Tonkatsu Ramen soup with boiled eggs

 I told Esme I was going to write this down because it is different than 'just making the package' but unless I do it while paying close attention, it's hard to tell her what exactly is so different about it. 

Tonkatsu ramen soup : (you can make it with different meat or just vegetables, just adjust to your taste) boil four eggs, then place in cold water unpeeled while chopped up 1 cooked pork chop, and gather up frozen green onions. Set pork chop and green onions to boil in one cup more liquid than the package calls for (in this case, 3 cups when the package asks for 2 cups), add a tablespoon of soy sauce and a shake of ginger-garlic-sugar-sage-black pepper pork seasoning, bring that to a boil and let it continue to heat while peeling the eggs. 

Sometimes I would add frozen green peas, bok choy or shredded frozen cabbage at this point.  I will sometimes put in a shake of furikake flaked seaweed into this - I did tonight.   If using shredded carrot, (we didn't have any tonight) let that boil to a tender state before continuing. I don't use canned carrot in this because it becomes mush and is not tasty in the broth, but some softened shredded carrot is really nice.  

 Break up the noodles and place them into the pan and cook for the required amount of time (4 minutes in this case), add the soup packet and oil packet from the package. Break the boiled eggs in the bowls to expose the yolks - and pour one half of the pot over each bowl of eggs.

chopped up porkchop, green onions, tonkatsu pork chop flavored ramen package

 

Bring 3 cups of water (the package calls for two for the noodles and broth packet, this is one extra to be absorbed into the meat, veggies and eventually eggs) to a boil, add the pork chop, 1 tbsp of soy sauce, green onions and a few shakes of a spicy pork ginger based seasoning.  We make our own, but it has garlic, ginger, sage, black pepper and a few other things in it as well as some sugar.  Do not mix the soup packet or oil packet from the package in yet - that goes in later! 

  

Boil 4 eggs - I try to soft-boil them but the key point is to not overboil them.  I boil four for two bowls, and if one cracks and is lost, three is still enough.  Pour out the hot water after they are boiled enough, refill with cold, let sit until the soup mixture is heated up well and the pork has started to flavor the water.  

  

When the broth is just about ready - break up the noodles into four sections and place them in the broth.  Set the timer for the amount of time the package says the noodles need to cook.  Peel the eggs, but do not chop them up yet. 

 When the noodles are entirely done, open the soup packet and the oil packet and mix them into the soup and noodles.  Break up the eggs to expose the yolks.  Pour half of the soup and noodles over each bowl of eggs.  The soup will mix a bit with the egg yolk and make the broth even richer. 

 

And there is your soup - much more than just the packet, but not so much you have to spend all day making it, like REAL tonkatsu soup would be - one of those told me to boil the pork for five hours to make the broth!  

 

more bits

 It's been another week went by and I'm not even sure where it went.  Did some things this week - gardening, shopping, going to work and the feed store, of course.  About to make some classic banana bread that is sort of between what I make for 'well I'll eat it anyway' banana flan stuff and madeleines with banana in them.

 I made 'mac and cheese' last night with gruyere and mini penne pasta.  Esme said it wasn't that different - just pasta and cheese, right?  And I reminded her that one has to make a bechamel sauce first  with butter, flour and some of the pasta sauce, then add the cheese into it.  Mark says if I can make it with white cheddar and American cheese he'll try it.  

I made a pot of lentil soup first thing  this morning.  It was cold, and my stomach hurt from eating a fast food ice cream yesterday - while finishing up our postal route and things were very early etc.  I told Esme that I had to think 'what did I eat that WAS NOT food, yesterday, and then .. oh yes, that'  So I was up at three am even on my day off, but took a bath and drank more coffee, did the dishes and the laundry - and then my stomach felt better after a bit, enough to cook lentil soup, and then get ready to go for shopping in town.

Frozen grated carrots and ginger from a few months ago, frozen onions, 1 cup or so of lentils, some herbs de provence, some black pepper and salt, and some beet greens - all cooked down and then ran through the blender.  I needed that.  There is enough for a few more lunches, too.

