Homesteading Update

I haven’t done a homesteading-type update lately. What have we been up to? Well, we joined a wonderful homeschool co-op, and as part of it, we now have the opportunity to once again order items from a food co-op. Our first order includes miso, Bragg’s Amino Acids, soy sauce, and cumin seed. I’m sure we’ll be ordering some other bulk items soon, like beans, nutritional yeast, and other delicious staples. We did get a bulk order of vital wheat gluten, which we use to make seitan, from a new local health food store.

So far we’ve made the traditional seitan dinner (with veggie gravy, mashed potatoes, delicata squash, and brussels sprouts), but have also done a vegan stroganoff, as well as using seitan in our veggie pot pie (so it’s sort of like a beef pot pie). They’ve all come out yummy, if I do say so myself.

This has been an amazing year for mushrooms in our neck of the woods. BlackLion wants to learn more about edible wild mushrooms. We’re going to attend a mushroom foraging workshop later in the month. In the meantime, he’s been taking lots of pictures. NOTE: this isn’t necessarily an edible type of mushroom – it’s just one that he found in our yard!

We’ve also been enjoying the bounty of food from our local farm. We’ve made several batches of fresh salsa, as well as yummy salads. And we’ve been sipping local cider, chomping apples, and adding some pears (local pears are tiny and adorable) to our smoothies. We didn’t end up doing a very big garden this year, but we do have some potatoes to harvest soon, and then we’ll plant garlic in those beds, to overwinter. I’m thankful for the bounty of this season’s delightful harvest!