Hot! / Freezing Fresh Raw Eggs, Frugal Homemade Baking Mix 2.0 and Biscuits, Stocking Up Wisely

Hot! /Freezing Fresh Raw Eggs-

We are getting hot here, or I should say, still HOT!!! 100+ weather is the norm in the week to come. We water, water, water everyday. We mulch heavily too, of course. Mulching conserves moisture and keeps weeds down. We haven't had this kind of 100+ ongoing heat for quite a few years! Here's our forecast-

We are in a full-scale production of fresh eggs! We've been averaging 3-4 eggs a day. We have been giving our adult kids some of our eggs and using up some ourselves. I recently found we had five dozen eggs in our fridge, which is a bit too much! I had recently done some research on how to freeze fresh, raw eggs and decided to try it. There's a few different versions out there, so if you're interested you can do your own research. Basically there are people who basically scramble the eggs with a pinch of salt as a stabilizer. Then there are people who simply freeze the eggs (out of the shell) as is. Most people freeze them in ice cube trays. I decided to give that a try! I found a large ice cube tray made out of food grade silicone that I bought. Some of our eggs are very, very large and some of them tend to run smaller. It seems to vary every week. So basically the really large eggs I put one in a cube. The smaller ones I put two in a cube. When I was able to I put two in a cube combining maybe one medium egg and one small egg-

I went ahead and put them in the freezer, levelled them to freeze up completely-

 After they were frozen I pop them out of the ice cube tray and put them in Ziploc bags labeled with the date-

I will probably go ahead and take them out of those bags and use my vacuum sealer for better protection. They kind of look like popsicles! I did read that you should thaw gently in the refrigerator before using or the eggs will be rubbery. These would either be eating scrambled or used in baked goods. What's good to know is we'll have eggs in the winter when our hens slow down their production with the short days. In the near future I will thaw some, scramble and report back on how they came out!

Photo from Mennonite Girls

Frugal Homemade Baking Mix 2.0 and Biscuits-

I posted Mother Earth News Baking Mix last week, here's another version from the amazing website Mennonite Girls Can Cook . They have so many amazing recipes, some gluten free. While some of the dishes are pretty heavy on the fat (think feeding hard working farmers) their baking recipe database is huge! Many you can make more healthy by using whole grains, like WW Pastry flour. Additionally there's a section here Variations On Biscuit Theme with tons and tons of different kinds of biscuits you can make! Too hot to bake right now, but will come in handy in the fall/winter with soups, etc. Browse thru their website, tons there! They also have some cook books online for sale as well.

Stocking Up Wisely-

With food prices steadily rising I decided to buy some things to freeze for the winter. Yes, winter! In the cold winter months once in a while I like to roast a chunk of beef, with veggies and herbs. I decided to buy some meats at Costco specifically to freeze. I bought a Nutrichef sealer vacuum sealer last year, works great! I bought two beef roasts and one big pack of pork country style boneless ribs. Split them up, sealed and labelled. All done! I have also double-bagged using freezer bags and sucked out most of the air, labelled, also worked well. 

I also bought a few other things- chicken breast with ribs (50% off) as this time of year chicken parts to BBQ are priced low. Also butter to freeze, organic raisins (great for holiday baking!), extra artisan breads and cheese. It's easy to think ahead- what do I usually buy later that I can store NOW? Grains, beans, etc. all store so easily in bags, jars or cans. We have a bumper crop coming of apples and peaches, less with the pears. I will be canning/freezing those too. Veggies are planted, will store dried herbs and make pesto. I'm hoping our local farmstead will have the same HUGE organic chickens for sale that I got last year! I bought two last fall and they were great. Supports local farmers, good price and stores very well. Like last year I am working on this (made my little sign)-

Idea from the Retrosuburbia Facebook Group