 Now to go throw my floor rugs in the dryer and make that banana bread, before I decide not to as dinner will be coming up - but I've already had the butter and eggs waiting on the counter bringing up to room temperature.  I had poked the butter a half hour ago and it was not ready yet.

Chopped up a bunch of yellow summer squash and red bell peppers and onions (all from the store), harvested a few more strawberries and sorrel leaves, checked on other things.  Have been studying French and Czech lately on duolingo, with some Greek and Lithuanian (and Czech and French) vocabulary on baba dum. 

 The banana bread recipe says :

 2 cups mashed banana (ha, you'll get what I've got, which is two small mashed banana)

1 full stick of butter, softened at room temperature

2 large eggs, brought to room temperature

1/2 cup granulated white sugar

1/4 cup packed brown sugar

2 cups flour (that seems a bit excessive, we'll see)

1 tsp of baking powder

1/2 tsp of baking soda

1/2 tsp salt 

2 tsp of vanilla (yea, no, we do one teaspoon, this is strong stuff)

 and it gives no baking time or temperature, so I'll wing it at 375 and watch it for when it turns brown, stick a fork in it and see if it comes out clean 

 

 

 

I've also been playing Mineclonia Minetest, with the Wine Mod and the plant based foods and x farming, 'get comfortable' furniture mod and a few other things - some of the mods clash - Esme says the barrels from the Wine Mod (which also makes cider, beer, rum, coffee liquer etc.) look so out of place.  I like the way the barrels on end make something like cabinets or armoires when stuck on top of the tables.  The get comfortable thing clashes with how I make roofs on my buildings, so I have had to learn a new way to get around it by putting dirt blocks and then placing the stairs on top of the blocks and breaking them back out from underneath.  This has monsters on, and hunger, and the snow biome nearly killed me last night because I fell through the powder snow and didn't know how to get back out with it all falling on me and doing damage -- dig down, and then reach rock, so you can stand on something, and then find a way to get out one direction or the other, always standing on rock and never on snow. Scary though.. like having a whole ceiling of sand and gravel fall on you in original Minecraft.

 One of the other things that has happened is the nearby pillager crew has come out with their bannerman to stare at me.  I put up a two high fence around my area between their huge watchtower and me, and also lined the other side of it with sweetberry bushes, which they will take damage from them.  We'll see if that works. 

 

  

Tarragon Cream sauce Pasta

I'm telling Esme about another one of the family recipes that I want to make and show her how to make - and every other recipe I've been finding for it uses white wine in it for reduction in the sauce. And I had to think, ah.. yes, my mother never cooked with that (cooking alcohol) at all, so of course the 'family recipe' that I know doesn't have it, so.. do I try to do it 'correctly' according to the books or do I cook what I know so I don't 'mess it up'? I'm choosing option two, and then maybe we can learn how to make the 'actual French recipe version' later.  Apparently there is a 'boil the onions in white wine' step that I've never done in my life.. and am not sure I want to.  

 This is usually served with chicken breast, but can also be served with eggs.  We didn't have fresh garden tarragon, but I was inspired to make this by the dried tarragon packet I got in our spice sampler.  Tarragon goes bad quickly, much quicker than many spices - and the reason I haven't made it in many years is that it is hard to find it, and then when you do, a little disappointing to throw much of it away later.  I used finely diced zucchini instead of the real chopped tarragon plants that were in a recipe I found - I think maybe it was made with canned green beans at times in our household, my mom canned a lot of green beans every summer.

 We decided to make it with eggs.  It is not an easy dish to make with three burners by yourself - will need to practice again, as one of the burners was an omelette to go with it and that got a bit messy in between - started pasta, then melted butter in a big pan and added finely diced zucchini and sliced sweet onions, cooking them until the onions were translucent, then added a bit more water to make sure there was enough liquid - added a few tablespoons of flour until it began to form a paste with the butter, added some grated cheese (used the last of the gruyere block we had, about 3 by 2 inches) to that to finish making it a full paste (roux), then began to reliquify with half-and-half, then whole milk, until the sauce and melted cheese came to the right consistency, added dried tarragon and lots of black pepper (should have added more salt, I had hoped the butter and cheese was salty enough) and removed from heat as the omelette was getting done to put on the plates and drained the pasta, stirred it into the tarragon cream sauce and added more black pepper and shredded cheese on top of each plate after serving. It's been years, maybe a decade, since I made this dish, but I thought I'd give it a go again to show Esme.

