Another chicken update

Scratching up bugs.

With temps in the 50's yesterday and overnight, the 12 inches snow that had acumulated over the past couple of weeks vanished, much to the delight of my little flock of hens. Today they spent the day outside, running around, eating grass and digging up bugs. They spent hours at this place in the yard where a fire wood pile recently stood. Must have been lots of grubs and bugs in the remnants of bark!

The hens look so happy when they are outside. I hate to have to keep them cooped up most of the time, but at least they have plenty of room to move in the coop. I feel so sorry for comercial egg laying hens who never get to go outside and live in cramped conditions. That is just cruel.

As of Christmas day, I know that all my hens are laying! My christmas present from the hens was 7 perfect eggs---one from each of them. That is the only time I have gotten 7 eggs. The average lately has been 4-5 each day. I think I need to learn how to make angel food cake from scratch so that I have a way to eat all these eggs!

Sugary, Buttery Christmas Goodness

I have a very strict rule that I make these cookies only at Christmas time (though I will occasionally break that rule for special once in a life time events, like my wedding). These are the most fabulous cookies-and they get inhaled once are made. They have way too much butter and way too much sugar in them--but so what? Christmas only comes once a year!

Pecan Toffee Bars

Crust:
1 cup butter
1 cup light brown sugar
1 large egg yolk
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon vanilla

Topping:
1 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup chopped chopped pecans
12 ounces milk chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350.
Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
Mix in egg yolk and vanilla.
Add flour gradually stirring only to blend.
Spread into buttered cookie pan and bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown.

Boil butter and sugar for topping together for 3 minutes, stirring constantly. Add chopped pecans.
Pour over baked crust and bake for 4 minutes at 400.

Let cool for a couple of minutes, then sprinkle with chocolate chips. Once the chips soften spread them with a spatula.

Let cool for 15-20 minutes, cut into small squares. Don't try to take the bars out of the pan until they have completely cooled.

More nativity scenes

Time for some new nativity scenes. I love this hand carved folk art scene.

Up close...In honor of my native American heritage...we have this native American nativity scene. Okay, I'm not really native American, but my name is. I am actually mostly Irish. But my name, Kateri Tekawitha is very distinctly native American. Yes, my middle name is Tekawitha. (My last name is most definitely Irish.) I am named after one of first Christian native American women, the Indian princess, Blessed Kateri Tekawitha.

I decided that it is time to give this blog a new winter look. I wild crafted the basket from cattails, weeping willow, and grapevine last winter.

Overwintering Rosemary

My rosemary bush in the sink after its weekly shower.

I may be able to grow plants outdoors, but when it comes to house plants I am a disaster. Every houseplant I have ever tried to grow has died a slow, agonizing death. Or, if it didn't die fast enough, it would end up in the compost pile in an effort to put it out of its misery. So it is something of a miracle that I have been able to keep a rosemary plant alive three winters in a row on my kitchen windowsill. Mind you, it never looks happy after it has been on the window sill a couple of months. If winter were any longer, I'm sure the plant would die in protest. I put it back out in the garden in May, and it always takes a while to perk back up, but so far it always has.

I've read that overwintering rosemary can be tricky, even for those gardeners with a green thumb for indoor plants. Ideally you would overwinter it in a cool room (less then 60 degrees) with good air circulation and lots of light. I don't have room that fits this description. So my rosemary gets to sit in my hot kitchen on an east facing window sill. I think the real trick with rosemary is getting the watering down right. The roots will rot and the plant will die if you over water. The foliage will dry out and fall off and the plant will die if you under water.

I'm guessing that I have somehow managed to come up with the right schedule for watering. Once a week I put the potted plant in the sink and spray the whole plant down with water for several minutes. Then I let it sit in the sink for an hour or so and make sure all the excess water has drained out of the pot. Rosemary really hates wet feet. I've read that using a clay pot will lessen the chance of root rot.

The other major problem I have experienced with rosemary is that when it is brought inside, it gets covered with fluffy white mildew. Many sources recommend using an insecticidal soap on the plant on a regular basis. I've never done that, but when the mildew starts growing, I put in the sink and wash the mildew off with plain water. This seems to work, but has to be done on at least a weekly basis.

I have heard that it is easiest to overwinter young rosemary plants. The older they get the harder they are to keep alive indoors. We will see how my rosemary bush tolerates its fourth winter in my kitchen.

