Learning How to Cook - Again

Patrice Lewis, on her excellent blog www.rural-revolution.com recently posted about cooking from scratch.  The gist of the post was making "box" dishes from scratch instead.  Along with some very good advice on cooking utensils to have on hand and items to keep in the pantry, she posted some recipes and invited her readers to post their favorite homemade items that most people these days make from a box, such as mac and cheese, pancakes, muffins and such.

It all sounded so delicious it made me hungry.  I found though that I couldn't really use any of the recipes that were posted much to my dismay.

Last year we discovered that my mom is lactose intolerant and my sister has gluten issues.  Since then cooking has become quiet adventurous in our house.  With wheat and milk out of the picture, most of the "box" recipes that are "go-to" for home cooks just don't work for us no matter if they are from scratch or out of a box. 

Basically now everything is from scratch, because wheat and milk are in just about everything in a box (explain to me why beef broth needs wheat in it.?  Check out the label on College Inn broth.  It's there.) 

Anyway, rant aside, we don't eat a lot of baked goods due to the issues, but I've been experimenting with various flours and liquids to achieve some tasty treats.  My two main flours are corn and rice.  I bought a grain grinder to make my own fresh instead of buying those expensive little packages in the exotic foods section.  I can buy a 50 pound bag of rice for about the same price as five pounds of ground rice flour.  I can make my own flour, it's fresher, cheaper and still make rice the regular way if I want to.

 I'm not real excited about using the gums and pastes normally put in store purchased food (weird and very expensive) to make non-gluten flours stick together, so I'm playing with my flour to egg ratio to up the protein needed to hold it all together (good thing I've got chickens!)  I've had lots of practice runs ending up being chicken food (another reason to buy a cheap bag of rice and grind it yourself) instead of gracing our table, but I'm getting there.  A peach cobbler made with corn flour can be downright tasty.  I try to do a lot of converting of recipes I find that sound great, but you have to work at it, because just replacing wheat flour with rice flour won't work and you won't like the results.

Rice flour cookies are very crisp straight out of the oven, but after a day, they can be like chewing on a rock.  I'm finding that a bit of applesauce in the mix helps to soften them up.

A cup of self-rising corn meal run through the grinder for a finer flour mixed with a tablespoon of baking powder, one egg, a half-cup of sugar, a teaspoon of cinnamon and a cup of lactose-free milk makes an absolutely fabulous cobbler dough.  Melt a stick of butter in your favorite baking dish, pour the dough in, drop the fruit of your choice on top and bake until golden brown.  Yum.

Lactose free milk is available out there now as are milks made from soy, almond and a host of other grains and nuts.  They're okay and in cooking you can't tell the difference. There is also a host of pastas made from different grains.  Some are good, some just cook into mush.  Finding out which ones do what is a matter of trial and error.

I'm also finding out that some things just don't need wheat.  Libby's canned pumpkin has a great pumpkin pie recipe on the side of the can.  On a whim, I made up the pie filling and then poured it into a pie plate that I sprayed with non-stick spray and stuck it in the oven - no pie shell.  It turned out great.  The filling held together wonderfully and the taste wasn't interrupted with pie crust thickness.  I've also tried this with an egg custard pie with similar results.

What I can't seem to find a substitute for is cheese.  There is a soy alternative out there, but it's not very good and doesn't cook worth a flip.  Oh well, maybe someday.

In the meantime, the experiments continue.....

Are People Really This Stupid?

A young man in South Carolina is facing a fine and possible jail time by virtue of being stupid.  It was raining outside and he was pet sitting his parent's dog.  Not wanting to get wet, he decided to simply hang the dog out of a second story window to let it do it's business, and then pull it back in.

I ask you now, can people really be that stupid?

Apparently they can.

Someone saw the incident, took pictures and reported it.  Good for them.

This act of stupidity leaves me rather speechless.  What type of people are we raising these days?  What are they going to do when faced with problems more serious than taking the dog out for a walk when it's raining?  It boggles the imagination.