Golden Beets and their Greens

Golden Beets : I thought they were just so pretty - even before cutting them up, and they had a long and thick plume of greens attached to them.  They are a bright golden color on the inside (See below).  Also, the leafy tops are more like the Siberian Kale than the darker tops that are on the red beets.   I cut all the green bits off of the stems and chopped it coarsely to put in a freezer bag.  A whole bag of greens AND beets for the price of a bag of spinach.  And the goat and chickens got bits of all the bits I didn't want, so none of it really went to waste.

And I got to show Esme how to prepare them - she says it is interesting to see the process and then how they are cooked.  Of course, then I also show her what vitamins are in them and tell her what foods and/or spices it goes well with.  I've told her that cutting up vegetables seems to be one of my favorite hobbies, which goes well with but does seem to live in a space all of its own beside the gardening and the cooking.  I also said that even though the produce wasn't perfect and the rest of what was on the shelf with it was bordering on sad - I would have been proud of that bunch if I had grown it myself.

Here are the bottoms, scrubbed but not peeled, then sliced somewhat thin, put a bit of water in the bowl so that the pieces were not sitting directly on the bottom, sprinkled olive oil over the top, added spices, and then drizzled some honey over the top.  Covered, in a 400 degree oven for probably a bit over a half hour.  We ate it with mandarin oranges, and she had about five slices on her plate.  I had twice that - and the leftovers in a small quart jar to use up tomorrow.  Mark made hamburgers for her and for himself, and I used up a bit of the sausage and egg rice I had made last night and added curry, ginger paste and green onions to it.

I will add the frozen beet greens to other fried rice and soup type meals just like I do kale and dandelion greens. 

navy bean soup recipe (with measurements)

 Apparently 'eyeballing' and experimenting with ingredients isn't as common as it was when I was learning to cook - so I made this recipe again as an actual recipe with measurements.  I 'scientifically' tested it out- and it worked fine.  Bonus is I now have two quarts of soup to eat this week at work :)

 

 

 Navy Bean Soup (with measurements)

makes two quarts (or two pints and a quart, which is how I put it up for convenience) 

 Note : This recipe was created to make a specific point of how to use dried beans, to have that in my 'cooking arsenal' and know how long it would take to make it correctly.  My daughter had wondered how to cook the beans from dry state, and there are SO many versions out there I wanted something I had done myself to show her a good method.  I use a lot of lentils and split peas, but dried beans do take patience and time to prepare properly.  Navy beans are small and cook up well into soups like this.  Dried beans are a lot cheaper than canned beans, are very available in many places and keep very well.  They keep even better when stored in a cabinet in a tight container like a coffee can, to prevent cabinet fly getting into the plastic bags.  You could use canned beans for this, just figure out what quantity you like and of course, it would make it quicker as the canned beans would already be at the softened state, just heat it up with the vegetables in it until they are done and blend it. 

The Method / Recipe :

In a large pot rinse one cup of navy beans - fresher beans are best, pick out any discolored or bits of other things (stem, gravel whatever, depends on your brand, they're much better about that than they were when I was a kid, as well)

pour out rinse water, add 4 cups of clean water to pot with beans

add 1 tablespoon of distilled white vinegar

Do NOT add salt or oil

put on stove and bring to a rolling boil - let it boil like that stirring for a bit, the beans may rise to the top and become sort of wrinkled

turn off the heat, remove pot from heat, add a lid to the pot, let sit undrained for 1 HOUR

 

