Yarn Along -24 August 2011

Wow, there are so many links over at Ginny's Yarn Along this week and it's only 11 am!  It's so much fun to see what the other knitters are working on.  Here's my contribution:

We've had some lovely cool weather for a few days.  I've picked up Grandma's blanket again.  It's only supposed to be a lap blanket, but I'm not sure how big to make it.  Any suggestions?  I really like the Bernat Mosaic.  I may have to get some more and try a Baby Surprise Jacket  I bet it would be beautiful.

I'm reading Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff.  I got it from the library for our holiday but didn't get around to reading it.  It's off to a slow start and needs to pick up soon.  I don't have time for reading books I don't enjoy.

Here's an easy meal to toss in the oven so you can have more knitting/reading time.  It uses a butterflied chicken, our grocery store has been carrying them lately at the same price as a whole chicken.

This chicken comes already seasoned.  They call it wild garlic and herb.  Cut up some root vegetables, I used potatoes, onions and carrots.  Cut them into largish pieces.  I left the carrots whole, just cut in the middle.  I love carrots fresh from the garden.  Sprinkle the vegetables with some oil and toss to coat.  Pile the veggies in the middle of the roasting pan and top with the chicken.  Now you have  a choice here.  You can roast the chicken at 450F for 30-40 minutes or 350 for 45 minutes.  I like the lower temperature because it makes less mess of my oven and less chance to burn the vegetables.

Ella loves dressing, so I made my usual recipe and cooked it in a foil baggie.  To make the baggie, cut off a piece of tin foil twice the size you think you need.  Fold in half lengthwise.  Then fold in half again.  Fold over the sides 2-3 times to make an envelope-type shape.  Spray with a bit of oil and fill carefully.  Fold the top closed and bake with roast for about 30 minutes.





For minimal prep time and just 45 minutes unattended in the oven, you end up with a yummy roast chicken supper.  By the way, the carrots were delicious this way.  They had an almost sweet taste to to them.  Will definitely be doing this again.

Thursday

Bit of a busy day today.  Ella and I went skating this morning.  She is doing so much better now that she uses both feet.  Then we headed to Pembroke to go to the Bulk Barn and a few other things.

Colin and Dad are busy combining some more corn.  The meltdown last week cleared enough snow from the field for the combine.  It's really dry now.  Boy, it sure was throwing heat in the corn stove last night.  Colin should save this corn for when we get cold again in March.

  I've been busy washing eggs and dishes.  The chickens seem to be picking up production and the new chickens seem to be laying well.  Their eggs are getting much bigger.  Even the new banty eggs are getting up to 'regular' size.  This is from two days.

I was just thinking I hadn't shown you what the new chickens look like now that they aren't balls of fluff.  This is our rooster.

Yes, I know he looks like a Barred Rock but he isn't, this what the Harco Black S-x Link rooster is supposed to look like.  He has a much nicer personality than the Chantecler roosters.

And here is one of the ladies.  Some of them are much blacker, but it's even harder taking pictures of chicken than of children  :)  As it was I had to take 5 pictures of this one to get one fairly clear picture.

I am seriously considering getting some meat birds this year.  There would certainly be no question about selling the birds, we are always being asked if we have chicken.  What I need to find is the easiest way to raise them.  Colin doesn't have any more time, so I need to find a method that Ella and I can handle -keeping in mind I'm a city girl and Ella's 5  :)  I'm not worried about 'finishing' the birds as we have a guy that goes from farm to farm taking care of that end of the process.
Ella's mountain took a real hit in the mild weather and now it's too soft to play on, that and she'd be landing in the muddy yard.  But I think we are supposed to be getting more snow in the next few days.  I'm sure she'll be out climbing mountains in no time.  Hopefully the new snow will be a little wetter and Ella will be able to make a snowman this year.

Our New Chickens

Ella and I headed into Renfrew yesterday to pick up our new little chicks.  The local feed mill, M&R Feeds, gets chicks shipped in from Frey's Hatchery.  We have basically given up on the Chantecler chickens.  If they can't brood and hatch their own eggs, then they aren't of any use on our farm.  These new chickens are Harco Black S-x-Link . A rather questionable name, but they sound like just the chickens for us.  They are supposed to be good layers and brooders and good eating in the end.

