Since we rely on our frozen dairy to get us through the winter, we don’t have the luxury of “fresh cream” like we do when we are milking. [Click here for more details about our seasonal dairy.]

I. Love. Fresh. Cream… Especially in my two cups of coffee each morning. 🙂

I was excited when I stumbled on the idea of whipping fresh cream and then freezing dollops of it on parchment paper, in my internet searching last fall. I tried it, and it has been a success! Sadly, I didn’t freeze enough for EVERY cup of coffee this winter, but it will definitely be my goal to freeze enough for next year! 🙂

4 pounds grass-fed ground beef

2T sea salt

1/3c chili powder

2t garlic granules or several minced garlic cloves

1-1/2t fennel seeds

4t coarse black pepper

1t dried hot pepper flakes

3T wine of choice

Mix well and form into 4 “rolls”.  Wrap in foil and set in refrigerator for 24 hours.  Next day:  poke holes for drainage in various spots on the rolls with the tip of a pointy knife.  (I used to use a fork, but it left tiny bits of foil in the meat – fyi.)  Place rolls on top of a broiler pan with a bit of water in the base to catch any drippings.  (Makes it MUCH easier to clean the pan when done, lol!)  Bake for 1 hour at 325°.  Once out of oven, carefully remove foil and allow rolls to cool.  We like really thin slices, so we’ve found that a large serrated bread knife works the best – especially if the rolls have been in the fridge for awhile so they’re nice and cold.  Once sliced, I freeze stacks of slices.  It doesn’t take long for a stack to thaw enough to separate slices for a “salami” sandwich.

For “pepperoni”, we bake it on our sourdough pizza crusts.

For “bacon”, we add it to coconut oil in a skillet & fry it until crisp .  Here’s a pic of the frozen slices in the coconut oil:

Here’s a pic of Paul’s favorite way to eat it – crisp & dipped in ketchup, lol! 🙂

These recipes have been such a blessing to us.  We do our best to avoid lunch meats/processed meats.  It’s been fun using what we have to create healthy substitutes! 🙂

Now that we have 37 pounds of “dry” cottage cheese frozen for the year for our family…

…I’ve switched to making ricotta cheese.

Here’s what I do:

In my large *THICK BOTTOMED* canning/stock pot, I add the milk. The reason I say *THICK BOTTOMED*, is because this is REALLY EASY to burn, as it gets heated to 180°. I have burnt several batches in a thinner pot, even though I whisked it the entire time… 😦 So, hence my advice to USE A THICK BOTTOMED POT and WHISK CONTINUALLY, lol! 🙂

Once it reaches 180°, remove it from the heat. I add raw apple cider vinegar, slowly. I stir with a large metal spoon, and once I can feel the clumpiness of the curds forming, I stop pouring in the vinegar.

Next I scoop the curds out with my hand-held strainer and allow them to drain in a bowl lined with a large colander.

I weigh the strained curds, and for each pound of curd, I add 5 oz. of whey back in, and process until smooth.

Then, I freeze the whey for future uses like in whey soup and to cook noodles & beans in, etc.

LOTS of wonderful, probiotic benefits to liquid whey…NOT-TO-BE-CONFUSED-WITH the powdered stuff you can buy at the store.

The Weston A. Price Foundation is a wonderful place to begin researching that… 🙂

Most of the whey I freeze is in 1 cup “ice-cubes”. This is the amount needed to make 1 serving of whey soup…Michael’s favorite! 🙂

Sometime, I’ll get that recipe posted, as well.

The 12th of July, we had 2 large freezers go from empty to full!!!! 🙂

In all, we took 8 beef in to get butchered the 2 weeks before. The 12th was the day we picked our 2 up from the butcher shop. Ohhhh were we excited! 🙂

Our FAVORITE is ground beef…in fact, we’ve been known to grind up our steaks when we run out of burger, lol! 🙂

Eventually, I hope to get a bunch of our recipes blogged that we use our ground beef in – like “salami”, “pepperoni”, “bacon”, jerky, “breakfast & italian sausage“, & meatloaf – just to name a few…  I’ll add the links to this post as I get them up. 🙂

This year, we have enough to “budget” four pounds of ground beef each week for one year.  And because I’m a control freak perpetual organizer/planner, I created a chart so we can keep track & HOPEFULLY not run out 3 months before we butcher next, (like we did this year), lol… 🙂

So what did we make that very first night??  MEATLOAF! Mmmmmm

Homemade cottage cheese with freshly ground sea salt & pepper, tall glass of raw milk, steamed dragon tongue yellow beans from last year’s garden with LOTS of our butter, and meatloaf…it was a WONDERFUL meal! 🙂