church faithfully, though she’d get a little miffed if the preacher kept the congregation late on days when the Dallas Cowboys were playing! She wore her wedding ring until the day she died and never so much as dated another man, though she had lots of friends at the senior center where they met to play dominoes most days.

She was frugal beyond belief, no longer out of necessity in her golden years, but out of habit. She had 2 or 3 nice Sunday dresses and maybe 7 or 8 more for daily wear and that was her entire wardrobe. She did not wear pants, EVER! She never owned an electric washer or dryer even though they were available by the time she lived in town. (And what I wouldn’t give NOW for those 2 old washtubs that sat in the back of her kitchen where she washed her clothes!) Every evening, she rinsed out her underthings in the bathroom sink and hung them on a rack to dry in her claw-footed bathtub. She had a fondness for potted meat and rather than waste fuel heating it on her kitchen stove, she’d set her little cans of meat and vegetables on the blue-flame heater in the living room since it was already running.

I’d like to say that I learned to cook from her, but truth be told, after raising 5 children with no labor-saving luxuries, she only cooked on holidays and for the occasional Sunday dinner. And, like all women who knew how to cook, she only wrote down recipes for desserts – cakes, pies, cobblers and such – she knew how to cook everything else from memory.

I did inherit a good many of her dishes, the most treasured of those being the bowl in which she served banana pudding in for special meals. She made a fantastic banana pudding from scratch and I’ve tried numerous recipes and never been able to duplicate it. Perhaps it’s best that way.

Another treasure of hers I’ve only recently resurrected is her pressure canner. I found it sitting outside by an old tractor one time when I was at the old homestead. God only knows what it had been used for – changing the oil, collecting drips from a leaky roof? In any case, I brought it home with me and carried it around for some 20 years, thinking one day it might be useful for something – a planter maybe? Earlier this year, I was thinking of ordering a smaller pressure cooker/canner than the All-American I have (which holds 14 quart jars). That’s when I spied my grandmother’s old “National” cooker/canner sitting on top of the kitchen cupboard collecting dust bunnies. Turns out those old canners can be refurbished with a new safety valve, petcock and gauge. Once I got it cleaned up, it works beautifully. It’s the perfect size for cooking down a tough old hen or ultra-pasteurizing 4 quarts of milk or broth.

My Grandmother's Old "National" Canner

Anyway, I didn’t learn to cook German food until I got older, but there seems to be some genetic memory there that craves it. Curtis and I both love the heavy, rich foods that are the backbone of the cuisines of Germany, Austria and many of the Eastern European countries. I’d planned on featuring both sauerkraut and homemade sausages in this post, but the sausage will have to wait until next time. Good sausage is worth waiting for!

Sauerkraut

I’m sad to say that I didn’t grow the cabbages shown in the sauerkraut crock. Cabbage takes a long while to mature and I’ve not figured out how to nurse it along through the hottest days of our Texas summers so that I can have some available for the first batch of kraut. But cabbage is cheap this time of year and our new grocery has some really nice ones.

However, I’ve grown some beautiful cabbages through the winter and enjoyed them during the early spring. Cabbage and kale are not the least bit affected by our mild winters and as long as you start the seeds early enough (no later than the first of September), they will start heading up nicely in February and by March or April, you’ll have some big, beautiful heads with the finest flavor you can imagine. Seedlings are available locally in late January/early February for harvest by early summer. They will not have the fine, sweet flavor of cabbages grown during colder weather, but what is summer without coleslaw?!

If you plan on growing your own cabbages for kraut, go for some of the old heirlooms that get BIG. Baker’s Creek has a good selection and many of those will reach fifteen to twenty POUNDS! That’s a lot of kraut. Or coleslaw.

I made 3 batches of kraut last year and will probably make at least that much this year. We rarely eat salads during the winter, so the kraut filles a niche for raw food with the additional benefits of lactic-acid fermentation. For every proponent of some health craze, you’ll always find people who claim it’s bull-hockey. But people all over the world have been proclaiming the health benefits of lacto-fermented foods for at least a couple thousand years. In one study, birds that were fed lacto-fermented veggies recovered from Avian flu.

We just think it’s delicious. Lots of vegetables can be pickled like sauerkraut – green beans, cucumbers, beets, onions, daikons – there’s really no limit and you can find lots of sites on the net devoted to lactic-acid fermentation (also called “probiotics”). It’s always helpful to have a jar of raw sauerkraut put back in the fridge since a teaspoon of the juice can be used as a “starter” to get those other veggies pickling – otherwise you sometimes have to use whey, which is not something I happen to have lying around.

Last year for Thanksgiving, I brought along a jar of kraut to share with the in-laws. That’s when Curtis’ mom remembered there was a “cabbage shredder” somewhere out in her garage that had belonged to Curtis’ grandmother. She asked if I wanted it. I’d been looking at “kraut mandolins” on the internet and had no idea what she was talking about! I couldn’t believe my eyes when she brought it out. It was covered in dirt dauber nests, dirt and rust, but I knew immediately that it could be made to work again. My in-laws are very “hygenic” when it comes to food safety and my sister-in-law gave me a strange look that I was actually planning on USING it, but here’s what it looks like now that it’s been cleaned. Mineral oil dissolved every last bit of rust on the blades and they’re still razor sharp. Beautiful, isn’t it? (And most likely much better made than the beechwood “Krauthobels” available from China new for about $50!)

