first pictures of the new house

This is the kitchen and the kids are enthused over our first ever dishwasher!

new house

We're closing on a house here in Minnesota on Friday. I can't believe the amount of paperwork it takes to hand someone a big wad of money. As soon as I get a few pictures I'll post them. I'm already scheming about my garden. Hodgson's Homestead is moving north!

sausage maker

Sorry, another post with no pictures. But you don't want a picture of this one. I've been making homemade sausage. It's idiot easy and is delicious. I love finding one more thing I can do myself and not buy from a store. These sausage don't have extra chemicals in them because I'm in charge! Here's the basic recipe-- buy pork butt when it is on a fabulous sale (memorial day or labor day) and freeze it half way (or freeze it and let it thaw half way). Now for the hard part, you have to have a meat grinder. If you have one the rest is easy. Grind the meat/fat up, adding spices (lots of variations here, it could just be salt and pepper OR you can get way fancier, there are tons of recipes on the web) then divide it into one pound plops. You can either use it immediately or re-freeze for future use. You could also stuff it into casings, but I've had trouble locating decent casings, so I've just been making it into bulk sausage. I can't wait until someone bags a deer and I can say, I'll make it into deer sausage for you! I remember as a kid begging my father to turn the entire deer into sausage. For some reason he didn't think that was as good an idea as I thought it was.