City girl gone farmer - Skills Part 1: Kitchen

Everybody wants to know... how did you get here?

As a girl who grew up in the suburbs of Toronto, without any immediate family in farming or with an expansive property in the country. it was always a dream to live on a farm.

And a lot had to change before getting the farm, and even more had to change once living on it was a reality.

Before the farm...

Building practical skills and research was incredibly important. With a desire to start out well, the skills developed over the years were helpful in having either a mastery of, or at least a baseline knowledge in, before making the move.

Here's a list of where to start:

Kitchen skills

Gardening

Preserving

Building and wood working

Laundry

Relationship building

All of these areas contribute to farms near and far. And I would argue they are necessary to develop before a farm is a reality for you. You can start now in your condo, apartment or suburban land plot; don't let where you are be the reason you don't get started on your future dreams.

Here are a few examples of the history of building the kitchen skills to run a farm before the farm.

Kitchen skills.

Ok, but WHY is this really important?

Because everything is far away, every take out place is a drive and often delivery of groceries or Doordash don't come as far as farmland starts. So if you need to make food for yourself & your family going forward, this will be a daily, 3 meals a day type thing. And it won't matter if you're tired or sick or just "done with life", you need to be able to pull it together or eat a bag of Tostitos and a jar of salsa for dinner. We need great fuel to be performing our best, getting great sleep and generating the best skin, hair and nails to make everybody want to become farmers like us. This is an every day thing, and it's important.

Food prep and light cooking

Having a basic understanding of how to make a soup, a salad, a sandwich, two or three proteins, pasta and rice will have you whipping up all types of meals in no time. This would be more skill based than recipe based in my opinion for one reason - scale. If you have made a creamy vegetable puree soup before, you can make it with 5 other vegetables. If you have made a great sandwich before, you can swap out the sauce, veg, cheese & meat to make lots of combinations, or try an open face sandwich for a higher protein ratio. Cooking protein is where I see a lot of challenges and finding what type of protein you enjoy then the right way to cook that specific cut.

For example, I would not cook chicken thighs the same way I'd cook chicken breast - one is much more juicy and the other is so much leaner and dry that it will not be tasty. Knowing how to properly cook different types of meat that you often consume will help you in the long run make quick decisions at dinner time.

The proteins I most often have in my kitchen are a rotation of the following:

Chicken, all cuts

Eggs

Ground beef

Albacore tuna in water

Sausages

Most often, I roast a whole chicken, air fry or pan sear (then bake) chicken thighs, and sautee chicken breast. Eggs are my favourite breakfast food and they get scrambled, fried or quiched daily. Ground beef is often used for meat sauce, meat balls, tacos and chili or for added protein to a broth based soup with vegetables in the fall/winter. Albacore tuna in water is my saving grace when no other protein is fresh or available and I'm in a pinch. And lastly, great quality sausages from a local butcher are a fantastic option for dinner, and I also love adding sausage meat to soups, pastas and cutting up coins for an on-the-go snack.

The proteins I have in the freezer but don't often have daily are:

Chuck/blade roast

Short rib

Prime rib roast

Peameal bacon

Bacon

Ham roast

Chuck/blade roast is a great one to slow cook for an enjoyable dinner and great pulled for tacos. Short rib is a brown & braise cut that is exceptional when cooked properly and you won't have leftovers. Prime rib roast is only coming out when I'm trying to impress somebody and I love to cook that according to my cookbook directions. Peameal bacon is what I would add to breakfast as a leaner protein option more regularly. Bacon is great all the time for breakfast, adding a salty crunch to salads and sandwiches and smashed potatoes. And lastly, a ham roast is also great cooked low and slow, then sliced for sandwiches for the next few days.

I find it really easy to pull together a year's worth of meals with these proteins and thankfully have learned how to cook them before I arrived on a farm. There are a number of starter recipes in my book - Practicing Hospitality - available via our farm stand and also online with direct delivery to your home. The book breaks down formulas for easy meals and how to combine things without a recipe. Highly recommend if this is an area you want to improve your skills in.

Knife safety

Learning to use knives safely is the literal lifesaver when the hospital is really far away. How to cut, sharpen knives and which knife is good for which job is important. Taking an online course is a great way to uplevel your skills here.

Organization

How to properly setup your kitchen to save time and energy when you're in and out of there three times daily just for your own food. This includes what's in each drawer, drawer dividers, organizing ziplock bags and tupperware etc. It's great to learn these skills ahead of time before searching far and wide in the kitchen starts to slow down your work.

Labeling

Labeling food in the fridge and freezer is a helpful habit to get in the consistent action of. Don't mind me thinking... I'll remember what that was!... and of course, 3 months later, nobody knows what the heck the brick of some meat and sauce actually is or how old it was. Labels on painters tape or ziplock bags is my favourite - I usually label the item and month/day it was prepared for food safety.

Food preservation

Freezing leftovers and making double batches of anything with a long cooking time really saves us. It's my goal to continually eat home cooked food and unrealistic to expect that I'll have the energy every day to make it from scratch.

We found a system for freezing leftovers that uses freezer trays which portion food into different measured blocks. The original company is called Souper Cubes and using these things has made life a lot easier. Any leftovers or double batched meals go into souper cubes in the freezer and get bagged up the next time the souper cubes are needed.

All of these basic skills will be important to know before you land on a farm and start a huge mortgage payment that will have you rethinking if you need somebody to cut up your meat or if you can do it yourself at home.

Tell us... what else would you add to the list in kitchen skills that you'd love to learn?