Gains, Loss, The Future

ah, the beginning of fall.  when the temperatures drift down into the balmy mid-nineties, and there is a chance of rain sometimes.  actually, all facetiousness aside, the mornings and evenings have been beautiful!  and enough rain has fallen that the back yard is full of chickweed and egg production is ramping up again. i'm excited about the change of seasons, and fall air is some of the best air.

sadly, we have lost another chicken.  this time there was no disease or predation involved...earlier this week bolo vanished without a trace! there she is to the left, the big black one, having a roll in the dust with pearl last sunday.  by tuesday, however, she was gone. just gone!  no feathers, no yard kerfuffle, everyone had been in the run all day.  all other fowl were fine and normal. but when i went out to the yard after work to give the ladies and gentleman their yard time, she simply was nowhere to be found.

i keep hoping she might come back, but i think it's been long enough that such hope is lost.  my best thought is that she's been bodily assumed into heaven, rapture-style.  at least that's my favorite theory...several others make perhaps more sense but are far more depressing.  she was a non-flyer, but had accidentally hopped out of the run once a long time ago--she was never one for adventure.  

needless to say, all remaining chickens now have flight feathers 1-8 clipped on their right wing, like i did sammo a couple months ago, to prevent further chicken raptures.

i wonder if she accidentally hopped out again, went for a mosey, got lost....and then was bodily assumed.  at any rate, wherever she is, i hope she enjoyed her life here and is enjoying her next life.  if not, i'd like it if she would come back.

in other, better news, we recently acquired two new girls to bump up egg production and add some new feathers to the flock.  introducing tony parker and scotty pippen!

tony parker

tony parker is a lovely young barred rock hen, a classic breed. true to her name, she is especially quick and agile, and does not seem to like to get picked up yet.  however, once caught, she will happily sit on the available lap for pets and chicken talk.  she should start laying big brown eggs any minute!

scotty pippen

scotty pippen is a beautiful red star chicken who, unlike her new sister thus far, is quite friendly. she seems to enjoy being picked up and cuddled, and even hangs around waiting for such attention.  her breed is also an egg-laying machine, and so we are much anticipating her egg scene debut.  in fact, she was destined to go to an _actual_ egg laying machine--a big production chicken house--which explains why her beak was cut.  but here on the TUF, her beak can grow back in all its glory and she can party in the run and yard all day.  i look forward to seeing her beak back!

all chickens have made the adjustment seamlessly, both to the new additions and the loss of dear old bolo.  the flock numbers six once again--tumblr (the rooster), sammo (easter egger), pearl and ninja (original silkies), scotty pippen and tony parker.  we pause to remember the TUFlock chickens who have gone on to the great free-range in the sky: soft grey twitter, baby lil' bitz (we barely new ye!), and big black ol' bolo.  thanks for all the eggs and fun.

milk snail enjoying a fall morning

and finally, a bit about the future: dan and i are pleased to be expecting a new HUMAN addition to the TUF to join us in early march 2013!  all is well so far, and of course we will appreciate another TUF hand around to help care for all these crazy creatures. that's why people originally starting having kids anyway, right? more help around the farm?  maybe we can actually start that garden i've been screaming about since the beginning of this whole experiment!

speaking of experiment, and as a final note, here is a picture of the fantastic carrot soup i concocted the other day.  i had also (true to TUF philosophy) used a bunch of farmer's market vegetable odds and ends, and the frozen carcasses of a roasted local duck and chicken, to make a killer-awesome no-waste stock as the base for this soup.  i basically used this recipe, with lemon juice but no zest, a zillion cloves of garlic, and only 1/4 cup of cream, and it came out pretty dang delightful.  and healthy! mostly!

anyway, there is much coming up to discuss, what with the changing seasons, new girls, new food, new future prospects and all.  thank you for reading, Dear Reader, and though i'm clearly not the best at it, i'll renew my efforts to keep y'all posted and document the process!

