Post-Thanksgiving post

Time flies when you keep yourself busy ... it's already the end of November??  That means my "baby" has had another birthday - he's 23 now.  Wow.

We hosted a small Thanksgiving here, with hubby's parents coming down.  I roasted a Muscovy duck, gifted to us by Frank and Caroline back when I helped them wrangle and castrate piglets and picked my three up.  I think that was September.  Along with the duck, I baked two decent sized sweet potatoes, then steamed some broccoli florets (store-bought, my plants are yet big enough to feed us) and opened a can of cranberry jelly.  Simple but very tasty.

roasted muscovy duck

That's the china platter I intended to send Feyd off on ... he would have filled it just a bit better, I think, but we were denied that by some nighttime predator.

Speaking of nighttime nuisances, egg thief number SIX has been trapped and dispatched.  This one tripped the smaller trap a couple times before finally getting caught in the larger of the traps.

possum number six caught

This one is pretty big, but still acted juvenile by opening its mouth and hissing at me.  I guess it grew up big from eating all those eggs ... the traps are set again, although one of the Flashy Girls sprung the larger trap again, thinking she should lay an egg next to the ones in the back of the trap for bait.

I put enough of a dent in the possum population to load up the incubator on the 1st, and chicks hatched on the 22nd.  I helped three out of the shells, as I had too many eggs in one plastic strawberry basket, but one chick was too weak and one had a dislocated hip, so eight chicks made it out of the incubator to be weighed and put in with Pollux.  The eight weights were: 1.2; 1.3; five at 1.4; and one at 1.5 ounce.  In the week just past, we lost two chicks due to smooshing (it's a technical term), likely from Pollux.  He didn't immediately adopt this group, and it's probably because I didn't take his last chick away soon enough for him to start feeling lonely and inclined to adopt any little ball of fluff.  We even had to set up the heat lamp and a tub of pine shavings for the chicks ... and of course there is always at least one who hops out immediately then cries about being alone and colder.

I weighed the remaining six chicks last evening, and had three weigh in at 1.9; one at 2.2; one at 2.4; and one at a whopping 2.6 ounces.  Next week I will be certain to have a paper bag I can fold closed to weigh them again!  The heat lamp provides just enough light for them to jump out of the plastic strawberry basket.  I know the original eight were five Bigfoot x Feyd's Daughters; two Azar x the Sisters; and one Tiny x the Pretties (the largest, also the surviving one I helped out of its shell).  I don't know which died.

Another note on those plastic strawberry containers: they don't even hold in/out newly hatched chicks.  I used four with the lids cut off to (try to) separate the eggs in the incubator, and it was not long after drying off that the chicks were up and over the sides of the baskets.  Lucky for me, I did not cut off ALL the lids on my stack of baskets, so I can try again with the current batch cooking in the incubator.  I had five breeding groups' eggs in there for that hatch, and this time I limited it to only three breeding groups (Azar x the Sisters; Tiny x the Pretties; and Azar x the Flashy Girls).  No eggs from Feyd's Daughters this time around, as one of the Daughters is broody and has been since the 17th.  She still has that crazed look in her eyes, so she may go the distance despite this being the wrong time of the year for them to go broody.  (NB: Lengthening daylight hours usually triggers those hormones, along with upping egg production just prior to broodiness.)

I'm also working on starting seeds, but I'll save that for another post.

Bigfoot and a baked Silkie

I caught Bigfoot just a short bit ago, then held him until hubby reached a break point on the Silkiebator tractor he's working on to take a few pictures.

Bigfoot, the one grow-out cockerel from the October hatch

Bigfoot isn't sure if he liked his throat stroked
He certainly has lovely hackle feathers!

Bigfoot staring down the camera
(I am holding him by his hocks)

Bigfoot's wingspan - he still has a lot of growing to do!