After one hour :

add about a tablespoon of olive oil

add rosemary and garlic powder, flake, minced whatever you like 

add some ham or bacon or kielbasa if you want (it helps a lot to add fat but you don't want to overwhelm or add too much saltiness)  I used one round of Canadian bacon that Mark had bought for pizza, cut up very fine

optional : black pepper, ground brown mustard seed and/or celery seed

 

Put pot back on heat and bring back to a boil, stir well.

bring down to a simmer, where it just barely bubbles or not even quite bubbling but close, keep at this heat for 1.5 hours or so, stirring occasionally

remove a bean or two onto a plate and try to mash it with the back of a spoon

if it mashes easily, it is time to continue - if not, stir well and keep at temperature for another half hour, test again - if you had added salt before, it will be very difficult to get this to work well, as the beans may have hardened, so no SALT other than what might have already been in the meat 

 if mashable : add several good handfuls of diced zucchini and another of sliced onion, carrots might work in this or bok choy tops and bottoms - I've done the latter with no real change in taste but have been wondering if I might put carrots in it or if that taste would be too different

I also add some Garlic Parmesan grill seasoning at this point, because it is VERY good, but I know it has salt in it, so I don't add it earlier.

bring pot back to a boil, then simmer for 20 minutes or so until the vegetables are well cooked - I have my veggies in the freezer, so this works well for them

take entire pot off of heat, put on a towel or trivet on a counter, and blend with a stick blender until smooth 

Either serve when cooled with bread and maybe some shredded cheese or : Pour up into two clean glass quart jars or two pints and a quart, leaving about an inch at the top of each jar - place tops on and put in refrigerator after they have cooled on the counter some, using within four to five days.  This will not keep out of the refrigerator, and it is best to use it as soon as you can, but I routinely get four or five days out of it before it is gone.

Another nice variation for serving : add several tablespoons of diced mild green chiles to the pot when rewarming, and then tear up flour tortilla into very small pieces, heat with the soup and it becomes almost a noodle.   

 

Madeleine cookies :

It seems I have to keep putting this recipe back up in multiple places because either I'm spelling it off, or the algorithm just really doesn't like to give it back to me when I ask.  It has went as far as to say that the website doesn't have a recipe for it - when in fact, it probably has about four different ones.  I make this sometimes once a week, but not too much more often than that - and know I've posted the recipe several times over the years although it always does fluctuate some.

What I'm using lately for the Madeleine recipe - also called magdalenas in Catalan

3 large chicken eggs, set out on counter to warm up and beat with 1 tsp of vanilla extract, 1/2 cup of white sugar plus 1 softened stick of butter plus 2 tbsp of dark brown sugar - beat together for a total of FIVE minutes - then mix in 1 cup (little more) of white flour (that has come out of the freezer a few minutes beforehand) and 1 tsp of baking powder and less than 1/2 tsp of salt - mix dry ingredients in portions into the wet mixture. 375 preheated oven, each well of the madeleine pan brushed with butter and coated with flour, fill wells up only half way, and remove from oven as soon as the outer bits of the cookie begins to brown in the pan and a finger pressed makes the cookie bounce back - turn out onto plate to prevent it from overcooking in the madeleine pan.  All that bit about pouring in melted butter at one point and/or chilling the dough before baking it -- I tried that time and again, and found it really didn't matter in the end product at least not to me.

 Madeleine cookies

3 large eggs

1 tsp of vanilla extract (mixed with the eggs) 

1/2 cup of white sugar

2 tbsp of dark brown sugar

1/2 cup (one stick) of pre-softened butter

1 to 1 and 1/4 cups of all purpose flour

1 tsp of baking powder

1/2 tsp little less of salt

375 degree oven, 10 minutes or less

this recipe should fill 2 madeleine pans, each well about 1/2 full or so 

 

 

 

an unusual soup and freehanded peanut butter banana bread

 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. 

 

 

 

some hot dishes

 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.   

