Farm Life: A Healthy, All-Natural Earth Day Breakfast
Farm Life: A Healthy, All-Natural Earth Day Breakfast
How would you like to have one of the healthiest breakfasts you could? And what if you could raise is in a sustainable operation that improves the land it grows from?
And what if you could do this in your own (large) back yard?
What you need: one milch cow (or milk goat), A few chickens. Feed for them (about 2–3 acres to pasture the cow and chickens. Some good fencing. Water and shelter. A farm supply store for incidentals.
Steps:
I. Basics
0. Assuming you have good fencing to keep your cow where you want her (and access to a bull to keep her happy), a barn where you can milk her and store her feed supplements, a sturdy chicken coop, and some place you can live in (recommended: a tiny home.)
1. Get the cow producing milk.
2. Get the chickens laying eggs.
3. Milk the cow daily, collect the eggs daily.
II. Making a nutrient-rich, probiotic-imbued breakfast
Refrigerate the milk and let it sit for 12 hours or overnight. The cream will rise to the top.
2. Might as well refrigerate your eggs as well. They’ll keep longer.
3. Pull off the cream and make butter out of it.
4. Get the cream back to room temperature and into a smallish jar, then shake until you make butter out of it. Save the buttermilk, and refrigerate.
5. Take the skimmed milk and let it set with a thin cloth over the top. In a few days, it will separate into the milk solids and whey. Strain the solids off. This is called farm cheese. Refrigerate it. Save the whey (while you can drink this straight, as an acquired taste, it is rich in protein and probiotics, so dogs, cats, and chickens love it. Also, dilute it with 4 parts water and it makes great garden fertilizer.)
6. Get some buckwheat flour (it’s not a grain, so it’s gluten-free, but healthier for you.) Flour makes this breakfast thicker, like a pan bread or really thick pancake.
7. Take your butter and cook it down into ghee.
8. Recipe:
a. Heat up a medium-sized cast iron frying pan while you mix:
- Three farm-fresh, free-range chicken eggs.
— A couple tablespoons of of farm cheese.
— A quarter cup of buckwheat flour.
— A quarter cup of farm-fresh milk.
— Salt, pepper, and cinnamon to taste.
— Add a dash more milk if it seems too thick. Think: pancake batter or cake mix.
b. Put a tablespoon (or so) of ghee into the frying pan and coat the inside thoroughly. Don’t worry about the extra, most of it will be absorbed.
c. Pour the batter into the frying pan and cover.
d. Turn the heat down now that the pan is hot, not off, just way down.
e. When it’s firm on top, flip it over. Take the pan off the heat and turn off the stove. The cast-iron will brown the other side with the leftover heat.
f. Serve hot, with home-made jelly or jam or fresh fruit compote. Farm-raised spun (unheated) honey is also good.
g. Add a glass of milk to wash it down.
Ta da!
If you look through this, you’ll see this is a great breakfast that will stick with you all day. It might even serve two if you don’t have the calorie demands of a farm life. (Or half could be cooled off as bread to make a protein-rich sandwich for lunch.)
This started out with eggs, cottage cheese, and cooking with coconut oil, if you want to try it from store-bought items in your city apartment while you figure out how to get the cow/goat and chickens.
The Earth Day benefits:
Low, if not negative carbon footprint.
Other than picking up mimimal extra feed at the farm supply store (or a local farmer’s coop) your food didn’t have to travel anywhere to get to you.
The cow is grazing on your own land and can be managed so that her grazing is carbon-negative (look up grass-fed beef and management-intensive grazing.)
Your chickens are scratching through her cow paddies meanwhile and limiting the amount of feed supplements they need by about 2/3rds or greater. The bugs and grass they eat give their yolks a nice orange cast, meaning they are rich in protein and omega-3 oils.
Your milk and cheese is home-grown and rich in probiotics.
Your ghee is home-made and is better for you than vegetable-oil (read: transfat heavy) shortening and many other cooking oils or lard.
There are no food additives or preservatives in this breakfast.
How it could be improved
Use buttermilk instead of milk in the recipe.
Skip the buckwheat and milk (just the farm cheese) and it comes out thinner, but just as tasty. Makes a nice high-protein substitute for various thin breads — just keep it refrigerated.
I was reading all about Earth Day today and thought you would appreciate what I had for breakfast this morning.
Useful if you have a few empty lots on each side of your suburban home. And if don’t have some idiotic zoning that tells you what you can’t do with it. Goats are just as eco-friendly and prepper-enabled. Less milk, but takes less land. Mini-cows is another option.
Had I thought it through, I’d have added pictures for you.
Enjoy!
Resources: WorstellFarms.com
Originally published at Living Sensical.