Welcome to Farmhouse Delicious! My name is Rose Blankenship and I live off-grid on a bustling mountain homestead with my family, where I cook three meals a day without modern amenities. The recipes you'll find here are simple, un-fussy, and made with real, whole foods. These are the most tried-and-true, filling, nourishing and DELICIOUS family meals we keep coming back to.
My favorite thing ever is when we sit down to dinner and my daughter says, "Mama, this is SO good!" Then my toddler says, "Mmmmm!" and my Man says, "Oh, baby, this is amazing!"
Up here in the mountains, food is everything to us! It brings us together, and it refuels us: body and soul. It is also the product of our work, since so much of what we eat comes from our homestead or the woods around us.
I'm here to share a little bit of this from-scratch, work-your-butt-off-for-some-lard magic with you.
Behind the Camera
This blog is a collaboration with my daughter, who takes the majority of the photographs, and helps with the recipes, too. I refer to her here as "Filia," which means "Daughter" in Latin.
Filia is a passionate goat shepherdess, who can often be found in the barn. She also likes drawing, building things out of wood, and enjoying everything the forest has to offer!
Our Story
I grew up in the suburbs and lived in various cities as a young adult.
If you told me back then that someday I'd be waking at dawn to milk goats and put a loaf of sourdough in the oven...I would never EVER have believed you.
But I did have a great love for the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, for knitting, and for doing things "the tricky way," like putting my pajama shirt on from my legs.
Around 2020, my husband Philip and I started talking about moving someplace more rural. In spite of various seemingly insurmountable obstacles (student loans, limited income, limited knowledge, limited equipment), we made the leap to purchase a small parcel in the mountains in 2021.
Since then, it feels like we've been living in paradise, though I'll admit, it's not everyone's idea of paradise! At the start, living on a shoestring, we cooked on the flat top of the wood heating stove. I washed dishes in an old bathroom sink with a bucket underneath the drain to catch the water.
Now we have a collection of farm animals (goats, pigs, rabbits, chickens, bees) and are working every day toward greater self-reliance. My favorite part of this lifestyle is how close it's made our family. We rely on one another for so many things, big and small, and each person makes such an important contribution to the farm.
Professional Background
For as long as I can remember, I wanted to be a storyteller. I've pursued this dream across many disciplines, from film to theater. Now, food and family is my medium!
I earned a Bachelor's in Media Studies in 2010 from Pomona College, where I also ran Cross Country and Track. Running competitively is what first gave me a sense of the importance of food as fuel, and how nutrition can affect physical performance.
From 2010-2015 I made a bunch of film and theater projects while working as a waitress at a vegetarian space-age dinner. I still remember the cilantro-lime sauce.
From 2015-2018 I completed an MFA in Film Directing. Along the way I directed and produced several short films and a comedic TV pilot for the City of New York. I learned a lot about stories and navigating collaborations, got married, had a baby, and didn't let it slow me down.
My biggest blunder: spending the beginning of my daughter's life working my tail off to make movies and TV. I wish I'd been home with her instead of on set. Ladies, don't make the same mistake I did. Your babies need you, and only you.
In 2020, I stepped away from the film projects I was developing to focus on my family. I haven't watched a movie or TV show since then, and it's helped me so much to find my own path.
Now, I'm a wife and mother, first and foremost. I'm proud to be the one who feeds and nourishes my children!
Learning to Bake & Cook
It started with bread, yeasted bread. Then whole wheat bread. Then I checked out every sourdough book from the inter-library-loan system. It took months to get the first sourdough starter going. Filia and I had to take the jar into bed and sleep with it between us so it wouldn't get too cold overnight.
Finally, though, we got that starter going and the rest is history.
We've traded sourdough bread for lumber to build with, we've shipped it to family and friends all over the country, and we eat it every day. After a few years of following other people's recipes, I started to branch out and create my own combinations and textures.
I love cookbooks! I absolutely consume them and they've taught me so much. I've also learned a lot from nutrition trailblazers such as Paul Chek, Sally Fallon Morrell, Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride and Pete Evans.
But the best teacher of all is Experience, and I met her through her mother, Necessity. Up here in the middle of nowhere, I just have to dive in. I get groceries once a month; everything else comes from the farm and the forest. My family tells me when it's good, and how good it is or isn't, I tweak and try again.
That's how I've learned to make yogurts and cheese without store-bought cultures, how to use the obscure parts of the pig, how to use goat's milk to address all our dairy needs. So many attempts to get it right! It hurts when the brie I've been aging carefully for weeks goes moldy!
This site is to pass on what I've learned, and what I'm learning, so you can make something delicious the first time. You can enjoy these recipes with food you buy from farmers, food from your own homestead, or food you buy from the grocery store. You can make it all from scratch, or not.
Either way, I'm so glad you're here sharing this journey with us.