Bigfoot still has big feet and long legs to grow into ... and a nice wide wingspan.  He flapped a bit while I was posing him, and left his one wing spread out, so all I did was extend the other.  I am still quite pleased with how he's growing out - especially considering he's from my first F1 hatch.  He seems to be setting the standard pretty high.

Quick note on the January hatch - the best cockerel has a single comb, so I will not be growing any intact cockerels from that hatch.  That gives me more caponizing practice.

Finally, we ate our first Silkie cockerel recently.  I had a couple of oranges from my friend Lynn's trees, and an idea to make a nice exotic spiced baked chicken using orange juice, ground cinnamon, ground clove, and just a touch of cayenne.  Exotic-looking chicken, exotic spices for it.  I am so doing a Silkie for Halloween, with green food coloring in the rice and acorn squash.

orange spice baked Silkie

The Silkie cockerel was quite small, which is why he ended up on our table.  The amusing part is, when he had his feathers he looked about the same size as BeeCee.  It was when I picked them both up the size difference was apparent.   Plucked, cleaned, and without giblets the Silkie only weighed one pound, ten ounces.

We also ate one of the guineas, cut up and done teriyaki with fresh mushrooms, carrots, and garlic.  Not bad, a touch richer in flavor than even the Silkie, but the guinea only weighed one pound, fourteen ounces under all those feathers.

I had also slaughtered a cockerel from Bigfoot's batch, and he weighed two pounds, 15 ounces (just shy of 3 lbs!) which is quite a decent size for the age ... especially considering that slip from last year only weighed about four pounds even.  He was the smallest slip, and I should have just slaughtered him instead of trying to grow him out more.  Ah well.

Chicken soup and hot tea

Today is day two of hubby doing the hot tea and chicken soup "diet" plan.  The sinus crud hit him pretty hard yesterday morning, and he actually requested the chicken soup.  He had "meh"ed the idea the evening before, as the only time chicken soup sounds good to him  is when he's sick.  So yesterday morning I opened up a pint jar of chicken stock, popped it into a little pot with carrots, garlic, crushed red pepper, and spaetzle from the grocery, and dried Swiss chard and kale for his breakfast.  I figured he'd nibble on that all day ... instead he had that pot done before brunch time and was hungry for corned beef hash and omelette.  After brunch, I made him another pot using a pint of chicken meat from last January that had plenty of "juice" for broth, and a can of store-bought vegetable broth.  Since the chicken was far more chunky, I omitted the noodles.

Hubby says even though he doesn't care for chicken soup unless he's sick, when he is sick the chicken soup I make is the absolute best.  It's even better using birds we raised up ourselves, and canned up here.  The other day, while the man was unloading the lumber delivery, he chatted about chickens since we had a group out in the enclosure.  I found myself once again grasping for a way to describe the flavor of an older chicken, as compared to the little 5 or 8 week old fatty babies at the grocery.  While I still can't really say what it tastes like (other than CHICKEN!  LOL) I have made the comparison to the difference in flavor between veal and beef.  People seem to be able to wrap their minds around that analogy, although that still doesn't tell them what the wonderful flavor of an older bird is.

Hubby expressed a concern this morning about using up the chicken stock in the pantry, but I assured him we are not at that crucial of a level just yet.  If we do run too low for comfort, then I'll just harvest the October hatch cockerels earlier than planned.

A wonderful dinner.

Home made Pizza!

Some might call it the food of the gods.

And they'd be right!

A wonderful pizza dinner tonight. The crust came out really well, another one from a certain bread magazine. 

Topped with ground beef home made sausage and bacon.

Served with a side of home made pizza sauce.

Getting hungry? 

Thanks for looking!

Thanksgiving capon dinner

First, the "empty stomach warning" ... that is, do not look if you have an empty stomach.  Go snack before reading on!