Curtis' Grandmother's "Krauthobel"



If you don’t have a “mandolin” don’t rush out and buy one unless you’re already certain that you’ll use it a lot. Just shred the cabbage with a sharp knife. The pieces will be a little thicker than without it, but I made several batches that way last year and they were just fine. Sorry, but a food processor doesn’t really work well for shredding cabbage.

(Something that has been on my wish list for awhile are these beautiful Harsch fermenting crocks made in Germany. I can imagine someday having a big root cellar lined with these, bursting with all kinds of wonderful fermented pickles. After I have more money than sense, of course – they ARE expensive! J )

I’m not going to go through the entire process of making kraut – there are PLENTY of sites devoted to that on the net and after you’ve made it once, you’ll be an old hand and you’ll only need to remember the ratio of salt to cabbage.

Here is the basic recipe:

*5 pounds shredded cabbage

*3 ½ tablespoons of non-iodized salt (I use pickling/brining salt found in the canning section of the mart.) This works out to 2.1 teaspoons per pound of shredded cabbage, if that’s helpful.

I also like to add 1 tablespoon (per 5 pounds cabbage) of either dill seed or caraway seed. Juniper berries are also a nice addition.

Now, how much cabbage to start with?

The crock above holds about 3 gallons. It was less than $20 a few years back from Wal-mart. I started with 22 pounds of cabbages to fill it. That was 6 heads weighing about 3 ¾ pounds, minus the core, outer leaves and the last bits that are hard to shred. (Incidentally, a quart jar holds about 1.5 pounds of veggies, if that’s helpful at all.) Resist the urge to add any water to the mixture on the first day – the salt will continue to draw water out of the cabbage for a couple of days and it will likely bubble over if it’s too full. This will also happen if you pack too much kraut into the crock – leave a couple inches of headspace between the kraut & the rim of the crock.

It is necessary to make sure the entire contents of the crock are completely submerged. Here is my method: After pounding the kraut and packing it into the crock with a potato masher, take about 12 of the whole outer leaves you removed from the cabbage before shredding. Cut the thickest part of the stem out so they lie flat. Layer them over the top of the shredded cabbage, tucking the edges of the leaves down into the cabbage. Cut down a styro-foam paper plate so that it fits through the opening of the crock, then use 2 chopsticks (you’ll have to trim them with wire or bolt –cutters), crossed over each other and secured under the rim of the crock. (You’ll have to use a different method if you use a straight-sided crock.)

Be sure and save the whole leaves of cabbage after the kraut is done if you plan on transferring the mixture to jars. I fold up a leaf and tuck it on top of the contents of the jar to keep all immersed in the liquid. Kraut can be water-bath canned after it’s ready, but that will destroy the beneficial bacteria. We almost always eat ours raw. My kraut is usually ready within 7-10 days, fermented at approximately 70 degrees with cooler night-time temps.

Whole Pickled Cabbages

My friend Jack (Maryland’s genius!) has a cousin who married a woman from Bulgaria. Her family not only grows their own cabbages, but they pickle them WHOLE in trash cans or drums for making cabbage rolls (sarmas). I’d never heard of such a thing and subsequent googling didn’t turn up much either. Simona doesn’t measure the salt in the brine, but does it “by taste”. Knowing fully well I’m not capable of such a thing, I compared kraut and other brining recipes to come up with a reliable formula for doing it safely. Try it at your own risk. J

The biggest problem with these is that you need BIG cabbages (at LEAST 5 or 6 pounds) to get leaves that are big enough to roll and cook without tearing. I made them with smaller leaves, but it ended up being a very small batch and I didn’t dare cook them for as long as the recipe suggested. (I also cooked them in the oven so they didn’t bubble and tear as easily as they might have on the stovetop.) So you really need to grow your own for this dish. Keep in mind that this is as much a method of preservation as it is preparation – if you have a cool garage rather than a cold root cellar, this might be just the thing for you.

With a long, sharp paring or boning knife, cut the core from a cabbage. (The core only goes down a few inches, not the entire length of the cabbage – don’t cut so deeply that you damage the outer leaves.) Weigh the cabbage, then spread the interior leaves out just a bit without breaking it up. Add 2 teaspoons brining/pickling salt (per pound of cabbage) into the hole and work it into the leaves just a bit. Fill the hole with water and set the cabbages with the hole upright into a barrel, drum or trash can. After all the cabbages are in the container, make a weak brine using 10 parts water to ¾ parts salt and gently pour over the cabbages until they are all submerged. You’ll have to find something to hold them under the surface of the liquid until they wilt a bit. They’ll also need to be “aerated” (stirred around gently) occasionally, maybe once a week, to ensure even pickling. Kept in a cool place, they’ll be ready in about 4-6 weeks. (I’m told the fermented liquid left in the barrel is an excellent “tonic” for “cleansing” the digestive tract…) J

Sarma (Cabbage Rolls)

(clicking this link will take you to someone who actually makes these on a regular basis!)

Here’s my recipe for a very small batch (will serve about 4) of Sarma. It uses ONE whole pickled cabbage. But DO click on the link above to see the detailed instructions. Makes 12 rolls.

