Retro Recipes

I'd love to pretend and have you all think that we only eat super healthy, all produced here on the farm, good for you meals.  I would love it if you thought that ;)  Probably even better if it were true.  And while it is true most of the time, there are also those times when I just opt for fast food, deli food or comfort foods from my memories growing up.

These simple, satisfying recipes are throwbacks to my childhood.  My Mom was an excellent cook....I mean to tell you, she was really good!  She cooked at home.  But in that odd, tilted way that life has because she was such a good cook and because we ate mostly at home we always thought tv-dinners and fast food were treats!  And maybe that's okay - it would be a lot better if we all thought good home cooking was "the norm" and these others were "treats" to enjoy only occasionally, instead of the other way around!

Thursdays were Dad's payday and Mom's grocery shopping days.  I remember the routine - go to town, pick up Dad's check and go grocery shopping.  By the time there were five of us kids ages 10 and under, it got to be a rotational thing to be able to be the child who went to the store with Mom.  Anyway, I'm wandering here....what I wanted to do was share two recipes with you that are from that era for me.  You might laugh, but as kids one of our favorite tv-dinners was "Franks and Beans"  LOL!  It came in the little oven safe packet with two little hot-dogs in a rich brown baked bean mixture with a little piece of cornbread and (I think) chocolate pudding for desert.  Whew, no color in that menu and probably not much nutrition either!  But we loved it.

So here is a recipe that recreates that taste treat from long ago (okay, its probably from 30 or 40 years ago for me).  Really, you've got to try this, it's so good!  Unless of course, you are one of my healthy-choice friends who never eats processed meats and store bought beans - that's okay, just skip over this recipe then.

FRANKS AND BEANS


2 (16-oz) cans baked beans (use the most common baked bean you can find for this – in our area the brand name will usually start with a “C” or a “V” and is a kind of tomato-ey base)
1 large onion, chopped – about one cup
2/3 cup unsulphured molasses
2/3 cup catsup
8 frankfurters, cut diagonally into pieces (3 or 4 pieces per frank is good)

Butter the inside of your crockpot. Mix all of the ingredients together in the crock, making sure the franks are pushed down into the beans.   Cook on low setting for 3 or 4 hours, or till mixture is heated through and nice and thick.

To be true to our tv-dinner memories, I make a nice moist and dense cornbread to serve with this. This is one of those lick-your-spoon comfort dishes to me. It can also be made in the oven – set at 300 to 325 degrees, combine the ingredients in a well greased casserole dish and bake for one hour and a half, to two hours.

Here is another one, only this comes more from my junior and senior high school Home Economics class.  I loved Home-Ec class!!! I still remember the Home-Ec room with its sets of well supplied kitchens (our class room had four different, complete kitchens)  As I mentioned earlier, my Mom was a great cook and people often say to me "you must have learned to cook from your mom"  Not so.  I was/am a very messy child.  My Mom was extremely, obsessively neat and clean and orderly.  I think I really distressed her!  So no, I was not allowed to cook with her.  Maybe I learned some things just from being in the same household?  I don't know, but I do know that I loved those cooking lessons in Home-Ec.  We didn't just learn to cook, we learned nutrion and menu-planning and grocery shopping.

Okay, I'm wandering down memory lane again, sorry!  I really just meant to share this second recipe with you from Home-Ec class.  It wasn't one of the healthy recipes we learned, it was a home made "fast food" of the day, one that was popular with kids.  It seemed like everyone made this occasionally at that time.  Now days, I know a lot of you don't eat canned tuna and if that is the case, this is another recipe you just want to skip over.  But oh my, it makes my stomach rumble just to think about it ;)

TOAST and TUNA CASSEROLE


8 slices bread, toasted (rye bread is really, really good in this dish!)
1 (6 ½-oz can) tuna, drained
1 small onion, chopped
¼ cup mayonnaise
4 slices American cheese (I prefer to use a nice slice of real cheddar)
Canned peas, drained (use your personal preference here – I use about half the can, but you can use the whole thing if you like)
1 can (10 ¾ oz) cream of mushroom soup
¼ cup milk

Arrange 4 slices of the toast in an ungreased baking dish. Mix tuna, onion and mayo; spread over the toast. Top each slice toast with 1 slice of cheese; place remaining slices of toast on top.

Mix the rest of the ingredients together and pour over all. Sprinkle with pepper. Cook, uncovered, at 350 degrees until hot and bubbly, 25 to 30 minutes.