Christmas is in the air...

I don't normally decorate for Christmas until the the week of Christmas, in keeping with a family tradition. On Christmas Eve we would clean the house until it sparkled, then go out as a family and cut the Christmas tree, and then as family decorate the tree and house. It was one of my favorite days of the year.

This year though, I am working the entire Christmas week, including Christmas eve, Christmas day and the long weekend after. It makes me tired just thinking about it. If we are going to have any kind of a Christmas, I thought I'd better start early. And what better day to start than St. Nicholas' Day, especially since it is a cold blustery day full of snow swirls. The weather looks and feels like Christmas. St Nicholas day is another day that is full of warm memories. Like in Holland, when I was a child we would line up our boots by the wood stove before going to bed and in the morning they would be filled with treats and little gifts from St. Nicholas. As a little girl I never dreamed it was my parents doing. I remember as an eight year old earnestly explaining to another little girl that Santa was a made up person, but Saint Nicolas was a real person and he was the one who really left the gifts. (I don't think she was convinced.) Actually to this day, I am amazed none of my siblings ever caught my parents filling up our boots. We were always so excited we could hardly sleep. With 11 brothers and sisters, you'd think someone would be awake at some point! But somehow my parents managed to get those boots filled without any one noticing.

I spent the day going though my many Nativity Scenes and trying to decide which ones to set up. I love Nativity scenes and have somehow managed to collect a dozen in the last 7 years. A few of them where given to me, but most caught my eye while shopping in second hand stores. In the past I've sent up two or three--the one that Terry and I bought together the Christmas of the year we first met, and then one or two other sets. This year, since I'm starting early, I've decided to rotate through some of the ones I don't usually display. I'm starting with this one depicting the characters as little black children, in honor of our first black president elect. This is being displayed on the window above the kitchen sink.

I am going to put up a Christmas tree at some point, but in the meantime, I've decorated my Rosemary bush with tiny glass bulbs. This rosemary bush has survived three winters indoors. This is its fourth winter and hopefully it will survive this one. It gets to spend its summers outside in my herb garden recovering from having to spend the winter in my kitchen.

After the leaves where raked...

Terry and I spent the morning raking leaves. Just as the last leaf was raked and piled near the compost pile, the snow started to come down. It's a good thing we got them raked when we did, because it would have been impossible to rake them later in the day...

Pizza for two

Since I have have a long weekend off for the Thanksgiving holiday I'm doing a little extra cooking for the freezer. Yesterday I made a red bean soup with ham and collards and froze 3 quarts. Today I spent the morning making pizza crusts for the freezer.

I learned the secret to good homemade pizza crust a couple of years ago when I was shopping at a little bulk food store. Among the of barrels of flour was a barrel of semolina flour. I had never seen it before, but the yellow grainy flour fascinated me. It looked a lot more like cornmeal than flour. I asked the owner what it was used for. Pizza crusts, he said. He I quizzed him on ratios and recipes and he admitted he really didn't know any thing about baking. The only reason he knew it was used for pizza crust was because the pizza shops in town would sometimes buy the flour from him when they were in a pinch and had run out their supply. I bought a couple of pounds and brought it home to experiment.

With a little experimenting, it seems that about the right ratio is 1/4 semolina flour to 3/4 wheat flour. It makes a crunchy light crust. I'd post a recipe except that I really don't have one. Well, I do sort of, but I have no idea of amounts. I have an idea of rations in my head and just sort of make the rest up as I go. Every now and then my husband will watch me as I mix up bread and comment that it really is amazing that everything I make usually turns out. I am very much an intuitive baker and have a very difficult time following bread recipes even when I try hard to do so. Actually any recipe that has more than a couple of steps is usually a little beyond me.

That said, if you want to make pizza, just take any basic bread recipe (flour, salt, water, yeast, oil, and just a little bit sugar (no more than a table spoon or two) and substitute semolina flour for 1/4 of the wheat flour and olive oil for what ever oil the recipe calls for. You should be able to make a fabulous pizza dough that way. I always use whole wheat bread flour. Because I don't follow an exact recipe mine always turns out slightly different each time. Today's dough was really beautiful--very springy and elastic, the type of dough that is a joy to work with.