 

 

Eggs and lentils

 

We finally got the first egg of 2026 - they hadn't laid any, or the opossums had eaten the rare one they had laid, for many months.  We had went all around the fence tightening things and putting bricks up against the fence any place it was loose.  Perhaps that has helped, some.  The day after the first egg I would have been surprised to see even one more, and there were two eggs that day.  We are still looking at getting more chickens, hopefully more like Speck, our golden chicken above - which I've asked the internet and been told that she was probably something crossed with a Crested Cream Legbar, to become the Olive Egger she was sold to us as.  She lays the more blue egg in the bunch, and we've gotten two of those the last two days and a more green one, as well.  

 

We will need to bring the brooder inside, it has sat outside since last summer but it looks in good condition - the lock and door might need to be looked at to see if there is any rust etc.  And we need to fix the footer barrel it used to sit in.  This is the big handmade cage Mark and Esme made from hardware cloth and a plastic 55 gallon barrel for our hamster and rat years ago but has been used as a brooder for two sets of chicks, as well, since then. It still might be a week or more before we actually look to buy chicks, but then we will be ready and not in a hurry one night to make a place for babies.

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. 

a soup and kick tail

 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 also checked the little car today, after it had sat dormant for almost two months.  I've been kicking myself that it wouldn't crank, or it would choke on the fuel pump - it still might.. but it cranked, and it ran really well on my usual 'runabout' trip that makes sure it is not overheating and is working well enough for emergencies.  I was feeling quite bad about letting it go so long with all the cold and the ice storms that really required more maintenance of it... but it wasn't going to get any better for not knowing and I finally kicked my own tail today.

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.

 

mid February tools

 

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.

yeast bread

 

I found a recipe that looked similar to what I had on hand - World's easiest yeast bread  I didn't follow the recipe exactly because of what I had on hand - 1.5 cups of whole wheat flour, 1.5 cups of all purpose flour, 1 tbsp dark brown sugar, 1 tbsp of white granulated sugar, 1 tsp of normal iodized table salt, mixed that all together, heated up the 1.5 cups of water it asked for, poured a 4 year out of date yeast packet over the dry ingredients and 1 more tbsp of granulated sugar, and then poured the water on it and mixed, rose for three hours in a 63 degree kitchen, then followed the rest of the instructions about putting onto parchment paper lightly floured, preheating covered Corelle type pot in oven to 450 degrees, put whole thing with parchment paper included into pot, baking covered for 30 minutes, uncovered for 12 minutes, waiting 10 minutes to cut.

Ate it with the soup I made this morning, which was one can of crowder peas with aqua faba included, most of a large frozen sweet potato that was too much for the pan last month so it just went in the freezer and was a bit freezer burnt by now but still souped up really nice, and yellow summer squash along with some maple chipolte seasoning - all well blended after the sweet potato chunks were soft enough

 

and the process:

 at one hour

 

 at two hours - I put it on a pottery stoneware plate that I heated up 25-40 seconds in the microwave a few times along the process, since there wasn't a way to move it to a warmer area

 

and at the three hour mark, before I floured the parchment paper and then scraped it onto it, made it a ball and lightly slid flour over the top of the ball

 It went in looking like this

 

 when I took the lid off after a half hour

 when it came out of the oven and I transferred it immediately to the pottery stoneware plate on the counter, then waited the ten minutes and sliced it (first picture)

 

simple onigiri with adzuki bean paste

 

Well, we've been iced in all week, and I have this cupboard of dry foods that I eat, but no one else in the house does, or rarely.  These are habits I learned in Fargo, where we had organic health food and Asian market stores.  The onigiri, though, I only learned the full form of in the past few years.

First : the adzuki beans.  One of my local stores had them last year and I was happy!  I bought a bag and have been using it up.  They require at least 12 hours of soaking, and then cooking for a long time, and then pulverizing and cooking some more, and a little bit of brown sugar (and mirin, which I finally found this year, too - the local stores are carrying more oddity things).  They sell the finished thing in the store as 'red bean paste' or 'adzuki bean paste' but that is even sweeter and would be expensive to buy pre-made.

