yesterday, we made homemade pizza. BBQ chicken pizza to be exact. it was delicious. kenny grilled the chicken to perfection with my favorite BBQ sauce (i love making my own sauce, but i love this flavor in the summer months, despite all the prefab ingredients!) and it had just the amount of mozarella and BBQ sauce on the crust.

we enjoyed yesterday's pizza with a local white wine and a bag of potato chips (a compromise between our favorite ways to eat pizza).

let's talk about making our own pizza crust now, shall we? i love sending out requests to you all for your best recipes. (i am holding onto all of your salsa recipes for as soon as our tomatoes and peppers are ripe.) we love to make our own crusts, and kenny's been pretty pleased with the crusts that we've tried so far. but i'm picky. and there's just this little flavor thing in the doughs that we make that doesn't taste right to me. i read this morning that the secret is to use bread flour instead of all purpose flour. i'm trying that next. but i thought i'd send out a request for your favorite homemade pizza crust recipes. i've got all the ingredients for some more pizza (more BBQ chicken and some pepperoni for the less adventurous pizza eaters, namely everyone under 5 in our house).

so, email or leave a comment with your favorite dough recipe as soon as possible. or your computer will blow up.

just kidding.

i've been making chocolate chip cookies forEVER, but have just recently come across the best recipe i've ever used. and yes, it's even better than that tollhouse recipe. i've made it several times in the past few weeks: for friends who just had a baby, for friends who just moved, for my family visiting last week, and now today because it rained and we needed something to shake off the crabby-cranks that rainy days like to bring with them.

so i'm sharing my new favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe ever. the best part about this recipe is that you don't have to remember to set out sticks of butter on the counter to soften a few hours before you start since you use melted butter, not softened butter.


CrispyChewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

this recipe is very easy to double, and i often do. because semi-sweets come in 12 oz bags and who wants to save or waste a half bag of chocolate chips because i don't know about you, but those things do not have a long shelf life once opened in our house. if you know what i mean.

1 stick butter, melted
1 egg
1/2 cup sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. vanilla
1 1/2 cups flour
6 oz. semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 and lightly grease cookie sheet.
Beat melted butter and egg, add sugars and mix well. Stir in vanilla, soda, and salt. Mix with flour and chips.
Place 1" balls of dough at least 2" apart on greased cookies sheets. Bake 10 min (or 14 or 13...depending on the mood of your oven). Cool cookies on cookie sheet before removing them to cooling rack.

this past week has been a bit of a challenge in the eating department. i struggle with getting food (any food!) into their mouths on most days, or getting quality food, even if it's not much of it on others. it's a new challenge every morning. but it's a learning process, and all of our food choices won't change overnight, i'm well-aware of that fact!

some things that we did this past week:

• after my mom read this waldorf eating entry last week, she showed up at the door with bags of veggies and a bottle of Trader Joes Goddess salad dressing, and that has been the boys' snack of choice for the past week: raw carrots, broccoli, and grape tomatoes in the salad dressing.
• i made homemade granola with dried cherries. mmm. but it wasn't my favorite recipe. if you have a favorite recipe for granola, please share. i've yet to be blown away by my homemade granola. and i do like granola! fortunately the boys loved it. and ate it with milk and over yogurt, or by the handful.
• i made millet bars, from the waldorf kindergarten snack book and it was a total flop. i can't even bring myself to eat it, even smothered with honey! blech. i'm "x-ing" that one out in the book.

here's another recipe i can share with you that was a total hit. whenever we are out at a restaurant, the only thing the boys ask to eat is "macaroni and cheese and chicken fingers with dipping sauce." they're palates have yet to move beyond that. but it's quick and easy and fills their bellies. good thing we rarely eat out any more. so, i brought their favorite restaurant food home, and found a great recipe for it that doesn't include frying in oil! the best part is that all our plates were clean - even Adam's (which is rare!)

Seasame Chicken Fingers with Honey Mustard Dipping Sauce
(I served it with sticky rice and steamed endameme)

1/3 cup stone ground mustard
1/3 cup honey
2 T lime juice
1/4 tsp salt
1/8 black pepper
1 lb skinned, boned chicken breast cut into strips
1/2 cup sesame seeds, toasted
1/2 cup breadcrumbs
2 large egg whites, lightly beaten

Preheat oven to 350.
Mix together mustard and honey and set aside.
Season chicken with salt and pepper. Combine sesame seeds and breadcrumbs in a shallow dish. Dip chicken in egg whites, and dredge in sesame seed mixture.
Arrange chicken in a single layer on a baking sheet coated with cooking spray (or lightly coated with veg. oil). Bake 350 for 15 minutes.

