Farm Week in Review: Cookbooks

I love cookbooks for the possibilities they hold. Which recipe will be chosen first? Which ones will become fan & family favorites for years to come? Which will I make so often that I will commit them to memory? And, which ones will be total and complete failures? 

I know that not everyone is as excited by food (and cooking) as I am, but that’s why I love cookbooks like The Nourished Kitchen: Farm-to-Table Recipes for the Traditional Foods Lifestyle Featuring Bone Broths, Fermented Vegetables, Grass-Fed Meats, Wholesome Fats, Raw Dairy, and Kombuchas by Jennifer McGruther. I love my other favorite author, Shannon Hayes, for the same reasons I love McGruther’s new book. Not only do they provide beautiful and wholesome recipes but there’s so much education packed into their books, too.

In The Grassfed Gourmet Cookbook: Healthy Cooking and Good Living with Pasture-Raised Foods by Shannon Hayes, there are profiles of the farmers who contributed recipes to the book and in the Nourished Kitchen cookbook, McGruther provides an array of information about buying directly from farmers and her family’s experience with a Weston A. Price Foundation based diet. The majority of recipes online and in the usual cookbooks are written for conventionally produced foods and converting them is not always an easy task for rookie cooks to do in the kitchen. Awesome peoples like Hayes and McGruther have done that work for us and then pack their books with info on why farm-raised products need to be cooked differently and how to accomplish this.

So what recipe will I make first from my new Nourished Kitchen cookbook? I’m not sure yet. But, I am excited to curl up with a cup of tea to browse, read and learn. What are some of your favorite cookbooks? Are they old (or new!) enough to include recipes for non-traditional cuts and sourcing from farmers? Have you converted conventional recipes to accommodate for sustainably-produced food? Drop us a line and let us know!

Not many farm update this week – we survived the Christmas chaos and are very much looking forward to the normal routine that January will bring. We had some late night (and late morning) milkings because of family parties so I think the barn ladies will also appreciate the return to earlier routines. Christmas day was a great opportunity to deep clean the house after farm chores were finished, while Dan delivered 9 calves at work solo. Venison beer stew with a family movie topped the day before evening chores and an early bedtime. It was glamorous to say the least. ;D

A very Happy New Year to our farm family this week!