I make the crusts small enough to fit in gallon ziplock freezer bag. That is actually just the perfect size for a pizza for two. I bake each crust until it is just starting to brown along the edges. Then they are cooled and popped in the freezer. After a long day at work, all I have to do is thaw the crust in microwave, pour some hot pasta sauce over it, and cover with toppings and put in a 400 degree oven. Five minutes later the cheese is melted and the pizza is ready to eat.

Heck with the laying mash. We want hot dogs!

We feed them...they feed us.

I find it amusing to watch my chickens eat. Their tastes in food continues to surprise me...with the chickens we had when I was growing up it seemed they ate just about anything that was set in front of them with no particular preferences. Maybe I just wasn't paying attention back then. My seven hens have very definite food preferences.

On the very top of their list of favorite foods is bugs. Early this fall I am positive they ate just about every bug in our backyard. When they ran out of bugs in our back yard, they started looking for bugs in the neighbor's backyards. Not appropriate behavior, especially since one of the neighbors had just put in a new flower garden with lots of mulch. If we didn't keep a close eye on them, they immediately headed straight for that mulch.

Next on their list is meat products. Forget laying mash, forget bagels and bread and cracked corn. This morning I gave them a their usual bowl of scraps--a mix of vegetable peels, apple cores, crushed egg shells, bread scraps, and odds and ends from the fridge. I also threw in a couple of old hot dogs--cut up and mixed in with other scraps. That started a major food fight. Everybody wanted a piece of a hot dog and the ones who got a piece weren't interested in sharing. Because I'm such a kind hearted person, I had to go and get a couple of extra hot dogs so everyone could have a piece. The other day I broiled them up some spoiled steaks. They demolished those instantly. I'm wondering what would happen if they were allowed to eat as much meat as they wanted all the time. Would we end up with obese chickens with heart disease and clogged arteries?

Bread and grain products come in next, but they will not even look at these if there are bugs or meat available. They do have their preferences in how there grain is prepared. Bread is better than corn chips, Corn chips are better than cooked cereal. Bagels are better than ordinary bread. Whole grain bread is apparently tastier than white bread. The thing I don't quite get is that while they ignore the bran flakes in raisin bran, they love the raisins. They will carefully pick out all the raisins and turn up their noses (er, beaks), at the flakes. I had a stale box of raisin bran that I thought would be a special treat and well, other that the raisins, it wasn't. I don't get it because fruit in general is on the very bottom of the list.

Next is greens with wood sorrel and Swiss chard on top of the list. They love arugula. I love arugula when it is less than two inches tall. They love it regardless of how tall it is. This fall when I was giving them bunches of overgrown arugula, the pungent aroma would hang over the coop for hours afterwards. Kale, lettuce, and mustard greens get eaten quickly too. They are not so keen on collards or broccoli leaves, but will eat them if there is nothing else. They will not touch spinach though. I don't know what I am going to do when the greens in my garden are gone (which will be within the next week probably). Maybe I will get up the courage to ask at Plum Market or Kroger's if they will save spoiled produce for my chickens.

Vegetables and fruit are on the very bottom of their list. Which is probably a good thing, because I could let them free range in the garden and they never once touched a tomato, cucumber, or pepper. (I grew enough greens that what they ate while free ranging made little diference.) Their real interest while free ranging is worms, spiders, and bugs. They do eat fruit and vegetables in a pinch and generally seem to prefer them cooked.

We are currently getting 2 to 4 eggs a day. Two brown eggs and one to white ones. The white eggs mean that one or two of my California whites have started laying. They are five months old. The amount of eggs we are getting right now is plenty! I'm not sure what we are going to do when all 7 are laying! My only problem is that one of the hens is eating her eggs. I'm not sure which hen it is, but I am pretty certain it is one of the brown and white hens, because if I don't collect the eggs right away one of the brown eggs disappears and I see remnants of yolk in the nesting box. She only seems to eat her own egg. The other brown egg and the white eggs don't get touched. If any one has any ideas for preventing egg eating by chickens, I would appreciated it!

Eternal hope

"Gardening is, by its very nature, an expression of the triumph of optimism over experience. No matter how bad this year was there is always next year. Experience doesn't count. Just because the carrots have been knobby, misshapen, and somewhat bitter four years in a row doesn't mean that they are going to be knobby and misshapen next year. No, sir, next year you will (1)work in twice as much compost and peat; (2) plant a new improved variety: or (3) get lucky. Or even better you can forget carrots and plant something exotic like blue cauliflower. Because each year starts with a clean slate, and because of the phenomenon I call garden amnesia, the garden ensures eternal hope."

