Filling a chest freezer or two

We finally decided to get another chest freezer. That makes two chest freezers, two normal freezers and two fridges. That sounds like a lot of capacity, but I am sure it will feel too small in a year’s time. 

Delivery man trying to calm his nerves after braving our road...

Most of the space is taken up by our bulk purchases of organic/ grass-fed meat. However, in a year’s time, we will need some of that space for our own meat! Although our rare breed lambs won’t be that big, an estimated 14 x 15-20 kg of lamb meat will probably fill up our freezers pretty quickly. 

These ladies will hopefully put a lot of food on our table (however macabre that may sound). 

In addition, we are currently topping up our freezers with all the berries that we can find. We’re preserving as well, but since we don’t use much sugar in our household, we would rather not try our luck by making preserve with ALL our berries, lest it should fail (low sugar/ honey content = more likely to spoil). We’re currently at 120 litres and counting, blueberries and lingonberries…

They're alright to pick, but cleaning is another thing...

Now we just need to find some space for the all the mushrooms we’re planning to pick!

Porcini deluxe. 

The Mills Visit

Off foraging…yay! (image: N.D.Mills)

We had Family Mills pay us a visit in the middle of their Swedish Summer Road Trip from Gothenburg to Mora. It was great to see them all again, especially as Tora had a couple of friends, Freya and Hugo, to mess around with for a couple of days.

Grilling meat.

The weather was fantastic and we were outside everyday, walking, foraging, swimming, and BBQ'ing - all in all a great couple of days. Whilst we grilled meat on the fire pit, we finally made good use of the rustic log table we made with Liz and Laurence (guests in June!). It was great and blends in perfectly with the natural surroundings.

The Table.

The Defrosted Blueberries

Simon accidentally (supposedly) left a 500g bag of frozen blueberries on top of the freezer last night. Only yesterday Simon was saying that he thought we should include some paleo treats on the blog. In other words, he was having sweet cravings. Anyway, I decided that it was best to use up the blueberries today and whipped up some blueberry muffins and some no-sugar blueberry jam.

The blueberry muffins were loosely based on a recipe in the "Primal Cravings" cookbook (also have a look at the Health-Bent website for some great paleo recipes).

Ingredients:
1/2 cup coconut flour
1/2 cup tapioca flour
1 tsp bicarb of soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground cardamom
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 cup coconut oil
1/3 cup coconut sugar
4 eggs
1 ripe banana (mashed)
1/2 tbs apple cider vinegar
1 cup blueberries
1/2 cup chopped hazelnuts

Mix the dry ingredients in a big bowl (flours, bicarb, spices).
Melt coconut oil and whisk together with coconut sugar in another big bowl. Then add eggs, one at a time, whisking in between. Add mashed banana and apple cider vinegar. Whisk in the dry ingredients and fold in defrosted blueberries. Pour the mixture into a standard muffin tin lined with paper liners (12 muffins). Top off with chopped hazelnuts. Bake at 175 degrees C for 20 minutes.

As for the blueberry jam, I just boiled the blueberries with a few lingonberries and then stirred in some gelatine powder. Yum!