Unsportsmanlike Conduct

Congratulations go out to the Auburn Tigers for their win over Alabama in the "Iron Bowl"

Let me make this perfectly clear.  I am not an Auburn fan.  I am an University of Alabama graduate (class of 1983).  I was screaming and yelling all the way for the Tide on Saturday.  It was painful to watch that last play.

I WILL NOT, however, be ugly about the loss.  Some of the things I have heard and seen this year for the game is enough to put you off football altogether.  This rivalry is so bitter that it's even led to murder in one case.  It's getting to where it's downright embarassing.

And it's coming from both sides.  Auburn fans can be just as bitter and ugly as can Alabama fans.  The name calling is no longer funny.  It's nasty and shows the worst in human nature.  It also makes the rest of the country look at this state and know they were right in thinking that we act like a bunch of redneck hicks that will literally kill each other over a sporting event.

Oh Please!  There are enough things going wrong in this country that are really important.  Football isn't one of them.  In fact, football should be a way of forgetting our problems and having a good time during times that aren't so good.  Instead, except for the 60 minutes of playing time on the field, football in this state has become something to dread, because some redneck is going to do something stupid, get himself in trouble and as he's being led away to jail, scream "Roll Tide!" or "War Eagle!"  Well that certainly reflects well on the state, now doesn't it?

The kicker for Alabama missed field goal attempts.  He's getting death threats?  The comments posted by readers at the end of articles about the game are so full of threats, demeaning comments,  f bombs, and other foul language that they should be censored for everyone under 50.

What amazes me more than anything is that most of this vitriol is from people who have never even actually been to either school.  So many people around here were just worked into a lather about the whole thing, but when I thought about it, it occured to me that I'm the only person I know that actually attended the University of Alabama.  I know only one person that went to Auburn University and he's a very nice fellow.  In fact, I ran into him on Monday and congratulated him on the win.  He in turn commiserated with me on the loss.  We parted on the best of terms.

That's the way it should be.  It's a game people.  Let it go.  Congratulate the Auburn fans.  Console the Alabama fans, and gear up for next year.

Congratulations Auburn.  Best of luck on the SEC championship.  I'll be pulling for you.  Roll Tide!

Ouch!!!!

It was 23 degrees this morning when I stuck my nose out the door.  I immediately withdrew my nose from the outdoors, back into the warm house and slammed the door against the encroaching cold.  Three seconds of that was about to become painful, so I avoided it.

We get cold weather here in the deep south, just generally not this soon in the year.  It should be somewhere in the 40s and 50s, not the 20s.

We had a very cool summer this year.  It never got really hot, except for a couple of quick jabs, and we had lots of rain, which is just weird.  The earth never really got a lot of heat to absorb, so it could radiate it back at us.  The "experts" say that doesn't make any difference in what kind of year you have, but I'm not so sure.  Anyway, I've been saying all along that we were going to have a bad winter.  Just saying it though doesn't make it feel any better when it gets here.

And the first cold weather always seems to hurt worse than it does in the depths of winter.  My system hasn't adjusted and its not an instant turnover.  The first few days of cold, I never have enough layers on and I always get that bone chilling cold that you can't get rid of.

It's been getting steadily colder over the last couple of weeks, so I did get a running start.  I had pulled out my boots I bought from LL Bean when I used to live in Vermont.  They are old and worn, but they keep my feet warm and that's what counts.  I also found my heavy coat, made in Russia, (and we've all heard what the winters there are like) and have it on hand.  Gloves, scarves and mittens have all been turned out and are waiting in a basket by the door.

I'm late on winterizing the house, but I stopped by the DIY big box store yesterday and got the materials I needed to get to work.  It's suppose to warm up over the weekend, so I know what I'll be doing.

I went through the yard and picked up all the fallen sticks and made myself a box of kindling and put it on the porch.  I also pulled my little wagon full of firewood on the porch and I'm ready to light the woodstove.  The porch keeps the wood out of the house, but it's also out of the rain and all I have to do is take one step outside to grab a log.  Love it.

I have plenty of food in the house and I just got the heating unit serviced and it's working well.  Next week I've got to call and get some gas delivered, but other than that, I think I may be ready to hibernate for the winter.

