Warm Soup for a Cold Day

After playing in all that snow, we needed some soup to cup our hands around and to warm our bellies. The snow prevented much of a shopping trip, however so i stuck with what i had on hand. Leeks, being my hubs' favorite of late have been featuring heavy in my recent soups, and 1 leeks goes a long way to creating a delicious soup. The husband says i'm good at making soup. I love that, since i was afraid of soup making for a long time, assuming that some great skill, knack or formula was needed to make a great soup. I was totally wrong. Soup is easy! Everyone should make soup, and no one should buy soup from a can or box. Skip the bpa lined cans, skip the packaging and skip the preservatives and sodium. Just throw together some veggies (you don't even have to chop 'em much), maybe some (preferably homemade) chicken stock and then finish it off with an immersion blender and you've got soup fit for a king and queen! If you don't have an immersion blender GET ONE, they're awesome... or just chop the ingredients finely for a somewhat uniform consistency at the end.



Served with a side of locally baked crusty bread (and a totally non-local BUT in season avocado!) you've got a well balanced meal. Remember the Dark Days Challenge? The soup challenge is ON this week and i'm proud of this contribution, even if it doesn't meet quite all the parameters of SOLE food. To prove that making soup is NOT a challenge, even if sourcing all your ingredients locally can be, here's the recipe:

1/2 quart condensed chicken stock *homemade*
1/2 quart water
1/2 a cauliflower *not local (california), in season*
1 turnip *local and in season*
1 leek *local and in season*
some garlic cloves *homegrown*
fresh rosemary *homegrown  by my mama #2 1 hour away*
1 potato *Oregon*

To cook is too easy: put all the ingredients in a pot, cover it, bring it to a boil and reduce to a simmer until you feel like eating, at least 20 minutes after it boils. Hit with your immersion blender and top with some seasoning for a filling and vitamin packed feast. Makes enough for 4, but 2 of you will end up eating it all if given the chance.

Have you ever become master of a dish or technique you were once afraid of?

This post can be found at Simple Lives Thursdays: a great blog hop of recipes and sustainable living tips

Photos from Dark Days

The Dark Days challenge has started! Check out Not Dabbling in Normal on the 18th for re-caps from our western region, but in the meantime here's what the western bloggers have been up to lately:

Kitsap Farm to Fork had some really great reflections this week. Her late Summer chores take over her blogging time, but her family is doing some things my family dreams of doing: growing most of their food. Her post this week reflects on where the ingredients she's cooking with lately come from - and there's nary a mention of a store or even a local purchase - she grew most of it! Kudos! I think Diane really summed up the challenge when she said:

And the best part about this meal?  It was a meal eaten around our family table with my husband and children, we were truly grateful for the bounty of our life, and were able to talk and laugh as we enjoyed the fruits of our labor.  Regardless of whether your food comes from 100 miles or 1000 miles from your home, if you are unable to eat with the people you love, they are dark days indeed!

Cocoa and Coriander with her Toasted Beet and Carrot Panzanella

Reluctantly Blogging's Borscht

I really want to know what borscht tastes like!

Four Four Ten's "All American Meal"

I'm doing my best to think of some SOLE meals i can cook up in the next few weeks... the freezer is pretty scant! But hopefully I'll come up with some gems.

Have you been able to cook any all-local meals lately?

Let the Dark Days Challenge Begin!

I am excited to be a part of the Dark Days Challenge over at Not Dabbling in Normal this year. I'm in charge of reading and re-capping all the luscious, local and scrumptious posts that participants from the west coast will be submitting. I will do my best to post some of my favorites here at An Austin Homestead, and will be posting every other Sunday over at NDIN. Check us out this Sunday for some tantalizing photos, and be sure to visit all the participating blogs to see what they're cooking up this season.

What is the Dark Days Challenge, you ask?

Cook one meal each week featuring SOLE (sustainable, organic, local, ethical) ingredients, write about it on your blog and email your happy recapper a link to your post. It’s really that simple, but at the same time, it can really be that hard. Need more details? See the links in the right side bar at (not so) Urban Hennery to the past Challenges.

It's quite a task for me this year, as i have A. no garden B. no chickens C. no farmer's market until mid January and D. limited food put by in my cupboards. BUT i did put up SOME produce, and i do have a little local meat left in the freezer, so i'll do my best and hope to scrape together some yummy, local dinners. Come January the farmer's market opens back up, indoors and i'll be vending my soap! Hopefully i'll be able to convince some farmers to trade me for veggies.

Here's a sneak peak at what one blogger is finding locally in her area: Kamut!

