UPdate

Today is measurements day, and I thought for sure that I would have nothing to report, but I am (happily!) WRONG! 😀

Despite, temporarily, suspending “The Homestead Diet” and it also being “that time” of the month (and I rarely ever lose weight during that time) I somehow managed to lose 1/2 inch in my waist and 1/2 inch in my hips!

So, my latest update is as follows…

Bust: 39 3/4″ (Started at 41″)

Waist: 33” (Started at 35″)

Hips: 44 1/2″ (Started at 46″)

I’ve still been eating roughly 75% homegrown food, lots of salads with hardboiled eggs and goat cheese mostly.  I got my ice cream maker in the mail (still waiting on the milk separator though, but it’s coming from Sweden so it might be awhile….) and I have been eating way too much frozen yogurt which I why I am surprised at the loss of inches.  The ice cream maker came with a recipe booklet containing recipes for ice cream, frozen yogurt, and sorbet.  So, because I didn’t have my milk separator yet, and thus no goat cream for real ice cream, I turned our goat’s milk into yogurt then drained the whey from the yogurt to thicken it and used that, along with some goat’s milk, to make frozen yogurt and it is AWESOME!  To sweeten it I used demarara sugar (for the vanilla version, rapadura …whole cane sugar… for the chocolate version..) and replaced half of that with stevia…so it ended up being 1/2 cup sugar used in a whole 2 quarts of frozen yogurt and it was damn good  😆  Despite it being frozen yogurt it tasted like ice cream and because I used some sugar the sweetness wasn’t “flat” tasting like it can sometimes be with stevia…and I ate WAY TOO MUCH OF IT…but I still lost inches, so I am happy 🙂

I chalk up my inch loss to all the extra activity.  It’s finally warm here, after what seemed like an unusually cold Spring! and I have been outside on the homestead A LOT, doing this and doing that…just the general “puttering about” type things to spiffy it up around here…both inside and outside the house.  (hence no recent blog posts, would much rather be outside..)  Nothing extremely major or noteworthy just lots of little activities combined to give me the exercise needed to keep my metabolism high and still lose weight even though I ate copious amounts of frozen yogurt and even pizza and beer…

But, it’s straight back to my homestead diet once the milk separator arrives, I swear it!

Cancelled (for now)

I have cancelled “The Homestead Diet” (wherein I eat only food grown on our homestead) for now, at least until my milk separator comes in the mail (hopefully sometime this weekend)…until then, my daily diet still consists of about 75% homegrown food.  I have also cancelled taking my measurements this Thursday because it’s “that time” of the month and as all women know that is so not the time to be weighing oneself or taking one’s body measurements…pesky hormone issues causing all sorts of bodily misrepresentations 😉  …so I will hold off on that till next Thursday.

I can say though, that for the week that I did “The Homestead Diet”, I lost 3.7 pounds and I am very happy with that loss!  (and it’s becoming more physically noticeable, just check out my new pic in the sidebar …)

Bacon and Egg Salad

But I am glad to be not so restricted in my eating, I missed having bacon lol (we really need to start raisin’ pigs!)…my main “go-to” meal during the growing season is always a nice salad of miscellaneous garden veggies, with 2 hardboiled eggs from our hens chopped and sprinkled on top, along with 2-3 slices of bacon crumbled on top and some raisins and a vinaigrette made from bacon grease, olive oil, raw apple cider vinegar, mustard powder, a bit of stevia for sweetness, a finely minced clove of garlic and moist grey sea salt and freshly ground pepper to taste.

However, I have also grown to really love my “green smoothies”.  And have been having them for breakfast nearly every single day with the above described salad for lunch.  I recently started adding some “Tangy Tangerine” (a plant based vitamin powder) to my shakes and the citrus flavor goes really well with the spinach.  The shakes have now morphed into 1.5 cups of our RAW goat’s milk, 3 egg yolks from our hens, a BIG bunch of spinach from the garden, a dash of vanilla extract and some stevia…combined with the “tangerine” flavor of the vitamin powder it ends up tasting like an orange creamsicle, like having dessert for breakfast! 😀

What I am most looking forward too though is getting that milk separator and making ice cream from goat cream and egg yolks, sweetened with stevia and anything else I feel like adding…soon there will be strawberries and I could make 100% homegrown strawberry ice cream..now, THAT would be wild 🙂

Homegrown Homemade Creamy Tomato Soup

First I mince 5-6 cloves of homegrown garlic and saute that in butter in a large pot on the stove.

