Homemade Happenings

We had a lot of homemade goodness going on over here during the end of last week.  I get such a little thrill out of anything homemade.  I made tomato sauce Thursday.  It is still early for really good tomatoes but I made do with what I could find.  It came out pretty good and I can't wait for the really good tomatoes later in the season.  Friday Dom and I made chicken sausage.  We've pretty much mastered the pork and I wanted to try making chicken because I believe it is a bit healthier as well as cheaper to make.  I joked that if we wanted realy fresh sausage we could just grab a chicken from the yard.
 I was of course joking.
 I will be honest and say at some point I would definitly consider raising meat birds.  Yes, I am well aware of what the act of processing your own birds entails.  My parents raised turkeys when I was younger and I witnessed the whole process first hand.
Could I do it myself?  That remains to be seen.
The first time would be the hardest but knowing that the chicken lived a happy life being chickens and not crammed into little cages and pumped full of antibiotics and hormones would make it easier for me.  I am honestly quite disturbed by the size of chicken breasts that you find in the grocery store.
Henrietta and Henny Penny are quite safe from becoming sausage as we are quite fond of them and they're egg laying, insect eating contributions to the family.
Anyway,we made chicken sausage and it turned out good.  I think that we will switch to making chicken sausage for a little while since we have both worked so hard to lose weight.
Next homemade item on the agenda was Mozzarella cheese.  In my neverending curiousity to find
easy things to make at home I came across the New England Cheesemaking Supply Company. They sell kits for cheese making at home.  The mozzarella takes only an hour-(actually the box claims 30 minutes but it was closer to an hour for us first timers.)  It really wasn't that hard and the cheese came out pretty good.  You can just use milk from the grocery store as long as it isn't ultra-pasteurized.  I hope to find a more local source for milk because the cheese would be even better!

So by Saturday afternoon we had fresh sauce, sausage and cheese and decided to make pizza for
dinner by making up some homemade dough.  So fun!  I had several little helpers because Becca had a
friend from school sleepover and we had a delicious homemade pizza!
Add to that Kenzie's woodworking creations and we had lots of homemade fun!