*I also added some grated parmesan cheese and garlic powder to the sesame seed/bread crumb mixture.

Kenny: "Make it again!"
Liz: mmmmm.
Rowan: Empty plate with no bribing needed!
Sawyer: "Can I have some more please?"
Adam: He ate everything but the endameme. Because it was green.

...and i don't mean the salad, but i love me a good waldorf salad (even though i take all the walnuts out as i'm not a big fan).

a few months ago, i was reading a blog of a woman who had sent her girls to an in-home daycare/preschool that used the waldorf style of childraising in their daily schedule. if you don't know anything about the steiner waldorf schooling or childraising philosophy, a quick read here will fill you in. i don't subscribe to many of the teachings, but i love the overall, general feel of its earthy and earth-cycle centered approach to living.

while reading this particular blog, i was fascinated at the daily routine she described her preschooler experienced at this daycare: play with wooden toys, a bowl of steaming hot porridge for snack, outside play for 20 minutes each and every day (no matter what the weather), naptime with comfy blankets and pillows (not mats!), wholesome and hearty lunches all handmade by the daycare provider, and a full hand-written report of her child's schedule sent home each day. now that's a busy daycare provider! she had one assistant and a house-full of busy kids. and no television!

i am the first to admit that i've bought and continue to buy packaged, processed snacks to give to my kids throughout the day to keep them from "starving" or to keep the ever-present "i'm hungry!" statement to a minimum. fortunately, all three of the boys love fruit so we get a substantial amount of fruit into them on a daily basis. unfortunately, they also love sugar. white sugar and brown sugar: the two "evils" that actually can do more harm to their growing bodies than good. but i know full-well that a better and richer diet would aid in their hunger and keep them healthier than ever.

so....i'm giving them only nuts and grains for the rest of their lives.

no. i think they'd starve because i know their tastes! so i began my search for "better snacks" although if you google that you'd get nothing. i had no idea when to start because really, it's so much easier to just give them a granola bar than to make them yummy granola. i found this lovely little book:

it came in the mail this week and I already have big plans to incorporate better foods into the boys' daily routines.

this morning I made baked oatmeal with raisins and cinnamon for their mid-morning snack. it was a big hit...with Adam. it was "iffy" with Sawyer (he ate half his serving) and Rowan barely ate two bites. the recipe was from another cookbook. i will have to work up to the sugarless recipes in the waldorf snack book (the recipes are sweetened with honey, molasses and syrup).

i'm glad we're coming up on fresh fruit season. they can eat berries and melons all day long if we let them. we'll be eating a lot more local and fresh foods over the summer and i'd love to keep that up throughout the fall and winter. we'll see how well i keep to the DAILY baking and cooking regimen (i have homemade chicken stock simmering on the stovetop now!), and how well their already spoiled taste buds accept a healthier approach to fueling their (and our!) bodies.

My brother recently posted about the things that are always in his fridge. It wasn't a meme, but i'm going to give it a go as well. And now he can have an opportunity to harp on something that I have in our fridge like I did with his diet coke. :)

So...what is usually always in our fridge/freezer:

4 gallons of milk delivered each week. It's hormone-free, but not organic. It's a price thing.
Mayonnaise. Except we're currently out. But it's Kenny's favorite. For sandwiches and fries.
Yogurt. A lunch-staple for three boys who don't share with their momma.
A big ol' chunk of cheddar cheese. Adam and Sawyer prefer the extra sharp.
Endameme. (freezer) Rowan and Sawyer beg for this. It's such an easy snack, but they love eating it alongside of macaroni and cheese. It's a dinner we have at least once every other week. Usually on nights when a babysitter is coming and Kenny and I are eating out! I'd love to grow it in our garden...it's all over the corn fields here in late summer!
6 empty mason jars, no lids. (freezer) the perfect glass for an icy cold beer or water on those hot days.

so there...nothing earth-shattering. this used to be a question asked in a celebrity interview section of the LIVING section of the weekend paper. and i loved the "fridge-lists" that i felt matched the celebrity's personality. for instance, you'd probably be able to visualize the interviewee when they answered, "perrier, prawns, and pate" or "beer, mustard, and yesterday's primanti's leftovers."

so i'd love it if you, readers, either left me a comment with things always found in your fridge (we can limit it to 3-4 things if you want), or blog about it yourself and let me know that you've blogged it.

I Have to Say... is having a recipe swap today. I've already posted some of our favorite Indian recipes, so this my next favorite main dish. It's something I like to take to potlucks and serve when company comes.