Rolls:

*12 large pickled cabbage leaves + smaller leaves for shredding

*1 pound bulk pork sausage (breakfast sausage or bratwurst is good)

*2 ½ cups water or stock

*¼ cup wild rice

*½ cup long-grain white rice

*1-2 smoked ham hocks or neckbones

Sauce (makes 6 cups):

*1 ½ cups sour cream or yogurt

*2 cups sour pickling brine from cabbage or kraut

*2 ½ cups water

*½ teaspoon salt

*caraway and paprika to taste

Bring the water or stock to a boil and add the wild rice and a little salt or bouillon. Cook, covered, for 35 minutes. Add the white rice and cook 10 minutes more, covered, stirring occasionally. Saute the sausage, cutting it with a pastry cutter to make it fine. Mix the sausage into the rice and fill the leaves, using about ½ cup filling in each large leaf.

Chop most of the small leaves and place them in the bottom of a large casserole or roasting pan. Drizzle about a cup of the sauce over. Layer the rolls and smoked meat on top. Pour about 3 cups of sauce over the top. Cover with whole smaller leaves or more shredded kraut. Top with the remaining sauce. Dust heavily with paprika. Cover and bake in a slow oven (about 250-300 degrees) for 2 hours.

Sarma (Cabbage Rolls)

As an aside, the first time I pickled a cabbage whole, I packed 2 of them into the center of the kraut jar, like this. It will take an additional week or so for the whole cabbages to pickle after the kraut is ready. After they’ve pickled for the initial 7-10 days amongst the shredded kraut, they’ll be soft & wilted enough you can remove the leaves & continue to pickle them whole that way, as it takes up less space in the brine. You’ll probably still have to add more pickling brine after removing the kraut though . One large cabbage will give you enough large leaves to make the smaller batch of Sarma in the recipe above.

Whole Cabbages Packed into the Kraut

For Our Own Good

Creamy French Silk Chocolate Pie

Last weekend was so wonderful. It finally rained! We got a nice, slow, five-inch drenching over the course of about 24 hours. And not just in our little neck of the woods either. All of Texas got at least a little. Those folks that have been battling fires down around the Austin area and over by Possum Kingdom lake needed it even worse than we did, which is hard to imagine. To top it off, just last night we got another 2.2”. We didn’t expect that!

The morning before the rain started, I got 50 pounds of “Austrian Winter Peas” broadcast in the big, north garden. That garden is roughly 1/3 of an acre and it’s where I plant larger crops, like sunflowers, sweet and dent corn, tomatoes, pumpkins and winter squash. The winter peas are a nitrogen-fixing legume, and in past years have supplied enough nitrogen that I don’t have to fertilize in the spring. They are very winter-hardy as well and can handle much colder temps than any we have to throw at them!

They are also a boon to the local wildlife. With so little rain this year, the deer are practically starving. There’s no grass to graze, nor are there any acorns on the oaks. Deer LOVE winter pea shoots. And I’ve no doubt the smaller varmint population has suffered this year, meaning my chickens are going to start looking mighty tasty to the coyotes and bobcats here pretty soon. The peas will offer food and cover for cottontails. Coyotes are opportunistic feeders and will take anything small enough to kill. The bobcats and ocelots however, actually prefer wild game over domesticated meat and I’d just as soon them have rabbits to snack on instead of my chickens! Our own cats are also quite fond of tender, young cottontails…

So the peas are a good investment all the way around. Here’s what they should look like in February before I mow them down and till them under:



Winter Peas in the North Garden
(That's Wilson-Prairie Cemetery Road to the right.)

The ground really soaked up the rain fast and I should be able to till the fenced-in garden in a few more days. That’s where I’m planting the garlic and onions this year. I made the mistake last year of not putting the garlic behind a fence, and between my chickens and our neighbor’s obnoxious 120-pound Lab, a lot of it got dug up or stomped on. The chickens got really excited over the mulch of oak leaves and I could hear them talking amongst themselves: “What do you think she’s hiding under all those leaves? Grubs? Worms maybe?” “I can’t believe she’d keep something like that from us. We’d better go remove those leaves and see what’s under them!” That was the end of the mulch and quite a bit of the garlic as well. I’m not even going to mention what they did to the rhubarb after I mulched it. J

I popped all of my garlic cloves last week. There’s a little over 30 pounds of it to plant and I’m hoping it will eventually evolve into a nice little cash crop. Garlic seed stock sells from anywhere from $14-$32 a pound. In addition, nematodes got into the garlic crops up north and into Canada last year, so stock for sale has been reduced, making it more expensive and near impossible to obtain some varieties unless you order VERY early in the year.

I ended up with near 10 pounds of good quality stock of my own to replant this year, which includes Ajo Rojo, Shilla and (my favorite!) Romanian Red. From Sharron at Crazy Horse I ordered another 21 pounds. Sharron is a private grower and a pleasure to do business with. I’ve not been as happy with some of the garlic I’ve gotten through the larger, better-known companies that have a monopoly on garlic internet sales. From my friend at Sonnenhof Polyfarm, I received a couple bulbs of elephant garlic that are near the size of baseballs, along with some Egyptian Walking Onions. I’m looking forward to expanding those for our personal use.