Even better than the tuna-melts we had as kids! The original recipe called for broccoli rather than peas, but to me peas just go hand in hand with tuna.  I have even added chopped hard boiled eggs and that's good, too.  What to eat as a side dish to this meal?  Good ol' salty potato chips!  LOL...hey, we are going unhealthy here, we might as well go all the way.  And then wash it down with a big glass of super cold white milk (now that IS healthy!)

Okay, so now we have enjoyed our 1960's throwback foods, we will return to having a farm raised, free range chicken baked with garden produced garlic for supper tonight along with redskin potatoes from my brothers garden and frozen corn from the neighbors garden.  Healthy and delicious and local or home raised.

But I still lick the spoon on those other two retro recipes ((grin)).  Do you have a favorite?

 

Soup, Sheep and Celebrities

Thanks for all the positive comments on last weeks soup!  I can't wait to share this second recipe with you - it was yummy, too, in an entirely different way.  Here are a few of the key ingredients ~

I had intended to make a Pasta-Sausage stew type concoction, but after working outside a lot for the past few days both Bill and I were feeling a little cold, stuffy and achey.  I didn't want something heavy and I was craving some super foods....enter kale, freshly dug garlic and bright healthy peppers to make a very quick, savory soup.  This was literally ready to eat in thirty minutes, and about ten of that was preparing the vegetables.

SAUSAGE & KALE SOUP
A recipe adapted and tweaked from one I found in an older Better Homes & Garden magazine

8 ounces fully-cooked smoked sausage, sliced (I used a delicious German sausage from a local shop that is very dense and garlicky)

1 medium onion, chopped

Minced garlic (the recipe called for 1 Tbsp.  I used the entire bulb of a small, freshly dug garlic from my neighbors garden.  This is a warm and spicy garlic!)

4 to 6 cups chicken broth

3 medium potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks

About 8 cups fresh kale, stems removed and leaves chopped (this would be about 12 ounces)

Heat a pot over medium high heat (I added about a tablespoon of butter to cook the sausage in)  Add sausage and saute for 5 minutes or till lightly browned.  Stir in onion and garlic, saute another 3 minutes or till softened.  Add broth and bring to a boil.

Stir in potatoes and kale.  Simmer, partially covered, for 10-12 minutes or till potatoes are tender.  Serve.

My tweaks ~  Well, as I mentioned above I used a lot more garlic than the recipe called for.  Like I said, I was feeling a little like I was catching a cold ;)  I added some diced red pepper along with the onions and garlic (and this was a small dice)  At the end, I added a squeeze of fresh lemon juice to brighten it up (just cut a lemon in half and squeezed the juice in) and when I dished it up, I did a small grating of Parmesan cheese over it.  Bill ate his soup with crackers, I ate mine with the crust of a rustic white bread I had made earlier in the week.

I didn't grow the kale, it came from a dear older lady who always has small treats like this at her booth at Farmers Market.  She grows lots of fun varieties of things.  The leaves were still small and tender, I didn't even have to remove the stems!  We have had a few hard frosts (see the picture below), enough to help sweeten the kale.  This soup was exactly what we needed and we made pigs of ourselves cleaning it all up.  I hope Edna has some more kale at Farmers Market this week....

We have had about three heavy frosts now

I just included the shot above to show some of the heavy frost we have had and a few of the sheep out in it.  The rams have been working pretty hard, hopefully getting ewes bred for lambs early next spring.  I would like to start writing a bit more about the sheep side of things here at the farm, what we do and how we make decisions about them.  Is that something you would like to read?

And finally, a word about celebrities - local celebrities that I happen to know!  You have heard me speak of Angie and family at Maple Valley Off-Grid Farm right here in Michigan.  They are living off-grid and sharing their love of the Lord, the land and their family.  Well, they are going to be on the Anderson Cooper show!!! Yes, really ;)  The show will air on Tuesday, October 25 on CBS.  Locally it is on at 4 pm.  If you have a chance to check it out, or look at their blog, be sure to do so.  I hope they are well represented - they are really neat people.

A New Favorite Farm Soup

Recently, my friend Kimberly (who has a terrific blog, by the way) proposed/challenged trying a new soup each week for a month.  Well, I'd been planning to try making a winter squash type soup for some time so I decided this was just the "kick-in-pants" I needed to get started!

