Tag: coleslaw

seeding… finally!

here we go!  after a freezing cold April with so much snow, we are finally getting going around here…  well, the farmers have been going for a few days but I finally got the ‘nod’ to bring suppers out…

as it so happened, my run took me by the cemetery this morning and I stopped by to have a chat with the farmer’s Grandpa…  both the farmer and I miss him this time of year…

I felt like he asked me a bunch of questions about seeding that I didn’t have the answers to and then told me I shouldn’t run so much…  seeding, farming, this land, this area… it all reminds the farmer and I of the hard work, sacrifices and joys that Grandpa and Grandma went through for us to be were we are today and doing what we are doing…

seeings how I had ran all morning I had planned ahead yesterday and bought what I consider to be Costco’s finest achievement… Tiramisu Cake…  it is delicious…

dessert being done… I moved on to the Pulled Pork on a Bun part of the meal… having gone a winter with minimal meat cooking and no pork/bacon in the house, this was a bit much for me to handle…  so I called upon the help of my 14 year old… turns out, he was just as disgusted by the texture of raw pork as I was!  none-the-less he slapped some spices on it for me and then proceeded to wash his hands like he was heading into the operating room

I used the Instant Pot to brown the pork, then added the garlic and onions in to saute and then returned the pork to the pot

I added some Passata (tomato sauce), apple cider vinegar and worcestershire sauce and set the Instant Pot for 70 minutes

whilst that was cooking away… I quickly cut up some bok choy and cabbage for a salad… it occurred to me that I have made more complicated main dishes and salads but I’m not exactly sure why…  when this was so simple and easy and quick!

salads are most likely thrown out by the farmers I’m assuming but it doesn’t mean one cannot try!

when the pork is done it gets shredded and added back to the sauce with some brown sugar in the sauce…

in seeding I am never sure exactly how many guys will need to be fed so I plan for apparently 54 of them by the amount of pork I made…  good news is the farmer will be getting pulled pork sandwiches in his lunch all next week!

I’ve been told by the farmer that you cannot have a pulled pork sandwich without coleslaw on it…

this was one of the easiest meals I have made and I was very glad today to have a few easy things to throw together for my first meal to the field… as I get older I realize you shouldn’t start seeding with your most complicated meal as you are just remembering how to cook for a big group again…

I also will be very sad someday when I have no one around the house helping me out… no wonder back in the day they had so many kids…  they didn’t like kids any more than the rest of us do… they just knew they couldn’t run out of manual labour around the farm!  I have found that my children will still do every job I ask them to do for a pop and dessert…

crunchy bok choy and cabbage salad

Ingredients:

Dressing:

  • 3 tbsp sesame oil
  • 2 tbsp rice vinegar
  • 1 tsp honey
  • juice of 1/2 lemon and zest
  • salt

Salad:

  • 6 cups chopped bok choy
  • 1 cabbage chopped
  • 1/2 cup sliced green onions
  • 1/2 cup sliced almonds
  • white sesame seeds
  • black sesame seeds

Directions:

  • make the dressing
  • in a large bowl, make the salad and pour the dressing on
  • place in refrigerator for at least 20 minutes to marinade

pulled pork with coleslaw on a bun

Ingredients:

Pulled Pork

  • 4 lb boneless pork shoulder or loin, skin cut off
  • 1 tbsp paprika
  • 1 tbsp cumin
  • 2 tsp kosher salt
  • black pepper
  • 2 tbsp butter
  • 1 onion, chopped
  • 4 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
  • 1 cup passata (tomatoe sauce)
  • 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
  • 3 tbsp worcestershire sauce
  • 1/4 cup brown sugar

Coleslaw:

  • 1/4 cabbage, shredded (about 4 cups)
  • 2 carrots, grated
  • 4 green onions, finely sliced
  • 3 tbsp apple cider vinegar
  • 2 tbsp canola oil
  • 1/2 tsp sugar
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • black pepper

Directions:

  • in an Instant Pot, saute the pork that has been rubbed in the spices in butter until is is browned on all sides
  • take out and saute the onions and garlic
  • add the pork back and add the passata, vinegar and worcestershire sauce
  • set cook time for 70 minutes
  • when finished cooking, shred the pork and add the brown sugar to the sauce
  • for the coleslaw, add all ingredients together
  • serve the pork and coleslaw on a big bun

 