--------------------

Disturbing news in the food world this month, but what else is new? The “Cantalope Listeria” outbreak has now caused 21 deaths and 109 illnesses. Last time I checked. So far, they have not been able to track the exact cause. Someone mentioned to me that they’d read the shipper may be responsible for not rinsing out the truck between shipments, but I’ve not been able to find any links for that. Either way, the grower is likely to lose his farm whether he was directly responsible or not. I find the whole thing terrifically scary from a market-farming perspective. All the more reason to grow for your family alone or to use your surplus as barter rather than selling it outright to perfect strangers.

Even more disturbing is the new “Fat Tax” Denmark just implemented last week. As much as I intend to keep this blog as free of political and religious opinion as possible, I just can’t let this one slide by. It reeks too strongly of “Big Brother” and I guarantee you, it won’t be long before our government tries it out on us. Actually, they already are.

A couple weeks ago, the USDA released new guidelines that would completely eliminate potatoes from school breakfasts and drastically reduce them in school lunches. Further, the guidelines seek to reduce all starchy vegetables to only 2 servings a week. That includes corn, peas, lima beans and potatoes. Course I don’t know too many kids who’ll be disappointed about the peas and lima beans. J

WIC is also pushing for low-fat foods while exonerating high-glycemic carbs, like juice, whole and processed grains and pasta. Not that I’d normally care about WIC or the USDA’s food stamp program since I think it should also include mandatory drug, alcohol and tobacco testing, but sure, let’s make certain that pregnant and breast-feeding women, infants and children don’t get the nutrition they need so they can stay on the program forever. Let’s churn out more kids living below poverty level that will need advanced healthcare in the future.

Then you have Mrs. Obama deciding to single-handedly reform obesity in children. A noble goal, I suppose, except that you can’t fix the system if you won’t fix what’s broken within the system first. The USDA has recently replaced their outdated “Food Pyramid” with a new concept called “My Plate”. It does give a little more leeway in choices and it’s easier to understand, but as long as they continue to villify whole-fat dairy, push hard-to-digest oils rather than butter and lard, and insist we keep eating so much of the grains that are making us fat and contributing to diabetes, not one single child is going to lose weight healthfully. I DO commend Michelle for insisting that more exercise and “limiting screen time” be an essential part of every child’s daily activities. (Course it wouldn’t hurt more adults to participate in those 2 activities as well!)

But I’m still convinced the USDA is comprised of a panel of aliens whose sole mission is to fatten us on grains and corn syrup so the rest of their race can stop by and harvest us later. (Has anyone checked for X-shaped wounds on the back of their necks?!) McHumans… will they make us into nuggets or grind us into burger? I wonder what alien children get in THEIR Happy Meals?

Think you can avoid intervention from the food police by sending a bagged lunch for your kids? Last year in Britain, the mother of 2-year-old Jack Ormisher packed him a lunch that included an “unhealthy” cheese sandwich. The lunch also contained a vegetable and a slice of melon. It was the first time she had packed his lunch and she did so because he was getting sick from the food being prepared at the nursery school he attended. Staff at the nursery school confiscated his sandwich and informed his parents that in the future, cheese sandwiches must contain lettuce or tomato to pass muster. Thankfully, she found a new nursery school for him to attend. Too bad more of the parents didn’t do the same.

I don’t have time or space during THIS post to address this issue adequately, but the information is readily available to anyone who goes in search for it: It has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that fats and cholesterol do NOT cause heart disease or stroke! It has been proven over and over and over, yet the information is still ignored by most in the healthcare industry, who pass it along to us in the form of our politically correct dietary agendas. Further, evidence suggests that if we do not get enough of the protective foods (eggs, dairy, animal proteins) in our diets, we set ourselves up for all manner of health-related problems later – diabetes and cancer included. I am not suggesting we live on fats and oils, but in moderation, they’re not death-on-a-stick as many would have us believe. A calorie is NOT a calorie whether it comes from fat or carbs and our bodies treat them differently, no matter WHAT Weight Watchers tells you! These are subjects I’m going to be focused on a LOT in future posts.

One of Denmark’s primary food industries is dairy. And yet the Danes are not an obese people in the first place. It’s estimated that only about 10% of Danish people are obese, compared to about 33% of adults and 17% of children in the United States. (The USDA estimates much higher numbers of overweight and obese Americans, as many as 66%.) Butter and other whole-fat dairy foods are not making the Danes obese any more than they’re making Americans obese. We have high-glycemic carbs, especially wheat & white flour products, to thank for that!

The food tax in Denmark is not about making people healthy, it’s just another way to generate revenue for the government, just as it will be here if it’s ever implemented. Further, the tax only punishes the poor – everyone else will manage to afford the tax hike. One Danish resident said it best: “We get the taxes, but never a reduction on anything to complement the increases, such as on healthy foods.” Well, sounds to me like a tax on whole-fat dairy IS a tax on healthy foods!

The pharmaceutical industry is making BILLIONS on drugs that lower cholesterol, but they are NOT preventing heart disease or helping people live longer. And the constant brain-washing we get from the pharmaceutical companies, the AMA, the FDA, the USDA and countless other “well-intentioned” organizations makes it almost impossible to think for ourselves, even if we wanted to.