Vegetable peelings

Recipes for some type of squash soup are everywhere this time of year and most of them are very, very similar. If you do an online search and then read reviews of some of them, you'll often find comments about the soup being too bland and some suggest the use of potato adds to the bland-ness. Well, I think you probably need the potato to add to the thickness but what I did was to substitute a couple of carrots for some of the potato. I’m not sure how much difference it made, but it all tasted great! Then because squash speaks to me of needing autumn flavors, I just added the same set of spices that I put in my home made Tomato Soup. I read one recipe that used curry powder as the seasoning and I’ll bet that would be good, too. Something else I want to add to this next time is red pepper – either just sautéed along with the main vegetables or roasted and then added to it. For some reason, I was thinking adding sage to the seasoning would be great. You’ll notice that I added fresh pressed cider as part of the liquid and so that got me to thinking that you could include an apple or two to the sauté.

Really fresh pressed cider!  My grandsons pressing apples they picked with Aunt Mo and Uncle Chris - they had a blast!

This recipe offers itself up to so many possibilites!  I think you could add all different kinds of liquid to help flavor it.  I did the apple cider but you could try some orange juice.  And instead of maple syrup for flavoring, how about a nice rum?  just a splash....

Anyway, this came out a huge success and my husband now has a new favorite soup!  I have plenty more Butternut Squash and lots of other vegetables to throw in the mix, so I know it will be in our bowls many more times this winter.  Here it is, our version of a classic ;)

SERENITY FARMS SQUASH SOUP
My own adaptation after studying several different blogs and recipes, using what I had on hand and seasonings we are partial to

1 whole garlic bulb, roasted

1 medium butternut sqush, peeled, seeded and cut into chunks*

1 large potato, peeled and diced (I used a freshly dug and scrubbed Kennebec potato from my brother’s garden. I’ll bet a Yukon Gold would be nice, too, or even a sweet potato)

2 large carrots, (also freshly dug and scrubbed from my brother’s garden!) cut into chunks

1 large yellow onion, chopped (you guessed it, this came from my brother’s garden, too)

1 stalk celery, including the leaves (this was from my garden)

3 Tbsp butter

3 cups water (I added half a cup cider to ours, so a total of 3 1/2 cups liquid…I happened to have on hand some that was freshly pressed by my brother-in-law and my grandsons. Yummy)

1 14-1/2 oz. Can chicken broth (I used the low sodium kind) I think you could substitute vegetable broth

1 ½ tsp kosher salt, ¼ tsp fresh ground pepper

½ tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp each ground allspice, ground nutmeg, ground cloves

½ cup cream, half and half or evaporated milk

Maple syrup

Crumbled feta cheese (hey, Kimberly has a great tutorial on her blog for making a Farmers Cheese that would be delicious here!)

* If you find it a hassle to peel the squash, I don’t know why it wouldn’t be just as easy to go ahead and roast your squash (or do it in the microwave, if that is how you prepare it), scoop it out of the skin and add the cooked squash to the already sautéed vegetables. In fact, now I am thinking that maybe roasting all of the vegetables and then making them into the soup would add a whole other depth of flavor to the finished product. And oh my, what about adding parsnips to the mix?!?

If you don’t already know how to roast garlic, here is the simple way I do it. Don’t peel or separate the cloves, but do take off the papery outer skin and cut just the top off the garlic bulb. Drizzle with olive oil and wrap it up in heavy duty foil. Bake at 425 degrees for 30 minutes or till softened. Have this in the oven while you are preparing the rest of the vegetables for the soup, and let it cool a bit before you have to handle it.

In a large soup pan, Dutch oven or something similar sauté the squash, potato, carrots, onion and celery in the butter until crisp-tender. Add the water, broth, salt and pepper and spices to the vegetables then squeeze the softened garlic into the mixture. Bring it all to a boil then reduce the heat; cover and simmer for 20 to 30 minutes or till vegetables are tender. Cool slightly.

Using an immersion blender or a food processor, blend into a thick and creamy soup (be careful, the soup is hot!).  At this point, return to the pot and add the cream or milk and maple syrup and allow to heat through. I think I only used two or three tablespoons of syrup for this amount of soup, just enough to sweeten and add that earthly flavor (we like the darker maple syrup). If you don’t want to add cream and maple syrup, don’t. The soup was fine before I added those, but then these two things just took it to the next level - over the top, at least in my opinion.