‘teddy bear’ sandwiches

I’m not sure the extent of it… but I feel like there might be a significant amount of lying going on…  by the farmer…  and it’s spiralled into  something he sees no way out of…

for the meal to the field tonight I made coleslaw, honeydew melon and strawberries, steak sandwiches with onions, provolone and arugula, corn on the cob and zucchini coconut loaf…  

and the farmer texted me… ‘great coleslaw honey’…  

he texted this to me as I’m sitting with some friends at a football game and in the middle of telling them what an awful coleslaw I made for the men tonight…

so awful, I said, that I might not even put the recipe on my blog…

as you can imagine, there were gasps and statements like… ‘no, Catherine, put it on… I’m sure you are just exaggerating’ … ‘oh Catherine, you can’t withhold a single recipe from us’…

it all started with a coleslaw I ate this summer, at the farmer’s mothers house made by his youngest sister Jamie…  I felt like it was the best coleslaw ever known to man…  so I got her to send me the recipe and away I went to re-create the party in your mouth coleslaw that I had experienced…

I recently had purchased a new, very cheap, food processor… after making zucchini relish and grating every ingredient by hand I felt like maybe I should own one…

so I began putting the cabbage into the food processor…

to say it was ‘finicky’ is an understatement…  and it also smelt like metal and burning rubber…

and it ground the cabbage into something you could serve at an old folks home…  (assisted living… not sure the right venacular to use for a place where people don’t have teeth but still enjoy cabbage)

the consistency of the cabbage was off-putting to me but I plugged ahead and made the rest of the salad, poured on the dressing I had found (although different than the dressing my sister-in-law used and not homemade… gasp)

 

and then I sampled it…  shook my head… sampled again… and considered throwing it out…  but then thought about the few hours I had spent making it and decided that I would just throw a note in with every meal saying…

‘sorry about the crappy coleslaw…  I know it’s gross…  I’ll do better next time’

but then faced with the task of writing this out 12 times I decided that I’d just let them come to the obvious conclusion that the coleslaw was garbage…

and then I get the text… “great coleslaw honey”… 

and I begin to wonder what else he has lied to me about…  I’m assuming other food dishes I’ve prepared are garbage and he raves about them…  perhaps the daisy dukes and ripped white jeans I wear don’t make me look great…  what if my ass really has cellulite all over it? I would never know!

I’m going to include the recipe… because it was so good… just not the way I made it… the way she made it…

and a side note… instead of cleaning the cheap, piece of crap food processor that destroyed my coleslaw… I threw it away…

you heard me… tossed it… it’s going to the burning pit…  all $18 of it…

Jamie's Party in Your Mouth Coleslaw

Ingredients:

  • fresh purple and green cabbage
  • corn (I bought frozen organic sweet corn)
  • red onion
  • cilantro
  • Renee’s Brand Coleslaw Dressing

Directions:

  • don’t mess it up

on to the actual pleasant tasting food item… the steak sandwiches… which I had the steak in the freezer marinated from the big meal prep I did earlier this month…

but there was a lie involved with this as well… I was unaware until tonight at the football game, an 8 year old girl brought me the sweetest thank you card… and thanked me for buying her 4H award winning Steer ‘Teddy Bear’…

and here all along I thought I had bought her brother’s cow…

she was quite proud to point out to me that her ‘Teddy Bear’ was far superior to her brother’s and won for being the fattiest…

so let me tell you, ‘Teddy Bear’ is delicious… 

the sauce from the marinade gets put in a pot while the steaks are on the bbq and you boil it until it thickens… ours did not thicken a whole lot… but was very tasty…

we served ‘Teddy Bear’ with some mayonnaise, provolone cheese, sautéed onions and arugula…

wrapped them up in tin foil, put them in the oven at 250 degrees for a bit to warm up and away they went…

my eight year old daughter picked 12 cobs of corn, husked them, boiled them, put butter and salt on them and wrapped them in tin foil for the supper bags…

her reward was that good feeling you get when you do a job well…

I had to set the supper bags outside the shop to be picked up so I didn’t miss my middle son’s first regular season football game…

it was also a test to the farmer’s self control how long you can make a meal last…

this was at 4:10 pm… I’m guessing his was done before 5:30…  because he “loved” the coleslaw right around 5:10…

meal to the field #4

 we combined red lentils the night I took this supper out…  saskatchewan is a huge producer of red lentils and a side note is my daughter loves to eat them in the combine… in fact when she is out there riding with her dad she drinks a pepsi and eats lentils… I figure once less mouth to feed…
  

sometimes you’ve got to be organized… thus me making the shell and the filling for the lemon meringue pie in the evening and then plastic wrapping it up, putting it in the fridge and then completing the meringue the next day – it actually worked very well…

I do wish there was a before and after for this pie going out to the field… let’s just say I saw what the farmer had to see and it was more of a ‘soup’ pie…  so as much as I love this pie, it is not a great one to survive the trip in the supper bag out to the field…  just eat it at home…

Grandma Swan's Lemon Meringue Pie

Ingredients:

For the 2 baked pie shells:

  • Crisco Pie Shell Recipe
  • 3 cups all purpose flour
  • 1 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1 1/4 cup crisco, cold
  • 11 tbsp cold water (1 tbsp less than 3/4 cup)

For the filling:

