Organizing My Kitchen Pantry

Gin & Juice, Winter Chickens, and More.

Our Winter Party Workshop is in just 12 days! Packages of books, aprons, booklets, and sourdough starter will be sent out early next week. Just a couple of spots remain for this intimate workshop of just 10 people. Reply back to this email for details or scroll to the bottom for details on how to reserve your spot.

shayeelliott

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Happy Friday, my friends.

I woke up with that wonderful feeling in my belly just knowing it was Friday. I’m celebrating a friend’s birthday tonight, have church to look forward to on Sunday, and have made it through our first week back schooling after Christmas break. When we started doing math again on Monday after three weeks off, I was convinced my children had forgotten everything I’d ever taught them about every subject. I’m happy to report the brain cells turned back on (though not without some effort on our part) and we’re back on track.

Part of getting back on track for me was spending an hour cleaning out the pantry in my kitchen on Monday - while simultaneously making bean soup and ciabatta bread for lunches. Our kitchen is so used - it’s essential that it stay clean and organized. Otherwise it’s complete anarchy in there and I just can’t stand for that.

I know who’s in charge of the kitchen. It’s me.

So come spend some time with me as I share thoughts on spices, organization, and show what’s in my pantry:

If you’d like detailed recipe cards for what I’m cooking in the video, I’d love for you to join our Cooking Community. We have both digital memberships (works great for those overseas!) and physical shipping memberships as well. You may have noticed that our logo and website got quite the facelift over the past few months and after four years, we were eager to give our Cooking Community membership boxes as facelift as well. New physical shipping members, here’s what’s headed to your mailbox!:

It may be clean and beautiful in the kitchen now, but life on the farm is far from clean. I shared this over on Instagram this week to encourage my fellow chicken farmers.

“Some jobs on the farm are cleaner than others. Here’s the reality behind our farm fresh eggs: lots of kitchen scraps. Sometimes the scraps are pretty radish tops or lettuce leaves. More often, our scrap buckets are full of weird meat pieces, remnants of pickle juices, old milk, egg shells, honestly WHATEVER food stuff I clean out of my kitchen or fridge. The only things I don’t feed them are citrus peels and onion skins because they won’t eat them and I get tired of cleaning them out of the feeder. My friend Dolores, a new chicken owner, asked me about what I will and won’t feed. I don’t even think about it anymore. I suppose I’ve had chickens for so long I know what works for us - which, as previously stated, is pretty much everything. Yes, even old, moldy foods. And you know what? My chickens are doing GREAT. So follow the rules - or don’t. Also, chickens are more fun to own in spring and summer. Winter chickens are nasty. Love ‘em, but they’re nasty.”

shayeelliott

A post shared by Shaye Elliott (@shayeelliott)

We’ve also been busy finishing up the lamb butchering for the year. We got so behind. In case you missed it, I detailed the process of how I break down a carcass, how I cut and wrap the pieces, and how I cook the various cuts of meat in this week’s new post.

Lastly, I was finally able to sneak into the studio this week to spend some time therapeutically working on a new still life. A local coffee shop asked to feature our photography in March, so I am very excitingly piecing together frames and photographs. In my secret dream world, I would spend hours and hours fussing with my still life photography each day - perfectly displaying a cabbage head or carrot or bundle of garlic. I find food so pretty and inspiring. This week, I wanted to highlight the beauty of winter grapefruits. Scroll to the bottom of this email for my favorite gin and juice recipe, which is exactly what I made with these after photographing them.

You can browse this image in various sizes, including in puzzles and on cellphone covers, on the art site.

If you’re not sure what to do with grapefruit, here’s what I suggest:

Gin & Juice

Juice from 2 grapefruits

Juice from 1/2 a lemon

1 teaspoon honey simple syrup (optional)

2 cups ice, divided

2 ounces high-quality gin

2 ounces Cointreau

For the honey simple syrup

Stir equal parts honey and boiling water together until well combined. The honey syrup can be stored at room temperature for a week.

• Into a cocktail shaker, combine the grapefruit juice, lemon juice, simple syrup, ice, gin, and cointreau.

• Put the lid on the shaker and shake vigorously for 30 seconds.

• Pour into two cocktail glasses. Garnish with additional ice or grapefruit peel, if desired.

We’ll be preparing this recipe and many more at our Winter Party Workshop. Come join us, learn how to throw a gathering, get inspired to cook new finger-foods and beverages, set a table with ease, and more! Packages for the workshop ship on Monday so don’t wait! We are topping this workshop off at 10 people and there’s just a couple of spots left. A recording will be sent out if you can’t make the whole workshop.

That’s it for this week! I hope your homesteads have been blessed by the rest of winter.

Cheers,

Shaye