I am so blessed and have so much to be thankful for.  I hope you all are having as wonderful a Thanksgiving weekend.

Giving Up

I've just about reached my toleration limit with the electronic devices in my life.  Our lives have become so complicated lately that we can't function without them.  And nowadays they overlap each other.  This is where my frustration comes into full play.

I love my blog.  I want to spend more time posting on it and letting my friends know what is happening on the farmette.  But posts without pictures are basically boring, so now I've got the computer AND a camera of some sort involved.  As time has progressed it's become easier and easier to do that.  Cords have been exchanged for cards, and wireless is the way to go.  Sure.

Seems like the easier it's gotten though, the more convuluted has become the path to get there.  You have to have the right software, the right hardware, the right accessories and a bit of knowhow to get it all done.  And of course, all this costs money, the commodity that I'm shortest on at the present time.

And if one part bites the dust, I'm screwed.  Welcome to my world at the moment.  My camera has been down for some time now and is showing no signs of coming back to life.  Hence, I have no photos for my blog, hence I have a boring blog, hence I have not been writing.  So I just give up.  I intend to keep writing, but you're just going to have to put up with no pictures, or ones that are old.

Bear with me.  I'm saving my pennies to buy a new camera, and hopefully it will be soon.

Surprises Big and Small

I have a variety of layers in my hen flock.  They lay all sizes and colors.  I get eggs that are white, brown, beige, green and even blue.  It makes for a lovely carton of eggs.

 

 



Occasionally I get a really big egg.

But for the most part, my eggs are just average side.  They would be sold in the store as large or medium size eggs.

 

 



 

But then last week, I picked up this egg in the hen house.

 

 



It looks like a normal egg, but there was something a bit different about it.  When you put it up against a  regular size egg, this is what you get.

The pictures just don't do it justice.

 



Of course, you can't just leave an egg like that.  I had to see what was inside.  I was amazed at how hard the shell was on it.  I had to give it three really hard whacks just to get it to crack.  Finally it came apart.

 

 

 



 





 A small white with a line of yolk in it.  Actually, I was a bit surprised that it had any yolk at all.  Eggs are fascinating things.

 

 



Springy Things

I know that Spring is going to get here sometime.  It is.  I just know it will.  You'd never have guessed it by the temperatures here the last few days though.  Forty-seven degrees is just not normal for here in the first half of May.

 

 

 

And certainly not by the vast amounts of water that have landed on top of us. 

 

 

 

 

Between the two it's been dank and cold here lately, but supposedly there is a warm spell headed this way.  We'll see.

 

In reality, though, Spring has shown up already.  Many things have bloomed and it's been quiet a show.  Here's some of Spring around the farmette.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Off My Feet

I'm kicking back and putting my feet up for a few days.  Not that I don't have anything to do, but I just don't have a choice in the matter.

A while back, my toe started to hurt.  It was an ingrown toenail on the right side of my big toe on my right foot.  No big deal.  I've had them before.  It starts out with a bit of soreness on the side of the nail, but a little work with a pair of nail clippers and it goes away. Didn't work this time, however, and it kept getting worse.  In fact, it got bad enough that I developed a limp.  And an infection.  It was obvious that this was beyond my ability to handle, and I needed to hand it over to the professionals. 

So Tuesday I went to my family doctor and she sent me to a podiatrist.  My appointment was for this morning and off I went expecting him to bring me back in the next day or two to dig out the ingrown toenail.  Not so.  He decided he could take care of it right then and there.

He deadened my toe.  That was not fun.  What he did next, I have no idea because I wouldn't look to see.  It sounded bad and smelled worse.  According to what he told me, he took off the side of my nail (sound), took out the ingrown part and then cauterized the root (smell) so that it wouldn't grow back.

After it was over, I looked at the ingrown shard that he had pulled out, and it was huge!  It was about 1/2 inch long and had been growing straight down into my toe.  Good Lord!  No wonder it was hurting so badly.

