Enter the chicken time machine... where we start at four weeks old (today) and go backwards. Keep your wings and feet inside the vehicle at all times...
Same type of side-eye, one week later (now above, 3 weeks old below)
fresh from the big box store (above)
we have no pictures of eggs... well, of these chicks as eggs. **ha**
Esme saw navy beans in the store the other day and asked me what made them so different - and I said honestly that I thought they cooked up a bit easier than some of the others. Bought a bag to try - and yes, I can say that they do. Not as easily as split peas or black eyed peas, but close. Years ago I had bought something very similar to them, but a bit bigger from the Amish store but I haven't been back there in several years. I've had a lot of trouble cooking my adzuki beans from scratch - and might have to try this same method on them next.
The method : rinse and place in a glass jar with water that has been brought to boiling - seal jar, let sit for an hour. Remove to a pan (do not drain water) and add another quantity of water - bring back to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and let cook for at least another hour - should have gotten to mashable state by then.
Did add some olive oil to the water when putting into the pan - did NOT add salt, as it says not to on several cookbook sites. Did add a pinch of rosemary and cut up a piece of ham to boil with it.
Now that it has boiled to mashable*, added zucchini and onion and a bit more spice, and will bring that up to heat and then make into soup with my stick blender.
*able to mash one on a plate under a spoon - not mashing the whole amount
I saw a quite unusual, but interesting soup the other day - some version on 'alubia blanca' stew with white beans, cod, onions, garlic, almonds and boiled egg. I'm not interested in making that right now, but it got me thinking.
Mark boiled a dozen eggs yesterday for a project he was working on - and then put them in the fridge for us to use and/or feed to the dogs.
Today we went to grocery shop and upon returning, I wanted to use up a few odds and ends that are still in the fridge now that I have more time to cook today. I had made quick banana bread yesterday to use up some of the other things - and it had turned out pretty well considering it was freehanded.
Last night's banana bread :
350 degree oven, Mark already had it heated up and on from cooking pork roast
2 small bananas, overripe, mashed
2 eggs, cracked and beaten
1 to 2 large tablespoons of peanut butter
1/3 of a stick of butter, softened
(the peanut butter was because I didn't want to open another stick of butter)
a 1/4 cup of white sugar
about 1 cup of flour, with some salt and baking powder sprinkled on top of it
mixed all that together quite well, baked it for what was about 30 to 35 minutes until the knife came out clean
It didn't rise a lot, but it did bake up clean and taste very good
I had another large slice of it this morning with morning coffee
Today's unusual soup :
thinly sliced onions fried in butter and then added a bit of cilantro right after the butter began to brown
in a separate blender : 1/3 of a can of black beans and 1/3 of a normal can of tomato sauce
1 large boiled egg, peeled, blended in with the beans and tomato sauce
a handful of almonds
a good dose of "seven spice" (which is basically five-spice plus a few things : cloves, cinnamon, brown mustard seed, fennel seed, coriander seed, black pepper, star anise)
added that well blended mixture to the onions and cilantro along with another cup or so of water and heated up to bubbling, served with a flour tortilla in a bowl
We also made the red lentil sauce/soup the other day again and it was very good. Fresh summer squash and onions with red peppers and a bit of frozen zucchini, and finely ground carrots and frozen ginger put with the red lentils to cook, and then served over a bed of rice beside an egg each.
I've been needing to clean out some of the frozen vegetables in the freezer, and use up some other things - I do this standard sort of 'this is what fried rice could become if you just did it without frying the rice' hotdish thing, and usually I just follow what I've got on hand. Both of these worked out really well, worth writing down and doing it again.
The past two nights I've done this :
Kielbasa :
1 cup of water and 2 tbsp of olive oil
big splash of soy sauce, brown prepared mustard (a small bit), 1 tbsp of brown sugar, splash of balsamic vinegar, dash of pork ginger spice
red pepper, onion, green pepper, bok choy (shredded tops and chopped bottoms) and small amount of zucchini
about 1/2 cup of cooked rice and potato mixture (leftover)
frozen kielbasa chopped up into small bits
2 eggs
I served that beside some chicken dumplings from the freezer case that we had decided to try the other day - but the above mixture was really standout above and beyond the store bought dumplings.
Pork and Bacon :
I cooked 1 cup of fresh rice in the rice cooker, and then set it aside to cool.