We had Uno the capon as our Thanksgiving dinner, and yes indeed, he was tasty.  For those who may not recall, here is Uno out on the grass:

Uno the hatchery GLW capon

Note that his comb and wattles are small and still chick-pink ... that is how you can tell a capon from a slip.  When the hormones come back on a slip, they redden up and grow their comb and wattles again.  Even without his hormones, Uno still kept almost all of his tail feathers and held his own among the six slips.  I do recall him being a little pill as a cockerel, and unlike Pollux, Uno showed absolutely no aptitude for nannying chicks.  The one time we tried, all the chicks were huddled in the far corner of the tractor while Uno was eating all the food.

Uno plucked and dressed out beautifully.  My postal scale only goes up to five pounds, so I don't have a weight for him, but he was well-fleshed and had a generous amount of rich golden-yellow fat on him.  Here he is on the smoker:

capon on the smoker

Doesn't he look just positively scrumptious?   Hubby only gave him a light smoking - one hour - just enough for flavor.  Then, into the largest crock pot:

capon in the crock pot

For some reason, I thought I posted a pic of one of the cull cockerels in that same crock pot, but apparently not.  Uno was ten months old, and the next-oldest cockerel we've eaten was only six months old, so there is a definite difference in size and cooking time.  When I served dinner, he was cooked through, but not to tender stage yet.  Next time, I'll just set up the crock pot on low to go overnight, or maybe just "warm" which is one setting below low.

For those curious, dinner was rounded out with baked sweet potatoes, broccoli casserole (frozen from grocery store broccoli, as our plants out in the garden aren't ready yet), cranberry sauce, and homemade dinner rolls.  Dessert was baked pumpkin cheesecake, and was served a couple hours before dinner to give the rolls enough rising time.  It's a good thing we ate dessert first - no one had room for anything else after the dinner!  That was my first baked cheesecake, and I probably should have gotten a pic, but it is just too late for that now.

Homegrown chicken dinner

I think we have hit the magical sweet spot on cooking up cull cockerels!  We had one of Luanne's cull Wyandotte cockerels last night for dinner, and the taste was simply awesome.  First, we slaughtered five Wyandotte cockerels Sunday morning to make room for the new Silkies I had bought Saturday night at the local livestock auction.  The carcasses rested in the back refrigerator for five days, then hubby mostly plucked one Thursday while I drove to an appointment, then he brined it (standard issue 1 cup salt to 8 cups water) until yesterday morning, when he put it into the offset smoker for a couple hours with cherry wood chunks for the smoke flavoring.  Then we moved it to the big crockpot and let it go on low for another three hours.  When hubby went to lift up the chicken after we decided it was done, both drumstick bones came right out and the meat was melt-in-your-mouth tender.

We just finished up the leftovers for lunch, and this was the fastest we have eaten an entire cockerel.  My friend Lynn had a leg quarter last night when she came by to get ten guineas.  I asked if she had supper yet, and when she said she hadn't I offered her some chicken.

"Home grown, too.   Wyandotte."

"Oh, now you're talkin'!"

Lynn agreed with hubby that the brine was a little too strong, so when I put it into the last three carcasses I added 2-3 cups more water.  Our plan is to smoke them, then cut them up for canning.  We'll see how many end up in jars, as opposed to the crock pot.  Maybe we'll get pictures this time.  Maybe.

Cappy's grand finale

This post is a tribute to Cappy the Gold Laced Wyandotte, hatched 20 January 2015.  For a cockerel who had absolutely no future in the breeding pen, he has had quite the good life!  I attempted to caponize him back in April ... in fact, I truly thought he was my first capon.  As a believed-capon, he was nanny to two batches of cockerels.  It was only last month that his hormones returned in full force, and it was obvious he was a slip.  So, Friday morning we slaughtered him.  We let his carcass rest in the back refrigerator, then brined him all day and night Sunday.  Hubby lit the smoker firebox yesterday afternoon while I seasoned: a light sprinkle of salt, black pepper, a very light sprinkle of cayenne pepper, then slices of a zested orange.