Cookers Cooking

it's fun to share a kitchen with someone who also likes to cook, and who has fantastic culinary sense all his own.  dan recently cut up a raw chicken into the traditional parts the other day, bravely embarking on a knifespeariment neither of us had ever attempted!  it was not as intuitive to do as one may imagine, and yes, there may have been some hacking and yanking involved at various points.  but he did it (i cheered!), and we ended up able to use a tasty farmer's market chicken in two different delicious meals.  i couldn't believe it never occurred to me before, but it is WAY economical to cut whole chickens up yourself than to buy the pre-packaged/separated parts from the big box.  great for stretching one's ethical chicken dollars!

the night of the chicken-cutting, we decided to grill the thighs/legs (haunches?) and breasts, leaving the wings and carcass (such an appetizing word) for soup-making.  we marinated the parts for grilling in a delicious mix consisting of:

olive oil

dash of sesame oil

glug of white wine

1/2 lime

sea salt

paprika

parsley/tarragon/rosemary (dried)

2 cloves superchopped fresh garlic

and let it all mingle 'n chill in the fridge while we prepared the vegetable: farmer's market rainbow chard!  

now i love me some rainbow chard, and i am undaunted if/when it gets wilty-looking, as in the case of our chard for this particular evening.  i cut the very ends off of the stems under running water and then plopped the whole chard bunch in a glass of water in the fridge, like a vase of flowers. it perked up within the hour, and was 100% delicious!

i chopped it roughly and sauteed it quickly in some butter over medium-high heat with fresh onions, several cloves of garlic (we. love. it!), a tiny glug of white wine, and some seasalt.  dan taught me this quick green-wilting trick:  once everything is hot and buttery, clear a little space in the middle of the pan and slip an ice cube in there.  cover the pan, leave the heat high, and let it get all steamy for a few minutes.  then uncover, turn up the heat and stir everything around again so that any liquid reduces into a puddle of delish to go with your greens. YUM. YUM.

so then dan grilled the marinated chicken parts (about 30-35 minutes total over medium heat) until juices ran clear and joints were loose in sockets, and we ate 'em with the chard and some straight up box macaroni and cheese.  i know, not super TUF, but sometimes you just can't replace ancient comforts.

the next meal we made with this lovely chicken was soup of the noodle persuasion, and it was just REALLY REALLY GOOD.  perhaps it seems a bit counter-intuitive to make soup in the summertime, but if you have the ingredients and the gumption, what the hell! and dan is good at soup.  there was hardly anything to it, either: he boiled those chicken wings and carcass (ew) in water to generously cover for about an hour, and skimmed that scum stuff off every once in awhile.  then i helped him take out the bones and pick all the meat off 'em (a visceral, but amusing, process!), putting the bones back in the pot and the meat in the fridge for later.  THEN he added coin-cut carrots, several small rough-chopped onions, many garlic cloves (whole this time!), and spices--seasalt, celery seed, coriander seed (WOW), parsley, oregano, ground mustard--you know, the spice cabinet.  and let that gently simmer on low for another couple hours.  we then decided to let it cool off in the fridge and have it for dinner later.....

....at which point i re-heated it with some smashed-up spaghetti noodles and simmered until they were soft.  oh yeah, and i made KILLER AWESOME YEAST ROLLS to go with it, using my new favorite bread recipe.  it's actually so great i'm going to devote the next post to it.  geeah i love bread.

by the way, this process made a BUNCH of chicken soup, and we are bad left-over eaters.  but i kid you not, we ate every last drop of this soup over the next few days.  you know it was good when.

THANK YOU FARMER'S MARKET CHICKEN!!

grilling is, of course, the best way to cook in the summer...you can grill a huge variety of vegetables and meats, it doesn't heat up your house (unless you are crazy like me and BAKE something while grilling is happening outside!), and you end up smelling really good when you come in.  so the other day we had this half-an organic purple cabbage sitting in the fridge from a previous grocery store adventure, and dan said, how about we grill it?  and i said, _grill_ purple cabbage? and he said, why no?  and i said, right on!  because i LOVE grillsperiments.

so we cut the half in half, and marinated the quarters together in the fridge with a glug of white wine (always!), olive oil, seasalt, tarragon and paprika.  look..BRAAAAINS!

sorry.  before grilling, dan rubbed a bit of butter on each one, and wrapped them individually in some foil, dumping the marinade in there as well.  we put them on the grill for about 40 minutes (well before the lamb chops!), and they could've gone for even a bit longer.  but let me tell you what...that was the best cabbage idea i had ever heard!  i have never described cabbage as luscious, but.  that was some luscious cabbage.  next time i will have a significant quantity of goat cheese to schmear on there, but it was perfect just by itself.

those are some organic new potatoes plain ol' boiled, and some delicious texas farmer's market lamb chops.  all due respect to my colorado peeps, but i'm sorry, texas grassfed lamb is just thicker and richer than ya'll's hard workin', low-oxygen mountain lamb that i had previously grilled!

one last note about the grilled cabbage: LOOK AT THAT COLOR.  it's practically pornographic.  i think we should all resolve to eat more purple things.

more soon!  especially about bread!  stay tuned!