So he bundled my toe in gauze and sent me home with good drugs.  I started getting the feeling back just as I got home so I took advantage of the pain killers and spent the afternoon piled up in my mom's guest bedroom snoozing away.  What luxury!  Sister is taking care of the chickens and goats, so all I'm doing is sitting around surfing the web and watching videos.  I'll have to be back up and at it in a couple of days, so I figure I'll take advantage of it while I can.

Cock-A-Doodle-Doo

I currently have too many roosters.  I have seven.  According to chicken culture, you should have about one rooster for every 10 to 12 hens.  Earlier in the year, I had about 70 hens so everything was running smoothly.  This particular group of roosters are very nice to have around.  They do their job of continuing their genetic lines, plus they are on constant lookout for predators and work hard to find the best scratching spot for their particular group of ladies.  Best of all they all get along together and I don't have to be on the constant alert for fights.

A problem has developed lately though with the loss of several of my hens.  Something went through the flock and I had a few just drop dead from God only knows what (that just happens sometimes).  I've lost a few to predators (I've got a red tailed hawk that has discovered the chicken buffet here) and then a few were lost to their own stupidity (jumping over the fence into the waiting jaws of my sister's dog qualifies in the stupidity catagory).  Their loss has thrown my numbers off.  I'm averaging about six hens per rooster now and things are getting a bit tense around the barnyard.

This is Champ, my main rooster.  He took the position of main roo with the passing of his father Red.  I haven't got a clue who his mother is, but Champ is about three years old and doing a marvelous job of keeping everybody in line.

My second in line is a black Minorca by the name of Kemosabe.  I bought him about a year and a half ago as a chick and he's quiet handsome.  His biggest downfall is that he crows all the time.  And I mean all the time, 24/7.

 

 

 

The three muskateers come next and I have to look at them really closely to tell them apart.

 

 

 

 

Pigeon is up next but he was being very camera shy the day I was taking pictures and went and hid.

 

Last but not least is the Lone Ranger.  He's at the bottom of the pecking order which makes no sense as he is the largest rooster I have.  I'm guessing that he's about 10 to 12 pounds and he outweighs even Champ.  He doesn't push his weight around, however, and always lets the other roos have precedent.  I worry about him hurting some of the hens, but his personality has saved him from the stew pot so far.

 

 

 

 

 

I keep thinking that I need to get rid of some of them as I'm down so many hens, but this is such a good crew of roosters that I can't bring myself to do it.  I've got so many chicks coming on this spring that I keep hoping they will continue to get along well until I can replace the hens in a few weeks.  Wish me luck.



Bubbling Away

I've always been a fan of saurkraut (it's the German in me).  When I was a kid we ate it fairly regularly with sausage (another German staple) and it was just a meal I took for granted.  Things changed over time, though, and I realized we weren't eating kraut and sausage as often.  For one thing the kraut tasted funny, off a bit.  It wasn't the kraut of my youth, tangy and spicy with an earthy scent that blended with the sausage.  Now it was sharp and bitter and tended to clash with the taste of the sausage.  I  just figured my taste for these things were changing and over time gave it up altogether.

Then one day, I was reading an article on saurkraut and I discovered back in the 70s/80s companies that were making kraut transitioned from the old way of fermenting cabbage to make their kraut to simply dumping shredded cabbage in a vat of vinegar and letting it sit until the cabbage wilted, then canning it, labeling it kraut and sending it out the door.  Took a lot less time, hence cheaper, and they could get more out the door in a shorter amount of time, therefore more profit for less work.

Soooo...for several years I just went without saurkraut.  Since I've moved back home though, I've been wanting kraut and since I'm doing the "from scratch" thing nowdays I decided to give it a go on my own.  I wasn't expecting much, but figured the worst I could do was make some unique chicken food.

Ever since I saw one, I've been wanting a fermenting crock, so Sister got me one as a present.  This particular one is Polish and I have to admit it looks a lot nicer than the German ones.  The German ones are very utilitarian (imagine that, Germans-functional!) but not as artistically done as the Polish ones.

 



So I got myself a head of cabbage, and then decided, Why stop there?  I added sweet and hot peppers, garlic, onions and carrots.  I figure if I'm going to ferment, I should ferment in a big way.

 



 So I chopped it all up, mixed it with the required amount of salt, packed it into the crock, sealed the whole mess up and waited.