By 5:30 PM the smoking was rudely interrupted when the sky opened up into what Lynn described as "a monsoon" when she stopped by to pick up Maria's eggs to sell.  We put Cappy in the oven at 350F, but all we had last night were the wings, as the wonderful aroma was just about driving us crazy.  Great, most excellent flavor, but the meat had not cooked quite long enough.

Today I snapped a pic before covering Cappy up with some foil and putting him back into the oven, this time at 250F for a couple hours.

Cappy the capon slip,
smoked and seasoned and ready for the final roast

The breast meat was a tad dry, but that was probably because we didn't baste him.  Hubby thinks we should use the drippings for either a gravy or a sauce.  The flavor is fantastic!  We have more slips, so we can experiment to see if it's a matter of the smoking, the seasoning, the bird being older, or a combination of those things.  We'll also vary cooking factors like basting or wrapping in foil longer.

We are really hoping Uno is a full capon, because we both want to roast a fine capon for one of the winter holidays!

Solar oven prototype

Hubby and son put this most of the way together last week, and I put the foil in this morning and now it's in direct sunlight to see how warm it gets inside.  I have an oven thermometer in it.

prototype solar oven

Right now, this is only a cardboard box inside of another cardboard box, with the lid of a display case on top and aluminum foil on the inside.  It's not as if we don't still have plenty of cardboard moving boxes out in the shed ...

I didn't blog much last week, due to my son's week and a day visit.  Of course, the weather was a little less than ideal, but it was great having my kiddo around for a short while.  He and hubby also put together another chicken tractor, and helped me pull some larger weeds from the back of the house.  For most of the week my back was iffy ... which probably made me a bit less fun to hang out with, but I was really trying not to be too grumpy.

Busy week

This has been a rather busy and fun-eventful week so far.  Kicking things off, we celebrated our ninth anniversary on Monday by going up to Jacksonville to have a Japanese hibachi lunch with the in-laws.  Before lunch, hubby and I both went "book mining" at a large new-and-used bookstore called "Chamblins Book Mine."  After lunch, hubby dropped me back at the Book Mine while he went off to WalMart with his parents ... there are days I just cannot stomach the noise and crowd at WalMart, and Monday was certainly one of them.  Since the Book Mine is so huge, that gave me the opportunity to look at the cookbook section.  I quickly realized I needed to be extremely picky and choosy, or I might need a semi-trailer to haul home my purchase!  LOL  The theme for cookbooks turned out to be baking.  While I didn't find a bread-specific book I liked, I did get one dedicated to 200 years of American baking, which yielded a new honey wheat bread recipe I made yesterday (more on that in a bit).

Tuesday, our actual anniversary date, was dedicated to the chickens.  Along with caponizing in the morning, my neighbor Maria came over and bought four of the red broilers.  Two were definitely "por comer" (to eat) and one was the lighter colored broiler pullet she had been telling me was too pretty to eat.  The other broiler pullet she decided was also too pretty to eat once she had the bird in her hands.  It amuses me when she tells me my meat birds are too pretty to eat, as I have decided I just don't really enjoy raising ugly birds (like the Cornish-Rocks).

I made cookies this week, using a recipe from that "all-bad-for-you" cookbook and they came out nicely.  I did glazed molasses cake cookies, and they really did turn out cake-like.  Today I will likely be trying out a cake recipe in my new cookbook, which conveniently has a picture of a Boston cream pie on the dust jacket cover.  All I needed to do was hold the book up and ask hubby if he'd like "this" instead of the usual pineapple upside-down cake for his birthday.

Yesterday, one of hubby's friends came down from Jacksonville to hang out, game, and of course enjoy the food here.  Hubby made breakfast of bacon, toast, and poached eggs.  By luck of the draw, hubby's friend got the double-yolk egg.  He thought that was so cool.  He also showed up with an empty egg carton, which I cheerfully filled while joking that, "Every good pusher knows to give the first hit for free."  He agreed, and bought a second dozen.  When he asked the price, I suggested $3 a dozen, which he promptly shot down saying our eggs are worth $5 a dozen up in Jax.  So, he put a five dollar bill on our coffee cart, and went home with two dozen eggs.  He said he'd like to come down once a month to get eggs and he hopes to try some of our homegrown chicken as well.