They are a little bigger than the Chantecler were when we got them last summer.  These chicks are 2 weeks old.  We got 12 hens and a rooster.  We'll keep them in the summer kitchen for a while and let them get bigger and get over all their travel.
Ella's very excited to have new chickies out there.

Peep Update

Check it out, Peep has friends!!!

The Great Egg Experiment

In case anyone is interested.  Colin has built us a home-made egg incubator and we are trying to hatch out some chicks.  Head over to our farm blog and follow along.  Should be interesting.

New Chickens!!

Colin was out in the barn this morning, walking by the chicken pen.  He stopped because he heard a ‘funny’ sound.  Upon investigating this is what he found:
This is one of the ladies in the maternity ward.  We think the chick is a Chantecler.  It’s hard to say for sure since the Chantecler and the Banty Hens seem to be sitting on whatever eggs they feel like.  Now that the chickens are sitting we can go back to collecting the extra eggs.  Colin hasn’t been going into the coop for a while so he wouldn’t disturb the broody hens.   This hen is one of the Bantys.  We have 3-4 hens sitting on eggs.

This is Ralph.  He’s our Banty rooster.  We’ve had him for a couple years.  We used to let him run loose in the yard.  But when the first winter came, Colin couldn’t catch him and his mate Henrietta.  They were out in the cold for too long, Henrietta froze her feet and died.  We also found out that Bantys let go of their tails when in ‘danger’.  The first time Colin tried to catch them he came in the house with two beautiful tails.  Ralph sure looked funny with no tail.  We also discovered just how well Bantys can fly, they ended up in the top of the 10 ft cedars outside of the barn.

One of these days, I’m hoping Colin will have time to make an outside run for the chickens.  Their coop is along an outside wall, so it wouldn’t be too hard.

More on Chickens

Ok, I thought I had covered everything, but my friend Kimberly has asked a bunch more questions that I'm sure others are asking too.

Do I wash the eggs? Yes.  I know some people feel you should leave the 'bloom' on the eggs and have all sorts of claims as to why this is a good idea.  But our chickens lay their eggs where ever they like and the eggs come from the barn with all sorts of 'stuff' on them.  I give them a quick wash under running water in order to cut down the chances of spreading e.coli. around.  That and I think it's disgusting to crack an egg into a recipe that's covered in poop.

How long to keep fresh eggs?   Are you ready for this -an unbelievably long time, so long that we've never had a bad egg.  You may not believe this, but store bought eggs can be about a year old!!  Yep, you read that right, a year.   I forget which show I saw that on, but it was one of those 'investigative news-type' shows that you can trust.  My MIL stores her eggs in the basement (when she gets backed up), it's cool and they keep for months (if needed).  Remember, in Europe people don't even refrigerate their eggs, fresh eggs are kept on the counter.  Fresh eggs are in such demand that MIL's eggs are usually never more than a week old, sales slow a little during the bad weather months.

How soon do they need to be collected?  It depends on the time of year and if you have roosters.  During the winter or without roosters you can actually collect eggs every couple days.  Colin usually goes every day but there have been times he's forgot.  The chickens aren't broody during the winter and so the eggs usually aren't fertilized (not an issue if no rooster) and they just lay around the coop (i.e. not kept warm).  These days when the hens are getting broody and the roosters are doing their 'duty' Colin collects every day.  Soon he will let them set on a few eggs (the Chanteclers, likely not the Bantys).  While the weather stays cool, I wash the eggs every couple days and then refrigerate.  Once it gets much warmer, I'll wash them as soon as they come in.  Here's a picture of one of our Banty eggs.  See how far the yolk stands up in the white, that's one way to tell a fresh egg.

Blood spot in 'organic' store eggs?  I'm not sure whether you can salvage those.  You still don't know how old the eggs are or whether there was a rooster involved.  If the eggs aren't yours (or a friends) I would be tempted to toss the blood spots.  I'm much more cavalier with egg safety (eg., eating dough, meringue) but that's because I know how old the eggs are and the conditions they were harvested under.  I'd be more wary with store bought.

