Pioneer Woman at Heart

I started the day yesterday by mixing up and baking a carrot cake for Son .  It calls for baby food carrots.  We love it because it's dense.  I am able to locate organic, non-gmo baby food at our local store I made a batch of homemade tortillas with lard.   My puppies are now officially way over board spoiled.

I mentioned a while back that I would try another tortilla recipe, but this time I used lard.  I forgot I even had the recipe until I was looking for my whole wheat pancake recipe one day.  Tip:  Tortilla presses are more for corn tortillas (or masa), so you'll need a rolling pin for this recipe. This recipe got all thumbs up from the family.  The tortillas are softer and we all like these better than the tortillas I have been making with organic canola oil.

I adapted the recipe for Egg less Peanut Butter C ookies , by using natural peanut butter, and lard (v s. shortening) .  Once we have goat's milk again, I will bake these again, using organic butter and goat 's mi lk ( vs . the buttermilk ). These were pre tty good, and I got about 6 1 /2 dozen cookies, by using my smaller pampered chef cookie sc oop.   I think these woul d make a wonder ful addition to our Christmas cookies next season too.  And I am betting they would freeze well.  

(The upper two on the right were made with a half cherry and the others a whole cherry) Another future goal of ours, i s to raise pigs for m eat, and of course have lard .   I spend a lot of time rese arching ways to utilize something before we r aise it for food.    (Photo source: Amazon) I have foun d this wonder ful book at the library (again, a great place to read books for free).   However, I may have to add this book to my personal homesteading library .   I did not have enough dough to cover 24 whole maraschino cherries.  I started to cut them in half, however, in the end, pref er red the whole cherry in the cookie.  Next time, I need to use less dough per cookie. These would be great for Valentine 's Day or Chris tm as . I am sur e the debate over shortening and lard will contin ue for years, and doctors will have their opi nion.  But when it comes down to it, it's abou t what's real and what's not real....