It has been suggested that statins to lower cholesterol be added to our drinking water supply. Pharmaceutical companies and many doctors will tell you these drugs are safe for everyone, but if you go in search for information about these drugs, you will find that just the opposite is true.

And it’s not enough that a very high percentage of adults take cholesterol-lowering drugs. Now they’re being specially formulated for children. Lipitor has been approved for use in children aged 10-17 since 2002. But just last year, Pfizer came out with (and got approved for) a chewable form for children 10 and up. Really?! Cholesterol meds just for children?!

I know. We’re too stupid to think for ourselves and it’s all for our own good….

Creamy French Silk Chocolate Pie

There used to be a pie kitchen in Arlington where you could buy a magnificent French Silk Chocolate Pie. They added some Grand Marnier orange liquer to it and it was just incredible. I tried adding an ounce of orange liquer to this recipe, but it wasn’t enough for the flavor to really shine through and I’m sure my teetotaling family would have a cow if I were to do that for the holidays, so I’m going to try it with a teaspoon of orange extract next time.

You can make this with a deep-dish graham-cracker crust, but it isn’t as good. You will need to put a fluted edge on a 9” crust in order to get all of the filling in the pan. There is a recipe at the bottom I developed myself for a gluten-free crust. It is quite good and simple to make. Be sure to use a deep-dish pan if you use the gluten-free crust. I usually make the filling first, then the pie crust, since the filling needs to be quite cool before the last step.

This came from the back of an old Pillsbury pie crust box. It is the richest pie I have ever eaten! I notice if you google it, you get a completely different recipe from Pillsbury, one that’s much lower in dairy fat. I haven’t tried it. However, I have eaten all but two slices from TWO pies using this recipe in the last couple weeks, and I have not gained a single ounce of weight. THAT’S BECAUSE WHOLE-FAT DAIRY ISN’T FATTENING!!! J

Butter Crust:

(Purchased, refrigerated crust may be used)

1 ½ cups flour

6 tablespoons cold butter

Pinch salt and sugar

3 tablespoons milk or cream

Filling:

¼ cup sugar

3 tablespoons cornstarch

1 ½ cups WHOLE milk

1 cup (6 oz by weight) semisweet chocolate chips

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 cups heavy whipping cream

3 tablespoons powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 450. If you already know how to make pie crusts by hand, go ahead and do so; otherwise place the flour, butter, salt and sugar in the food processor and whirl until the butter is incorporated. Pour in the milk or cream and whirl until mixture comes together into a soft ball. Roll the crust out and press it into an 9” pie pan. (A fluted edge is necessary.) Prick the crust all over with a fork (be sure and get the sides!), then bake the crust for 10-15 minutes or according to package directions if using a storebought crust. Cool completely.

In a medium saucepan, combine sugar and cornstarch; blend well. Add milk, cooking over medium heat until mixture just comes to a boil and thickens, whisking constantly. (This doesn’t take long!) Turn off heat, add chocolate chips and vanilla and continue to stir with the whisk until chips melt and mixture is smooth. (If the chips don’t melt, turn the heat back on for a jif.) Put a lid or cover on the saucepan and set it in the fridge to cool for about an hour.

In a large mixing bowl, combine COLD whipping cream and powdered sugar; beat on high speed until soft peaks form.

Beat cooled chocolate mixture at medium speed until light and fluffy, about 1 minute. Pour about half the whipped cream into the chocolate mixure and beat until blended. Spoon into pie shell. Top with remaining whipped cream. Garnish with chocolate curls and orange zest, if desired. Refrigerate for 2-3 hours or until set. Keep refrigerated.

Diane’s Basic Gluten-Free “Graham Cracker” Crust

4 cups Rice Chex cereal

½ cup brown sugar

¼ cup melted butter

Whirl Rice Chex and sugar in the food processor until fine crumbs form. Add melted butter and whirl until well-blended. More butter may be used if mix doesn’t press into pie pan easily, but it’s harder to cut through after it chills. For this recipe specifically, I like to add 1 tablespoon of cocoa powder (Special Dark is also good!) and a dash of cinnamon to the crust mix.

Song of Drought & Fire

Onion Pie

This has been, without a doubt, the worst gardening year in the 10 years we’ve lived here! Spring was bad enough and it went downhill from there. The wildfires began back in April, followed by triple digits early in the summer and continuing through the end of August. More wildfires this month and everyone’s been on pins and needles every time a breeze picks up. We’ve had a light smattering of rain over the last few weeks, but it hasn’t even been enough to germinate garden seeds. Everyone’s ponds are dry and hay, if it can be had at all, is running about $120 for a round bale and  $12-$14 for a square bale of coastal. The really sad part is that if we get no rain in October, there will be no more precipitation until at least February. That’s just the way it works in Texas.

But still we plod on and we’re hopeful. The fall garden is planted even though I had to germinate it with a sprinkler. Grasshoppers decimated the flats of cabbage and broccoli I’d planned on setting out this month so those will have to come from the grocery this winter. I wasted no expensive or rare garden seeds on the fall garden. Everything is very basic and planted in large quantities – there’s 40-foot beds of spinach, turnips, carrots, green beans and summer squash. And that’s it! I will miss the beets this year, but with triple digits all during August, I saw no point in wasting the seed.

