{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. inspired by soulemama

Farmhouse Fare : Pancakes Edition

Pancakes – my favorite!

Well, getting into this blogging thing is going to take a bit more effort than I've been giving it! And since it was a long day at work today I decided to go with something easier for me to write about than all the newer adventures of homesteading – FOOD!

I love food, I love cooking, baking and creating delicious treats, I love feeding people, and feeding them well.

One of the reasons we have chosen to start this journey towards suburban farming is to eat good healthy food. Food that is better for us, food that we know where it came from.

We are starting to do this in several ways, and one thing I thought I might share on a fairly regular basis is how we do food – on a budget while s l o w l y incorporating our home grown foods. My idea of healthy food is mostly whole foods, and most everything in moderation. Nothing is good for you in excess, you can even drink too much water. That being said we chose to eat lots of fresh and whole foods. Whole foods to us are any foods with minimal to zero processing. We eat eggs, milk, butter, cheese, sugar and meats and so on but we try to choose the most natural we can grow or afford. We are not where we want to be, but this is a journey...

Simple is usually best in my opinion. And while simple doesn't always mean easy, I have found that eventually the simple and easy come together the more I make the meal.

When I first started to make more meals “from scratch” for some reason, one of the first things I chose to try were pancakes. After a few years of experimenting, I have two solid recipes that we love and I now have a good feel of how to tweak each recipe if I am desiring something a little different in the finished product. We love pancakes that are fluffy, and chewy and egg-y and these seem to fit the bill. The whole wheat are a little heavier/heartier, and really both recipes are so fun and easy to adapt to your personal preferences!

I have been making different versions of the whole wheat recipe since high school and it never fails! The version below is a combination of 2 recipes that we liked - I added more eggs because we both prefer egg-y pancakes and a little sugar just because I prefer lightly sweetened pancakes with less syrup and the Husband doesn't mind if I do it that way! All that to say you can make the whole wheat recipe with no sugar and only two eggs and they are still good.

I generally halve these recipes for the two of us and it makes 3-4 servings.

Sorry about the lack of pictures...we have poor lighting in our kitchen and I don't often take the time to find better lighting because I just want to eat the food instead of shooting pictures. I told you I love food!

Pancakes (slightly adapted from a Racheal Ray recipe)
Serves 6-8

(this first recipe is a little less healthy, but oh, so delicious!)

3 cups unbleached all purpose flour                     6 eggs, beaten

3 tablespoons organic sugar crystals                    2 ½ cups half and half or buttermilk

2 tablespoons baking powder                             5-6 tablespoons butter, melted

½ teaspoon salt

Preheat griddle to med-high or 350 degrees F

Sift all dry ingredients together into a bowl and make a well in the center of dry ingredients.

Mix milk and melted butter together. (This may solidify the butter into little flakes, but those little flakes turn into delicious melted butter bubbles in the cooked pancakes! YUM!) Stir into dry ingredients until just mixed. Add beaten eggs and stir until most large lumps are gone, being careful not too over mix as this will result in flatter more crepe-like pancakes. (unless of course you like crepe-like and then go for it!) At this point you can cook up the pancakes, but I like to let the batter sit for about 30 minutes if at all possible. The liquid has time to soak into the remaining lumps and it just tastes better if it sits. You may need to add a little water or milk to thin the batter before you cook the cakes.

Pour onto griddle in preferred size and cook until bubbles appear and top is no longer glossy. Flip and cook second side until a perfect golden brown. Serve hot with favorite toppings or syrup!

Whole Wheat Pancakes

Serves 6

2 cups whole wheat flour                                       3 eggs, beaten

2 tablespoons organic sugar crystals                       2 ½ cups milk or buttermilk

1 tablespoon baking powder                                  3 tablespoons butter, melted

¾ teaspoon salt

Prepare and cook in the same method as above, but you can often omit the sifting!

Entry - the first

So... another new blogger with a new blog.

I guess I should explain what we hope this little blog will be about!

Backyard Homesteading and Suburban Farming kinda sums it up, but what it means for us we have yet to discover.

We – The Husband and I - have always been interested in making and creating our own, well everything, trying to make our food, clothing, and housegoods a little better, healthier, and much more natural than can be purchased at a store.(you can ask our family, this interest has been going on for years!) This has led to quite a bit of research on farming, homesteading, organic gardening, sewing, etc. One day we would love to have our own property and be able to subsistence farm, but seeing as that is quite a ways off, we decided to start where we are!

We live in an older neighborhood on a quarter-acre lot and also own an empty lot in the neighborhood that is about the same size. So how do we go about starting to farm and homestead on the very little land we have? 

We are about to find out.

We started with research, a very good place to start.

Well, I say we, The Husband is actually the brains of the operation, he is much better at compiling and processing information and I then organize and start the projects or help keep projects moving along! I learn better by hands on training, where as The Husband can read something once or twice and then is able to complete the task, so we have found that most of the time this method works best for us.

A lot of our research has come from the internet , but here is a list of some of our current book favorites and their links:

The Backyard Homestead  

All New Square Foot Gardening

The Encyclopedia of Country Living

The Fifty Dollar and Up Underground House Book

Now I realize not all of these are strictly regarding farming, etc, but all have information on methods and processes that can be used in backyard homesteading and BEYOND!! Oops, too much? Sorry, I get carried away sometimes.

And as I said, much of our information has come from online, other homesteading and farming blogs, etc.

So, I hope to introduce you to our very small farm over the next few entries and to chronicle our journey of suburban farming. We would love to hear from you all and please feel free to pass on any links, information and helpful tips!

SuburbanFarmGirl