Ladle your soup into bowls or mugs and top with some crumbled feta cheese (again, a matter of preference. If you don’t like feta cheese, don’t add it!)

Oh, and I didn’t puree the soup until it was entirely thin – it certainly wasn’t runny or anything, and we definitely didn’t feel like we were eating baby food (a complaint I read about a lot of recipes) On the contrary, my husband and I just looked at each other in delight and kept eating. In fact, we finished off most of the pot for supper then each had another soup mug full before bed!  This is destined to become a regular at our table.

If you give my version a try, would you let me know how you like it?  Next up for my soup experiment is a Sausage and Pasta Stew, with lots of good things like tomatoes, peppers (I have a lot of peppers right now) and Italian sausage (made from our own lamb)  I'll certainly let you know how it goes ;)

Barn Raising? Barn Cleaning! And Breakfast...

Most mornings for the past week, breakfast has been a succulent and delicious Brandywine tomato from the garden.  Sometimes I might slop up the juices with a hearty chunk of homemade bread, toasted.  Two nights of frost here in mid-Michigan have pretty much brought this to an end and Wednesday afternoon Elliot and I picked all of the tomatoes from the garden.  Yesterday morning I was up at 4 am, canning!

This weekend will be a wonderful, busy and tiring time of barn work!  Bill and I will have a houseful of grandkids, children, nephews, friends and even my Dad to help us get the barn ready for winter.  I will be running back and forth between the barn and the kitchen ;)

I will be back here (hopefully) on Monday to share some of the work and good times.  We hope you have a great weekend, too!

Farm Fresh

Taken in June, snippets from around the garden and farm ~

The berries are now finished and the broccoli is huge.  Arugula and lettuce underplanted and now consumed ;)  The chives and basil are a constant source of goodness and so are the eggs.  The green ones, by the way, are duck eggs!

You didn't think I was going to show you a picture from the part of the garden where the weeds are threatening to overtake the potatoes did you?  LOL....

The other thing we are enjoying fresh from our farm is lamb (grilling a lot lately) and the first of our recently butchered chickens. 

Now, when did July arrive?!?

Dirt For The Chickens

And more weather...Are you tired of hearing about weather here on the farm? LOL, it sure seems to be on my mind lately! On Saturday I snapped this shot of some dust-bathing chickens to share with you that we had lost some of our snow:

(This might look like an odd pile of feathers, but really it was just that they had all piled together in the few feet of open ground we had. This also happens to be right where I walk, push the wheelbarrow, carry hay - and twist my ankle in the "chicken waller". There are four hens and one rooster in this picture!)


Sunday, we had fog and then snow. And more snow. And more snow, all falling quickly. Sleet was pelted the window. Early this morning we had thunder, lightning and heavy rain.

I'm always grateful for rain (well, nearly always - not so much at haying time). But this is what I am dreaming of today ~

How about you?

Real Spring Fever and Food

I've really got it now ~ a longing for spring!

Yesterday, Alex and I went to visit my Dad and brothers. Just an hour and a half south of us. About twenty minutes into our journey we started to notice that we weren't seeing much snow on the ground. About half way through, there was none! The ground was clear and dry. At Dad's we drove into the neighbors field to watch them spreading manure with teams of horses. At the farm we walked out to the pasture without slipping and sliding or sinking into mud! Sigh....not so here at home

Although wait! You can begin to see some temptations of green near the fence posts above and the ice has started to melt and shatter ;) At least the sun has been shining and the ewes changed their minds about lambing these past few cold nights. I think they need to get outdoors for some real exercise, but the big barn door is still frozen in with a bank of solid-as-ice snow packed up against it.

I think I will comfort myself with some comfort food ;) One of our farm favorites any time of year (even during hot weather because it is made in the crock pot) Featuring Serenity Farms lamb ;) Or your favorite lamb, pork or beef

~ CHALUPAS ~

3 lb. lamb roast (can be pork or beef)
1 lb. dry pinto beans, rinsed and sorted
2 or 3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 large onion, chopped
3 tsp. chili powder
1 tsp. cumin
1 can chopped green chilies
Salt

Combine all the ingredients in a large crock pot (I put the beans in first then layer the others on top) Cover with water and cook on high for 5 hours. (If you are around the house and notice that this has started to boil pretty hard, you can lower the heat sooner) Remove the meat from the bone, tear into small pieces. You can mash the bean mixture up a bit if you like at this point. Return the meat to the crock and cook about 2 more hours on low.