How to Raise Chickens

I asked Colin to give me brief instructions on how to raise chickens.  Well, lets just say they were a little too brief.  I'll try to give some more information here, trying to cover questions that I had before.

First of all, of course is to decide on what breed you want.  Whether you want regular 'run of the mill' layers that are available every spring from your local feed mill.  Or do you want fancy, heirloom, rare chickens.  Or chickens some where in between.

We did a bit of research and after losing our Banty hen to the cold last winter, we decided to go with Chantecler chickens.  I was very interested to get an actual Canadian chicken, especially since they have very small wattles and combs and are quite tolerant of the cold.  We weren't planning on keeping the chickens outside all the time, but I wanted to them to be fairly worry free.  It was hard finding a breeder, especially since last year seemed to be a very bad breeding year - Colin said it was because it was so cold and dim, nothing wanted to grow not even baby chicks.  We finally found some just outside of Fergus so we girls headed off on a road-trip. 

Our little chickies were only a day old and so adorable.  They went peep peep peep the whole way home.  We kept the chicks in a large Rubbermaid storage box (about the size of a horse trough).  Wood shavings in the bottom with a large shallow bowl of water and a dish for feed.  You can see the why mesh on top, you would be surprised how far these little guys can jump and flutter.  I know there are a lot of recipes out there for homemade chick feed, but we buy ours at the local feed mill.  I would think the TSC stores would carry it too.  Colin says it's better just to buy the starter feed instead of dealing with chick death.  The price we paid for these chicks I wasn't going to risk them unnecessarily.   We buy unmedicated feed because it's not necessary to medicate healthy chicks.  Colin only fed one bag then switched to corn.  Being still rather cool, we also had a heat lamp hanging over the box, but not too close.


A few weeks later they got moved out to the barn.  Colin had to put up some smaller fencing in the old chicken coop or they would have escaped.  They were very happy to get to the bigger coop, they are growing very quickly.  Although the pigs give off quite a bit of heat, we still had a heat-lamp in the coop for the little ones.

This is our 'little chickes' now.  They are so big and sturdy looking.  I love the brown ones.  The hens are all quite shy.  We have 3 roosters, they are not shy!  We can hear the crowing across the yard.  The one rooster is really trying to get himself into hot water -literally!  The one rooster is very aggressive.  So much so, that I can't gather eggs any more.  Only Colin goes in.  Now that the chickens are bigger we don't buy feed.  Colin feeds them our corn, usually he grinds it a bit so they can eat it easier.  He says cracked corn can be purchased from your local feed mill, if you don't grow your own.  He also feeds the chickens oyster shells.  This keeps them from breaking eggs and keeps the egg shells nice and sturdy so I don't break them. 

The barn has lights, and we leave a light on for the chickens so we have eggs all year round -don't want to buy year old stuff from the store.  This summer (after cropping) I hope to get Colin to build a door in the wall and an outdoor run for the chickens.  I'm not turning them loose because I don't want to feed the raccoons, coyotes, skunks, and all the other predators!

Oh yeah, just in case you don't know: you don't have to have roosters in order to have eggs.  If you don't have a rooster you really don't have to be concerned with little blood spots, I just scoop that spot out and use the egg.  But, if you have roosters and it's getting towards spring and the hens are going broody, you must must must be sure to gather the eggs every day (not a worry in winter).  Colin was busy for a couple days and I got a rather unpleasant surprise when I went to use those eggs.  I threw out nearly a dozen!  Now I candle the eggs before using.  But that is just a spring time problem.

Hope this answers any questions you might have.  If I left anything out, just ask and I'll find the answers.

Eggs!!

Colin came in with a surprise from the barn. Our first Chantecler egg!! The chickens weren't supposed to start laying until January -not that I'm complaining :) I can't get over the size of the egg. Most chickens lay very small first eggs, I know my MIL's layers take a while to get up to full size egg production. I would say this egg is 'extra large' size.

Looks like it's breakfast for supper tonight :)

no title

This recipe comes from my Great-Grandma's cookbook -Kate Aitken's Canadian Cook Book It's one of those books I like to sit and read even when I'm not looking for a recipe. It's not very "chatty" but I find Kate's "Note to Brides" interesting and a window into a world gone by.