(aromatic) white chili
1 onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 pounds ground turkey
2 (4 oz) cans canned green chile peppers, chopped
1 T. ground cumin
1 T. dried oregano
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
ground cayenne (to taste)
ground white pepper (to taste)
3 (15 oz) cans cannellini beans
3-4 cups chicken broth
2 cups shredded monterey jack cheese

In large pot over medium heat, combine the onion, garlic and ground turkey and saute for 10 minutes, or until turkey is well browned. Add the chile peppers, cumin, oregano, cinnamon, cayenne pepper to taste and white pepper to taste and saute for 5 more minutes.
Add two cans of the beans and the chicken broth to the pot. Take the third can of beans and puree them in a blender or food processor. Add this to the pot along with the cheese. Stir well and simmer for 10 minutes, allowing the cheese to melt.

**Great served over thick egg noodles or with cornbread

And who can resist and easy dessert recipe!?

chocolate no-bakes
4 cups sugar
1 cup milk
1 cup cocoa
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup peanut butter
1 cup butter
6 cups oatmeal

Mix butter, sugar, milk, cocoa, and salt, and bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Boil for 1 minute. Remove from heat and add remaining ingredients. Stir thoroughly and drop by spoonfuls onto waxed paper. Let cool and set up completely.

**this makes a HUGE amount of cookies; you can easily cut the recipe in half.

this image makes me happy:

and serina asked about my cleaning schedule. fortunately for me, this schedule is extremely flexible and it still works when i don't get around to doing ti all, every day. because in reality, every day is full of surprises. like yesterday, i had three loads of laundry planned, but our pipe froze (it did last year in single digit temps, so i should have known!), so the first load resulted in a floor full of water. so here it is...

Liz's Very Flexible Cleaning Schedule

Monday:
Launder sheets from all beds (guest room bed if overnight guests from the weekend)
Launder towels
Reorganize/straighten back porch, office and kitchen

Tuesday:
Launder boys' clothes
Clean upstairs bathroom (tub, floor, toilet, sink)
Reorganize/straighten upstairs

Wednesday:
Launder Liz and Kenny's clothes
Launder kitchen towels
Clean downstairs laundry room/bathroom

Thursday:
Vacuum downstairs
Dust upstairs

Friday:
Vacuum upstairs
Dust downstairs

Saturday:
NOTHING!

Sunday:
NOTHING!

On Sunday evenings, I look at our week and adjust the cleaning schedule as need, around the errands I need to run. For instance, this is how this week looks:

Monday:
Grocery shopping
Launder boys' sheets and guest room sheets (we had an overnight guest this weekend)
Launder all towels
Clean laundry room
(but Monday's schedule changed because of a frozen pipe in the laundry room. It thawed by early-afternoon, so I was only able to do the towels, so we readjust today's schedule to fit into the next few days).

Tuesday:
Launder Liz and Kenny's clothes (and boys' sheets)
Dust downstairs
Vacuum upstairs

Wednesday:
Library day! Return books-on-tape (the boys have been listening to the Frances books - or in their words, "Frahnces" because the narrator is British)
Launder guest room sheets
Dust upstairs
Vacuum downstairs

Thursday:
Catch up on cleaning (if I didn't get to any, this is the day I fill in)
Launder Liz and Kenny's sheets

Friday:
More catch-up!

This morning, I found Adam reorganizing my small pantry for me:

Now all the asian ingredients are in with the baking ingredients. i don't have the heart to re-reorganize. he WILL notice. :)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

april from SALT for the spirit tagged me for a little meme. it was fun to stretch my mind around this one...thanks, april!

Love/ Hate Meme
I love to eat: meat (i'm a true carnivore...see above); death by chocolate (i'm a true addict).
I hate to eat: wet eggs. scramble the heck out of them for me, please!
I love to go: on vacation with my man. and the boys.
I hate to go: shopping between thanksgiving and christmas.
I love it when: all five of us are piled on the bed, reading, watching tv, chatting....
I hate it when: "The Office" is a rerun YET AGAIN.
I love to see: the older boys playing with adam, teaching him their games - they're great little teachers!
I hate to see: the weekly forecast in january and february; a snow storm in late-march;
I love to hear: adam's waking up words: "uh, oh mamamama! uh, oh dadadada!" (that's "hello!" not a true "uh oh!"); owls chatting at night;
I hate to hear: "mommy, i just don't feel so good"

i tag...stephanie for this one! and anyone else who wants to post it in their own blogs. let me know if you post it!

this evening, my mom and i shopped for all the ingredients for our thanksgiving meal (except for the turkey...we pick up the bird tomorrow or wednesday).

earlier in the day, i watched a segment on some news program about how to cut back the calories in your thanksgiving meal...something that i'm not too concerned about with the thanksgiving meal since it's only once a year that we get to eat it.  any way, from this segment i learned that the typical caloric intake in one thanksgiving meal is around 2100 calories. per plate. including dessert. then they gave some pointers on how to cut the calories. for instance:

• eat only white meat. if you insist on eating dark meat, don't eat the skin (i can't stand dark meat)
• give yourself only 1-2 tablespoons of gravy on your potatoes (i normally skip the gravy, but i'm going to try it this year, since it'll be made from a fresh bird)

there were others, but i got distracted and was gloating in my ability to only eat a 1400 calorie thanksgiving-day plate already instead of a 2100 calorie plate.

now, i'm off to make some butter and shortening crusts for the pumpkin and apple pies. and i'll leave you with the simplest recipe ever for something our family calls, "stained glass window cookies" (although it's a candy, and not a cookie!), my brother andrew's favorite (so it's always included in holiday get-togethers). The original recipe calls for sprinkles of coconut on top, but we're not coconut fans.

Stained Glass Window Cookies
1 12 oz. bag semi sweet chocolate chips
1 bag of colored marshmallows
1 stick of butter

Melt butter and chocolate chips together over low heat (or double boiler) until melted and blended. Remove from heat and let stand five minutes. Add entire bag of marshmallows and stir until completely covered.

Pour everything onto a large sheet of waxed paper. Using sides of the waxed paper, shape into a log. Tape waxed paper over top to hold shape and refrigerate until hardened (several hours).

back in june of this year, kenny and i were all set to order a few (four, tops) turkey chicks and have them sent to us to raise for the 10-12 short weeks that they have before taking them to a local slaughterer for a fresh turkey thanksgiving dinner. free-range, mostly naturally-fed turkeys for a grand total of $6-8. plus shipping and handling.

when we went to make the order, the nice people at the hatchery told us that we had to order a minimun of 15 for shipment.

so, we decided against it as we had no room to house 15 turkeys. and we were trying to live a normal life of a family with three kids, 15 chickens newly released into their outdoor coop, and a huge garden with huge groundhog problems. we didn't need 15 more little headaches. (oh, that made it sound like the three kids are headaches. if i have to be honest, sometimes they are. but that's my fault, not theirs!)

so today, kenny called a local turkey farm. we ordered a fresh 18-20 pound local turkey for our family thanksgiving meal this year. we had a hard enough time finding a local turkey farm, let alone finding an organically raised, free-range one. the one we found keeps their turkeys in open-aired coops and are fed natural food and do not use growth hormones on their fowl. that's enough for me. especially since the USDA definition for free range does not mean pasture-ranged.

we are set to pick up our fresh bird the week of thanksgiving.

recently, my mom brought us up a 1/2 a peck of apples. cortland apples - perfect for eating, baking, and applesauce-making. i've made enough applesauce, i think (unless i decide to can some), but it's time to bake. i made this last night and it's just perfect for days like today: cold, rainy, orange and red leaves all over the wet road. i'm enjoying my second piece of the day with a cup of constant comment tea. oh, how i've missed my constant comment tea (it's just not something you drink in sumertime!). enjoy!

for several months now, i've been enjoying a perk of being a blogger: free books! i get a book in the mail quite frequently and i'm allowed to review it on my blog, or read it and keep it or give it away without ever blogging about it. i'm happy to report that after months and months and dozens of books sent to me...i just received two books that are KEEPERS and that i'm really excited about!

the first of these two books i'll review today. Deceptively Delicious by Jessica Seinfeld (due out this weekend!) arrived on my doorstep last week and I dove into it immediately. the concept is simple: hide veggies in normal, kid-friendly foods, and they'll get their veggies whether they like them or not. the plan is a bit more complicated...you're not tossing broccoli in the bowl with lucky charms and soy milk (not that that would be hiding the veggies so much). you prepare vegetable and fruit purees, freeze them, and then use them in the recipes in the book.

it's been a while since i've pureed much of anything since adam has been on solid foods for months already, so if i want to follow any of these recipes, i'll have to get back into it. but i love the concept enough that i'm willing to give it a try again. besides, i love the veggies that she has listed to puree (and adam is NOT a veggie eater at all).

she lists a lot of breakfast recipes - which is great because i'm at a loss for healthy breakfast choices some mornings. rowan doesn't like eggs, but sawyer and adam love them. kenny loves eggs and toast...i prefer a bowl of cereal or oatmeal. we all love pancakes. i love her recipes for applesauce muffins, peanut butter and banana muffins, blueberry lemon muffins and coffee cake.

there are so many meals listed that i don't know where to start: beef stew, spaghetti with meatballs, quesadillas, or sloppy joes? twice-baked potatoes, waffle sandwiches, or pita pizzas?