 

 



One thing I love about this crock is that it has a water seal lid.  Once you put the lid in place, you pour water in the small lip around the crock opening and it seals the lid on.  No air can get in to cause bacteria growth and it cuts down on the spoilage enormously.  (as long, of course, as you keep an eye on the lid and don't let it go dry)  The lid will occasionally burb however as the cabbage begins to ferment and outgasses.  That little bubble popping through the water tells you that everything is working as it should and all is right with the world.

So after the crock is packed, it's a waiting game.  The recommendation is two weeks minimum, but you can let it wait much, much longer if you've got the patience (I don't).  Longer waiting simply gives the kraut a tangyier bite, but won't hurt or ruin it at all.

So I waited, and waited, and waited.  Finally the two weeks arrived and the lid came off.  Oh my!  Was this stuff ever good!  The cabbage part was so much of my childhood coming back to me, and the other veggies were just a wonderful add on.  I'm especially fond of the carrots.  They are still crunchy and have a salty, sweet, soury kind of flavor.  I have to admit to not being overly impressed with the peppers and think I will leave them out in the future.  And since it is fermented food, it has tons of good probiotics in it which make you feel all good inside.

So now the pot is going non-stop and we'll be having kraut for forever.  It's super simple to make and just about any vegetable will ferment in there.  The problem is making the last batch last long enough to get the new batch through the initial fermentation.  I see more crocks in my future.

Mistake? I Think Not!

I made a mistake today.  A serious error in judgement.  Or so my mother tells me.  Actually, I think I had the best luck in the world.

I had spent the entire day trying to go through boxes of paperwork that had piled up during the various moves I've made over the years.  I have the mortifying feeling that some of this paperwork hasn't seen the light of day in over a decade.  Be that as it may, I decided to do something about it today and was making great headway until about two o'clock this afternoon when I reached the point where I just could not tackle another pile of murdered trees without going stark raving mad.  So to clear my brain I decided to get in the truck and just tool around a bit to blow out the cobwebs.

So I loaded up the dog and off we went, headed south.  I intended to go to the community about two miles south of me and stroll through Dollar General for a few minutes before going home.  Instead I kept traveling and ended up in the town about 10 miles south instead.  I figured since I was there I would go to one of my favorite stores just to see what was happening, the feed and seed store.  That was probably my first mistake to Mom's way of thinking.

Got in the store and wandered around a bit and as usual drifted back to the chicken section to watch the new baby chicks for sale there (mistake #2).  While I was standing there, the store manager (a very nice man who I'm on a first name basis with mainly because I spend a good portion of my income in his store), came by and struck up a conversation.  He was talking about the new shipments they had just gotten in today when a small chicken fluttered out of its bin and perched on the rim.  Manager shook his head as he reached over and placed the chick back in its bin.   "These chicks in this bin have been here a week and they are getting big," he said.  "They're feathering out and nobody wants them after they're not cute little balls of fluff anymore.  They're starting to fly and cause problems.  They're getting in the other bins and I caught one running through the store the other day."

We looked at each other and inspiration struck us both at the same time.  "How much?" I asked(mistake #3) at the same moment that he said, "50 cents apiece."  Now a 75 percent markdown is just too good to pass up, so all I could reply was, "Done!"

So home I went with 22 chickies in tow (and one very anxious dog).  Luckily we had just put this year's first crop of babies out in the brooder house last week, so we had empty tubs.  As soon as I got home, I made sure they were clean, put them on their stands and made them ready.

 

 



The bricks are to set the waterers on.  If they are just on the bottom of the tub, it really becomes a mess.  So after this I added chips, waterers, feeders, chicks, tops and heat lamps.  Another batch, ready to go.  Actually, three as I split the 22 chicks into three tubs.

 

 

 

By the time I got all that done, it was time to go do the outside chickens chores.  The feeder was getting low so I loaded up a five gallon bucket with three-way scratch and off I went to the hen house.