Current Culinariousness...

 even though we don't have a garden yet, we have the great fortune of living next to someone who does.  someone who recently went out of town, and who left me in charge of watering her about-to-totally-domino tomato plants.  JACKPOT!

seriously, one of the best things about summer is a texas tomato.  i can't wait to grow my own.  a summer tomato sums up why vegetables, gardening, and life in general is awesome: this plant sucks up water and sunlight and carbon dioxide and turns it into sugar and oxygen.  to reproduce, it makes a flower, and behind the flower begins to swell a green bead. sun and water create more sugar, and the bead fills with seeds and juice and tender flesh and grows red and sweet.  and then...you pick it!  and eat it! and the plant just makes more and more. tomatoes are a summer eruption in my mouth.  I LOVE THEM.


my kitchen candy jar.



anyway, so we started to get a whole bunch of these awesome tomatoes, big and cherry, red and yellow.  i was determined to use them to their greatest potential, as well as the delicious organic meats and vegetables i had acquired from a recent grocery store adventure.  also, i had some ethical fish to deal with.  so let the foodblithers begin!

i have never been the biggest chili fan, but in recent years i have acquired a taste for it--especially now that i've learned how to use a slowcooker thing.  d. loves chili and devotes a lot of time and attention when he makes it, and his techniques inform my own chilimaking.  it seems more like a winter food, in some ways; however, chili made with a slew of fresh tomatoes and onion is a revelation. we don't do chili with beans--just diced tomatoes, onion, browned ground buffalo, chili powder, cayenne, cumin, salt, garlic.  slow-cookered on low for 6 hours.  i used about 5 smallish whole tomatoes this time, coarsely chopped. the skins slipped off during cooking and i just fished them out, but that was super lazy...next time i'll actually peel them.  right.

i did squeeze out their seeds and keep the remaining 1/2 cup of juice, to which i added 1/2 cup lone star beer. and dumped that in there too, right at the beginning.  YUM!

then, just to be silly, i made cheese popovers from a recipe straight out of The Joy of Cooking (p. 637, 75th Anniversary Edition) to go with the chili.  now granted, i've had a lot of time and eggs lately for such silliness.  but it was a leisurely 45 minutes well spent.

so, we ended up having tasty chili and popovers for dinner, and there was way too much, so i stuck the leftovers in the out-of-town neighbor's freezer.  i figure, gotta pay up, you know?

rainbow trout is on the Super Green List from the Monterey Bay Seafood Watch, and it was also on sale the other day.  i have had great luck with trout whether i sautée or grill it, and this was going to be a sautée kind of day.  after rinsing it off and drying it thoroughly, i dunked each filet in a mixture of 1 (silkie-sized) egg and 1/4 cup milk, then in a flour/breadcrumb/dried spice combo (i know tarragon and basil and garlic powder were in there). 

after getting the fish happily sauteeing in some pre-heated, pretty hot butter and olive oil (skinside up first!  let it brown! then skinside down), i started steaming some spinach.  i had already been boiling some red potatoes.  i love when 3/4ths of the stovetop tops are occupied by deliciousness.

in the time it took the spinach to wilt to perfection, the fish was ready to go.  i love me some rainbow trout...the fillets are long and thin and get just a bit crispety!

if you eat meat, specifically pork: i suggest you get some good pork.  not just because it's more ethical if it's from happy pigs who are raised naturally and humanely and killed with respect; it is SO MUCH MORE DELICIOUS. it's like you can taste that the pig independently foraged for, and ate, flowers for breakfast. in this particular case, dan grilled these pork loin chops, seasoned with salt/garlic/olive oil/paprika, for around 6 minutes a side.  and we had it with rice and salad with tomatoes/fresh mozzerella.  i accidentally started eating it before i could take a picture of it.

so i have all these millions of cherry tomatoes now, may of them the golden pear kind, and i'm like, i can't eat all these.  not for lack of trying, either, but there are only so many sunbombs you can eat in one day!  there is only one thing to do.  make tomato soup.  not just any tomato soup, i thought...golden cherry tomato BISQUE, because that sounds fancier and more summery.  and i decided to have it with these colorado mountain lamb chops i had nabbed, with a side of simple parmesan noodles. yum. yum.

 so i chopped up ALL those cherry tomatoes and three big ones (i squeezed out the seeds but didn't peel anything....again), and the other half of the onion, and like 5 garlic cloves (we REALLY LIKE GARLIC) and i threw it all in a biggish pot with some butter/olive oil (per usual), and started cookin' it. i added a few glugs of chicken broth, and i threw the spice cabinet at it.  after letting it all melt and sizzle and stir together for about 20 minutes, i added about one glug (1/4 cup maybe?) of heavy cream.  after letting it simmer for one minute more (gently!), i blended it up and returned it to the pot.