1 cup of water and 2 tbsp of olive oil
finely chopped pork chop, put in at this early stage and brought to sizzle
yellow bell pepper, bit of red bell pepper, onion and a larger amount of zucchini
1/2 to 3/4 cup of tomato sauce
1 to 2 tbsp of birria taco seasoning (guajilio and ancho chiles, claims to have 'adobo' seasoning in it and apple cider vinegar) that I picked up to try at the store the other day (Oh yes, getting more of this at a later date)
brought all the tomato and vegetable and pork combination to a high boil and the mixture began to become sauce-like, cracked and added two eggs
very very finely cut up two slices of bacon, sprinkled in while the eggs were beginning to have the whites cooked
draw the yolks through the entire mixture after the white has cooked a bit, then let the whole mixture cook for another 30 seconds or so until the tomato sauce thickens with the egg
split the rice onto two plates and pour half the mixture over each plate
for my lunch the other day I had put part of a porkchop, carrots, ginger, zucchini, split peas and onion together and made a soup, which was then blended thoroughly and I've been eating at work with curry powder in it - one quart jar of that actually gets me three good bowls of soup, and helps to keep my sinuses from having issues as well
I've been doing rice and black beans, rice and crowder peas, squash and black beans and so forth for other lunches, always with a good tablespoon of butter in it and curry powder and black pepper. (anti-inflammatory stuff, it works for me)
I'm thinking the rest of my butternut squash, some of the leftover tomato sauce and black beans for my own lunch tomorrow, with a little gouda cheese in it.
I made the chocolate chip cookies today again, and I was a bit distracted. I was watching our cat and goat interact outside the kitchen window, and I forgot all the way to the very end to add the brown sugar! So, then, I improvised and still ended up with something very good, but they were more like muffins than cookies.
So what happened instead of the regular recipe was :\
375 degree oven preheated with parchment paper on a (non-preheated) flat baking sheet
1 stick of softened butter, cut into 1/2 cup of white sugar
1 tsp of vanilla extract mixed with one egg, then cut into the butter mixture quickly
1 cup of flour mixed with 1/2 tsp of baking soda and 1/2 tsp of salt - folded in
then add one half cup more of flour
and one cup of chocolate chips SHOULD have been next but I realised there is usually 1/2 cup of packed brown sugar in the sugar mixture.. and I hadn't done it. I had been laughing at our goat and cat outside the window and not paying enough attention *sigh* So now I have a floury mixture and need to add the sugar...
So, I added one more lightly beaten egg, a splash of milk, and the packed brown sugar all at one time, then added a bit more flour until the mixture was back to the right consistency. I worried that not adding more baking soda might make it not rise right - but I went for it anyway.
I added the chocolate chips and scooped it out onto the parchment paper and then baked for 10-15 minutes just until the bottom edges looked like they were beginning to brown. Whew, they all turned out great! And the other cookies were thin and a bit crisp after removing - these were soft and very muffin-like, but not gooey. And they hardened up a bit after being put on a plate and then into the fridge in a ziploc bag with a paper towel in the bottom of it.
Last night I used Mark's leftover beef roast cut up into a noodle recipe I have been looking forward to. We had stir fry noodles I wanted to use up the second half of the package before too long had went by.
I added olive oil to a pan and put white onions, green onions and red bell pepper in to begin to sautee. Then I added about a cup of water to that, and some soy sauce and some Allegro Black Pepper marinade, which usually I would use some balsamic vinegar, brown sugar, prepared brown mustard and spices to make something similar - but I've been liking the marinade and it has balsamic vinegar in it, which is probably why. Let that sautee and bubble for a little bit, added the well chopped meat and stirred thoroughly, remaining sort of 'saucey' even with the meat in it add some water if it absorbs too much, turned the heat down a little - broke and rinsed the stir fry noodles in their package (wet pack), and then put them into the mixture and let that steam off the heat and stirred it a few times - then served it up
We also cleaned out the baby chicks' cage and put all new material in for them. Our dog Charlotte was so upset, she thought we had thrown the chicks out with the bed litter - but she realized after a few moments of utter despair (she was actually laying stretched out next to the empty, drying cage like it was the end of the world) that they were inside the house in a different cage, and then she was so excited I had to tell her to go elsewhere for a little bit and calm down as she was jumping around smelling and scaring them. As we put them back in the big cage she had another super-excitement and they were all bouncey and fluttering around but at least they were in the big cage then. Esme and I finished giving them names, but we'll have to see if we can still tell some of them apart for a while after they finish molting their adult feathers.
