Thoughts of Spring

After a hesitant start, the winter seems to have got into its stride now. The barnyard is a mass of ice and is becoming challenging to navigate.

I've enjoyed the sunshine we've had this week but am looking forward to some warmer weather so that I don't have to keep carrying jugs of hot water out to the chickens to defrost their water supply.

Inside, my onions and leeks are emerging well. I'm never going to get tired of seeing those first few green signs of the growing season to come.

I've just finished reading Folks, This Ain't Normal by Joel Salatin. It's an interesting read for sustainability nerds like me, although I can't say that I agree with everything he has to say (and I did feel as though I was being shouted at quite often). On Wednesday lunchtime I read the chapter on Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (which was quite enough to ruin my appetite). On my way home I passed these cattle and I had to stop and take a photograph. After reading about conditions in the feedlots, it was so good to see these animals enjoying their hay.

 

Flat as a...tortilla

I do try to resist getting new kitchen gadgets, but we eat a lot of shop-bought tortilla wraps and I thought it might be better to make them myself. Not least because the ones from the stores contain a long list of 14 ingredients, including carrageenan which is under suspicion of being a carcinogen (although the name suggests to me that it is in fact a species of leprechaun (which I also would be reluctant to eat)).

Therefore my birthday request this year was for a tortilla press, because, enthusiastic though I am, I can't face the effort of rolling tortillas out by hand. As today is pancake day, it seemed like a good opportunity to try it out.

It is a very simple low-tech device, made of extremely heavy cast iron. You make the dough (2 cups of flour (half wholewheat, half white), ¼ cup vegetable oil, pinch of salt (I forgot to add that, actually) and enough warm water to bind everything together - I did all this in the food processor as though I were making pastry), let it rest for half an hour, then it's time to play.

You have to encase the dough with plastic to stop it from sticking to the press. I cut a freezer bag open down the two sides and folded it over the lump of dough. Two cups of flour makes about 12 tortillas this size (6 inches in diameter).

Then you shut the top down, press down with the lever, et voilà!

I cooked them in a non-stick frying pan at a fairly high heat for about a minute each side.

I had a couple for lunch as quesadillas, with cheese and slices of pickled pepper inside.

But the true test was in the evening, when I gave the children the same thing for their tea. "You have to make these again!" was Child1's comment, while Child2, who invariably won't eat the cheeseless 'crusts' of quesadillas made with shop-bought tortillas, said "I would eat these without cheese". The dog, who usually gets to gobble down Child2's leftovers, was the only one destined for disappointment.

Not bad for a foodstuff made with three ingredients! I'd love to try making them with proper corn masa harina - but first I'll have to find a supplier...

Digging out

Yesterday was the first snow day that the children have had this winter. It snowed steadily with a strong easterly wind and we were all glad that we didn't have to go anywhere.

This morning is clear and bright, perfect for digging our way out of the house. After a rather self-indulgent day yesterday of comfort food and curling up by the fire with a good book, it was a relief to get outside this morning and do something energetic. I quite enjoyed shovelling the snow from the front steps of the house and from in front of the garage door, the barn door and, finally, the door of the greenhouse.

The solar panels had been caked in snow since last Saturday, as it's been pretty cold this week. Not prairie-cold, but in the minus teens on the centigrade scale, so cold enough!. Yesterday's wind actually helped out with shifting the snow on the panels: there's less on them now than there was before the storm and with any luck today's sunshine (with the promise of some slightly warmer temperatures) will clear them off a bit more.

The weather broadcasters were saying "it's going to be the worst winter storm since February 2008" and I felt quite a seasoned old hand when I recalled that we were here for that storm. The front of the house today looks just like it did back on February 7th, 2008. Well, except that today I cleared all of the steps, not just that rather small passage on the left which was all I'd managed in 2008. I must be getting better at this snow-clearing business!

UPDATE (2pm): As I'd hoped, the temperature has gone up to a balmy -5°C/23°F and with a cloudless sky the snow is beginning to slide off the panels. I love watching that happen. (Yes, I'm very easily entertained.)