William Alexander, quoted from The $64 Tomato

Red Russian Kale in Snow

The temperature dropped suddenly last week and we haven't had a day above freezing since. I still have a lot of greens out in the garden. They have been under snow since last sunday. Today it is finally supposed to get up to 40 degrees and I will go out and assess the damage. I'm suspecting the lettuce is probabally done for. Hopefully the endive and spinach survived. I know the kale and what is left of the collards will still be just fine. In fact I have been picking kale under snow all week. Frost and cold only makes it more tender and sweet.

I usually just saute my kale with in a little olive oil with garlic. I also love it in soup. This is one of my favorite kale soup recipes. I modified it from another recipe. It seems that most kale soup recipes call for lots of sausage and while I have no objection to sausage in moderation, I perfer low fat recipes for everyday use. Please note that amounts are approximate. I usually just make things up as I go and never measure anything.

Kale White Bean Soup
1 cup cooked white beans
1/2 cup chopped celery
1 medium onion (chopped)
1 tablespoon olive oil
3 cups stewed or crushed tomatoes plus one cup water, chicken broth or vegetable broth (More if needed)
1 can of corn (not drained)
4 cups chopped kale
Garlic to taste (minced)
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
Salt and pepper to taste

Heat olive oil in a pot, saute onion and celery.
Add cooked beans, tomatoes and water or broth. Bring to a boil.
Add corn, kale, and thyme and simmer until kale is tender (about 20 minutes).
Add minced garlic during the last five or ten minutes of simmering.
Add salt and pepper to taste.

Spring bulbs

Late fall used to be my least favorite season. My memories of it growing up is lots of hard work and being cold and wet all the time. We heated our log cabin with a fireplace. There are some people (I won't mention any names!) who believe that if it isn't a foot of snow on the ground, you shouldn't be wasting firewood. As a result we rarely had a real winter fire until late November. I never could see the logic in that. When the weather is damp, that is when you need a fire more than any other time. As a result I spent a lot of falls shivering. The only redeeming thing about that time of year when I growing up was the apples and apple cider.

Fortunately I married a man who has the good sense to realize that a fire in the wood stove is appropriate as soon as there is a touch of frost in the air. Now that I am warm and can come inside and get warm if I have been outside all day, I have come to appreciate late fall. In fact, I almost like it as much as I love my favorite season, early spring. The growing season is over, the leaves have fallen and plants have died back. Nature is drawing back into itself, to prepare for a long quiet winter's rest.

Two weekends ago I spent the day outside in the cold and rain and mud (and a couple of snow flurries) planting hundreds of spring bulbs. My spring, summer, and fall project this year was getting rid of the ugly yew bushes that overwhelmed the front of of our little house and putting in flower beds. It has been a long slow project. But today I can happily say, that the project is done. Yes I will need to plant some annuals and perenials next spring. But at least the front of the house will be pretty in April and May. It was a lot of work, from yanking out the tangled stubborn yews (we broke two chains and beat up our Explorer in the process), to shoveling a couple of tons of soil to build up the beds, to building a little rock wall to contain the soil.

I always promptly forget what I planted and even if I label things, I usually end up losing the the labels. So, I am making a list here of what I planted. Maybe in the spring when the flowers bloom, I will remember to come back and look them up.

100 tulip bulbs in every shade of pink, white and purple. This was a mix, so even though the names where on the packages, for most of them I am not sure which ones are what...but maybe I will be able to figure it out come spring.
Shirley
Purple prince
Jan Reus
Don Quichotte
White Dream
Menton (dark pink)
Queen of the night (purple, almost black)
5 greigh tulips "Quebec" (clusters of pink tulips with white on the edges of the petals)

50 grape hyacinths
10 muscari "Blue Spike"

50 tete a tete daffodils (grow six inches tall with single golden trumpet flowers)
5 specie narcissi (5 inches tall with clusters of tiny white blossoms with little yellow trumpets)
5 tezetta narcissi (6 inches tall with clusters of pale yellow trumpet flowers. Somehow I have it in my head that these smell really good. We will find out)
5 triandrus narcissi (14 tall, with clusters of delicate and graceful yellow trumpet flowers)

50 ixiolirion (16 inches tall, with blue flowers and bloom in late May/early Jun. I don't have a clue what these are, but if they bloom in late spring, when the other flowers are done, I'm all for them!)
25 Dutch iris (22 inches tall and bloom in shades of yellow, purple and white in late spring.)