Prairie is the silvery-brown one next to the grey (Goose) in the corner Duck is the dark brown, Pheasant is the one with the yellow face and brown back, Goose is still smaller than everyone and is probably not Americauna, but some other breed we'll find out as we go, or a sport from Sapphire Gem crossing that some say happens in this type. Duck we think is definitely just a sport (odd color, brown in this case) Americauna, but she also walks low to the ground and holds her head close to her shoulders and the name is fitting more and more every day. Esme says one of the yellows has a spot on the side of their face and the other has a stripe across (somewhere?) and so she has called them Spot and Stripe - but I'm telling those two apart basically because Stripe is one and a half times bigger than everyone else, they've been 'the one in charge of figuring this stuff out' since the beginning, first to use the hanging feeder and to check out the water bottles etc.
We are supposed to have a wild storm and maybe even a dusting of snow tomorrow, then cold temperatures for days... the wind is definitely up out there now.
went out in the front garden and did some more of the clearing out - the dandelions are doing very well there, and the bean I planted last week is also getting third leaves on. I need to also plant some mustard, komatsuna and have ordered another big pack of beet green seeds (the types of dual purpose beets that are good for both) and some Mississippi Silver cowpeas. I had resisted purchasing any more seeds since the ones I ordered from the preservation center, but I planted almost all the beets I have and if they do not germinate, I wanted some back up.
This is two Alice Whiting bean plants, germinated about a month ago and finally put out a week ago.
languages: I have been working on French, Japanese and Turkish. We heard more Turkish spoken in the crime series we are watching and there is also that one manga about the android girl in the post-apocalyptic world that was only available in Turkish so I had went a bit further in it back then to keep understanding words and it was cool to hear a few words in the crime series and say 'hey, I did understand a bit'
Charlotte is still quite happy to have babies - although she whines when we check on them. They are eating and drinking - the light and heater are keeping it about 80 degrees or a little less during the night and it is warming up during the day. They are active and seem happy. We still think we got five Americanas (as ordered) and one of something else. The Americanas were also supposed to be all hens. We'll see.
I need to kick myself up and go fix a hose outside and then drag a bag of new dirt to the main garden and put it into the beds there. There will probably be another frost here before March is out. I have ordered some seeds from Sandhill Preservation center a week or so ago and they should be getting here sometime... trying to keep my fingers from itching to buy other seeds - I do have some kale and mesclun greens to plant, and have also went and harvested a little bit of dandelion green from that bed I had gotten that started in a few years ago. None of the italika rossa (italian red-stemmed) dandelions have survived, but the other native ones I put seeds in there from have - and I did that so I would have a clean source to enjoy some of that in the Spring. I also have two bean plants that I sprouted last week and they need to go out in one of the beds. They are 'Alice Whiting' green / dry dual-purpose beans I ordered a few years ago and have kept replanting.
the first eggs
Esme and I were experimenting with lentils - red lentils a few weeks ago and I had her try some of the brown lentil vegetable mix I made last night. She said it was nice - and that she couldn't really tell that much of a difference between the two types, spiced up as I had them.
The recipe last night was :
1 cup of brown lentils, rinsed
2 cups of water
bit of olive oil, celery seed, black pepper
minced clove of garlic, and a bit of minced ginger
chopped raw carrots from the freezer
bell peppers and onion from the freezer
half a can of diced tomatoes with italian spices
and after it had boiled for a while and was about half-absorbed, I added a teaspoon of paprika
I served that beside a typical packet of Spanish rice, so she would have something else to eat if she really didn't like the lentils, but that made a nice combination, too - three quarters Spanish rice to 1/4 lentils mix. The last time I made Biryani spiced red lentils for her with garlic and ginger and carrots - I served it over rice. That is supposed to make a complete protein, so it is very good practice.
Mark also made two hamburger patties and split the second one in half so we put that with our meal and French bread. With meat being so expensive I want to make sure Esme learns to cook the way I did in college and can stretch things and keep dry goods like rice and lentils. Also, it is a good way to add vegetables and she will eat a lot of them prepared this way.
I put the other half of the lentils mix into a clean quart jar and put a lid and a ring on it, and when it was cooled some, I put it in the fridge to blend up into lentil soup for my lunches this week. I ate the pea soup all last week with extra vegetables and spices each day and it was some of the best soup I've had in a long time.