It must be Predator Week...

We've seen barred owls a lot this winter: one swooped in front of the car just the other day. I've seen this one near our pond a few times, but the dog usually chases it off before I get a chance to snap a photo. This evening the owl came quite close to the house and I went outside and inched my way towards it, without the dog handicap, taking pictures as I went.

Lovely, isn't it?

Walk on by

Keep going, Mr Fox. Nothing to tempt you here...

Orange, Lemon, Lime and Ginger Marmalade

I haven't seen any Seville oranges yet this year, so 2013's marmalade is a mix of other citrus fruits, with some ginger thrown in for good measure.

Ingredients
5 Navel oranges
2 lemons
5 limes
3 inch section of ginger root, peeled and cut into narrow strips
4 pounds of sugar

I used the boiling-the-fruit-whole method that I first used in 2009 (here's the PDF of the original recipe I followed). I still think it's one of the easier ways of making marmalade, although if you wanted to make it even quicker, you could maybe do the peel-cutting part in a food processor with a slicing attachment.

Thanks to Quinn for her comment about sprouting lentils (she's also blogged about it), I had a go at that this week, to make something green for the chickens to peck at. I hadn't realised that store-bought lentils could be used to make sprouts. I think I'd always assumed that they'd been heat-treated or something to stop them from sprouting. But it works just fine, as Quinn said:

Although it seems that the chickens are quite good at finding new things to eat by themselves. When I went into them yesterday evening to replace their frozen water with a new supply (we've had a very cold week), I found one of the hens happily pecking away at half a dead rat. :-(

How to boil an egg

Well, it's more 'How to peel an egg', to be strictly accurate. I present for your inspection two batches of hard -boiled eggs.

Batch 1:

Batch 2:

Batch 1 was cooked on Sunday, with the intention of making pickled eggs. As you can see, they peeled so badly that they are only fit for egg sandwiches. Batch 2 was cooked today.

The eggs were all the same age: 3 or 4 days old and I cooked them exactly the same way (gentle simmer for 10 minutes then drained and plunged into iced water). The only difference was in the length of time I allowed them to cool. With the first batch, I was distracted by something else and they sat in the bath of iced water for half an hour. During that time the outer layers of the white became firmly glued to the shell and impossible to separate. With the second batch, the eggs went into the iced water and were then peeled almost immediately, as soon as they were cool enough to handle. Maybe this is something that everyone else already knows, but I thought I'd share my discovery here in case it's helpful!

Pickled eggs have established themselves as a firm favourite since I first made them back in 2011. They're very easy to make and the end result is a useful, nutritious component of a packed lunch or a satisfying snack. Here's how I make them.

Recipe for Pickled Eggs

14 hard-boiled eggs
200ml/7 fluid ounces water
200ml/7 fluid ounces white vinegar
1tsp salt
Whole spices to taste, e.g.whole chilli, peppercorns, allspice, cloves, garlic cloves

Bring the vinegar and water to the boil with the salt and spices, then remove from the heat and allow to cool. Pack the eggs into a two-pound jar, pour over the vinegary brine and refrigerate. You can start eating the eggs after two days, but they'll taste better after a week or two. They keep for months in the fridge. Or would do, if they didn't get eaten much more quickly than that (I find I'm making a batch of these once a week!).

Root and branch

I forced myself out of the house this afternoon to take a stroll along the edge of the lake. With the high winds yesterday during a rapid freeze, I knew that the water from the still-unfrozen lake would have made some interesting ice-forms along there. It was still well below freezing today and there was a cold easterly wind, but I persuaded myself that it would be worth it. And it was.

In places, trees and branches were welded to the surface of the lake with long columns of ice:

Elsewhere, the ice had formed into delicate combs

The lake is decidedly frozen now, resembling a moonscape or desert with the light dusting of snow which fell today.