Then I dump the contents of a 1 quart jar of tomatoes, along with the juice, into the blender along with 1 cup of homemade chicken broth made from homegrown chicken, and generous amounts of oregano and parsley from the garden (I would have used basil too, but it’s still to early in the season for that.)

Then I puree all that till smooth and dump it into the large pot with the sauted garlic.

Then I add 3 cups of homegrown goat’s milk to that and heat over medium-high heat.

While that is heating, I take 4 homegrown eggs and separate the whites from the yolks.  When the soup in the pot is hot but not boiling I add a little bit at a time (1 tbsp. at a time at first) to the egg yolks, all the while whisking to incorporate the yolks into the tomato and milk mixture.  This is called “tempering” the yolks and I do this part carefully and slowly so as to avoid cooking the egg yolks and ending up with scrambled eggs.

When a good portion of the tomato/milk mixture has been whisked into the yolks and the mixture in the bowl is relatively the same temperature as the mixture in the pot I then dump all the contents of the bowl into the pot with the rest of the soup.

I then heat the soup over medium-low heat, carefully and slowly so as to avoid having scrambled eggs in my soup, till the soup thickens nicely, but does not boil.

I then season to taste with salt and pepper and serve it up with homegrown radishes, spring onions and homemade herbed goat cheese made from the homegrown goat’s milk.

Obviously this is waaaay better with fresh homegrown summer tomatoes (especially if you roast them first..) but home-canned ones are pretty tasty too!  And there you have it, another recipe using 100% homegrown ingredients 😀

Homestead Diet Day Six

Okay okay I know I said I would have some yummy food things to share today, but things didn’t really go as planned yesterday (do they ever??) and I got caught up in working outside in the delicious 65 degree weather instead of stuck inside the house cooking and preparing food. (I made a HUGE batch of crockpot chili in the A.M., for the family, which cooked all day long while I worked).

I repaired and re-posted the fence on one of our garden plots that got flattened by extreme wet heavy snow that we got in March and I also cleared out brush (damn mulitflora rose invaders, the bane of my existence! 😡 ) that were trying to take over my apple tree saplings.  I mulched the strawberry plants with wasted goat hay (they waste SO MUCH hay!) and planted more radishes, and more lettuce, and cleared out the back garden plot to prepare for more peas and to plant my first plot of snap beans for the year…and ALL of that work took up the majority of my day!  But it sure was fun! 😀

Here is what I ate:

Another “green smoothie” for breakfast (we’ve used up about half of our 10 POUNDS of spinach so far..)

Radishes, spring onions and goat cheese and iced green tea for lunch

And a HUGE spinach salad with fixin’s and herbs from the garden along with 3 hard boiled eggs for dinner and a big glass of RAW goat’s milk

Sorry to cut this short again, but there is much to be done and I’ve got not much to say right now.  I’ve been completely satisfied with my diet thus far and not even been very hungry, except for after doing a lot of hard work and then I am famished …and that’s when spinach never tasted SO GOOD lol

Homestead Diet Day Five

Wherein I eat a non homegrown food item 😯

I know I know, oh the horror! lol 😉

But I do have a good excuse!  Nathan did the grocery shopping yesterday and well, they had lobster tail on sale 2 for $10 and so he got two of them as a special dinner for us…I mean how can a girl say no to lobster?  Seriously.  Would YOU be able to say no to lobster?

Nathan’s Solution: “Well if you don’t wanna eat it, you can always make it for me two nights in a row.”

Ummmm. NO. 😆

So, yes, I had lobster with butter and lemon slices and it was DELICIOUS and I don’t feel the least bit bad about it 😛

But everything else that I ate yesterday was homegrown, here’s the breakdown:

Another “green smoothie” for breakfast (1 1/2 cups of raw goat’s milk, 3 egg yolks from our hens, 20 LARGE spinach leaves)

Then bunches of radishes from the garden with homemade goat cheese

And the lobster tail with butter and lemon slices along with a spinach salad using homegrown spinach and 2 hardboiled eggs from our hens

Total Calories: 1,470

And today is very busy, so I must go, I have a few homegrown meal ideas in mind for today (I need to make up for my cheat!) so stay tuned for tomorrow’s blog post, it’s gonna be a good one! 😀

My new fav snack: homegrown “french breakfast’ radishes with homemade herbed goat cheese and salt

Homestead Diet Day Four

Today is measurements day!