and the desserts? brownies (with carrot and spinach puree), hot cocoa, chocolate cupcakes, or chocolate chip muffins? the amounts of puree in each recipe is impressive, so you're getting a good amount of veggies in each bite (especially in kid-sized portions).

the book itself is lovely - it's ring binder style, so it'll stay open on your counter. the pictures are cute, and the recipes are easy to follow (with the veggie/fruit puree listed under the recipe title as well as the amount listed in the recipe). i'm excited to give the recipes a try. when i do, i'll be sure to review them again, along with the responses from each of the boys, and my husband (who doesn't have any trouble eating veggies) and let you know if this is just a pretty book to look at, or a worth-while, useful cookbook.

and yes, she is the wife of jerry seinfeld.

our garden continues to be munched on by a particular small, grey rodent of sorts...some things are surviving, but i'm afraid that our pole beans will not produce beans this year. the lima bean plants look really good, however, as do the green pepper, celery, and one lone cucumber plant. and our tomatoes? they're going crazy. i'm afriad all the green globes that are forming will turn red on the same day and i'm going to have to can and make salsa within a 24-hour time slot. yikes! at least the boys will eat the cherry tomatoes off the plants.

i've been following (but not participating in, sadly) a great project/blog called One Local Summer. the jist of the project is to make one meal a week of all local ingredients. if you haven't already done so, go to your farmer's markets and get some locally grown fruit and vegetables. you may even be able to find baked goods made from locally grown flours/grains. the other night, we had steamed green beans from the garden of kenny's colleague. they were so sweet and delicious, i'm sure they would have been great raw. i'm afraid it's what we're missing in our own garden, thanks to mr. groundhog (did you notice, in that list of groundhog characteristics that a groundhog is "is a herbivore, or vegetarian, eating a wide variety of wild plants, clover and alfalfa, and garden vegetables if available.)

tonight's dinner is the closest i've come yet:
grilled chicken with homamde BBQ sauce (made with local honey)
corn on the cob (grown in slippery rock)
green beans (grown in slippery rock)

the only thing not "local" is the chicken. hopefully by next year, we'll be eating locally-grown, preferably pasture-raised, chicken and beef. and pork. and the occasional lamb. and turkey.

"we set our hopes high so that we can grow wings and learn to fly."
 - i have no idea who coined that phrase

it's been a while since i posted what we're having for dinner...so here's this week's menu!

monday: BBQ chicken breasts, baked rice, broccoli (baked rice recipe below)
tuesday: Roast turkey, mashed potatoes, petit pois
wednesday: egg salad sandwiches on homemade bread, salad, carrots and hummous
thursday: feta quiche with baby spinach salad
friday: Rockin' Moroccan Pita (recipe below)
saturday: pasta salad with bread
sunday: leftovers

*   *   *   *

Rockin' Moroccan Pitas
1 T. ground cumin
1 tsp. chili powder
1 lb. chicken breast, shredded
4 T. olive oil
1/4 cup lemon juice
2 cans chick peas, rinsed
3 green onions (from our garden!)
1 red bell pepper, diced
1/4 cup chopped parsley (from our garden!)
6 pita pockets
plain yogurt
salt and pepper to taste

Combine cumin and chili powder in a plastic bag. Add chicken and shake to coat. Heat 1 T. oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add chicken; cook 5 minutes or until chicken is no longer pink, stirring frequently. Take off heat, cool.
Combine remaining ingredients, mixing well. Stir in chicken. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Cut tops off pitas to pen. Divide chicken mixture among pitas. Top with yogurt (if desired...I recommend it!).

(And yes! Our boys eat this and love it - especially Adam!)

Baked Rice
(this is the only way kenny will eat white rice without a sauce.)
1 T. olive oil
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 cup long-grain white rice
2 cups chicken stock
1/4 tsp salt (optional)

Preheat oven to 350.
Heat oil and add onions. Cook, stirring, until softened.
Add (raw) rice until well-coated.
Add chicken stock and salt. Bring to a boil.
Transfer to casserole, cover and bake until rice is tender and stock is absorbed, 20-25 minutes.
Let stand, covered, 5 minutes before serving.


*   *   *   *

for more weekly menus, check out Org Junkie every Monday!

my grammy makes her pie crust with oil. i usually use butter in my pie crusts, but this recipe is VERY easy. if you're afraid of making pie crusts and resort to the store-bought ones, i urge you to at least try this one. it's so very simple. and it tastes really good with this particular pie.

CRUST:
2 cups flour
1/2 cup canola oil
3 T. cold water
Roll out between 2 sheets of wax paper.  Remove top sheet and flip onto the pie dish.  Carefully remove the other sheet and work dough into dish to fit.
Bake at 450 for 7 to 9 minutes.  Remove and cool.