Serve this over tortillas and topped with your favorites - we like lettuce, tomato, cheese, black olives and freshly chopped onion. Sour cream and salsa are good additions, too. You can roll this up taco style as well, or even serve it over tortilla chips. I usually have a side of rice of some kind. This freezes well, so I usually make a large batch and put some away.

At least I can add salsa put up from the garden last year! And we are able to get locally raised dry beans, even organic, at the feed elevator. Gratiot County is known for growing beans ;)

And look, under the cap of ice...spring really is on its way to mid-Michigan!

For other recipes featuring Serenity Farms lamb, you might like to look here or here. Or seek a local supply for your own lamb for the table and support a farm family in your area. It is appreaciated more than you can imagine! Check online through Local Harvest if you aren't sure where to find farm raised food close by.

Windy, snowy and cold!

It's such a blustery day here in mid-Michigan today! Although the sun was out earlier this afternoon, it snowed hard from about 4 am till 9 am and brought us a few new inches of fresh clean powder. Now the wind has picked up and the temperatures have dropped....brrrr! Makes me awfully glad for wool socks and wool sweaters to throw on against the chill of an old farm house!

I didn't even venture out to take a picture, but if I did it would have looked something like this ~


Or this ~


Funny thing, though, the sheep sleep outside in this weather even though they have free choice of being inside the barn or out. This morning they were big blobs of snow covered woolies, chewing their cuds and waiting for me to start chores.

Supper tonight is Swiss Steak made with beef that comes from the farmer who puts up our hay. Along with tomato soup canned right here in this kitchen and onions, peppers, carrots and corn put up from our garden or the garden of extended family. The peas are from a can though. I prefer canned peas and don't take time to preserve this particular vegetable ;) Was going to have mashed potatoes with it, but we changed our mind and wanted dumplings instead. They are simmering away on top of the mix right now.

Now if we only had some of that homemade apple crisp leftover for dessert!

Question...how do you make Swiss Steak? Or what do you think of when you hear Swiss Steak? My mom always made it with a tomato base (in this case, I used home canned tomato soup) along with onions, peas and carrots and usually over mashed potatoes. But I know others who have a mushroom-onion type sauce (though to my mind, this is more of a Salisbury Steak. I'd love to hear how you do it, or how you think of it!

Still Life With Soup

That is what I titled the photo above, featuring our delicious homemade tomato soup alongside a bobbin full of yarn and my favorite yellow soup bowl ;)

I was reminded by a reader that I promised some lamb recipes more than a week ago! I got so busy preparing for the winter storm and artic blast that was predicted (and that we did receive by the way) that I didn't spend much time at the computer. So today as I put some dried navy beans on to soak for one of those recipes, I thought I just better sit down and get to blog posting.

By the way, here is a link to the tomato soup recipe that will take you right to the original post (September 25, 2008), if you don't already have it. The first of our family favorites with lamb makes use of that soup ;) It is called:

~ BARBECUED STICKIES ~
I use this recipe for whatever meat I have handy that I want to barbecue in the oven. This might be ribs, chops, steaks. We have our lamb chops and steaks cut 1 inch thick, so they work really well here. One of the things I really like about this one is that the meat is browned in the oven, saving the mess of an additional pan for browning on top of the stove)

3-4 pounds lamb - ribs, chops or steaks, whatever you have
Garlic powder, salt, pepper
SAUCE:
1 pint homemade tomato soup (see recipe link above) or substitute 1 can (10-3/4 ounces condensed tomato soup, undiluted
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves minced garlic
1 cup water
1/2 cup honey (you can use light corn syrup or I have even used maple syrup, though the sauce was not quite as thick with the maple syrup - tasty though!)
1/2 cup ketchup
1/4 cider vinegar
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 teaspoons chili powder or hot pepper flakes
1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Sprinkle meat with garlic powder, salt and pepper. Place in a single layer in a large baking pan. Bake at 325 degrees for about 30 minutes; drain off the fat. Combine the sauce ingredients and pour over the meat. Bake about 50 minutes longer, turning to coat occasionally.