Current Measurements…

Bust: 39 3/4″ (same as last Thursday) Started at 41″

Waist: 33 1/2 ” (1/2 inch loss since last week!) Started at 35″

Hips: 45″ (same as last Thursday) Started at 46″

So far, since April 11th when I began this quest to lose weight, which recently morphed into “The Homestead Diet”, I have lost a total of 3 3/4″ inches! 😀

There is a reason I do these measurements on Thursday, and I will tell you, it’s because if I overeat or eat the wrong things I am most likely to do so on Friday or Saturday and that gives me a whole week to get my diet back in check and on the right track before my next measurements day on Thursday…just a bit of sneakiness on my part 😉

Continuing with “The Homestead Diet”, in which I eat only things that we’re grown here on our homestead (zero calorie flavorings and seasonings being allowed), here is what I ate yesterday:

• A green smoothie consisting of 12 oz. of our goat’s milk, 3 egg yolks from our hens, and 20 LARGE spinach leaves from the garden, along with a bit of stevia, vanilla extract, almond extract and nutmeg
• A spinach salad with radish and swiss chard sprouts that I thinned from the garden, along with radishes and spring onions from the garden, dressed with RAW apple cider vinegar, salt, pepper, and a finely minced clove of garlic that we grew last year (garlic is almost all used up though!) and 2 hardboiled eggs from our hens
• And then 2 eggs scrambled and topped with homemade goat cheese and sauce leftover from Tuesday night’s dinner (it was REALLY good!  the sauce seemed to take on more flavor on the second day..) along with a 12 oz. glass of our RAW goat’s milk

Total Calories: 1,266

As for exercise yesterday, really just more of the same…milking goats twice a day, hauling water buckets twice a day, weeding and digging in the garden, planting TONS of lettuce seeds and harvesting more garden goodies, also picked whole bunches of dandelion blossoms for making some homemade dandelion wine and violet blossoms for making a violet complexion lotion for the face….I do these things every year in the Spring Time 🙂

violet blossoms, they grow ALL OVER the place here in the Springtime

Violet Complexion Lotion: Steep 1 heaping cup of fresh violet blossoms in 1 cup “blood temperature” 95-100 degrees milk (preferably raw goat’s milk for best results) for 24 hours, strain the liquid and use on face and neck like a toner…it’s especially good for oily skin (store in fridge, lasts about 1 week)…you can also eat the blossoms, we like to put them on our salads to make them pretty 🙂

Homestead Diet Day Three

A.K.A “Wherein I gorge myself on spinach” 😉

So, ALL that spinach!  We’ve been eatin’ it that’s for sure!

  First, it was “green smoothies” consisting of 2c. of our goat’s milk, 4 egg yolks from our hens, 20 LARGE spinach leaves, a bit of stevia and a dash of nutmeg..and it was very surprisingly good!  I made three batches of smoothies and everybody in the family had some, even the toddlers 🙂

my 2 1/2 year old daughter, Charity, with a mouth full of spinach…who says toddlers don’t like vegetables? 😉

Then we had spinach salads, a new batch of homemade homegrown cornbread and our goat’s milk for lunch.  (Charity has juice in her cup in the picture ’cause I gave her grape juice after she finished all her milk..)

And then for dinner, Nathan and I had Indian Food (this dish was too “sophisticated” for the kiddos -ewww mom it looks like throw up- so I made something else for them..).  A recipe that I found online while searching for spinach recipes, called “Palak Paneer”.  It involves an Indian Cheese called paneer, one which I am quite familiar with as it was one of the first cheeses I ever learned to make from our goat’s milk.  Super simple to do!  For the recipe, click here.

the cubed paneer and chopped fresh cilantro from the garden

I used this recipe for the dish, with a few minor changes.  I used RAMPS instead of onions and fortunately we still had a few jars of canned tomatoes leftover from last year, I also used homegrown garlic and garam masala for the seasoning.  And instead of the fresh green chilies I used a few shakes of our own homegrown habanero flakes and it was PLENTY spicy! lol

the finished dish with cilantro sprinkled on top

Total Calories: 1,512