When I go out from the garden in autumn...

A garden that never died eventually would weary. The garden winter doesn't visit is a dull place, robbed of springtime, unacquainted with the extraordinary perfume that rises from the soil after it has had its rest.That promise, the return every spring of earth first freshness, would never be kept if not for the frosts and rot and ripe deaths of fall. I don't think I want to stand in the way of this. (As if I could!). So when I go out from the garden for the last time in the autumn, I leave the gate open behind me.

Quoted from Second Nature, A Gardener's Education by Michael Pollan

Tucking the chickens in for the winter...

I haven't been blogging much because I have been on the computer so much for work. I've spent the last four weeks trying to master the massive amounts of documentation that is required of home care nurses. I'm spending half my day staring a tiny laptop computer screen. I come home with aching eyes and the last thing I want to do is spend any more time on any kind of computer. Quite frankly, I am surprised home care nurses aren't all blind. I've only on the computer for four weeks and I have decided that this Monday I am going to call an eye doctor and see if I can get glasses to use while I am working on the computer. I never realized before that I might have an eye problem. In spite of the aching eyes, I am thankful that I don't have to chart on paper. I am all for computer documentation. Besides not having to shuffle lots of papers around and getting them all mixed up and lost (something which I seem to be an expert at!), there is so much better continuity of care and much better communication between clinicians when patients' charts are on a computer system.



Anyway, this post was meant to be about chickens. Last weekend we spent most of Sunday getting the chicken coop ready for the winter. We took the "upstairs" and lined it with insulation, then put a floor in so that they will have a warmer place to sleep come freezing temps. Then we dragged the whole coop inside the portable garage, so that they are more protected from winds and snow.
Here they are snuggled up for the night. We also bought them a heater that we will put in the coop on those really cold nights.



I find it comforting to come home from work every day and care for the chickens. Whichever one of us is home earlier lets the chickens out so they can run around and scratch outside until dark. I fill their feeder with laying mash and a little cracked corn (to give them a little extra fat to keep them warm), pick them greens from the garden, and fill the water pot with fresh water. In return they give me two brown eggs everyday.

This is one of the brown and white hens taking a dirt bath in her favorite place---under a tomato plant by the back steps. Even when it is wet, rainy, and cold the chickens still love to take dirt baths...mud bath, dust bath...they love any kind of dirt bath!



And this is the alpha hen. She is bigger than the other California whites and I keep thinking she might actually be a rooster because she is more aggressive and has that glint in her eye...but no crowing yet. I would think by 5 months if she were a rooster, I would have heard some thing by now.

The garden on November 1st

My fall greens came in splendidly this year...

I wasn't expecting much from the endive, as I planted it in July while it was very dry and only a few seeds germinated, then the baby plants just kind of sat there, but after those Septembers rains it perked right up and grew and grew...Now I wish I had paid more attention to it and thinned it before it was too late. It should be good anyway.

This lettuce mix from Johnny's Selected Seeds is so pretty...

Dead, gone tomatoes and greenbeans still need to be cleared out and added to the compost pile. That is on the list of things to do today.

The night before the frost...

I snapped this photo of the front flower garden the night before our first real freeze. My goal this spring was to have the prettiest flower garden on the block. I succeeded, but probably only because I was the only person on the block who planted annual flowers. I think with the economy crunch, spending money on flowers was not high on everybody else's priority list. However, I subscribe to Catherine Doherty's (founder of Madonna House) philosophy...she wrote, "Flowers are not a luxury, they are a necessity."


















"Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food, and medicine to the soul." -Luther Burbank, horticulturalist

Zinnias on a Garden Bench

The last of the zinnias from the front flower garden.

Defying Winter

Cold days are coming I know. At some point I am going to have to light a fire in our soapstone woodstove. However, I'm hoping that using the stove as place to diplay a chinese tea set and pink zinnias will ward off cold days a little longer!

Tomato Boy

Finn (Terry's grandson) enjoying a tomato fresh from the garden. When he is in the garden, tomatoes watch out! Big, little, ripe or not, he loves tomatoes!