Now this next dish is a real comfort food, just right for these cold blustery nights, but it makes use of the slow cooker so is also nice for summer cooking when you don't want to turn on the oven. The county in Michigan where I live has been known as "bean country" for all of the beans produced, so having beans in the mixture along with our farm lamb makes it all-around Michigan Farm Food ;)

~ LAMB AND BEANS ~
2 cups dried navy beans, soaked overnight in water
About 3 pounds lamb shoulder chops
1 medium carrot, chopped
1 medium parsnip or turnip, chopped (if you don't have either of these, you can substitute a couple of peeled, diced potatoes)
1 large chopped onion
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 stalk celery, chopped (include the leaves if you can)
1 bay leaf
Salt and Pepper to taste
1 16-ounce can chicken broth (or homemade chicken stock if you have it)
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup half and half (you can use milk)

Drain the liquid from the beans. In a slow cooker, combine the beans and lamb with the next 8 ingredients. Cook on high heat for about an hour, then turn your temperature to low and cook for about 6 hours or till the meat is done. When the lamb is tender, remove it and chop into chunky pieces, discarding the bones. Return the meat to the cooker and add the butter and half & half. Stir and allow to heat through. Ladle it up and enjoy! NOTE: If you notice that the liquid is cooking away, add additional stock or water if needed.

Well, there you have it - two favorite lamb recipes from our home. I hope you give them a try. I wish you could try them with Serenity Farms lamb, but if you can't, please try to find a farmer local to your area where you can purchase the meat. Ask to try just a package or two of sample cuts if they sell them that way. A good way to find a producer in your area is by going to Local Harvest - a website that helps locate and support family farms, CSA's, Farmers Markets, etc (a great resource!) Also, someone asked about the Lamb Ham I mentioned in the last post. All we did was have our processor smoke some of the roasts in the same fashion you would cure and smoke a ham when you have pork processed.

Brrrr...now I need to go pour myself another cup of hot coffee! I sure am thankful for wool socks today....

Food For Thought...

And for the table!

November seems to be about two major things for me...a return to hearty fall and winter cooking and the tie-in that has to Thanksgiving. (Okay, it is also about some special birthdays in the month - but even those seem connected to food thoughts - LOL!)

I have been meaning to write about one of my favorite foods all summer. One of my favorite foods that also happens to be home grown right here on our farm, another part of the diversity of our life as farmers and shepherds. I'm talking about good ol' delicious, nutritious American (Michigan, Serenity Farms) lamb for the table!

Growing up with sheep, we never ate lamb or mutton. My mom refused to cook it, isn't that funny? Though now I know lots of shepherds who don't eat it, so maybe it isn't so unusual. My folks and brother at home still raise sheep and still don't eat the meat. I love it. I really, truly love it. Lamb is my favorite meat - well, a good slice of bacon or ham is right up there at the top of the list, too! But then again, a slice of Serenity Farms Lamb Ham (one of our special cuts, smoked and everything, is pictured below) holds its own against the pork any day!


Over the years I have had good lamb and bad. Some of it really, really bad. Often the worst I have tasted I have eaten at sheep producing events or really expensive restaurants, if you can believe it! Watery, thin, grey, unappetising fare or else so highly seasoned and dressed up that you couldn't taste the meat - ugh! Would you like to know my "secret" for good, edible lamb for the table? I treat it just like any other meat - I use it in my favorite recipes, substituting it for beef or pork in the list of ingredients. I am not a fan of the "lamb is best prepared rare or medium rare" way of thinking. One of the things I am not overly fond of with lamb is both its texture (kind of like veal or venison or liver) and its color ;) I like to put a good "brown" on the meat with a quick sear or fry in the pan or on the grill. And I like it cooked all the way through, falling away from the bone. Lamb that has been well raised and properly processed - doesn't come out dry, in my opinion.

Did you know that (according to The American Lamb Board, "lamb is a good source of protein, niacin, zinc, iron and Vitamin B-12? And that compared to other meats, lamb has very little fat marbling throughout. Most of the fat is limited to the outside edges of the meat, so it is easily trimmed away." And while some might add additional fat to their ground lamb, we do not. I like it lean and dry and full of nothing but what we raised here on our property.

That brings us to another part of the equation - the part where what goes into raising lamb for the table and how it is processed contribute to the quality of the flavor. How about if I write more about that tomorrow, and maybe share a few of my families favorite recipes with lamb? By the way, if you have ever eaten at my house and been served meat with the meal...it may very well have been lamb ((grin))

Our favorite way with lamb...chops over a charcoal grill! And of course, the first photo in this post shows a juicy lamb burger, cooked over charcoal with homemade rolls, a good honey mustard and lettuce and onions fresh from the garden. All things to be thankful for!