Busy Hands Homestead

The sunshine last until late in the evening and greats us early in the morning.  We have been digging in the garden, running through the sprinkler, chasing our adolescent chickens and before I know it, the kids are up too late again and when I wake them up they are grumpy.  On morning like these I have a favorite breakfast recipe: puff pancakes .  I drag myself down the stairs, preheat the oven, melt the butter, mix the batter, and while the pancakes bake I wrestles kids out of pajamas, into clothes and comb sleep tangles out of hair.  When the timer beeps we have perfectly puffy pancakes.  The more often I have made these the more I have explored possible puff pancake combinations and the options are endless.  Here are my favorites: 1. Thin slices of  Apples and Brie added to the butter while the oven preheats.  The results are less puffy, but delicious with a drizzle of maple syrup.   2. A cu...

A small piece of paper torn form a Red Lion Hotels notepad has been floating around my kitchen for the better part of two weeks. It has been clothes pinned to my cooling rack above my kitchen counter.  It has been shuffled under papers on the catch all corner.  It has been used almost daily for the last week and a half. I am afraid I am going to lose it in the shuffle. Scribbled on it is a recipe for Egg-less Apple Cider Pancakes. A recent experiment that turned out to be fantastic.  Ivory, Sylvan, a few more kiddos (10 total), two mamas and I gathered the early fruits of a transparent apple tree, passed them through the hopper and pressed fresh apple cider.  This left me with a giant bowl of sweet, fresh and delicious cider. We sipped cups of the thick juice, but eventually the kids stopped asking for it and I still had a bowl full left.   What to do with all that juice taking up valuable space in my fridge?  The solution: make panc...

3 Mamas 6 Kids 3 Dogs We all piled into three cars and drove an hour to pick huckleberries. Small, red and purple berries dot the understory. Each one falling, plunk, into the bottom of my container until finally the bottom is covered. Our fingers red and sticky.  Two mamas, six kids, three dogs, a hour drive there and back:  Totally worth the effort.  Huckles, as Ivory calls them, in the freezer.  Huckles in the scones.  Huckles in this morning's pancakes.   The sweet and tart juicy fruit reminding us that summer is almost over - it is Huckleberry time!

Before Christmas I purchased a bag of almond flour and a bag of hazelnut flour for a variety of German Christmas cookies.  In spite of having baked many ( too many ) batches of Christmas cookies, I still have a partial bag of hazelnut flour sitting on my pantry shelf.  This is a unique pancake recipe I have developed to use up the remainder.  The result is fluffy and moist and both Sylvan and Ivory are guaranteed to ask for seconds. Hazelnut Pancakes 1/2 cup white flour 1/2 cup whole wheat flour 1/2 cup hazelnut flour 2 teaspoons baking powder 2 tablespoons sugar 1 tablespoon oil 1 egg 1 1/3 cup milk 1 teaspoon vanilla combine the dry ingredients in a bowl and stir until mixed well add the wet ingredients and stir until well blended ladle onto a skillet or griddle that has been oiled and warmed over medium heat turn when the craters formed in the batter stay open after a minute or two remove from heat and pour on another pancake! These a...

I have been slacking.  There are a few recipes that I have been asked for and I just have not been able to remember to write them down when I am sitting at the computer.  Instead, I have been stricken with extreme guilt at random moments of my day. I am writing them down NOW! for Ellen: GRANOLA!  I have made granola... and I have a super easy and cheap recipe that is my favorite.  It is from the More-with-Less Cookbook compiled by Doris Janzen Longacre Simple Granola preheat your oven to 250* combine in a large mixing bowl: 2 cups whole wheat flour 6 cups rolled oats 1 cup coconut (I use unsweetened, but I'm sure sweetened would work just as well)  1 cup wheat germ in a separate bowl combine 1/2 cup water 1 cup honey 1 cup oil 2 tsp vanilla 1 tbsp salt  combine the wet and dry ingredients and mix thoroughly spread out on two greased cookie sheets and bake about 1 hour or until the crumbles are dried and golden store in an a...