We do have chicken though! At least there’s that. The hundred that arrived at the beginning of August are now 8 weeks old and growing like little weeds. The feed bill is higher than I would like, but there’s simply nothing else for them to eat – no bugs, no grass, nothing. And the other day I looked up and realized that in addition to the hundred I ordered, we’ve got probably another 40 of our own needing to be thinned out. So at least 3-4 days a week, a chicken has been going into the skillet, the soup pot, the roaster or the freezer. For that I am thankful.

The Horrendous Hundred

I am also thankful that we have so much food put back. Even though much of our fresh produce is coming from the grocery right now, there are always our own treats to round out the meal: canned corn and tomatoes, picante sauce, pickled peppers, wild plum jam and pancake syrup, frozen blackberries, all kinds of frozen fish. The chickens have moulted and there are fresh eggs again. Not a lot yet, but at least they’re of good quality, unlike the few eggs we were getting during the heat of the summer. And I still have some turnips and carrots packed away in the bottom of the fridge from back in the spring. We are definitely not starving or malnourished! But little treats go a long ways right now.

Last weekend we re-fenced our broiler yard with chain link. The old fence made of chicken wire was rusted, sagging and falling down. Even though we let them free-range most of the day, it’s nice to have a place to confine them when needs be. Like when the garden is germinating or we need for them to leave us some tomatoes unmolested. Or I have errands to run and don’t want to have to worry about coyotes or stray dogs. So there are good things going on right now too.

New Fencing on Broiler Yard

With the weather turning a little cooler, I’ve been enjoying getting back in the kitchen every day and using the oven again. Breads, soups and stews have been on the menu a lot these last couple weeks. And then there are the pies, both savory and sweet…. I think pies are my favorite food group. J

-----------------------------

A couple months ago, a friend gifted me with a very unassuming little cookbook: “The Country Kitchen Cook Book” by Edward Harris Heth. It was first published in 1956 and the introduction is by Euell Gibbons, famous “stalker” of wild foods. My friend knows my affliction and affection for older cookbooks and this one instantly made it into my Top Ten! The book is worth reading for the stories and anecdotes alone, but the recipes (which are loosely written) have also proven noteworthy. This morning I enjoyed “Boiled Coffee” for the first time. I thought it would be bitter, but it wasn’t. The caffeine content, on the other hand, is right up there with an illegal drug and I thought Curtis might have to Taser me when he got home!

Anyway, there’s a recipe in the book for “Onion Pie” which I’d never heard of. I’ve made it a couple times now and want to pass along the recipe. It’s one of the easiest pies I’ve ever made and we’ve been enjoying it both for breakfast and late night snacks. Even the butter crust is easy to make and I am NOT good with pie crusts! Mr. Heth assumed (back in 1956) that EVERYONE knew how to throw together a pie and maybe they did back then, but I’m going to give a few more instructions than the book gives. In the picture above, I added some ricotta cheese to the filling, but it didn’t improve the original recipe so I won’t be doing it again. The only thing I’ve added to the original recipe is some dill. This is a nice way to use up some of the onions that are starting to sprout. If you don’t have an 8” pie plate, use a 9” – the pie will be a little thinner or you can add another onion, a little more bacon and sour cream and another egg yolk to fill the pan. Don’t get hung up on the details – they really don’t matter much!

Onion Pie

Butter Crust:

1 cup flour

¼ cup cold butter

Pinch salt and sugar

2 tablespoons milk or cream

Egg wash (optional)

Filling:

2 large onions, finely chopped

4 slices (ounces) bacon, chopped

2 teaspoons caraway seed

Salt and pepper to taste

----------

½ - ¾ cup sour cream

1 egg + 1 egg yolk

1 teaspoon dill

Preheat oven to 400. If you already know how to make pie crusts by hand, go ahead and do so; otherwise place the flour, butter, salt and sugar in the food processor and whirl until the butter is incorporated. Pour in the milk or cream and whirl until mixture comes together into a soft ball. Roll the crust out and press it into an 8” pie pan. (A fluted edge is pretty, but not necessary.) Prick the crust all over with a fork (be sure and get the sides!), brush on an egg wash, then bake the crust for about 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, saute the onions, bacon and caraway together until the onions are soft. For best results, sweat the onions by covering the pan for a few minutes, then remove the lid and evaporate the water. (This will keep them from sweating in the pie later.) Season with salt and pepper.

In a large mixing bowl, stir together the sour cream, eggs and dill. Pour the onion/bacon mixture over and mix thoroughly. Pour all into the cooked pie crust and place in oven on center rack, reducing heat to 350. Bake for about 40 minutes.

Pie is best served warm with a dollop of sour cream on top.

Chicken and Dumplings with Spinach and Mushrooms

This makes quite a large pot and is very filling. For a larger family, add another quart of broth, some more seasoning, then double the dumpling recipe cooking each batch of dumplings separately.