In the house, I'm sprouting alfalfa seeds to give myself something that's actively growing to look at, as a relief from all the ice and snow.

Unreliably icy

Yesterday morning the lake had frozen over. But today it has turned mild again.

The stream running down the western side of our property has partially frozen over, making the usual interesting patters in the ice. These bubbles looked vaguely biological: like frog spawn or a diagram of a cell and its organelles.

Up in the woods, the ice was more geographical-looking, with contours forming around the bases of the trees.

There's a dead ash tree in that area which something's been having a good nibble at:

The Weather Network's forecast for next week is for some 'proper' winter weather:

I think we'll be stocking up the house with wood this weekend!

Caribbean concoction

A lot of Canadians escape the cold at this time of year by heading south to Florida, Mexico, Cuba or other West Indies destinations. I can understand the need for a break from cold weather, but these days I'm not even slightly tempted by the idea. I'm quite content to wait for the change of seasons here for my next taste of summer.

Instead, I'll conjure up some Caribbean flavours in the kitchen and warm us up from the inside. Today I made a dish based around black turtle beans, a common ingredient in South and Central American cuisine, and a pork hock which came in our meat CSA order. For heat, I've added smoked paprika and some smoked garlic which I picked up in Sainsbury's when I was in England last week.

Ingredients for Pork Hock and Black Bean stew (serves 6)

180g bacon, sliced into strips

130g onions, sliced

1 tsp smoked paprika

1 tsp smoked garlic

1 pork hock (940g uncooked weight)

2 cups/400g dry black turtle beans (soaked in water overnight)

750ml/1½ pints water
salt & pepper

The pork hock had no skin on it, so I cooked the bacon first in a crockpot to generate some fat. Then I stirred in the sliced onions and cooked them for a few minutes until they were softened. I added the paprika and garlic and then put the pork hock in the pan to brown it. When the hock was browned, I added the beans and the water. Then the pot went into a low oven (275°F/135°C). If you've got a slow cooker, this is a great dish to make in that.

After four hours of cooking the meat was falling off the bones and the water had been transformed into a richly flavoured, thick, dark brown stock. I tasted it (mmmm, delicious) and added a little salt and pepper. This type of dish is usually better when you've let it cool and then reheat it (if you can bear to).

Then it is just a case of cooking some rice to soak up all that lovely stock made by the bones in the hock.

Mild and muddy

On Thursday, when I left to take Mike's mum back to England, the snow had melted enough to tempt the chickens back into the orchard.

Since then, nearly all the snow has gone and everything's wet and mucky.

The only bits of snow left are the remains of the large drifts.

It was colder in England than it was here, which is pretty unusual for January! The lake in front of our house still isn't frozen - much like last year in fact. Usually there are people skating and ice-fishing on it by now.

Snow slip

The temperatures rose a bit yesterday, enough to melt some of the snow. On the roof of the barn the snow gradually slipped forwards as the layer closest to the roof melted. This morning the temperatures are back to 'parky': -12°C or 10°F and the snow slip is frozen in its half-on-half-off state.

The solar panels work more effectively at low temperatures than they do when it's very hot, so at least they're clear of snow now and by the look of the sky it will be a good generating day!

Despite the cold, the chickens ventured out this morning for the first time since Christmas, so it was worth clearing some of the snow from their run on Saturday.

Contrasts

Yesterday's high winds made for an unpleasant day. I ended up in the ditch twice: not in a car, luckily, but rescuing our recycling boxes and their contents from the water at the front of our property where they were blown twice by the wind before the truck arrived to collect them. Later on, I did drive to the library to take some books back and it took three times as long to get there as usual, with drifts blown all over the roads from adjoining fields. Not much fun.

Today's weather is completely different: clear and still. It's pleasant to be out admiring the snow-sculptures made by yesterday's winds along the fence lines:

This one made me think of meringue when it has reached the 'stiff peak' stage:

The poor chickens haven't been out since Christmas with the snow that we've had. This morning, as it was a little milder and much more still than it has been, I've cleared some of the snow from their run so that they can go out if they want to. They don't mind a little bit of snow, but they do object to going out in it if there's more than an inch of depth. The cat is the same, come to think of it.

