KW Homestead

Pasture Raised Poultry & Edible Landscaping Plants Since 2013

Tag: shiitakes

Duck Feet Soup: Medicine in Broth

Jason injured his hand about 3 weeks ago and he had surgery 2 weeks ago. He cut himself butchering a pig and sliced through the nerve, artery, and nicked the tendon sheath of his right hand’s pointer finger.

It’s been a slow road to recovery… He hasn’t been able to move around much because of the pain/discomfort and it’s always hard to do very much for yourself with only one hand in operation.

So… We’ve been looking for ways for him to heal faster. Your diet, of course, is really the most important component of healing!

And what better meal to eat than a meal made of the very organic materials that are healing? Tendons, muscles, and nerves!

duck feet

24 duck feet waiting in the pot!

So we made the most delicious duck foot soup! We had 24 feet from our duck butchery a few months ago. We made it Vietnamese style, with spicy peppers, soy sauce, carrots, garlic, onions, celery, and tons of shiitake mushrooms! Shiitake mushrooms have numerous health benefits: they fight “bad” bacteria, viruses, and contain tons of B vitamins and many other micronutrients that are essential to life and healing. To this soup we added rice noodles and fresh cilantro and basil.

It was perhaps the most delicious meal we’ve had in months… And it’s gone now. We ate it for lunch and dinner every day until there was no more!

The feet of birds are often very fatty (unprocessed animal fat from healthy, organic animals is good for you!!!) and filled with awesome gelatin and nutrients! We moaned in enjoyment while we ate!

soup

Yummy soup!

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Let’s see how he heals now!!!

.:.

Dehydrating Mushrooms and Apples

We just dehydrated our first batch of mushrooms and apples.

The shiitake mushroom logs won’t fruit in the colder weather, so now is the time to save them for winter soups and stir frys.

The apples were beginning to spoil rather quickly, so we thought that dehydrating them for fruit-leather-like snacks would be fun.

apples

Some of the apple are going bad…

The apples and the mushrooms were sliced about 1/4 inch thick or smaller and laid out on the dehydrator trays. The apples were soaked in a Vitamin C water solution to lock in the nutrients that are often lost during dehydrating and to keep them from turning brown too quickly. They were dehydrated for about 14 hours at 135 degrees.

apples

Soaking apple slices.

The combined smell of the dehydrating apples and mushrooms was a bit funky, but the finished product looks great. I can’t wait to try the mushrooms this winter!

mushrooms

Ready to go in the dehydrator!

.:.

A Shiittake Update!

After a very cold winter and some log negligence on my part, I was worried that the many shiitake mushrooms logs that we inoculated last March would not fruit this year. But I was wrong!

Last week I soaked them again to be sure to kick start them into spring, and stacked them, log cabin style, so that I could keep watering them periodically with the hose. This week, the logs have started to fruit!

None of the mushrooms are quite ripe for the picking yet, but I will be checking them everyday and I imagine that in a few days we will have our first shiitake mushroom meal! Stay tuned for more!

logs

Our “log cabin” stacking technique.

 

Shiitakes!

Shiitakes!

 

mushrooms

Mushrooms!

 

yummy

Yummy!

.:.

 

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