Chicken Update

This week we added two new hens to our flock. Not that I need seven hens. A friend had to give most of her flock of hens away since she was moving, and she offered me two. They just started laying, and the thought of getting eggs a month or two early was a little more than I could resist. So I Monday evening I drove over to her home and picked out two pretty speckled brown and white hens. I know this isn't the greatest photo I've ever taken of a chicken, but it will have to do for now! I'll take some better ones later on.

It took a little while for my California Whites to adjust to the new hens. The first evening and the next day they pecked and harassed the little brown and white hens. It was pretty hard to watch, especially since the new hens wouldn't do anything to stand up for themselves. I didn't know what to do besides wait it out. I was fairly confident that in a couple of days things would settle down and they would get along. That is what ended up happening. By the third day everyone was pretty much getting along just fine.

It also took the new hens a couple of days to get used to the fact that they have to stay in our yard when we let them out of the coop. Terry and let let our hens out every evening to scratch in the in garden and get their fill of worms and bugs. My California Whites somehow got the message a long time ago that they need to stay in our back yard (it isn't fenced in) and they don't wander off. The first evening we let the brown and white hens out with the rest of the flock, it didn't take long for one to completely disapear, even though we were keeping what we thought was a close eye on them.

After a frantic half hour search with no results, a nieghbor three houses down stopped by and said that one of our chickens was wandering along the road by his house. Sure enough, there was the hen, peacefully pecking away in on the edge of road. Thankfully this hen is pretty sedate and I was able to just pick her up and bring her home (if it had been a California white, I would have never been able to catch her!). They started wandering off a couple of more times, but we were able to shoo them back on to our property, and the past couple of days they seem to be getting the hang of staying in our back yard.

I really would hate to have to keep them cooped up all the time. Chickens really enjoy being able to roam a bit and eat bugs. They seem to think eating bugs is the main reason for there existance. The other day there was a big swarm of bitting red ants near our back porch. I let the hens out, and within 10 minutes they found the ants, and in another 10 minutes there wasn't an ant left in site. The chickens acted like they were in heaven!

I am constantly surprised how picky my hens are. I remember the chickens we had growing eating anything and every thing in site. They were a totally disaster in the garden. These hens, on the other hand won't thouch most vegetables. They won't eat peaches, pears, tomatoes, or most of the left over food scraps that I put out for them. They do melon, cooked squash, and anything that is made with grain (bread, rice, oatmeal, pudding, that sort of thing.) I found out yesterday when Terry's grandchildren were over that they totally love soft taco shells. Liam and Finn had a lot of fun feeding them the tacos. I'm not sure who enjoyed it more---the chickens or the boys!

We have been getting two eggs a day--two medium size brown eggs. That has been really nice.

I love my job!

This has been a perfect fall so far with cool, clear days. Leaves are just starting to turn color and there has been no frost yet so fall blossoms are still bright. Yellow wheat and corn fields and fields full of orange pumpkins dot the country side. And best of all I have the perfect job to enjoy this beautiful fall! At least at the moment my job is perfect.

I'm still in the orientation phase of my new job as a visiting nurse, which means I don't yet have the loads of paper work that comes with being a full fledged case manager (that will come in a month or two--ask me then if I still like my job!). In the meantime, I'm driving around the county doing patient care and getting to enjoy all the lovely sights and smells of fall. There are some really beautiful places in Washtenaw county. I'm reveling in being able to be outside, rather than stuck on the 8th floor of a masive hospital. When I worked 12 hour days in the hospital, during fall and winter, I'd leave for work when it was dark and come home in the dark. Then I would be so tired on my days off, that I would sleep most of the day. It felt like I hardly ever saw real daylight.

There were many reasons I wanted to switch to being a visiting nurse, and right on the top of the list was a desire not to be stuck inside for 12 hour shifts. And with a fall as beautiful as this one, I am very greatful that I do have a job where I get to out in the country frequently, enjoying the beauty of God's creation as I go about the work of caring for my patients.

Tomato Salad

Green zebra, Cherokee purple, and Glacier tomatoes...

A little bit of everything bread

I love it when my house smells like fresh baked bread--that is half the reason why I bake, and it is why I made bread today. My house smells so musty when it rains. Baking bread freshens the house so nicely. I rarely ever follow a recipe when I make bread. Often people ask me for my bread recipes. Honestly, usually there isn't one. I usually just throw in whatever I have at the moment--that is what I did today.