The dog, however, is quite happy to go out whatever the weather.

Custard and crinolines

It's been fairly snowy and cold since Christmas. Quite useful when you need to cool a custard down quickly to make ice cream:

It might have cooled faster without the lid, but certain other members of the family were also outside this morning...

The snow had drifted up in interesting shapes on rooftops, which have since been further sculpted by the wind. The snow on top of the grain silo this afternoon made me think of a ruffled Victorian petticoat.

Last-minute white Christmas

It wasn't snowy when we went to bed last night, but we woke to a light blanket of snow this morning. Talk about cutting it fine. Happy Christmas!

Yule harvest

As forecast, the weather has turned wintry today, with heavy overnight rain turning into snow this morning. I decided I'd better harvest my last remaining outdoor lettuces, parsnips and some of the spinach. It made a good haul, with nearly a pound of lettuce in all:

We'll still be getting carrots, parsley, sage, spinach and kale from the greenhouse during the rest of the winter, but I expect this will be the last harvest from the vegetable garden. Not that I can complain about picking lettuces on the shortest day of the year!

Solstice surprises

After a week away from home I was pleased to discover that the young lettuce plants in the greenhouse were still going strong.

I think these must have sown themselves earlier in the year. I'm hoping that I'll be able to use them as a welcome bit of green in a Christmas salad, or perhaps just as a garnish. I covered them up with a spare bit of polythene yesterday to improve their chances of survival as the temperature finally looks likely to drop to more normal December levels after a fairly mild beginning to the month (and with no snow to speak of, so far).

In the barnyard, we've got some even more surprising survivals. There's still some lettuce bravely growing.

And the spinach is still hanging on outside, too.

These probably won't last a lot longer, but it's pleasant to still see some green outside when by now the world is usually a bit whiter than this!

December pickings

After two days which felt like winter, today we're back in November, as far as the weather is concerned: it's mild, windy and very wet. Although this November wasn't at all like that, I will admit. Looking at the report from our nearest official weather station, they've recorded 16mm of rain/snow in November, compared to an average of over 80! Temperatures, on the other hand, have been close to the long-term average.

As it was so mild today, I went out into the garden to restock my supply of vegetables. I collected beets, parsley, broccoli, and carrots from the greenhouse and a Savoy cabbage, some sunchokes and Brussels tops from the barnyard.

This week we also 'harvested' the male chickens we reared this year: this was our first foray into deliberate meat production after having to get to grips with the process of butchering the chickens which had been killed by a weasel last winter (and once you've tasted slow-reared free-range heritage chicken, you realise what you've been missing out on all your life!). We killed ten of the eleven new roosters (keeping the remaining one as an heir to our other rooster).

Heritage breeds like our Buff Orpingtons take a long time to grow, compared to the Cornish Cross chickens which is what you always buy at the supermarket. So where the Cornish X is a non-stop eating machine which is ready to be processed at six or seven weeks (any longer and its legs can't bear the weight of its ballooning breast), the Orpingtons are not fully grown until they are about 20 weeks old. There's a telling photograph on this blog showing the comparative size of the two breeds at five weeks. 'Chickenzilla' is the word that sprang into my mind at the sight of the Cornish X.

The meat is completely different, too. I found an interesting article [PDF] by Gina Bisco yesterday on the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy site about the need for cooking chicken differently when you're using meat from a heritage bird: because they spend longer running around, the leg meat needs longer cooking than the breast and has more texture to it than the meat from a Cornish X (there's also more of it). The leg meat is noticeably darker than the breast meat and responds well to long, slow, relatively low-temperature cooking.

I used two legs and a good selection of garden vegetables to make this chicken noodle and dumpling stew for lunch today. The broth made by the meat and bones of these more mature birds has to be tasted to be believed.