1 whole chicken, boiled in 3-4 quarts of water, deboned and chopped

--------------------

2 tablespoons chicken fat or butter

1 large onion, chopped

Fresh garlic, to taste

2 stalks celery, sliced

2-3 carrots, sliced

½ pound mushrooms, sliced

2 quarts chicken broth

2 tablespoons chicken bouillon granules or 2 teaspoons salt

Pepper to taste

--------------------

1 recipe Buttermilk Biscuits

--------------------

½ pound spinach or other greens, chopped or thinly sliced

1 teaspoon dried tarragon

1 cup cream

¼ cup flour

In a large stockpot, melt the fat or butter and add onion, garlic, celery, carrots and mushrooms. Saute until almost done. Add the broth, bouillon and pepper and bring to a boil. Add dumplings all at once, cover and simmer on low heat for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally to break up the dumplings. Stir in chicken, spinach and tarragon and bring to a gentle boil. Adjust seasoning. Whisk together cream and flour in a small bowl. Add to soup and heat through until thickened.

Buttermilk Biscuits

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon sugar

--------------------

¼ cup melted chicken fat, butter or oil

Buttermilk or thin yogurt, about ½ - ¾ cup

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together dry ingredients. Using wire whisk, cut in fat or oil until mix is crumbly. Stirring with a fork, add buttermilk a little at a time until dough just comes together. Knead a few times, then roll dough out about ½” thick on a well-floured counter. Using a pizza cutter, cut the dough into 1” cubes (or smaller). A tablespoon of chicken bouillon granules may be substituted for the salt. These are also super easy to make in the food processor.

Chicken & Dumplings

The Power of Barter

Whole chickens ready for the freezer, bar-cut shown on right

We are fortunate to have recently acquired some new neighbors who enjoy hunting and fishing. The wife has family in the South Texas area that loves to fish the Gulf. Back in the summer, she went fishing with them and brought back a considerable amount of Red Snapper. I recently traded her a couple of chickens, some eggs, salsa and jam for several bags of the wonderful fish. There’s nothing like good ocean fish, filleted and frozen within hours of being caught. That’s just not something we’ll probably ever manage to acquire ourselves and we were thrilled to get it.

They aren’t the first people we’ve traded with. We had another neighbor (who’s since moved away and we rarely see him) who LIVES for hunting and fishing. With him, we traded for wild pork, elk, venison, Spanish mackerel (kingfish) from the Gulf and rockfish from Alaska. There’s a retired couple who live near my mom who spend almost every waking moment trout fishing in Arkansas. I always send them some eggs and chicken in return for the delicious, delicate little trouts. At one time, I also used to trade eggs with a woman with milk goats until I decided it was too far to drive to her house every week.

And I’ve only recently become acquainted with my mom and stepdad’s new neighbors. He loves to garden, keeps a few chickens and leans heavily towards permaculture. He’s also a fount of knowledge regarding fruit trees and heirlooms and owns many unusual species of plants and trees. We exchanged some seeds, bulbs and plants awhile back and I’m now the proud owner of some of those unusual things. (The succulent Cuban Oregano is just too cool!)

People are always asking me if I sell produce, chickens and eggs. Well, I used to, but that ship sailed a long time ago. To be frank, I finally got fed up with the public I was having to deal with and came to the conclusion that mere money is not an acceptable form of payment for the quality of goods that we produce. Food laws have also become so ridiculous I don’t like having to navigate them. And God forbid if someone should get sick and blame it on something they ate from my farm, even if that’s not what caused it!

The last time I accepted money for eggs was about 5 years ago. One of my regular customers requested a dozen eggs for a friend of hers. Next time I saw her, she told me that her friend had told her all of the eggs were bad. “What do you mean by ‘bad’?” I asked her. She didn’t know. That’s all her friend had told her. I was puzzled and astounded! I have NEVER sold an egg that was more than a day old (fresh) or that hadn’t been promptly refrigerated on the day it was laid and sold within a few days. I never pick up eggs outside the next boxes unless I put them in a separate basket for us to eat. And I’m a control freak about keeping track of the lay dates. The only thing I can figure out is that perhaps the woman had never seen fertilized eggs, or perhaps she had never seen or tasted the golden-orange yolk of a free-range egg?

I’ll never know, but that was too close for comfort. And it could have gone very badly. I haven’t sold an egg since that day, but that doesn’t mean we don’t use them for trade.

Barter is a really wonderful thing on a small homestead. For us, it means we don’t have to do EVERYTHING ourselves. Not that we don’t try! But if we short ourselves in some way, there’s likely to be an abundance of something else we can use to trade for things to fill in the gaps. For instance, last year we got bumper crops of tomatoes and wild plums. I ended up with something like 6 cases of wild plum jam and pancake syrup, and I canned tomatoes, salsa and sauce every few days for almost 2 months. If you lift the skirt of the bed in the guest bedroom, you’ll find cases upon cases of tomato products!

The beautiful jars of pickled peppers at the top of this page were also canned last year. The year before that it was pickled okra. Three years ago, I processed some 800 ears of sweet corn, much of which ended up being canned. Another year there was a bumper crop of green beans.

The people who buy all their food from the mart “Tsk Tsk” at me and say “Whatever are you going to DO with all that stuff? You can’t possibly eat that much yourself!” Well, WE don’t have to. But we can use it to trade for stuff we don’t produce ourselves.