FILLING:
1 cup crushed berries
3 tbls. cornstarch
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
In a saucepan mix sugar and cornstarch. Gradually stir in water and crushed berries stirring constantly until mixture thickens and boils. Boil and stir one minute.  Put aside to cool. 

When crust and mixture have cooled place whole strawberries (de-stemmed, and point-up) all around the inside of the pie crust then pour the mixture on top. Chill for about three hours.  After chilld, I added another layer of whole berries around the inside of the perimeter of the crust.

Serve with ice cream or whipped cream.

Apparently, this recipe is good with raspberries as well. I think that's pure decadence, and since our berry farm has black, yellow, and red raspberries as well, I just might have to try it!

thanks to grammy for the very easy and very delicious strawberry pie recipe. the older boys helped me while adam napped and we all ate it for dessert last night while celebrating father's day with my parents. mmmm mmmm, good! mom and i picked a few more pounds of strawberries this morning (as soon as the farm opened!) and rowan and sawyer just helped me clean and de-stem them for freezing. i'm looking forward to the fresh taste of strawberries in december. or january.

this is a great article in yesterday's pittsburgh post gazette.

since bringing our chickens home as baby chicks, we wondered how easy it would be to raise them from such a young age. it's so very easy, as i alluded to earlier. so kenny and i have had a few conversations lately about raising broiler chickens as chicks, and then processing them ourselves for our freezer at the ripe old age of around 9 weeks old.

we eat a lot of chicken, and it would be so much nicer to know just where are chicken was grown, fed, and killed in a "chickene" fashion ("chickene", pronounced "chick-EEn" is my word-equivilent to "humane." chickens aren't humans, so you can't use that word to describe a "nice" chicken killing). what better way than to raise and process them ourselves?

but then there's that small problem of actually killing the chicken. i've heard of a few local farm families that'll do it for you for a small price (cheaper than buying chickens in the grocery!). and you can watch and learn for future use.

fortunately, the chickens running around freely in our yard right now aren't broilers (unless one of them turns out to be a rooster!). so they're safe from the knife. they'll provide us with free-range eggs, and companionship. next year we'll make the decision whether or not to bring home a few dozen broiler chicks.

geez. my bon jovi-loving-10th-grade self wouldn't believe just what i've become in my adult years.

no more plants eaten again today. a quick post as it's been a long evening, already!

a picture of the coop that kenny designed and built. it sits behind our barn. that's the egg collecting door on the right. hopefully, we'll be able to figure out how to get free-range chickens to lay their eggs in their nest boxes, and not around the yard. our country neighbors just laugh and shake their heads at us. :)
 

one of our araucanas. this one is very fond of jumping up on people. it did it for the first time the other night to a friends who was visiting for the day with this family, and then again tonight on my mom. it's quite disconcerting. i'm thinking it's a compliment since we're suspecting this chicken to be the top of the pecking order.


a golden buff, walking merrily along.


tonight, we harvested our first leaves from some heirloom lettuce seeds given to us by my friend serina. the leaves are still small, but it's time to thin, and they're so deliciuos at this stage - packed full of flavor (and vitamins!).

it's all about veggies.

we've had a long few weeks of warm, sunny weather and our arms and faces carry the tanned shadows of our full days outside. the boys were so happy to be outside, and they all slept the whole night long, so tired from running, climbing, digging, and playing..

we planted our garden over the weekend. here's what we're hoping to harvest through the late summer, into early fall:


it doesn't seem like a whole lot when you're out looking at the garden, but looking at that list - wow - it seems as though we're setting up our very own garden stand.

here's the garden, chock-full of plants and seeds, waiting for the rain to come (it did a few hours after this picture was taken):

right behind the garden (where the boys are standing in the photo above) is a huge grapevine that yields lots of sour grapes. but this season, we found a robin nest inside:

mama sat dutifully on her eggs until they hatched yesterday morning (mama has since returned to the nest after i took these pictures):

and she's there all the time now that the weather has turned cooler. what a good mama robin. fortunately, mama robin picked prime location in the grapevine as our garden is right next to her nest, and she has first dibs on all morning worms. smart woman.

also, since the weather has been cooler, kenny had to hook up an extension cord from the barn into the chicken coop to put a light on them last night. by the winter, they'll be fully feathered-out, but they still have those bald spots on their necks and heads, so we don't know how warm they actually are. it's supposed to warm up in a few days.

the chickens turned a whole month old on monday. to celebrate, we moved them out of their brooder in the laundry room to their brand new coop in the yard. i couldn't be more thankful. they're SO BIG now, that they were kicking up dust from their bedding and it was EVERYWHERE in the laundry room. i spent the entire day (between diaper-changes, meals, naps, playing, and reading) wiping down the room and cleaning it two times over. remember these cute little fuzz-balls?