While hubby and his friend were gaming, I was bartering with the neighbor who raises grass-fed beef cattle for a couple of steaks for hubby to grill today, which is his birthday.  When I asked how much I owed him, he said we could settle that later in the afternoon, as I had mentioned making bread.  The recipe in the new cookbook is for two loaves at a time, and my neighbor says he and his wife LOVE homemade bread, and he returned the half-pint jar that held strawberry syrup (saying it was very good) and I mentioned being up to our armpits in eggs with only nine layers so far (and twenty more due to start laying in the next six weeks).  So, I ended up with two New York strip steaks in exchange for a loaf of honey wheat bread, another half-pint of strawberry syrup, and a dozen eggs.  Oh, and a couple cookies.  He had asked if the cookies were fattening, to which I replied, "Of course!  Non-fattening cookies are as worthless as non-alcoholic beer or decaffeinated coffee."

Now, to start up on the birthday cake, and also start cleaning up to make room for a spare bed because my son is coming down to visit on Monday.

Cooking with all these eggs

Since we are past the equinox now, the days are longer than the nights, and will just keep getting longer until the solstice.  No, it is not only hubby's imagination, the days really are long and getting longer - LOL but he means that in regard to the work load.  With lengthening days, those of us with laying hens are getting a very steady supply of fresh eggs, and for the next few months the challenge will be to keep up with the hens.  Of course, I have recipes!

One is a new one, in the useful cookbook from TSC's bargain box.  I made the cream cheese poundcake, which calls for six (whole) large eggs and has yielded a wonderfully rich dessert, snack, and even breakfast this morning.

decadent 6 egg cream cheese poundcake

That cookbook has another recipe I'd like to make, but need to wait for the cream cheese to go on sale.  The regular cheesecake recipe calls for three large eggs plus two large egg yolks ... sounds like five whole bantie eggs to me.  We're not eating omelettes and scrambled eggs or poached eggs enough to keep up with the Eileens, who are laying at least two days out of three.

Another warm weather favorite here is tuna salad sandwiches, which I use one hard boiled egg plus the homemade mayonnaise.   I cut this recipe in half today, so that means I'll be making it more often but it will be fresher.  Hubby had hard boiled a dozen eggs the other day, for salads, tuna salad, and even just snacks.  Here is what is left of the mayo after doing up the tuna salad.

homemade mayonnaise

On the list of egg recipes we do love eating: quiche.  I usually do up bacon, spinach, and cheddar, but since we've discovered chard as a spinach substitute we'll be doing that, with the chard leaves fresh from the garden box.  Hubby would also like to try making a souffle.

Somewhere deep in the archives, there is an old Mother Earth News article on the best way to store eggs.  It looks like I didn't bookmark it, but the big take-away is that unwashed eggs stored in the refrigerator will keep at least six months, which is when they stopped their experiment.  We'll be keeping some, but of course it will be the FIFO rule: First In, First Out, sometimes called rotating stock.  It was a bit embarrassing last autumn to have laying hens but no eggs.

Chard leaves as spinach substitute

Despite my best efforts, using seeds and even transplants, I am not doing well at growing spinach down here.  While I still have starts that are alive, they aren't thriving to the extent we'd like.  Enter the Swiss chard.  So far, we have tried fresh chard leaves chopped up in omelettes and now a baked crustless quiche, and that is working out just nicely.  I have also dried some chard leaves to add into casseroles and broth soups and eggs later in the year after the chard bolts.  I definitely want seeds from these plants!