I just started a new job this week (!) and wasn't able to cook up the apple nut bread I'd planned for this post... so stay tuned for that. I'll be using almost all local ingredients, except the flour and salt... which i think will be a problem for many folks trying to source all ingredients locally. NDIN has a nice bit about 'what's local' too:

What does local mean?
Traditionally, local food challenges call for a 100 mile radius. Winter time is more difficult in many climates, especially if you’re new to eating locally, so my default winter definition is 150 miles. You can choose to make your radius smaller or slightly larger as you need. Typical exceptions to the local requirement are oils, coffee, chocolate and spices. If you’re making fewer or more exceptions, please note that on your first post.
What if I can’t find every ingredient locally?
That’s why this is called a challenge! If you can’t find every ingredient, or heck even most ingredients, please still write about your attempts. This is just as much about what we learn, the obstacles we find, and the decisions we make as it is about cooking with SOLE ingredients.

I hope you'll enjoy our adventure and challenges this Winter. Read along, cook along, and join us during these dark days.

It's Time for Handmade Holiday Projects

It's November. It is officially time to get your butt into holiday gear! I take that back, for some - it isn't even Thanksgiving yet and not even close to being time for thinking about other holidays, but for those of us who value handmade holidays, it's definitely time to get working on those projects!

Out here in the damp Northwest, I've been busy spinning on my wheel in the kitchen or cozying up on the couch under a pile of handspun yarn, working on scarves and hats for the special people in my life. As an artist and otherwise crafty person, i usually try to give handmade gifts during the holidays. I also love to cook and take every advantage of family get-togethers to bust out my favorite recipes. Instead of art this year, i'll be giving a lot of gifts involving my new passion for fibers. I'm a beginning knitter, and these homemade gifts are sure to be a little rough around the edges, but i think that will make them even more well loved. For the knitters in my life, i'm spinning them skeins of yarn with the colors and fibers chosen specifically for them.



Although i don't have a garden to harvest from this year, my husband and i took advantage of wild harvests during the late Summer. Oregon is full of blackberries for the taking, and take we did! I put up a few half pints of blackberry/cayenne jam that we'll be sending back to Texas with our Christmas package so that the family we left behind can enjoy some of the seasonal bounty found in our new home. It's apple season here now, and i've been slicing, coring, peeling and boiling until my hands cramp into achey claws. Apple crisps, pies, breads and rings are sure to play some role in my holiday plans and gift giving. We'll even get to toast the new year with some homemade hard cider!



This year marks the first holiday season spent in the same state as my family in about 5 years, and i'm absolutely thrilled to enjoy our silly traditions with them once again. (I'm also pretty happy about only having to ship one Christmas parcel this year!) We have some pretty great traditions that always make the season seem to last forever. One of my favorite traditions that was started by my mother's parents and has been passed on to every new family member i have acquired, from step-sisters to in-laws. Instead of just the basic "To/From" tags on our Christmas gifts, we also include clues that make the packages mysterious and even more exciting. These clues are often riddles or rhymes, often silly and misleading, not meant to be a hint or description of the gift, but rather something more involved and engaging. Something as basic as:

To Mom, From Miranda........ "Greasy Bug"

Greasy Bug really meant a decorative silk "butterfly,"and after 15 minutes of trying to guess, with some pretty outlandish ideas, and failing, my mother opened her gift and laughed. That's what the clues are really all about: extending the morning, bringing out laughter and creating family memories for years to come. Because memories and joy are what the holidays are all about, and handmade gifts bring back memories every time they're tasted, worn, looked at and enjoyed.
I'm looking forward to sharing my handmade holidays with my readers this year, as well as with my family. I hope you'll share your own handmade holidays with me, and with the writers over at Not Dabbling in Normal. We'll be honoring our time honored, handmade traditions with you and can't wait to hear about what projects you're working on and what unique gifts you come up with.


Happy holidays, almost!

I'm Not Dabbling!

I am so happy to formally announce that i have been invited to write at the online collective of all things awesomely sustainable, frugal, nourishing and fun: Not Dabbling in Normal. I have joined a group of really creative and savvy ladies and gents, whose blog i have long been a follower of. I know at least a few of my readers are also followers of Not Dabbling, and for those of you who aren't: get on over there! It's like An Austin Homestead, but better. Which is why i'd better be a part of it so that you still get some of my articles and don't just leave me forever ;)

I'm hoping that my participating at Not Dabbling will also serve as a bit of a bridge when i finally change my blog from An Austin Homestead to whatever I end up naming my new, Oregonian venture. I'll have a brand new blog with a new locale, so please follow me over to NDIN and then follow me back to my new online home. I'm not going anywhere yet though, so keep reading here every weekday for now :)

I'm super excited and can't wait to be part of the challenges and fun that will certainly be soon ensuing.
Head on over there now!