now, it was time to grill up the lambchops. not much to that, i seasoned them with salt/garlic/paprika (my favorite combo!) and massaged them with a little olive oil.  as we are rare meat eaters, i did them on a pre-heated gas grill on med-high heat for 4 minutes a side.

the parmesan noodles were a simple matter of breaking up spaghetti noodles, boiling until al-dente and adding a bit of butter and parmesan. BAM.

lamb is one of my favorites, and this was delicious...however, i have to say, i like the lamb from the austin farmer's market a bit better than this colorado lamb.  something about texas grass maybe? the soup was definitely the best part of this meal, in my opinion...next time i make tomato soup, i will DEFINITELY peel the tomatoes though.  i PROMISE.  really!  again, we gave the leftover golden cherry tomato bisque as a tithing to our tomato-bearing neighbor, and i hope she enjoys it as much as i did.  tomatoes are so bleeping good.

i sure love cooking and food, and i feel deeply lucky that i get to eat dinners like these.  thank you for your attention, dear reader...more news from the 'farm', and further adventures in baking, are coming soon! stay tuned!

Grocery Store Adventure!

one of the main reasons we began this TUFsperiment was to become more aware food consumers--more simply, better grocery shoppers.  taking steps to produce some of our own food is good progress--pilfering the neighbor's garden, the daily egg, dreaming of our own vegetable patch-- but grocery shopping will always be a major part of our food consumption. so i'm in the market for a non-big box grocery store.  the saturday farmer's market is awesome, but it's not saturday in the middle of the week!

another factor: non-big-box grocery stores are not cheap.  that is to say, big-box grocery stores ARE cheap, but for all the wrong reasons.  i expect to pay more for ethically- and sustainably-produced food, because the production costs are not masked by mass factory food practices.  i also find myself spending SO much money anyway on any given big-box run, and i realize that i rarely check prices on anything....i just fill up my cart, wince at the check out line and assume that i've gotten the everyday low price on everything.  that's not being a very conscious consumer!

so i decided to scope out a non-big-box grocery store, and i decided to set a reasonable limit and stick to it: $150, calculator out, every item in the cart accounted for.  i was going to try to do a 'normal' kind of big box grocery run at a non-big box 'fancy' store for $150.  hypothesis: i can get way more than i think at the non-big-box for a reasonable about of cash.

procedure: i headed straight for Wheatsville Food Co-op, but the parking lot was full.  undaunted, i carried on down guadalupe in search of The Natural Grocer, a small store i had noticed before but hadn't ever really thought about.  its full name continues, "...by Vitamin Cottage," which i always thought was strange.   but there were parking spaces, so i went for it.

i always notice the smell of places first thing, and the natural grocer had the smell of a fancy grocery store...i always imagine this particular scent to be a combination of wheat grass and bulk grain and dirt, and it's distinctive to non-big-box fancy schmancy grocery stores.  i kind of like it, but it smells expensive.  i selected a wheeliebasket, got out my calculator and began exploring.

shortly, a casually-official looking gentleman approached me and asked if i was finding everything all right, and had i ever been here before?  i said no, this was my first run at the natural grocer, and that i was getting my bearings before the real shopping began.  he said he was Robert, the general manager, from denver!  he was here to check out the newish austin store, and he asked  if i had any questions about anything.  i said, how much of your produce is locally-sourced?  he said that since the natural grocers by vitamin cottage was based in denver, they worked with many farmers and artisens in the denver area and from around colorado.  but he realizes that people in austin really like to support their local community, and that he was actively looking to work with local growers.  i thought that was a pretty decent answer, and robert seemed like a nice fellow.  i said, what's the deal with 'by vitamin cottage?' he explained that they had started as a natural vitamin and supplement outfit, but that the business really started growing when they started selling organic/natural groceries.  he said the natural grocers took pride in being 100% organic.  (i have some questions about the systems that label things as 'organic,' but that bears some more research.) at any rate, he seemed sincere.

we spoke for a bit about the fact that food that is ethical and sustainable is more expensive than mass-produced food, and he pointed out the fact that the grocery store had no fancy displays or deli/meat counters or anything like that, and this was in an effort to keep prices lower.  he also showed me that there were a lot of different items on specials or sales in the hopes of offsetting the higher price of natural/sustainable/ethical foods.  i explained my $150 experiment, and he said he would be checking up on me over the course of my grocery shopping to see how the store was holding up to my expectations and budget.  i was impressed that he seemed genuinely interested in my experience (and experiment!).