We haven't yet tried torn up fresh chard leaves for salad, nor have I tried using the stalks like celery in broth stock, but I have read (somewhere ...?) that they can be used as such.  I'd also like to test out the dried chard in crackers as well, along with the dried kale I have.

Saturday afternoon I stopped up at Lynn's and picked up another bucket load of compost.  Yesterday hubby unloaded it into a nice long narrow bed.  I think I'll transplant tomato starts there once it gets into the shade in an hour or so.

While starting to crumble up the dehydrated chard leaves, I had a "doh!" moment, then went to get one of two glass mortar-and-pestle sets Mom gave me back when I wanted to major in pharmacy.  Of course, that was before I took the "GPA Killer's" organic chemistry ... but the glass mortars and pestles are still here, and still quite usable.  One is big, and one is quite small, and the small one worked just perfect on the dried chard and kale leaves.

I ran the little electric dehydrator the past couple days, and it did a great job of keeping the chill out of the air inside the house.  I also opened up the two extra trays, so it was running six trays on the lowest setting, "Flowers & Herbs."  I am planning to get a lot more use out of it this year, although it will be outside when it gets hot.

Cooking With Flowers book

One of my more unusual flea market finds is a book in rather good condition called Cooking With Flowers.  Copyright date inside is 1971, and the subtitle is Wherein An Age-Old Art Is Revived.  Written by Zack Hanle, who is/was a woman, and illustrated by Donald Hendricks ... neither name is familiar to me, but this isn't exactly a mainstream topic.  While I do have individual recipes in various cookbooks using flowers like squash blossoms and lavender blooms, I had never seen an entire book dedicated to the subject, so of course I had to snap that one up gleefully.

Cooking With Flowers, copyright 1971
by Zack Hanle; illustrated by Donald Hendricks

For me, this book was well worth the $1 I paid for it.  The table of contents lists: carnations, chrysanthemums, dandelions, day lilies, elderflowers, marigolds, nasturtiums, roses, squash flowers, violets, and yuccas.  I had already known dandelions, elderflowers, roses, and squash blossoms were all edible (or fermentable, in the case of elderflowers) but I did not know about marigolds, which I have always been able to grow as garden perimeter flowers, or carnations, mums, violets, and day lilies.

I've only browsed this book so far, but I do love the line drawings.  Since today is definitely a cooking day (light rain since before sunrise) I figured this would make some interesting rainy-day reading.

You can find some of the neatest stuff at flea markets, if you just look.

My WONDERFUL birthday present cookbook

My mom conspired with my sister up there in Indiana, and I now finally have a copy of the cookbook I have been attempting to get from Mom since I was about 18 ... so 24 years.  Mom's copy is regular bound, with the obligatory packing tape on the spine (many I had found online were the same) and if you stand it up on its spine and allow it to fall open, you will find one or the other of the two best-est recipes in it: Hot German Potato Salad and Sweet-and-Sour Meatballs.

The copy I received from my sis is ring-bound, which means I won't be needing the strapping-style packing tape to hold it together.  It also means this copy won't automatically fall open to either recipe ... but I can live with that.

Sis bought this for me - but hubby is now LOVING this present.  The first recipe I made from it was (of course!) the hot German potato salad, and I have also made it for the in-laws.  Father-in-law stated before the meal that the "only" way to get really good German potato salad involved a plane ticket to Frankfort, yet once he tried it, we didn't hear another peep out of him about that.  Instead, he quietly went back for a large second helping.

Last night, hubby had the sweet-and-sour recipe for the first time.  Instead of meatballs, I used extra thick pork chops (BOGOF score) and also added carrots.  He cut the one pork chop into bite-sized pieces, while the other is waiting in the fridge.  Hubby said he kept thinking about the red dipping sauce Chinese style sweet-and-sour, despite my attempts to describe a more Hawaiian style in the recipe, but once he had a couple good bites of it, he loves it.  I told him about how the recipe calls for meatballs, which he says sounds delicious, but that growing we used to on other meats and cuts.  It sounds like he wants to try all the possible variations I can come up with.