I have a few beans coming up in the windowsill to plant outside when the first frost has passed - and I have been upping my levels on the languages in Turkish and Chinese, German and French. I haven't touched the Lithuanian all week... a break here and there helps to know what you really know. Just like the German, it's been years since I actually did many lessons, and I had to re-orient my grammar in it which I have had that specific issue with it before.
The first step to making this great soup ALL week long, has been that I made a pot of pea soup on last Sunday, and stored it in a quart jar in the fridge. That is the standard of a cup of split peas to two to three cups of water, a bit of butter, celery seed, black pepper and a bit of onion, all blended together once it has cooked until the peas are soft.
Then, I took about two to three tablespoons of the slightly solidified pea soup in a container all week with a bit of rice, frozen zucchini, more frozen onions, frozen beet greens that were in the freezer, and garlic parmesan seasoning and black pepper. I added some water to that at work and made a VERY tasty soup that I kept coming back for. One of the days I added some spicy seasoning with cayenne, and another I put some furikake rice seasoning in it. The beet greens were a very small amount in each bowl - but it has used that up VERY well. The picture below shows the soup with the furikake and sesame seed combination in it. This is a soup I could eat much more often - and would work very well with what I typically grow in my gardens, beet greens and/or kale, zucchini and summer squashes.
I tried to make gnocchi last night, and it was a learning experience. I needed to add more flour, as the first batch disintegrated in the water - but the second and third bits that I had put more flour in turned out edible. Tonight, I made leftover rice with kielbasa, diced tomatoes, garlic and lots of other vegetables, mandarin oranges and an egg for each of us on the side. We're still trying to stretch to make sure everything works out from the lost wages with the ice storm.
I've been catapulting forward with my German on Duolingo - taking the tests to try to get up to my actual level on my phone, and working at my level on my computer account, in between Japanese and Turkish.
It's time to start the garden - I planted a few little things that I don't know if they will take, and ordered some seeds from the preservation society. I need to go out and do some more work after the hopefully last freeze on Sunday. We haven't seen opossums, or eggs though, since we went and tried to fix the fence. Store-bought eggs work in recipes, but they are definitely not the same as having your own chicken's eggs.
Esme and I went out and tried to secure down the chicken yard a bit more with zip ties and bricks etc et al... two more opossums were in my hen house last night and my big Beau rooster (second in charge, half-blind) did his best to alert me and face them off but they wouldn't leave until I came out. He has a terrible noise he emits when they are out there - between that and the dogs I'm up even if asleep. We'll see if we've managed to close up the places they were getting in at or we'll have another round of checks and fixes. The other bigger rooster, (pictured below, I don't really have a name for him, but maybe Sarge) was on top of the henhouse with all of the hens pushed up under his wings keeping them safe, so both roosters were doing what they could.
This is called a 'hoedag', it is a gardening tool that is a hoe on one side and a set of tines on the other. I have been calling it, in my own mind, some sort of conglomeration of 'hoedak' or 'hoedar' and today, I decided to go look up what it was actually called. Surprisingly, I have not just made up a name and used it (as I have done with some things all my life, as a way of keeping it organized in my own head) - but it really is a 'hoedag'. Where did I pick up that name? It certainly wasn't on any of the tools when I bought them - I remember looking, and even asking myself at the time - what do I CALL this? Unlike my hori-hori knife, which I also use so often in the garden, and use the name from what was on it when I received it.
It is mid February, and the ice age has ended, at least for now. I hope for all year. In those hopes, I put a small patch of turnip seed out in the front garden with this hoedag this morning. I had given some chickweed that was growing by the front steps to the chickens yesterday and watched them run around and peck at each other to get some. They looked so miserable and wet this morning in the rain, that I decided it was worth some of my co-op 'old but might sprout' seed even at these temperatures to plant a little something - just to ask Spring to keep rolling along to warm.