Chicken a la King

3-4 lb chicken, or 3 cups leftover chopped chicken (bite size)

if using raw chicken, simmer in water with a chopped onion and a couple whole cloves until cooked. Cool chicken (saving broth) and remove from bones and chop.

In a largish saucepan (I use my non-stick) melt 3T butter and 2 T green relish, cook till tender. Add 5 T flour or cornstarch and cook 1 minute. Add 1 1/2 cups broth (or gravy) and cook over medium heat until thick and smooth -stirring constantly. Add 3/4 cup cream (milk will work), 1 eggs and the chopped chicken. Heat to boiling, but don't boil.

Serve over toast cups or patty shells.


This week's beef roast is too big for the crock pot, so I'll do it in the oven. Nothing fancy.

7lb beef roast
sprinkle with salt, pepper and garlic powder
a little water in the bottom of the pan to prevent smoking

Roast 350F for approximately 20min a pound, until it reaches 160F for medium. I always use my digital meat thermometer with an alarm -no more overcooked meat.

Recipes -June 22

Sticky Chicken

Combine:

4 tsp salt
1 tsp garlic powder
2 tsp paprika
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp thyme
1 1/2 tsp pepper

Rinse and dry chicken. Rub inside and out with spice rub. Refrigerate overnight.

Roast 250F for 5 hours or 350F for 30/lb if you are in a hurry.


Cowboy Casserole

1 lb hamburger
1 cup cheese, Colby, cheddar, etc
1 can tomato soup
16 oz can corn
16 oz can kidney beans
1 tsp onion flakes
1/2 tsp chili powder

Brown beef, drain. Put everything into crockpot, stir to mix. Cover and cook on low 4 hours.


Barbecued Short Ribs

4 lbs beef short ribs
1 1/2 cups water
1 T vinegar
1/2 c ketchup
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 t salt & dash of pepper

Cut ribs into serving size pieces. Mix everything else together then pour over ribs in large crockpot. Cook on low for 8 hours. Could be done in the oven too, but it was delicious in the cp so why heat up the kitchen :)

This is supposed to serve 4-6, but it was barely enough for 4 (including a picky 3 year old). Next time I will definitely use closer to 6 lbs ribs and likely more sauce. I like to have leftovers.

Menu Plan Mondays -22 June 09

I thought I was busy last week!! I've got to sew a winter coat and bonnet before Thursday and get all our laundry washed and sorted. I desperately need to get out the summer clothes.

Monday:
OVFC Board meeting at noon -potluck, I'm bringing a marinated pork roast and garlic bubble bread.

Crock pot beef short ribs -new recipe, sounds good <-- to quote Ella, they were "deee-licious"

Tuesday:
Hot dogs and chips

Leftover tenderloin from Sunday

Wednesday:
Cowboy casserole

Sticky chicken and roast potatoes

Thursday: Ella, Grandma and I are off to southern Ontario for a road trip, ending with a surprise. I'll talk more when we get back. This is the menu for the rest of the week, I'm not responsible for whether Colin eats it or not -ha ha

Ham sandwich and chips

Leftover sticky chicken

Friday:
Tenderloin or chicken sandwich

Leftover ribs

Saturday:
Peanut butter and honey sandwich (likely what he'll eat the whole time we're away)

Leftover chicken -we should be home sometime Saturday, but will likely grab something to eat along the way

Sunday:
Waffles

Roast beef -done in the crockpot if it's as hot as they say it will be. Why heat the oven?

Some Recipes

Garlic Bubble Bread

**do NOT try this with real garlic, it will burn and look terrible.

Melt 1/4 cup butter and add 1tsp of garlic powder. Take a loaf size chunk of proofed bread dough (one rise) and cut into inch size pieces. Dip balls and pile up in greased loaf pan. Top with any leftover butter. Let rise an hour. Bake 350F for 30 min. For best taste use real butter.