Now, here is the Book, and the two favorite recipes:

Betty Crocker's Cookbook, originally published 1969

Hot German potato salad recipe, page 140

Sweet-and-Sour Meatballs recipe, page 29

Considering I needed to put all the page back on the rings when I first got it, I suspect my sister scanned or copied the cookbook.  Those are the pages to check, Sis!

For everyone else, if you can get a decent readable copy for less than $25, do it.  These two recipes alone are worth it.

Orange and grapefruit marmalade

Otherwise known as "kitchen work - review."  I did not get everything accomplished on Tuesday that I had hoped, but I did get a good enough start on all but the bread pudding to finish up yesterday ... and still have time to crash out for a nap in the afternoon.  Both marmalades are finished and water-bathed.  The orange marmalade was my first time doing up a marmalade of any kind, and it's a bit thin because I took it off the heat just a couple minutes too soon.  The grapefruit marmalade is the perfect gel consistency, and it has that distinctive grapefruit tang/bitterness to it that may just be the perfect glaze for grilled meats.  Oh, I am now officially out of half-pint jars again.

grapefruit marmalade ready to be water bathed

orange marmalade in the water bath

No pics of the ketchup or barbecue sauce, as I have done a post on those previously.  I also did up the flour tortillas.

cooking the flour tortillas

kneaded flour tortilla dough resting before rolling out

My neighbor Maria gave us the grapefruits and oranges.  I'm pretty sure she said her sister has the trees, and had a good crop again this year.  This is really getting me excited for when our citrus trees finally start producing!  I have orange, lemon, lime, tangerine, and sweet kumquat trees out there still growing.

Now, time for a different sort of chore today: slaughtering the three cockerels.

Kitchen work

Today is an all-day cooking marathon here.  Already started orange marmalade two days ago, and have a crock pot going with ketchup, some of which will be further converted to barbecue sauce.  Also on the list are grapefruit marmalade, flour tortillas, and ... bread pudding with orange-soaked dried cranberries.  I'll also zest the peels and juice the rest of the oranges.  We had to toss some out due to fungus/mold/whatever fuzzy growth, so I need to get my (*donkey*) in gear and get them put up.  Live, learn, and compost the mistakes.

Chicken n dumplins

I have had chickens on the brain in one form or another the past few weeks, so it is probably no surprise that the pint of stock that didn't seal plus what was left over from canning up eventually made its way into hubby's absolute favorite form of chicken: simmered with veggies and drop dumplins.  Oh, food pic alert: do not view on an empty stomach.

plate of dumplins on a cool evening

chicken and dumplins on the stove

recipe for dumpings

The last pic is for my little sis, who has been working on doing more cooking from scratch.  She also conspired with Mom to get me a GREAT birthday present: a 7th printing of the 1969 Betty Crocker's Cookbook, in binder form so I won't need to tape the spine.  This particular edition has the ultimate hot German potato salad recipe in it, and is worth hunting down just for that.  I've only been trying to borrow/steal my mom's for the past 24 years ... now her original (packing tape on the spine) edition is safe from me.

Preparing to can up the nuggets

Now that the cold front has dissipated, and we can both move without too much creaking and cricking, I am putting up the three skinless nuggets plus the giblets from all five and a previous nugget I had started to simmer for stock but has been chilling on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator.

Since we raise these chicks ourselves, and slaughter them ourselves, it just makes sense to try to get the maximum use and absolute least amount of waste possible.  I have tried to make the most of chickens for at least my adult life, on the notion that what is in the grocery used to be a live animal that died for me to eat.  When you raise them up from cute little day-old foof-balls to roasting pan size, it really hits home on a visceral level.

