Simple Meals

We have found our meals getting smaller and simpler as time goes by. Part of that is age, we just can't eat as much as we used to and we don't need to because we burn fewer calories, otherwise it is a matter of choice. I have found myself using fewer ingredients and trying to incorporate what we grow or store in almost all of our meals. We buy some things - olive oil, apples, carrots, onions, cabbage, occasional eggs, milk when the goats are dry. We buy wheat, oats and flax in bulk buckets. But there's not really much else we buy. Coffee, we definitely buy coffee, for we are daily coffee drinkers. 

After I thought about it a while I realized that if we do experience a collapse, everyone will be eating much simpler meals made out of what is on hand. So our advice is to have on hand what you want to and can eat. Some folks have dietary restrictions because of their health, that is something to plan ahead for. Part of what we eat is to keep our bodies regular and provide adequate energy and nutrition. We have found that most people find our meals lacking enough items, ingredients or flavor, and that's okay. We truly believe everyone should have the freedom to choose, whether it is meals, location, weapons, vehicles or religion. This is the way we choose.

Here are a few of the meals we eat regularly. Sometimes they are like this, sometimes there are variations of the same theme. I didn't take a picture, but the other day we had a quarter pound ground pork burger on one of our sourdough buns with a slice of onion. Frank has mayonnaise and I have mustard. The side dish was a bowl of turnip greens. Different? Probably. Good? We like it.

 
Ground pork from the pigs that are no longer with us, eggs and salsa we canned last summer.

 









Okra we grew last summer and froze whole after washing. We slice and saute it in olive oil with salt and pepper. The purple hull peas were grown and canned in 2017.

 
Spam and cabbage, both store bought. Yes, Spam. We consider it part of our meat food storage and keep a good quantity on the shelf. We buy a head of cabbage about once a month and eat on it until it's gone, usually over three or four meals.

We eat greens regularly and keep a good stock on the shelf. We prefer our own turnip greens, but have others just in case we need or want them. We had quite a few comments and questions about turnip greens recently, so I was going to do an article about the nutritional benefits until I realized I had already done one. You can find it here, The Nutrition of Turnips & Turnip Greens. What we do differently now than when we wrote the previous article, is a serving of greens is simply water, salt and greens. We drink the water after eating the greens for the nutrients it contains.

Soup. Frozen tomatoes, cowpeas, cabbage and peppers. Canned green beans and squash. Ground pork, carrots, onions.

We are slowly using up some of the things we froze last summer. This batch of soup provides us four meals, some we eat fresh and some we freeze for later.

 

We have made a number of variations of the meat pie.







This version is made with our canned chicken, salsa, frozen peppers, cheddar, sourdough starter and store bought onions. It's okay, but we like it better with ground pork instead of chicken.

This meals takes little effort at this point. Turnip greens and Jacob's cattle beans. The tape measure was part of Frank's meal, um..... humor.... for this picture. Does this food taste wonderful? No, not really. We eat it for the nutrition and the taste is okay, but nothing great.

 

 










Think about simple. Think about how your meals would change if the SHTF. How would your diet change? What choices would you have? Are you used to eating what you would then be forced to eat? Would it make you sick? Can you afford to be sick in that situation?

Our diet is the way it is by choice. We like it that way. It's interesting to think it may benefit us if the world continues to spiral down into the abyss we seem to be forced to march a little closer to everyday. Eat what you store. Store what you eat.

Until next time - Fern

Goat Butchering, By a Novice

OP

We butchered one of our wethers, or castrated bucks, today. Butchering chickens has been part of our yearly routine for many, many years. This is only the second time we have butchered a goat, and the last time was about two years ago. There are many people that have butchered many an animal that will  

Frank

be able to help point out things that would make this task easier, more effective, and safer. A good friend of ours, OP, who has hunted and dressed out deer for years, came over today to help us out and give us some pointers. 

If you do not want to see pictures of this butchering process. Please do not view the remainder of this article. We will show our set up, process and end result. It's a little long, so sit back and enjoy the latest adventure in the life of Frank and Fern. We always begin a butchering process by thanking the Lord and the animal for providing us with sustenance and nourishment.

First, get things set up and ready. The table that held the drying sunflowers earlier in the summer was hosed down, brought in, and given a good washing. 

The butcher paper, plastic film and masking tape were brought in the kitchen along with a bus tub. The last time we butchered goats I tried using waxed paper for the first layer of wrapping followed by the butcher paper. It didn't work well. It did not make a good seal against the meat and allowed for some freezer burn. So, this time I am going back to the plastic film as the first layer. The grinder was set up, then all was ready in the house.