I started out with the basics--yeast, water, and honey, whole wheat bread flour and a little white bread flour. That all got mixed together in my kitchen aid mixer. Then I added some left over mashed potatoes, rice flour, teff flour and some fava bean flour. It wasn't until my dough was pretty stiff that I realized I had forgotten to put in oil and salt (I am a very disorganized baker!), so I threw in some oil, salt and flax seeds. In spite of my haphazard approach, 99% of the time my bread turns out great and smells fabulous.

I love my kitchen aid mixer. I can throw in all my ingredients, put in on speed 2, and putter around the kitchen for twenty minutes or so, and take out beautiful elastic dough.

Canning jars

I've know for a while that I have a canning jar problem. I have this compulsion to collect canning jars. If I see a canning jar in someone's recycling, I will stop and pick it up. If there are free canning jars on Craig's List I will happily take them off the giver's hands. If I see a canning jar for ten cents at the thrift store, I will buy it. In the 6 years I have been canning in Ann Arbor, I have amassed a large collection of canning jars, with only actually buying two dozen jars the first year I made pickles.

Lately, I have been good. I've realized that if I keep collecting jars at the rate I have been, pretty soon there won't be any space left for me to live in. Terry will tempt me on a regular basis by showing me free or very cheap canning jars on Craig's List. I've actually turned a lot of free jars this year! I haven't bought any cheap jars at second hand stores this year either. I will still pick up jars on the side of the road though and if someone actually hands me a jar and says, "Do you want this?" there is no way that I am going to turn the offering down! If you start canning, free canning jars somehow start materializing when you are around. Most people, I am sure, have the common sense to turn them down once they have collected a reasonable number.

I knew I had a lot of jars, but until yesterday I really had no idea how many. Terry had to rearrange some things in the garage, and that forced me to move a bunch of canning jars--9 dozen canning jars to exact. To be honest, I had no idea I even owned 9 dozen canning jars. And those were only the ones in the garage. I went down to the basement and counted 7 dozen jars. Then I climbed up to the loft and counted 5 dozen jars. I didn't have the energy at the time to get a step ladder and see how many I have up in the attic. I don't even want to know how many dozens of jars are up there! And this is not counting the 75 or so jars in the pantry that are full of pickles, tomatoes, salsa, beets, and jam.

I've always collected canning jars, as my sisters will tell you. I took over the family canning when I was 13. A big part of my problem is that canning jars represent food security to me. There were several winters when I was a little girl that my family lived on potatoes and soy beans. Those hungry winters made a big impression on me. As a teenager doing the family canning I knew that if I filled those jars with fruits and berries, tomatoes and pickles, we would be sure to have some to eat other than soy beans and potatoes. This wasn't something I consciously thought about it, but I've come to realize as a adult that I have this fear of being hungry and I'm sure it has to do with not having much food at certain times when I was little. If I have lots of canning jars, I will not need to go hungry. I can always fill them with food when it is plentiful and have it avaible when food is scarce.

Security blanket or not, I really don't need 21 dozen or more canning jars right now. I put four dozen out on the curb right away (thankfully with an ad on Craig's List, they were snapped up within half an hour, so I resisted the temptation to bring them back inside). I probably would have put more out there, except that Terry pointed out that someday I might need all these canning jars. Good point there. Someday I might have 12 children and need lots and lots of canning jars (though I seriously doubt I will ever have 12 children). Or someday I might have a 3 acre garden and have lots and lots of food to can (though even if I ever do have that big of garden, I seriously doubt I will be canning that much food). In any case, as Terry pointed out, some day I might need 21 dozen canning jars, so I shouldn't get rid of TOO many of my precious jars!

So in conclusion: I currently have enough canning jars. Please don't give me any more. Find someone else who grew up poor and canning who will appreciate them! And if you or some one you know is in despert need of canning jars, I would be happy to share a couple of dozen with you.