they are now not so cute. they're turning into chickens, and have scrawny necks with patches of bald waiting for their feathers. their feet are awkwardly too big for their bodies (just like in the 7th grade!). however, where their feathers are fully grown in, the patterns are beautiful, and there are glimpses of their full-grown beauty when they stretch out their wings. i am sure that in no time at all, they will be beauties.

here are our girls, all happy in their new digs:


a golden buff (front) and a buff orpington (rear) checking out the ramp:


feeding time:


three silver-laced wyandottes and a buff orpington:




did i mention how happy i am to have them out of our house? don't get me wrong, i love the girlies, but they really do stink. in ways you didn't think possible. and not like "dirty farm smell," it's more like something died in our laundry room on top of the dirty farm smell.

the chickens are still confined until our neighbor's dog is trained to stay inside his brand new invisible fence. how nice of our neighbor to set up an expensive system to keep her big pure-bred pointer dog from eating all 15 of the chickens.  i think the plans for the fence were already in the works, but when she heard our chickens were living in their coop soon, she got the fence buried and began training her dog.

if only we can figure out a way to keep hawks, foxes, and raccoons from preying on them.

the chicken-hobby is a big project, but one that we're enjoying. we have to keep the boys away from them most of the time "but they're my friends, mommy!" is rowan's excuse for wanting to hang out with them all day long, and what he repeats to us when we tell him it's time to leave them alone.

Menu-planning Monday has been left in the dust recently as life as become well, very unstructured. Illness and chickens seem to throw off the balance. I planned our month of meals over the weekend and Kenny and I spent a very romantic date at the grocery store Saturday evening (really...it was great to stroll the aisles and take our time). So we're set for the month!

We have a very international-inspired menu this week. It was all by accident, I promise. I guess I subconsciously threw in the American standard meatloaf and potatoes because we'd need some sort of break from the spices. Fortunately, we love 'em all.

We are having company for dinner on Tuesday. I hope they like Indian! (Does anyone call dinner guests "company" anymore? Or is that so "yesterday?")

Monday, April 30 - Aloo Gobi over rice
Tuesday, May 1 - Chicken Tikka Masala with leftover Aloo Gobi
Wednesday, May 2 - Meatloaf, potatoes, peas
Thrusday, May 3 - Asian Noodles Satay with vegetable
Friday, May 4 - Teriyaki chicken and salad
Saturday, May 5 - Peanut Ginger Beef
Sunday, May 6 - BBQ porkchops and salad

Lots more menus over at Laura's place.

it was FREEZING yesterday. add to the cold, it was WINDY. when we ordered our chicks back in early march, it was 60 degrees. i imagined us picking up our chicks donning shorts and t-shirts, sunshiny day and all. the sun met us in ohio, but pennsylvania was hidden under stormy clouds all day long (and we were in ohio all but one hour).

so it didn't REALLY take 10 hours. but we left at 10, met kenny at 12:15, and were on the road by 12:30. it took us over two hours to get to the hatchery in polk, ohio, which was really quite nice and not at all what i expected. we parked the car, got out and stood next to a penske delivery truck with literally thousands of chicks in boxes inside, waiting to be mailed. it made me happy that our little chicks were to be riding home with us, and not the noisy 1000-other chicks in the truck.

it was a long day, but totally worth it. the chicks are loving their new little home in their brooder in our laundry room under warming lights. the boys step up on their stools to be eye-to-eye with the chicks and they all run over to the glass to see the boys.

a few things we've learned about chickens from observation already:
 - when they are one-day-old, they suffer from narcolepsy. they walk from the water to where the light is warmest and stop mid-step, eyes begin to close and then fall flat on their face. or they fall asleep with their head still in the food dish. it was really quite entertaining for kenny, my mom, and i to watch after the boys were in bed last night.
 - they'll peck ANYTHING. they especially like to peck at harder things, like wedding bands and screws in the walls of their brooder.
 - they've stopped chirping so much and now when we hear them chirp, we wonder if something is wrong.
 - today, they all seem to fall asleep together, for about 45 seconds each. they've all had about 89 naps already since this morning.
 - just as a newborn infant, they'll keep you up all night. kenny came down to check on them (and their temperature) at least three times last night.
 - three brooder lamps shorted on us last night, even after checking them out last week. we have two normal bulbs in there now, keeping it at around 85-87 degrees (it should be close to 90 the first day, and down a few degrees as they grow).

adam, sitting in the middle seat with me:
 

the boys, with their new chick friends in between them in the back seat:




rowan, gazing into his new little friend's eyes. his friend wondering if he's her mother?