 

 

 

 

After the number of chickens I had went over a dozen it was obvious that the little feeders from the feed store weren't going to be able to handle that many birds, so I went to the poultry supply store and invested in a commercial feeder that will hold a 50 pound bag of feed at one time.  It comes with a hood that covers the feeder so that you can set it out in the yard and rain won't get in it, but since it's in the hen house, I found it's easier to work it with the hood off.

 

 

 

 



When I start pouring scratch in the feeder there is a flurry of excitement from the entire crew and everybody runs to grab a bite.  Some just can't wait and will peck at the feed as it pours into the feeder.

 

 

 

 



After the feeder is filled and everybody is munching away, it's time to gather the day's eggs.  Some of the hens will go broody and stay on the nest continuously, even when I take the eggs out from under them.  I guess they think they can hatch thin air.  Others simply lay their egg and leave.

 

 

 

 



After the eggs are collected and everybody is in the hen house and roosted up for the night, it's time to close the hatch, shut the door and turn the patrol dog loose for another day.  With everything locked up for the night, then the farmer can go relax and count the loot.  29 eggs!  A good day's work.

 

 



Success So Far

Today was Big Bee Day at the Farmette.  It was the day to check and see if the queens had escaped from their cages and were making a home in the hive.

This all started in January when I started taking beekeeping classes from the Madison County Beekeepers Association in Huntsville.  www.alabees.com   I've always thought beekeeping would be an interesting hobby, and I'd been attempting to get started in it ever since I moved back into the area.  Due to various circumstances beyond my control, it just hadn't become a reality.  This year the stars all lined up and I began the process of getting bees on the farm.

I took the classes and ordered two hives from Rossman Apiaries in Moultrie, GA. www.GAbees.com  I picked the hives up at a bee conference in Auburn on Feb. 2.  The hives came in parts, so I improved my nailing skills by putting them together.

 

 

 

 



 

Then after all that nailing and gluing, I had to put everything in place.

First the platform

 

 



Then the stand

 

 



Bottom board

 

 



Empty super

 

 



Add the frames

 

 



Inner cover

Top cover.  Done.  Who would have thought there were so many parts to a beehive.

 

 



So Monday was the big day.  The bees were arriving.  Sister and I traveled to Lookout Mountain Honeybees in Gadsden to pick up two packages of bees.

 

 



I thought the farmette was in a rural area.  I've got nothing on these guys.  They are truely out in the middle of nowhere.  It was in the mountains though and very beautiful.  We wandered our way home on back roads through Collinsville and Albertville and by the lake in Guntersville.  A beautiful drive that would have been restful if I hadn't had about 40,000 bees right behind the back of my head.  Just as we got home, the heavens opened and one of the worst storms I've seen this year barreled through with buckets of rain, hail and some hefty winds.  We later learned that an F2 tornado touched down and traveled the road we had been on about 30 minutes earlier.  Several businesses were destroyed and many people lost their homes.  Luckily no one was killed.  I haven't heard how the beekeepers came out.

After the storm passed and it cleared up, it was time to install the bees.  Bees are tough.  You just turn their cage upside down and dump them in the hive.  Prior to that I had placed the queen in her cage in the hive.  She comes in a small wire and wooden cage with two corked ends.  You take out the cork on the side that has a candy plug behind it and then the bees eat through the plug to release her.  I attached the cage to a frame with a tack through the tab that comes on the cage.  Sorry I forgot to take pictures.

After the bees were in the hive we strapped the tops down so the wind wouldn't blow it off and added a feeder full of sugar water and then left them to settle in.

So I impatiently waited two days and today I got to open the hives and see how things were going.  The sugar water was going down in volumn and bees were all over the frames.

 



If you look closely at the above picture, on the bottom frame you can see the white tab from the queen cage that is attached to the frame.  So then I carefully pulled out the queen cage and found.......

Nothing!  She was gone, out of her cage and crawling amongst the hoards of workers busily preparing a home for her and the future generations she would breed. 

I carefully put the hive back together and went to the second hive to find the same scenario taking place.  I am left with humming hives and two empty queen cages.  This is a good thing.

So in spite of my ineptitude, the bees are taking care of themselves and they seem to be settling down and making their home here at the farmette.  Life is good.