Fall Planting

Yesterday I planted the last of the greens I will be planting for fall harvest. I planted kale, lettuce, spinach, mustard, arugula, and a mix of Asian greens, all to be harvested through November as baby salad greens. It has been incredibly dry this summer. We had plenty of rain through May and June, then when July hit, the rain stopped. We have only had a few very brief rainy spells, no where enough to keep the soil moist. I have been watering off and on, but with a garden the size of mine, the cost to water can quickly add up, so I avoid it as much as possible. For the most part, the vegetables seem to be doing just fine, but the lack of rain did greatly affect the fall crops I planted in the middle of July. Lettuce, endive, and spinach planted then sprouted very sporadically. I guess we won't be having many endive salad with bacon and blue cheese this fall! I did notice this morning, though that some of the lettuce seeds I planted a couple of weeks ago have started sprout. You can see the seedlings coming up next to the baby lettuce:
I planted next years garlic last week. It will sprout in a couple of weeks, then we will cover it with leaves and over winter it for next year. Usually I have problems with the squirrels digging up the bulbs right after I plant it (I just go through and tuck it back into the ground, and one the bulbs develop roots the squirrels loose interest). This year it isn't the squirrels, it is the chickens. They seen the little white tip sticking above the dirt and start trying to unearth it. So far there hasn't been any real damage done and I hope once the garlic starts sprouting, they will leave it alone (I can't imagine they will like the taste of garlic greens!).

I let the chickens out in the garden for at least an hour everyday. So far they they are more of a help than a hindrance. They run around and eat bugs and wood sorrel and don't touch the vegetables. I suspect that will change when they discover ripe tomatoes! They also like to take dust baths, but so far have limited themselves to two areas in the garden. When we had lots of chickens on the homestead, they could be very destructive in the garden, both with scratching up beds and eating ripe vegetables. I'm keeping an eye on my five hens, but so far, so good!

See? A BLT can be heathy!

I picked the first Mortgage Lifter today. In spite of my best intentions, somehow bacon made it into the frying pan. But that is where the resemblance to a normal BLT ends. This is what the finished product looked like:
Whole wheat pita bread, heirloom tomato slices, crispy bacon, and lots of tender baby greens--kale, arugula, beet greens, mustard, bok choi ,and purslane.

Pita Bread

All day at work, I thought about making bread. I wanted to come home and bake bread.The only problem was, I didn't need to bake bread. I still have three loaves in the freezer from the last time I baked. Then I remembered my pita bread recipe. I hadn't made pita bread for a long time and it would be perfect as something different to bring to work for those cold lunches. So I came home and made pita bread.



Pita Bread

3 1/2 cups bread flour (I used one cup white and rest was whole wheat)
1 t salt
1 T dry active yeast
1 t sugar
1 t olive oil
1 1/3 cups water

combine flour and salt in a large bowl.

Combine yeast, sugar, and 1/3 cup warm water. Stir and set aside for about until yeast is bubbly.

Make a well in the flour mixture, add the yeast mixture, one cup warm water, and the olive oil. Mix and form the dough into a ball.

Turn dough onto floured surface and knead for ten minutes. (Honestly, I never do it that long--10 minutes is a long time!)

Place dough in large oiled bowl, cover with damp cloth, set in a warm place, and let rise until doubled in size. Then punch down and form into a smooth ball.

Cut the ball into 12 uniform pieces, form each piece into a ball, roll out each ball and place on a baking sheet dusted with corn meal. Cover the flat pieces with a damp towel and let rest for 45 minutes. (I rolled out three at time---that is what fit on the cast iron skillet I was using for a baking sheet---and only let them set about 10 minutes. )
Preheat oven to 500 degrees. Bake pitas for for 2 two 3 minutes, then flip over and bake for another couple of minutes. Don't overbake! Wrap the hot pitas in a damp towel as they cool to keep them soft.

It always amazes me how they can go from being completely flat........
to all puffed up in a matter of seconds when placed in the hot oven!For dinner we had the pitas stuffed with chicken, tomatoes, summer squash, and fresh pesto. (Hmmm....note to self, don't take pictures of food on rooster plates...having a rooster tail in the picture doesn't do anything for the food.)

The Garden is Alive with Little Creatures...

Lots and lots of little creatures...

Good ones...bees, fireflies, moths, and butterflies...

Bad ones... Japanese beetles, cucumber beetles, grasshoppers (okay, so grasshoppers aren't really that bad unless you have lots and lots of them) and a stink bug (I don't know if stink bugs actually do any harm either, but they sure taste bad when you put one accidentally in your mouth along with a raspberry!).

And one kind of scary looking one. (Sort of looks like batman, doesn't it?)

And last, but definitely not least....one of my very best bug eaters....a California White hen. ....