The knives were checked for sharpness. We have several knives we have accumulated along the way that I wanted to try out, just to see how they worked on a project like this. 

I have used this trusty skinning knife for many years. It is a good fit for me and works well. 

Once we had everything in place in the kitchen, we set up the area where we would hang the goat to dress it out. We used the tailgate of the truck as a workbench for our knives, towels, bucket of water, and bus tub to hold the meat. We used a reciprocating saw to cut through the bones of the neck, back, legs and pelvis area.

We use a gambrel and pulley for hanging the carcass. 







Now it's off to the barn. The last time we butchered, we put the goats in the stock trailer overnight with only water to help empty their stomachs. Then we drove the trailer down to the garage and hung them in the same place we are using today. But to do this we had to catch the animals, put them in the trailer, catch them again, and bring them out to be shot. Well, we don't plan on wrestling the goats through this routine again. We now have to be more careful with Frank's back, so this is not something we will be doing again. 

This time we shot the goat in the pasture, loaded him into the bucket of the tractor, then used the tractor to lift him up to the pulley to be dressed out. This worked kind of well. Unfortunately, we didn't drop him with the first shot, but it ended up okay in the long run.

Now for the butchering. As I noted in the title of this article, this is butchering by a novice. One of the things I used to learn how to butcher is this book. And one of the techniques I looked up again is how to tie off the bung (anus) to prevent any leakage from the intestines. When I asked OP what he thought of our techniques, one of the things he hadn't seen before was this process. He didn't think it would be necessary when dressing out deer, but commented on how full this goat's stomach was and that using this technique was a good idea. 

 

Here is a pictorial of the process.

After I got the meat in the house, I washed it thoroughly to remove any hair and blood.

Here is all of the meat including all of the scraps and organs that we saved for dogfood. There really isn't much meat on a goat, and especially a dairy goat. Since we raise Nubians and not meat goats, the comparison is like butchering a Jersey compared to an Angus, there is a big difference in the amount of meat you get.

 The only whole pieces of meat we kept were the hind legs, backstrap and tenderloin. The neck and front legs were boned out to grind.

After we had enough ground up, we stopped and had burgers for lunch. OP had not had goat meat anywhere except in a restaurant, and his first comment was, "This tastes just like meat." It's a very true statement. Many people turn their noses up at the thought of eating goat meat. But if you cook it just like you would any other meat - beef, pork - then it does taste just like any other meat. I realized just how much I had missed having some goat in the freezer after the first bite. It is very good. The only thing I did was add salt and pepper to the meat before cooking, just like I do with any other ground meat. One thing about our ground meat, it doesn't hold together like other ground meats when you make burgers. I have to be a little more careful with it or it will break and crumble. It is also fairly lean, so I put some oil in the pan as well.

We ended up with a good amount of dogfood from this butchering session. We keep the fatty scraps, the thin layer of meat on the ribs, heart, liver, kidneys, and lungs all as dogfood. If times ever do get hard, we want to have things set aside for Pearl, our dog, as well as for ourselves.

Besides the hind leg and one pound of ground meat we sent home with OP for helping us today, and the burgers we ate, we ended up with one hind leg, backstrap, tenderloin and nine pounds of ground meat. Not much, huh? While we were processing the meat our friend Grace and her husband stopped by for a visit. Grace helped me cut up the last of the meat for grinding and while we were visiting she made an interesting comment something like this. "This is a lot of work for only a little meat. But, if times get hard, you'll have meat and know how to process it." She's right. It is a lot of work, and we wish it was more meat, but we are very happy to have meat on the hoof out in the pasture and the tools we need to process it. This is also the reason we raise goats. If the time arrives when we no longer have access to refrigeration and freezers, then a goat has a smaller carcass, therefore, less meat. It is easier to process and preserve without the worry of spoilage.

After trying out the knives, these three worked out very well. The others were okay, but not near as effective or comfortable to use. This is another good thing for me to know. I think it's important to have tools that fit your hand and do the job, and the only way to find that out is through experience. One of the important safety factors that I like about these knives is the finger guard. With these knives I don't have to worry about my hand slipping down the blade while working with wet hands.

It's been a long, busy day. It's also been a very good day. We had good visits from friends and family. We learned a few new things about butchering, and we now have more meat ready to eat. Life is good.

Until next time - Fern