So I spent the morning experimenting, once again, with the bean paste that I rarely make.  I also ended up putting some baking soda in it at one point and being afraid I had done something terribly wrong ala chemistry.  But, no, that worked well.  It just foamed up and looked odd for a few minutes probably with the bit of rice wine vinegar I had in the water during the boiling.  Anyway, it became success.

Once that was turned off, I started the rice - which I'm pretty good at by now.

1 cup of rice, washed - 2 cups of water, bit of olive oil, bit of salt, bit of rice wine vinegar, boil until it is almost dry, but not quite.

Mix in 1/4 cup or LESS of white sugar, and just enough rice wine vinegar on top of that until the sugar is wet, no more - mix while still hot, over and over, scraping the spoon over and over, until the mixture is soft - then add white sesame seeds, and mix one more time. 

 

At the beginning of learning this rice mixture, I just made rice balls out of the rice mixture itself, and added a little bit of seaweed on top of each one - it was still very good, and easy to bring in a lunchbox. 

Here is the pinch point.  The rice will be hot and doing it by hand is possible but your hands will turn red.  When I did that I put some salt on my hand, made the ball, and then put the ball down in the glass plate, salt in hand, repeat etc.  I bought some little onigiri triangular molds last year and have used them a few times.  The trick is to not put too much rice in the first layer - and then add a tiny bit of salt (shio), then a spoon of the bean paste, then another layer of rice, and press the mold together until it is firm.  Press the mold out on the plate and it should look like the onigiri in the picture below, white rice on both sides, with a bit of bean showing in the cross section.  Take a small piece of seaweed and wrap it around the bottom of the triangle so it can be held easily.  Stand the onigiri up and move onto the next.

This can get very messy.  I probably need more practice.  I end up washing and wiping my hands clean every minute or so until I am done - and end up with a stack of nice snacks.

I put some red curry paste, real mayonnaise and wasabi paste on a plate and eat one with a fork - probably not allowed, but I really like the condiments. 

Time-intensive, the materials were harder to find, but NOT expensive.  

Even the onigiri molds were only three dollars - it was just getting them when we were getting something else and then actually using them that is the kicker.

   

dry goods cabinet - with split peas, lentils, rice, noodles, and dried beans.  There are a few cans of sardines and some more curry paste and blocks behind there, as well. 

peanut butter cookies (again)

 1 egg, no milk

 

preheat oven 350 degrees, parchment paper on baking sheet

cream 1/4 c. (half a stick) butter and 3/4 cup creamy peanut butter with 1/2 cup packed brown sugar and 1/4 cup white granulated sugar

mix in 1 large egg and 1 tsp vanilla

combine in separate bowl 1 cup flour, 1/2 tsp baking soda, 1/2 tsp baking powder and 1/2 tsp salt, mix thoroughly to avoid clumps of soda or baking powder

mix dry into wet ingredients just until dry is fully combined

 make small balls not much larger than fifty cent pieces and press down on top with a fork to flatten

 

bake for 13 to 15 minutes, pull out and put onto a cold surface to harden and avoid overburning the bottoms by leaving them on the pan

will be crumbly, but undercooking is also better than overcooking, as they continue to 'cook' for a few minutes after they are out of the oven and overcooked ones get very hard when they cool

 

rolling

 It's been a hard couple of weeks - was trying to heal up from that knee I smashed up (it is finally scabbing over enough not to break open, but I still wince whenever I kneel on it, which for some reason, I can't stop doing at least once every few days), and the dental plate caused a soreness and stiffness in one side of my face that I was worried about for a while, but finally has went back down just as it had done before.  *sigh*  I've been taking the plate out as soon as I can at night, and on Sunday I didn't put it in for more than a few hours because it was finally feeling better.  Advil and antiseptic rinse and turmeric/curry powder milk just before I go to sleep.  The hard thing is I don't like to take any pain reliever too much - so even taking three or four single pills during a 24 hour day is a LOT for me - but I was able to see the difference and know that it was helping.

