Oxtail Soup
A dish of oxtail soup is a thing to share with those you love. Or not. (depends how much you love them) What’s not to like about oxtail? It’s traditional farm fare, a simple country dish with robust complex favors – many parts of the …
Author: sylvie
Chickens Are Not Vegetarian
They love insects, worms, caterpillars, maggots, larvae, meat if they can get it. They do need animal protein for a balanced and healthy diet – which means also chicken and eggs healthy to eat – and delicious.
If anybody ever doubted that chickens are not vegetarians, they should have been here a few mornings ago, when I broke through the frozen top layer of the small compost pile housed in the current chicken area. It has been so cold that the compost pile surface has frozen. The very heart of it was warm enough though… Of course, as always curious, they follow me to see what I am up to. Plus I had the fork, and they know it’s the tool I use to lift rocks or dig out perennial weeds (all of which bring up all kind of good food to the surface).
So, as soon as I started to turn the pile, the race was on! Get that worm, girl! and that one! here! another! quick!
Vigorous scratching that sends clumps 4 feet away, heated conversation (yes chicken do converse), diligent industrious pecking, excited chatting and calls about a tempting juicy plump cache of worms… that’s what happens. And worms and other bugs just get gobbled up, fast and methodically. I love watching the chicken being chicken and expressing their joie de vivre through being able to do what chicken evolved to do.
Bugs the hell out of me when I see “vegetarian feed only” on boxes of supermarket eggs.
On Sauerkraut and Other Fermented Food
I had never eaten homemade sauerkraut until I started to make it last year. I can’t say that I really like the store-bought canned stuff – but I really like a Reuben sandwich, and you do need sauerkraut for that. In my quest for more …
More on Growing In Hoop Tunnels
This is Swiss Chard in the garden today, unprotected, after weeks of cold weather, night in the teens (F/- 7 C to -12 C) and days of bone-chilling howling winds with gusts at 50 miles/ h (80 km). Not pretty, right? Certainly not much to harvest…
This is Swiss Chard (and more) in the unheated hoop tunnel. Need I say more?
A few hours of labor, $100 in materials (some second hand), one layer of greenhouse plastic – and we moved at least one zone south, maybe 2 . Not bad for January, eh?
Snow, What Snow?
2 feet of snow last week-end, temperatures in the lower teens (F/ about -12 C). I have not been in the hoophouse for about a week, and frankly I was not sure how it was going to be in there. Would I have mush? It …
Cornmeal Cookies
Cornmeal is simply not used enough in sweets. There, I said it: eat more cornmeal. I like soft polenta (mush) and hard polenta (either – like oatmeal – taste sooo much better when made with milk instead of water). I like cheesy grits and creamy …
There is More to Turkey Than Roasting it for Thanksgiving
I have to confess that I do not have the proper respect for Thanksgiving.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy that food-centric holiday. It’s just that – not having grown with it – I am not enough imbued with its traditions, and I am trying to make it… well… gasp! too… French. You see, many of the French holidays end up being a celebration of food, but in the US, only Thanksgiving – distantly followed by Christmas – really gets the family around the table.
When I cook the Thanksgiving dinner, I always end up with multiple courses served not all at once but in succession – to stretch the fun of eating and the dinner. That’s a no-no: Thanksgiving is meant to have many many dishes all served at once (except desserts). Thanksgiving means that the table is groaning under the sheer quantity of the dishes. Continue reading There is More to Turkey Than Roasting it for Thanksgiving