Chicken Casserole

This is a good recipe for leftovers:

2 cups leftover gravy or thickened chicken stock
1 cup milk
2 1/2 cups bite sized cooked chicken
8 oz cooked noodles (homemade or not)
1/3 cup Parmesan cheese
sprinkle of breadcrumbs

Mix gravy/chicken stock and milk over medium heat and stir till thickened. Add meat, noodles and cheese; remove from heat. Pour into a greased 8 cup casserole dish. Top with breadcrumbs and bake 350F for 45min.


Meat Pie

Another good leftover recipe:

pie pastry for a two crust pie (your choice of size)
1-1 1/2 cups cooked beef, I shred in food processor
1 1/2 -2 cups cooked vegetables, whatever is leftover or can use frozen vegetables. I usually have to make a few more mashed potatoes
1-1 1/2 cups gravy

I mix all the filling in a bowl first, but that's the way my family likes it. Feel free to put filling in pastry lined pie plates in layers. Gravy can be poured over top, but I also mix this with the filling. You want the filling fairly moist. Top pie with other piece of pastry. Cut slits for steam to escape.

Bake 425F for 35 minutes, let sit for a few minutes before serving.


Stuffed Baked Potatoes
I do these the easy way:

Scrub as many potatoes as necessary. Cook in microwave until done. If you want to use the oven, toss clean potatoes in a 350F oven for an hour or hour and a half until soft. Carefully slice top off potatoes and scoop insides into a bowl. Save the skins. Mash or rice the potatoes. Add in enough butter, sour cream, minced onions, and cheese to make the potatoes yummy. Refill potato skins. 10 minutes or so before supper, put potatoes into a 350F oven and reheat to melt cheese -these also reheat nicely in my toaster oven.


Pizza Dough
I've tried a number of recipes over the last 6 years. This is Colin's favourite:

1 cup warm water
1 tsp salt
2 tsp oil
1 Tbsp sugar
2 3/4cup flour
1 Tbsp yeast

Put in bread maker in order given, set for dough cycle. This can also be made by hand the usual way for yeast dough. Let rise and roll out to fit pan. This fits a large-ish cookie sheet.

Romantic Valentine's Day -Not!

I had a nice quiet Valentine's Day planned for my Sweetie and me. Grandma had Miss Muffet sleeping over until Sunday. The only thing we had to do was go to a potluck/annual general meeting for the Ottawa Valley Food Co-op. It's an online group of Ottawa Valley farmers/producers. It's amazing the variety of things you can order. Order week is the second week of the month. Then on the third Saturday of the month, we producers take the orders to Pembroke where they are sorted and delivered to a variety of central locations for customer pick-up. It's surprising how far our products go, there is such a demand for local stuff. We've belonged for nearly a year, check us out here, it's a good overview of our farm too. I need to get a new picture, that one is nearly 2 years old, but Ella looks so cute. Maybe when it warms up some we'll try for a new Ella/piggie picture.

Back to my Valentine's day. We had fun at the potluck, it's good to talk with the other OVF people, we really don't know them. Most of the food was good. I made a marinated shoulder roast. Then the meeting started. It went on and on and on! It was 6 before we got home, Colin still had to chore. So much for my romantic supper and dessert I was going to make. We ended up with leftover pork and 5 minute rice when Colin finally got in for supper at 7:30. By then we were tired and I had a headache, so we just watched a dvd (Grapes of Wrath) and went to bed early. Not exactly what I had planned.

We've both been made board members for the OVF. They have a regular meeting/potluck coming up in March (if they can ever agree on a date) I sure hope it's shorter than the AGM.

Here's the marinated pork recipe, mix all this in a zipper bag and put in the pork roast the night before for best results. Though it's yummy done this way just before cooking too.

6 cloves garlic, minced 2 Tbsp oil
1 tsp ground pepper 2 tsp salt
1 tsp paprika 1 tsp dried parsley
1/2 tsp thyme 3lb pork shoulder roast

Take from bag and put in roasting pan, do not cover. Roast 350F for 30 minutes a pound, or until meat thermometer reads 165F.

Had I been home in time, I would have made my Grandma's chicken cacciatore for supper. It's the first meal I made for Colin when we were dating. It needs to simmer most of the afternoon.