Mark had made a good pork roast with all the spices a few days ago (Esme helped grind those up and measure them), and we made stir fry with it. I bought a new rice cooker a few weeks ago with a gift certificate, and it finally came in the mail. I think I like it - but I want to see if it will cook lentils as well as rice. The book has nothing about that - but I've seen some things on line. I also wonder if it will cook soaked adzuki beans - if so, that would be 'golden'.
the sauce for the stir fry, as usual : 1 tbsp brown sugar, bit olive oil, about 1/4 to 1/2 cup of water (I often add more later), 2 splashes of soy sauce and one splash of balsamic vinegar, and about a half a tablespoon or bit more of prepared brown mustard - mix that all together and put in with the vegetables and pre-cooked meat, and when it has all come to a good cooked mixture, add the recently cooked (but not just cooked) rice, a bit more water and when that has heated back to sizzling - make a hole in the middle and crack one egg. Let the white cook for a moment, then drag the egg through the entire mixture and put the lid on to steam while turning off the heat. Serve immediately. This had zucchini, red bell pepper and onions in it, as well as the pork roast and rice cooked in the rice cooker the night before.
And before we go out to town today, I am making some soup. Mark had given me a large rind of fat in the refrigerator off of his pork roast two nights ago, and it was time to do something with it. I put a pot of split peas on the stove with olive oil, celery seed, and pulverized brown mustard seed in it, as well as the fat rind. In a couple of hours I can blend it up and put it in quart glass jars to use for the week. Pease porridge in the pot, nine days old - not quite, in glass jars put up in the fridge shelf :)
This is the little mortar and pestle that my mother-in-law gave me a few years ago. I use it to grind up seeds like these in small batches to use in cooking. Whole brown mustard seed, from an Indian cooking spice kit I bought years ago, and did not have too much use for it particularly, until I began grinding it up in small batches.
for languages lately, I've done Spanish, German, Turkish and Lithuanian.
I had the opportunity to try to speak to someone in Spanish, they asked me if I could say whatever it was en espanol etc... but all I could think of was half German, half English, and something else in Spanish that had not meant the right thing in the past. For actual usability, I really do need to take some face-to-face Spanish lessons covering things I actually need to say. Maybe some day here.
Getting back in the swing of things, now that the ice is finally gone. There was even some still on our road this morning and, taking the back road on the way back in, we saw some even this afternoon at 70 degrees. I'm very glad I didn't try to take the back road route to the highway that other day - I turned around and took the shorter, more hilly route that I had already been over once in a wild ride, because I knew what it looked like and the back road route is longer, a bit flatter but so narrow there is no place to turn around if you come up on something you can't manage.
We restocked our feeds, and are halfway through restocking our propane. It will be tighter this month, especially trying to restock, because of the missed paychecks from the ice storm. I bought eggs for the very first time in a store in what has to be years - because I was going to make some cookies and our hens haven't laid in months - they were laying one every three days or so before this ice storm but of course during it, nothing at all. Opossums may be to blame - as well, time will tell. I'm glad to have the chickens themselves mostly healthy and bumping around pecking in their yard as pets, even without eggs.
Esme had been very worried about her classes at the trade school with the state of emergency and yet their strange attendance policy. However, it seems like that will work out - and she can catch up. It took a lot of reaching out and frustration to get them to actually talk to her before she showed back up at the doorstep - which she wanted to know before she got there etc.. but finally the answer was : 'yes, it will be in a way excused because it was weather emergency, but it will still be marked on the papers absent'... I saw her put her hands out and say 'What does that even mean?' to me in sign language. I agree, kid. I agree.
For languages I have been doing mostly Japanese (at the highest level I have reached) and Turkish (low profile, and vocabulary work) and a little vocabulary work in Lithuanian.
Now to catch up on the rest of the things at work - some chores, restock and pinch our pennies for a few weeks until we know everything will work out better and / or the taxes get done and we see our return.
I took an afternoon walk at 2 pm, as well - and it was getting better - the creek was roaring with all the runoff - but we're still wondering if it is better to wait until the entire day has had time to clear things. We aren't at the point where anything is critical, we're just 'out of most things' and finding other things to use, instead. We have water and power, and Mark has been doing okay with his extra heaters.
this is still a skating rink down to our house from grandma's mailbox
then it gets pretty clear, up until this point
just past the 800 house
I went out at 8 am to see what the weather was like - and how much melting might or might not have happened. I didn't even go up to the mailbox yesterday, it never melted enough to warrant - and the mail also didn't run to us yesterday, from what I saw. They already posted in the announcements that they won't run the garbage trucks this week. It might get up to 50 today, but it said 36 yesterday and it never got up to even 32 before 2 pm in the afternoon. With the sun setting at 4:30 to 5, we need more than that to melt.
so much is in shadow nearly all the day here between the trees that we are lucky when the sun can melt some
