Homemade Ice Cream

I purchased Aaron an ice cream maker for his birthday this year along with a recipe book. The book was a recommendation from Aaron's brother, Gavin, who has been making homemade ice cream for a while now. We tried it out this week Monday and made a simple chocolate ice cream out of our book and... MAN was it delicious! Considering all the cream, eggs and chocolate that is in this ice cream, its no wonder it is so tasty. Although, this also means it is full of fat. I think we will make the "real ice cream" on special occasions, but that is not to say that we won't be using the machine. It also makes frozen yogurt, sorbet and gelato. Gavin also says that using corn starch instead of eggs is a good way to reduce fat while keeping the texture of the ice cream. There is another book which I purchased for my Mom which is a vegan ice cream book which I will be sure to borrow and try out some recipes. I am excited to start making all sorts of healthy-ish goodies. With summer just around the corner, this was the perfect gift. Homemade Fro Yo here we come!

Meat Grinder

Deciding to purchase Aaron a meat grinder for Christmas was such a good choice. We are now able to purchase quality meats and grind them ourselves. No more mystery ground meats for the Lock household. We have been very busy with some family things lately so we have not been using it as often as we'd like to but we will definitely not be purchasing any ground meat anymore. As for sausage stuffing, we have yet to try it out.... but soon. This summer I think we will be making some sausages and smoking them in the eggs.

We recently tried our hand at making smoked pork belly (bacon). It turned out amazingly! We got together with Aaron's brother and his wife and we made 3 pieces. We used a recipe from the Charcuterie book as a base but then took some liberties and added some sweet to one piece and some savory to another. All 3 were very good and there wasn't any significant difference between them... it was great right off the smoker or fried up in a frying pan as traditional bacon. We just need to find the time to do it again, and soon!

Let the Planning begin....

Aaron and I have been chatting a bit about how we plan on setting up the vegetable garden this year and what we want to grow thistime around. We plan on doing things a bit different than last year; last year was our trial run. We haven't come up with a concrete plan yet as we are going to share with a neighbour and so we need to chat with them as well. The neighbour had the idea that we come together and grow different things and just do a swap at harvest times... we of course thought it was an excellent idea. I know we want to do some sore of sauce tomato for canning. We received a bunch of mason jars of all different sizes from a friend of mine and se we plan on doing some caning thisyear with many of our vegetables. I am excited to see how our plans come together. This year I think we will yield much more from the vegetable garden since we should have more time to keep up with the maintenance. We have many seeds left over from last year that should be fine for planting this year so we won't need to purchase much aside from things we didn't grow last year.

I didn't post any of the photos I took last year of the seedlingsand such so here are some from

last year....

Baby Blanket for my first Nephew!

I made a blanket for my nephew Dante Matteo.  It took forever to get completed since I have 2 little ones under the age of 3, but I managed to do it. I used 5 balls of cotton totes yarn by Bernat. I chose a light blue colour and just did the blanket with a simple stitch rather than using a pattern. I got the stitch form the book The Complete Photo Guide to Crochet. I really like this book and they have great illustrations for beginners as well as showing both written and symbol instructions.

Blanket Stitch

Chain multiple of 3. (I chained 75 and used a 9mm hook)

Foundation Row:
work 2 dc in 3rd ch from hook, *skip next 2 ch [1sc, 2dc] in next ch, rep from * to within last 3 ch, skip next 2 ch, 1sc in last ch, turn

Row 1:
Ch 1 (counts as sc), work 2dc in the first st, *skip 2dc [1sc, 2dc] in the next sc, rep from * to last 3 sts, skip 2dc, 1sc in the top of the turning ch, turn.

Cooking on the Big Green Eggs

I am not sure if I have mentioned earlier that I finally got on board with Aaron's persistant begging for a new BBQ/Grill.  Turns out I really caved and allowed for the purchase of 2... yes 2 new Grills.  Aaron has been talking about Big Green Eggs for a very long time.  We eventually want to smoke meats and such and the BGE's are suppose to hold their temperature for a very long period of time.   Aaron convinced me that we need a small and a larg BGE since we wouldn't always need to fire up the large for just the family of 4.  Plus when we entertain we can cook different things (meat and veg.) at more than one temperature... or use the small while something smokes on the large and so on.  And so he built a table for his new babies:

Aaron's babies; The Big Green Eggs.

Aaron's first time cooking on his fancy new grills turned out to be reassurance that allowing him to buy them was the right thing to do.  He did a poor man's sous vide (hot tub) on the small egg using a thermometer and a pot of water on the gas stove. Held 140F water for 25 minutes with two tenderloin steaks in a zip-lock floating. Meanwhile he got the BGE smokin' hot  at 700F dome temp and seared the steaks. Best steaks ever!  Charcoal is far superior to gas as far as flavour is concerned.

Left photo=after water bath. Right photo=just off the grill

Bon Apetite! 

Second cook, pizza on the large egg. We cooked four pizzas at 700F.  Fan-tas-tic; pizzas were great. (forgot the camera though)

Third cook was on the large. He added some wood chips for some smoke and threw down a Himalayan salt block and let it heat up at 500F for 30 minutes. Fish was tasty and not salty at all. The block lends an earthy/sweetish type taste. 

Cod filets grilling away.

Back to blogging!

Our daughter was born in May of this year and we fell off the blogging train for a while. Here is a brief sumer recap...

-Megan came in May... I have been nursing which means no wine :(

-Our vegetable garden was a success and failure (see November post)

-We discovered a fabulous magazine called Clean Eating with fabulous recipes and healthy living tips

-We had a landscaping company, Plantscape, come and do our front yard which looks beautiful compared to before. We had gutted it the summer earlier and it had 2 trees and that was it.

In order: Front, corner

Side yard.

Corner of lot, corner of driveway

... really, thats about it. We have been very busy with the 2 kids and have had little time for other things. This coming summer should be wonderful! We should have a bit more time for ourselves and the things we enjoy. We do enjoy our kids, don't get me wrong, but we also have other interests and I look forward to getting back into them and blogging all about it.

Update and New Eggs

After about a year of convincing Sarah that we could not live without a Big Green Egg, as well as the complete disintegration of our propane (we got it free) grill, we have our Big Green Eggs. One small, one large. The BGE is proclaimed as the worlds best smoker/grill. I'll put it through the paces and report on that lofty claim.

In addition, to fuel my addiction to odd hobbies, Sarah got me a meat grinder and Charcuterie by Ruhlman and Poclyn. She's forgotten what she's gotten into by "Living the Lock Life." It is, after all, me that drive most of the insane things that go on around here. And gifts are, I think, implied permission, aren't they?

As an example, I've come across my new food hero - Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall from the River Cottage. That would be me, if space, Sarah and the town would allow. But they won't, so it isn't. To (over)compensate for that fact, I'll be making sausage and various other charcuterie, smoking things, making bread and pizza, growing our garden, fly fishing and tying. And likely other half-brained attempts at hobbies. If all goes well, I'll elucidate my experiences here.