 

Charlotte and Minerva, watching me cook

My anxiety was really up because of that, but I've been running through my 'brain routine' to make sure I don't miss anything and to take care of what I can before it adds to my latent anxiety - and that helps a LOT, really.. it does.  When you can get something that would be a worry taken care of, it helps with the bit that just won't smooth down no matter what.  And it helps to see the difference, between something you can fix and something you have to wait out.

I read part of a book the other day - it was just so cold I spent half the morning in bed, because I could.  Every other day I've been running, work, errands, postal route.  But, Esme is really liking her college courses and work at the office job has been rolling and getting that done which it needs someone to get it done.  Told Esme that is a big thing - show up, do what needs to be done without waiting for people to stick up their finger and say 'shouldn't you be doing...' and don't put things off because they stack up and then it will be even harder to keep it all balanced and working after that.  Rest in between when you have run through the whole list and know that you've done all that you can do right now.  I also showed her my unique budget 'program' language that I have worked out the next two months in to help myself remember to account everything.  She said she actually understood it, that it was logical.

 We've also had what I would swear was a fifteen lb. opossum in the hen house - and maybe the thing that blinded my one green-egg layer a month or so ago.  I bruised him up pretty good with a hand tool and threw him out in a box he was hiding in - but I didn't actually do that much damage because he ran off and up a pole and out across a tree quick as lickety split, and then the dogs went off chasing him into the woods.  I only have the one chicken out of the twelve hens that are left that is laying an egg every two or three days - I don't know if that is the only egg we find and they are getting the rest or if that is the only egg that is being laid because of the cold.  I want to protect them better than that but I looked all over where I saw him go and couldn't find a hole in the netting or the fence - like he melted through it somehow.  I've sprayed white vinegar out there in that place and another I saw one melt through fence four or five months ago on the other side.

Now, it thinks it will snow sometime this week.  I don't need that.  We have a bit more animal feed and propane to get before that happens. Tomorrow will be a bit stressful with that run after work but once that is done we are at that 'what will be will be' state again. 

I've made pancakes, and curry, and orange chicken, red lentils and flatbreads, and bean soup and am researching using a rice cooker to cook my adzuki beans.  I showed Esme how to peel ginger when making the red lentil dish, but the 1 cup to 3 cups of water was too much for it, so half of that meal became soup.  I will have to work on that recipe now that I have the red lentils again, made a special trip to the other grocery store to get them.  I made 'seven spice' with star anise, cinnamon, cloves, black pepper, fennel, coriander and yellow mustard seed.  I had looked at all the five spice mixtures available to me and found none that I liked as much as the one that I am almost OUT of...*sigh* - I had all the spices, so I just used my coffee grinder and made a batch.

For languages, I've studied such a mixed bag it is almost funny - French, Spanish, Lithuanian/Latvian, Japanese, Czech, Russian, and Polish. 

The New Year's Cake and Parsnip Soup

 Esme and I made the butter almond cake together today.  

 

My haul from the grocery store.  I didn't take any pictures of the cake itself.  We made hopping john of a sort, and I served carrots and the almond cake for Esme, and carrots, the almond cake, greens and some of the acorn squash for grandma and myself.

 I had looked through all of my recipes and found the recipe for galette des rois (king's cake) and decided it was too complicated.  But yesterday, I had decided that I needed to make the cake again, maybe something that I can still eat after this dental work.

 

This is what we made - it was good, a bit like sweetened cornbread.  I can't have corn products, have been avoiding them for years now on my cousin's recommendation with my other connective tissue disorder.   

 

Butter Almond Cake :

 

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter softened

1 cup white granulated sugar

2 large eggs (at room temperature)

1 tsp. vanilla extract

little less than 3 tsp. baking powder

1.5 cups of general purpose flour

1/2 cup of ground almonds

1 cup milk

1/2 tsp salt

350 degrees for 40-45 minutes or until fork comes out clean

cream softened butter and sugar, add eggs and vanilla, beat until smooth, mix dry ingredients in another bowl and add half and half with the milk beating until all combined, pour into ceramic dish, bake

 