kayle, the tabby is "interested"


where the boys went the minute they woke up this morning:

what a day. i have NO energy to blog about our 10-hour trip to ohio...but my goodness, are these chicks freakin' adorable. seriously, it's like the energy and exhaustion right after giving birth.

i'm off to bed, but here is a few pictures of our baby egg-layers. :)

we couldn't find a local farm that hatched chicks for selling, and a few farmers kenny talked with actually advised us against getting chicks that way. we still felt uneasy ordering our chicks from the big hattery in texas and picking them up at the post office, so we found a happy medium at meyer hatchery which is only a couple hours drive away. i called last week to place an order for our 15 chicks (15!!!) and since a few of them weren't going to be hatched until mid april, we decided on a pick-up date in late april.
kenny spent a few hours tooling around in his garage last week and built the beautiful brooder where the chicks will spend their first few weeks on a bed of pine shavings, eating organic chick starter and drinking filtered water.

and all of a sudden, i had a nightmare that all of our chickens were going to die before we got them into the coop. you see, we've been told by many places that pine shavings are hard to come by these days (something about people not building enough houses???), and i can't even begin to tell you how hard it is finding organic chick starter. so i have images of our chicks starving, and walking on hard wood, drinking only filtered water. whatever will we do?

we'll find the shavings, i'm sure...and we'll start the chicks off with non-organic starter then switch them to completely organic chicken feed and our organic food scraps once they're outside in their coop. whew. now that i have all that figured out...let me introduce you to our "brood."

The Araucana will give us olive green or turquoise blue eggs! well, the shell is turquoise, the inside is "regular."
The Golden Buff is a "favorite" because they're good layers. and we're assured 100% of getting all females. (all the other chickens we ordered aren't "sexlinked" which means we have a 20% chance of getting a rooster with our order!)
The Buff Orpington...our original favorite...we're told are "very broody" which means they can sit all day on an egg. or a nest. and they won't like it when we go in to collect their eggs. so we kept them in our order because we still love them.
The Silver-Laced Wyandotte is my mom's favorite chicken, ever. we ordered a few for her to take care of. she's so excited, she's already named them!

in the coming weeks, kenny's working on the weekends to start coop construction. pictures will be posted and you better believe my camera will be flashing when those chicks are in our possession.

i can't wait to introduce you to our fowl!


 

we had a busy week with many emergencies and surprises last week, so our menu got switched around a lot and we...ah...ate out once (twice if you count the spaghetti dinner at church yesterday, but i planned for that, if you'll remember). so a few of these meals may look familiar as i planned them for last week, but we're eating them this week.

the beautiful thing about planning ahead is that i can switch everything around and have a new menu this week, without having to shop for more than my weekly dairy and produce needs.

monday: turkey sausage with noodles and cabbage (late st. patty's dinner!)
tuesday: chicken curry with brown rice
wednesday: baked chicken with ziti and veggie
thursday: aloo gobi
friday: sweet and sour pork over brown rice
saturday: leftovers
sunday: crusty pork tenderloin with sweet potato and apple compote

for more menu plans, visit OrgJunkie.

Monday: Roast chicken with veggies 
Tuesday: Leftovers or homemade chicken soup made with leftovers (if I'm feeling adventurous)
Wednesday: Spaghetti Chicken Pie, salad
Thursday: Baked Chicken and ziti with veggie (we didn't have it on Sunday, so we're having it today!)
Friday: Leftovers
Saturday: St. Patrick's Day! Noodles with turkey sausage and cabbage. Guinness. Whiskey cake (recipe below)
Sunday: We're supporting a cub pack fundraiser after church: spaghetti dinner

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Irish Whiskey Cake

• 2 cups golden raisins
• 3 tablespoons grated lemon zest
• 1/4 cup whiskey
• 3/4 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup light brown sugar
• 3 egg yolks
• 3 egg whites
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 2 cups sifted confectioners' sugar
• 1 lemon, juiced

1. Place the raisins, lemon rind, and whiskey in a small bowl and let them soak overnight. Line bottom of an eight-inch square cake pan with parchment paper that is buttered and dusted with flour. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Sift the flour, salt, cloves and baking powder into a bowl and set aside.
2. In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add the egg yolks and beat well. Quickly beat in the flour mixture. Stir in the soaked raisins.
3. In a separate clean bowl, whip the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the mixture. Pour this into your prepared pan and bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 45 to 60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Cool the cake thoroughly on a wire rack.
4. To make the glaze: Mix the lemon juice with the sifted powdered sugar and just enough whiskey and warm water so that you can drizzle icing over the cake.

find more menu ideas here!