  • 3 cups white sugar
  • 8 tbsp cornstarch
  • 1/2 cup lemon juice
  • 2 tbsp butter, melted
  • 6 egg yolks, beaten
  • 4 cups boiling water
  • 4 tsp grated lemon zest

For the meringue:

  • 8 egg whites at room temperature
  • 1/2 tsp cream of tartar
  • 8 tbsp sugar

Directions:

  • for the pie shell, mix flour and salt together
  • add cubes of cold crisco and then add water
  • using a pastry blender, blend together dough and dump out onto counter
  • form into a ball and then cut into two
  • wrap the two balls of dough in plastic wrap and place in refrigerator for at least 2 hours
  • roll the dough out and place in pie plates
  • bake at 375 degrees for 25 minutes or until browned and then let cool
  • for the filling, combine sugar, cornstarch, lemon juice, butter and egg yolks in a pot
  • add the boiling water and bring mixture to a boil
  • when thickened, cool and pour into shells
  • for the meringue, beat egg whites and cream of tartar on high speed in mixer
  • add 1 tbsp of sugar at a time until it is blended and stiff peaks appear
  • place on cooled lemon pies and bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes or until meringue gets browned

corn on the cob is easy to wrap up in foil and take to the field…  it keeps warm and with some garlic butter is fantastic!

Corn on the Cob with Garlic Butter

Ingredients:

  • 12 cobs of corn, husked
  • kosher salt
  • 1 cup Becel margarine
  • 3 tbsp Johnny’s Garlic Spread & Seasoning

Directions:

  • boil corn for 8-10 minutes at a slow boil in water with salt added
  • remove corn and set aside on plate to drain some of the liquid
  • mix 1 cup margarine with the garlic seasoning
  • place corn on tin foil with 1 tbsp of margarine spread and wrap up


I love coleslaw…  not the KFC coleslaw as they’ve changed the recipe now and it is disgusting… but homemade coleslaw….  even in a pinch I like store bought coleslaw with tomatoes and mushrooms added to it…  and it screams ‘picnic’… which also screams ‘meal to the field’… 

these are the Hutterite chickens that I get… I try to only use meat that to my knowledge has had a good life…  as far as I know Hutterite’s treat their chicken’s well…  so I like to get eggs and chicken’s from them whenever they drive into my yard selling them to me…  I did become a vegetarian for just over a month last fall…  it was after harvest and I went hunting with the farmer (mostly to get away from the kid’s) and I thought it was more of a ‘window shopping’ type of hunting trip…  turns out I spotted a beautiful white tail deer (buck) and he shot it… I cried while three other hunters helped him take the inside of the deer out and tag it and load it…  it didn’t help that I had watched the documentary ‘Black Fish’ that day… so I said if I couldn’t take seeing an animal die I had no right to eat an animal…  just over a month later I was getting the mail and a new purse came in the mail for me… my curly haired boy ‘Meat’ quietly pointed out “what is that purse made out of mom?”….  then added “so you can’t eat animals but you can wear them?”…  this is when I realized the the vegan lifestyle was not going to fit into my farming/fashion/hunting life very well…  but I still like to know that the animal that I am eating has had a good go at life… enjoyed it as well as possible… and we do have meatless Monday’s in tribute to eating less meat…  

Hutterite Chicken Sandwiches with Coleslaw

Ingredients:

For the Chicken:

  • 2 fryer chickens, defrosted
  • 1/2 cup butter, melted
  • salt and pepper
  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 3 onions, sliced
  • 2 heads garlic, chopped
  • 1 bottle bbq sauce

For the Coleslaw:

  • 1 head cabbage, sliced thin
  • 1 head purple cabbage, sliced thin
  • 4 large carrots, sliced thin
  • 10-15 radishes, sliced thin
  • 1 cup half/half milk
  • 1 cup mayonnaise
  • 2 tsp white vinegar
  • 2 tbsp sugar
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
  • 1 bunch cilantro, chopped
  • 1 block, Meddo Belle Dutch Mild Gouda
  • 12 buns

Directions:

  • for the coleslaw, slice the cabbage, carrots and radishes and place in a large bowl
  • mix up the dressing (without the cilantro) and add to salad
  • put in fridge for a few hours
  • for the chicken, pour the butter over the chickens and then sprinkle with salt and pepper
  • cook in oven at 350 degrees for 2 1/2 hours or longer depending on the size of the chickens
  • cut up and set chicken aside
  • put olive oil in pan and at medium heat put in onions and garlic
  • cook for 5 minutes and then add BBQ sauce
  • add chicken to mixture and bring to a heat
  • for sandwiches, put meat, gouda cheese sliced and coleslaw and wrap in tin foil
  • option is: put coleslaw separate and put meat, gouda cheese and ranch dressing on bun and wrap in tin foil… then put the buns to warm in a 300 degree oven and when done pack up in supper bags