Homemade Liverwurst

For over a year we've had four packages of liver and a beef heart sitting in the freezer.  I'm not a big fan of liver and onions and I had no idea what to do with the heart.  Today we tried something.

I got a recipe for homemade liverwurst.  I ground up two pounds of liver with two pounds of heart.  I added a minced onion, 1.5 tablespoons of salt, 1 tablespoon of pepper, and a teaspoon of allspice.  After two grindings, we patted it into loaf pans, covered it with foil, and baked at 300ºF for two hours in a boiling water bath.  It came out looking like meatloaf but tasting like a mild, lean liverwurst.  I'm giving it a two thumbs up.

...except for the part where the mixer died.  This one was only 2-1/2 months old and grinding the meat did it in.  They are sending a replacement, but we'll be without a mixer for one-two weeks until it gets here.  I'm beginning to wonder if all our attachments are not actually designed to be used.

With a dead mixer, that means our bread has to kneaded by hand.  It's not hard, but in combination with all the other things I use arm strength for, it wore me out.

Christina's quarter still isn't cleared up.  The lab result came back negative but the CMT results keep going back and forth between positive and negative.  Maybe it's a really low grade infection.  So we tried extra milkings and spent two days letting pepper nurse that quarter three extra times a day.  Then yesterday I noticed that the orifice of that teet was dark. I looked closer and it seems like she had a little scab.  It looked a lot like the pictures in the book of teets that have been overmilked.  It suddenly occurred to us that pepper is oversucking her and causing these problems.  Time for a new plan!  As of today, pepper is off the udder and on the bottle.  We'll keep watching and see if she heals up and those CMT positive's go away. 

All of this detective work with cows makes me glad I went to college!

We got another wet storm and had to move sand (moving sand is a lot like pounding sand, but more work). The pasture didn't fill up, but the area around the shed has gotten really soggy.  Christina had icky feet.  So my husband and daughters spent another morning moving sand.  While they were out, I churned some butter, made pudding, started a cheese, and did some fun preschool work with our littlest one.  When I saw them cleaning up, I got some hot chocolate started.  By noon we all felt like we had put in a full day.