i acquired the following items (all organically grown/produced, according to robert):
lettuce/spinach/red cabbage/broccoli (colorado)
2 tomatoes (from gonzales tx!)
onion/garlic/red potatoes (colorado)
avocado/lemon/lime (?)
cantaloupe (colorado?)
fresh mozzerella cheez
lambchops/sirloin steaks/chicken breasts/ground buffalo/pork chops (meat = VERY EXPENSIVE for good reason)
frozen broccoli/peas
canned green beans
bottled juice (2 lemonades!)
sliced provelone (horizon farms)
salsa (local)
chips (garden of eaten or whatever)
pickels (bubbies?)
pasta sauce

for just under $147.  i was impressed!  this represented a significant grocery run for a very reasonable amount of cash at the non-big-box-all-fancy-natural grocery store.  hypothesis, first trial: confirmed!

over the course of my rounds, robert and the other store employees did check on me and were extremely helpful. i ended up chatting with them for a little while, and found i could have a source of FREE organic vegetable odds and ends for guinea pigs and chickens--all i had to do was call!  at check out they boxed up all my groceries (they don't use plastic or paper bags--just left over boxes) and even gave me a free re-useable grocery bag.  i kind of felt like a celebrity or something, actually.  it was very pleasant.

at any rate, my grocery store adventure at The Natural Grocers by Vitamin Cottage was educational and validating.  just the act of keeping a close running total on the contents of my basket was enlightening, and discovering i could do a real grocery run at an expensive smelling store for a reasonable amount of cash was encouraging.  plus everybody was super nice and i got free stuff out of it.  so the moral of this story is: i will probably go back there! 

Food, Stuffs

i'm not sure i've mentioned this before. but i probably should, as it is a very important aspect of this TUFsperiment.  I. Love. Food.  i mean, i love it!  i'm not even picky....i've been happy for large portions of my life eating cheap crappy food with relish and abandon.  since i quit smoking (august 17, 2010!), i've even noticed that i've started enjoying peppers and chiles, which is a new and surprising development.  used to be that was the only group of foods i pretty much disliked across the board.  and now that is no longer the case.  WHO AM I???

i think it's worth mentioning here that i have struggled with my love for food vs. desire to fit socially acceptable thin-ness standards my whole life, and that i even delayed quitting smoking for fear i would eat tons more and gain weight.  i have learned the following things about quitting smoking:

1) it is hard, and i never want to do it again.
2) i have not gained weight as a result of quitting smoking.
3) i have been more inclined to exercise as a result of quitting smoking.
4) food is EVEN MORE DELICIOUS, and i find i eat less of it because i can taste more of it.

anyway, since a lot of TUF is about food consumption, and we've been getting more of our food from the farmer's market, i thought i would show off some of the dishes we've concocted lately!  and some gratuitous chicken footage, of course.

the picture above is a medly of zucchini, onions and mushrooms from the farmer's market, stirfried/braised in a bit of butter and white wine, with two cloves of garlic smashed over all.  it accompanied a very small leg of grass-fed lamb, which i rubbed with olive oil, tarragon, sea salt and paprika, and then rotisseried.

that's what it looked like all finished, with rice pilaf and my requisite summer dinner beverage of cheap white wine. love that farmer's market lamb and vegetables!

the evening before, we had sauteed scallops and rainbow trout, with chard and organic fingerling potatoes.  chard and green garlic are in abundance at the market right now, and they are deLISH.

dan pressed both the scallops and the trout in seasoned bread crumbs, and sauteed them quickly while the chard simmered away with the green garlic.  the potatoes got roasted with a bit of salt, whole garlic cloves,  and olive oil in the oven.  of course, it turned out to be way too much food, but completely delicious!

after dinner, i went out to give some of our scraps to the lovely chickens. i caught this intimate pearl moment to share with the world:



my chicken check-in was so inspiring that i came back in and made cookies.  admittedly, i used one regular (free-range, organic) grocery store egg in addition to the two remaining silkie eggs. i also tried out a new kind of unbleached, less-processed flour that is supposed to replace regular bleached all-purpose flour cup for cup.  i think it makes the cookies taste that much more TUF!

at any rate, it's been a productive food couple of days around here.  and just wait until i have more time on my hands here in a few days....gardens, pies, chicks, bread, cheese! (and yes, more exercise.)