Chicken Cacciatore
3lb chicken pieces, we use thighs 1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced salt & pepper, to taste
28oz stewed tomatoes 28 oz tomato sauce
1/4 cup red wine 1/4 tsp thyme
1 bay leaf

Brown the chicken in a little oil. Add everything into a dutch oven. Cover and simmer all afternoon until the house smells wonderful :) Don't use a crock pot, the sauce doesn't reduce and is too runny. If you really want to do this "old school" serve with Italian/French bread, green beans and roast potatoes -yummmmmmm!

Leftovers

Now what to do with all that leftover chicken! First night we just reheat everything so it's like roast chicken but then what? Make this leftover dish.

Grease an 8 inch pyrex baking pan, or the size to suit your family.

In a bowl cut up chicken into bite sized pieces, you'll need enough to cover the bottom of the pan. Crumble in any dressing if you have it too. Pour in enough gravy to make it rather moist. Pour into prepared pan. Next layer in any leftover vegetables, or frozen. Then remash leftover potatoes with plenty of milk and butter. Spread this over the mixture in the pan.

Bake 350F for about 45 minutes. Add a salad and your done.

It's like shepherd's pie, but only better :)

Roast Garlic Chicken

Thought I'd share the delicious supper I made Sunday. It's Garlic Roast Chicken and is sooo yummy -if I do say so myself :)

Garlic Roast Chicken

Cut the top bit off a whole head of garlic and wrap in tin foil (drizzle a little oil). Bake at 425F for about an hour. I use my toaster oven so I don't have to use the big one. When done, squeeze out garlic cloves and mash into 1 cup butter or margarine. I sometimes double this recipe depending on the size of the chicken.

Wash and dry the chicken, taking out giblets if inside. Stuff bird with dressing if you want. Slather bird with garlic butter. Gently slide hand between skin and meat and put lots of butter in there. Tie up legs. Place breast side up on rack in roasting pan and put into a 325F oven. After about 20 minutes put enough water in to cover the bottom of the pan. This will help keep the drippings from burning. Baste the chicken every 30 minutes, if you have time.

A stuffed bird will take about 30 minutes per pound. An unstuffed bird is closer to 20 minutes per pound. One of the best investments you can make is to buy a meat thermometer. I have the digital kind; I stick the probe into the thigh or breast, put the bird in the oven, then sit back and wait for the beep. No need to try and guess if it's done.

Dressing

1/4 cup butter 3 tbsp parsley1/2 tsp dried sage 2 eggs, lightly beaten1/2 cup milk 1 onion, chopped fine2 stalks celery, chopped fine (optional)1/2 loaf stale bread, cubed fairly smallsalt and pepper

Saute the onions and celery till soft. Remove from heat. Mix with all other ingredients, except milk and eggs. Then add milk and eggs to make a fairly moist dressing. May be cooked with bird or separately in a casserole.

After you get the chicken into the oven, put the following into a non-stick sauce pan:

any giblets left from the chicken, plus any extra pieces you may have (necks, wing tips, backs, etc). I actually buy these "junk" pieces at the store, the gravy is so good.Add in a coarsely chopped carrot, celery, onion and clove of garlic. Pour in 1/2 cup chicken stock (homemade works best and you'll need 4 cups total) and boil uncovered over medium high heat. You'll have to stir often. Keep stirring until stock is evaporated. Add another 1/2 cup and make sure to scrap up the bits from the bottom of the pan -that's where the flavour is. Do this 2 more times. Pour in remaining stock and simmer, covered, until chicken is done. When ready, stain gravy into another pot; bring to a boil. In a small bowl, dissolve 2 tbsp corn starch with a bit of water. Add to the gravy to thicken.

If you want to make easy chicken stock, just put the gravy leftovers that you just strained into a large crockpot along with all the chicken bits that are left over from carving. Add in enough water to cover and put the crockpot on low and let cook for a few hours. I usually put the stock into baggies, each holding 2 cups. Then I freeze them until needed.

To finish off supper I made some really good rolls. They are called Ranch Buns and are over at Rural Writings. Very easy in the bread machine.

Of course, supper was rounded out with vegetables and chocolate cake for dessert. I'll share that recipe another day.