One of the great things about barter is that you’re dealing in the same coin. People who purchase all of their food expect everything you sell them to look pretty and uniform like it does at the grocery, only to taste better and be grown with organic methods. It has never occurred to them that the REASON that food is flavorless is because it was grown to be pretty and uniform! If you sell them something that looks different or is more trouble than what they’re used to, they’ll usually turn their noses up at it no matter how good it tastes. And they think that if they dangle money in front of you, that should be more than enough to secure your goods and services. But they aren’t dealing in the same coin because money simply can’t buy the same quality you can produce yourself. You can’t take their money (no matter how much they want to give you!) and buy food of equal or greater value with it. It just can’t be done!

And that’s especially true with meat. People think all chicken should be butter-tender and plump. But after you get used to eating free-range chicken that has foraged it’s whole life, grocery store broilers are nothing but flavorless mush compared to them. And the meat stinks from the high protein feed they’re fed to make them reach that size in 6 weeks instead of the 4-5 months it would normally take. The other day I found chicken on sale for $.50/lb. and bought a couple bags of it to feed my little mini-Aussie. It smelled fine in the package but my house stunk to high heaven for 2 days after boiling that down. I’m glad WE didn’t have to eat it!

But people who hunt and fish and raise their own meat KNOW what to expect from wild and farm-raised meat. They know that pork is NOT the “other white meat” since wild and free-range pork is almost as red as beef. They know that pastured beef tastes almost exactly like venison and little like the grain-fed marbled slabs you get from the grocery. And they understand how much trouble you’ve gone to when you offer them your own goods for theirs, because they know how much trouble they’ve gone to! You’re dealing in the same coin when you trade with them.

Another great thing about barter is the quality that’s a result of specialization. We don’t yet have larger livestock than chickens and I get little enough practice cutting up venison and wild pork. But my chicken butchering skills are quite advanced and the chickens I have to offer for barter are immaculate. They will always be butchered WHEN they should be and they are cleaner and in better condition than store-bought birds. You won’t find wing tips missing and broken, bruised drumsticks and I use a bar-cut to tuck the legs in tight to the body cavity for freezing. The skin will be soft and supple and each chicken is clearly labeled as to the age and condition of the bird, plus the date it was butchered. I use a freezer wrap that will keep them in great quality for much longer than the 3 months most freezer manufacturers recommend.

My canned goods are also top quality because I’ve been around canning my entire life and I’ve been doing it hard and heavy for about 10 years now. Another barterable skill I have is baking bread. If I include a stick of Italian Peasant Bread in with a gift of barter, I must like you very much indeed!

That quality is also present in the bartered goods that we receive. The Red Snapper was in large boneless fillets and vacuum-sealed for freshness. Our neighbor told me her mom is the expert at cleaning the fish and you can certainly see it in the quality of the cuts. The trout we trade for is filleted so carefully and expertly there looks to be almost no waste. It’s also vacuum-sealed and the little trouts look like works of art the way he stacks them in the package. The raw goat’s milk I used to trade for was chilled immediately after milking in a clean, sterile sealed container so there was never an “off” flavor. That’s the kind of quality you get when you trade with people who are experts at what they do. It’s not something you’ll ever find at the grocery store.

Over the years, we’ve learned that it’s good to be generous with our friends and neighbors who homestead, hunt, fish, garden and brew. You just never know what kinds of wonderful treasures you’re going to end up with!

FishWiches

I had some Red Snapper left over from the last batch of fillets I cooked and I’ve been making them into a delicious sandwich spread. You can use any kind of mild-flavored fish, both ocean and fresh-water. It’s an especially good use for fish that are too small to fillet, like bluegill, small bass and crappie, since you can remove the bones after they’re cooked. For fast meals, put your leftover cooked fish pieces into a zip-loc and freeze them for reheating in the microwave later.

Take one 3-4 ounce piece of cooked, leftover fish (fried, baked, grilled) and crumble/flake it into a small bowl. Add a little minced onion (maybe 2 tablespoons?), some sweet or dill pickle relish (or chopped pickles), about ½ teaspoon of dried dill and a generous dollop of tartar sauce or mayonnaise. Mix well. Makes enough for 2 open-faced sandwich halves.

I like mine with some tomato and lettuce on the bun, salt and vinegar chips on the side and a dark beer to wash it down. Shiner Bock’s “Black Lager” is perfect with this dish. J

Beautiful Burger Buns

(clicking on this link will take you to the King Arthur Flour website)

These are just delicious! And so easy to make. I add a ¼ cup of powdered milk, ¼ cup of potato flakes and 1 teaspoon of onion powder. I also substitute 1 cup of the flour with 1 cup of soft pastry wheat. (And it always seems to take a little more flour than what the recipe calls for.) Instead of brushing them with butter, I use an egg wash so the toppings will stick. My favorite topping is cumin seed. Curtis likes the ones with dill seed or caraway seed best. You can also use poppy seeds, sesame seeds or just plain kosher salt.

Make sure you get them VERY flat before the last rise. After shaping them into disks, I let the dough rest for a few minutes, then flatten the disks out on my tortilla press to about ½” thick. You can go a little thicker, but not much. We haven’t bought bread in 7-8 years and this is one of our staple sandwich breads.

Beautiful Burger Buns with Dill & Sesame Seeds