So, the usual method I use/have used for years is: cut off the breast meat, take off the legs and wings, simmer the remaining carcass with the neck and giblets for soup stock.  This time, I have taken the meat off the leg quarters and wings to raw-pack in wide mouth pint jars ... and each nugget filled a pint jar just about perfectly, with a smidge over an inch head space left.  The skinless chicken breasts are in freezer bags and already in the freezer, for use in tacos, enchiladas, stir-fry, or whatever else may strike our fancy in the future.

It should be interesting to see just how many pints of stock and carcass meat from four bodies, three sets of legs and wings, and six sets of giblets.

Pics later, when everything is in jars and ready to go into the pressure canner(s).

From the front porch

For those of y'all up in the Frozen North ... I snapped this from the front porch, after listening to the chicks make happy noises through the open windows, dressed in capri length jeans and wearing a cotton button-up shirt as a light jacket.  Yes, that is still-green grass.  This morning is much cooler than the past couple mornings, as it's only in the lower 60s.

cockerels pecking and scratching

The chicks are pretty energetic this morning, after a weekend of humid 80F plus with overnight lows only in the lower 70s.

Like last year, we are forecast to get an actual cold front this week - and may even get frost.  This will be perfect for a mess of baking.  I have enough bread heels to do up more cinnamon cranberry bread pudding, plus there is a birthday cake to bake.  There is a nugget to roast (as soon as we pluck the last bit of feathers off it) and still five more to slaughter.

Homemade bread and English muffins

WARNING: Do not look on an empty stomach!
Fresh bread just out of the oven today, trying a new recipe:

homemade sandwich bread fresh from the oven

Now, for a little catch-up from earlier this week, when I made my usual loaf of wheat bread and hubby made from-scratch English muffins for the first time:

homemade bread and English muffins cooling

Homemade from-scratch English muffin

 If you ask me, I will say the homemade English muffins taste light-years better than the store-bought ones ... I have never been a huge fan of English muffins, having only had the store version before this.  The fun part is that they "bake" on the stove, in a cast iron skillet.

Both the new bread recipe and the English muffin recipe come from a special issue from Hobby Farm magazine, simply called "Homemade Breads" that I found on the magazine rack in Tractor Supply recently.  I already consider it money well spent, and there are more recipes we want to try like apple-stuffed fry bread, skillet cornbread with cheese, and an Indian flatbread called naan.  The added bonus of baking our own bread is when hubby walks into the house after being outside or in his workshop and exclaims, "Yum!  It smells wonderful in here!"

Cooking from scratch

As the two regular (?) readers here know, I have been cooking more and more from scratch this year.  At some point (after I wash the pickled beet brine stain out of the tablecloth I made) I need to pull out all my favorite cookbooks that have scratch recipes in them and take a pic for posterity or some such ... but sometimes I just wing it.  Both my parents began to teach me to cook back when I was still too little to reach the stovetop or counter without pulling the stepstool over - about 6 or 7 years old, I think.  I was short for many years though, but probably that early.  Yes, my mother had her cast iron skillets even back then, and still refuses to pass them on while she is still above ground.  She also refuses to even let me borrow her 1968/72 edition Betty Crocker cookbook which opens to my two favorite recipes in it.  I can remember the ingredients, just not measurements and back then I still measured on most things.

Yesterday, I made up a loaf of bread like usual, and it rose and had just the perfect consistency which is often a function of temperature and humidity levels in addition to ingredients.  Today I have two projects going: homemade ketchup where I used up the last of the pomegranate vinegar, and pasta sauce.

homemade ketchup in the little crock pot

homemade pasta sauce on the stove

Yes, there are already splatters from stirring and other dishes ... I cook in a real kitchen and not some gussied-up TV sound stage.  It's easier for me to wait until I am done and things have cooled to wipe up the splatters and drips.  The saucepot on the stove is at least twenty years old, as well ... I bought it at a garage sale way back when.  I'd say I have more than gotten my 25c worth out of it.  Or was it 10c?

Garden and chicken updates soon.