Hopping John  

 

fry chopped bacon on low until the edges begin to crisp, keep the oil in the pan

pour drained can of black eyed peas into the grease and mix thoroughly while still heating

stir often until it begins to bubble again

put frozen chopped green onions into mixture, heat again until it sizzles and stir until the gravy thickens

 

Parsnip Soup  (a variation on the turnip soup from a while back)

 

peel and chop up into small slivers one large parsnip

put in pot with at least 2 cups (I think it was closer to 4) of water

pour in a bit of olive oil 

add frozen zucchini and onions

garlic parmesan grilling seasoning

black pepper 

 

boil until everything is soft, use a stick blender to make smooth 

add a good pat of good butter on top of each bowl

 

 

 

Christmas Day

 We put together some 3D printed toys Mark had downloaded and printed.

 

Mark made a roast beef cut and potatoes, and we had the pears that I had made yesterday with pudding.  It was a good dinner, and over by 3:30 pm, and everyone opened their gifts.  Esme and Mark got clothing they needed and snacks and Grandma got some snacks and a blanket and socks.  Esme bought Mark a blanket, as well.  I gave Esme a talking penguin toy, a star projector and we all played a card game that I had bought.  I got coffee and spices and socks.  Mark had found more guajilio chiles for me at the store, which I knew they had according to the website but couldn't find them IN the store.  I also considered buying three plus pounds of pears and the gouda cheese as part of my Christmas gift 'splurging' on food that I wanted. 

 Grandma watched a few shows with us, and then I brought her back home. 

 I have work tomorrow and Saturday.  Studying Greek mostly today, and some Catalan.

 

another of the spice mixes I had in my Christmas presents, with pumpkin seeds, a bag of caramel coffee, seaweed snacks and pistachio pudding :)

 

 

Christmas Eve, 9 years with the green owl

 

Oh, I've still studied twenty plus languages, but these are the top tier and I keep at them on Duolingo... not including Latvian and Lithuanian, which are not on 'the green owl'.. but I'd love it if they were added.  I had made a phone profile to force myself to do more Spanish learning (and Catalan, in Spanish) when I was not at home, so I haven't had that for the full 9 years, more like 3?  I often play the 'all languages' version on Ba Ba Dum.  It throws curveballs at me in Albanian and Greek and Turkish and Chinese etc- which I don't have as much practice in beyond basics, as well as the languages I am studying more - and it shows that my Romanian and Spanish vocabularies are very lacking, my Japanese needs work, my Czech is better than expected, and my Lithuanian and French are the best there. It is one of the two places I can practice the Lithuanian, and the other place is BaltoSlav, which has the Latvian to practice.

 It's Christmas Eve, it is 70 degrees out nearly (I am happy about that) and I'm cooking pears in butter and ginger vanilla sauce.  I'll make a cake tomorrow for it maybe.  Mark has another roast to put in the oven with beef broth and rice for tomorrow.  We will bring Grandma down for an early dinner, as she likes to eat early.

1 qt jar of water, mixed with white sugar, vanilla, a few tablespoons of butter and good powdered ginger.  Brown sugar put over the peeled and halved pears with seeds scooped out.  Heat up the quart jar mixture in microwave, pour over the pan of brown sugared pears, then put in oven at 275 (because Mark had a roast in there already) for a few hours, turning every ten to fifteen minutes.  Save all the liquid - it is excellent syrup!

 I even had to go get some more pears - because they are good.  The greenish ones I've put in the freezer for making something else, after washing and cutting them up into chunks.  I bought some gouda cheese to go with it, and more mozzarella which we usually have.

 

The Christmas Tree is ready, with a few things for everyone under it.

I caught up on the Greek and Japanese today, after doing Catalan and Romanian for much of the week.  Now to do some laundry and cleaning.  Mark said the chickens were checking their wristwatches this morning as I had slept in, but I said no they were checking their 'roost watches'.  
 

 I had asked for some spices this year - and this one was one I didn't put under the tree.  Someone had brought it to work for a cookout months ago and I've been looking to see what store around here carried it ever since.  It is excellent with avocado, just as a topping!