Buttah Baby!

Today I tried my hand at making butter...real butter, not the slightly cheesy smelling/tasting organic butter I bought a little while ago...just plain, creamy, slightly salted butter.

I never realized just how simple it was to make, until I ran across a blog post about it.  The post called for putting heavy cream in a mason jar and shaking it.  I told my mother about it and she said, "There's a much easier way - whip it with the hand mixer like you would to make whip cream.  Only keep whipping.  Eventually it will separate and become buttermilk and butter." The light bulb went on!

So I bought some heavy cream, got out the handy dandy hand mixer and went to work.

It took a little while, but just when I thought I was doing it wrong - viola! It started to separate. When it got chunky, I poured off what buttermilk was there and kept pressing the butter with the rubber spatula until there was little to no buttermilk coming out of it.

I mixed some sea salt to the butter (because I like salted butter) and put it in a little container for the fridge.  Now I have fresh creamy butter for my toast...and the buttermilk pancakes I'm going to make from that leftover buttermilk! Yum!

Buttah Bitches!

The Black Crow Bakery

The Black Crow Bakery has become an every Saturday stop since I found it. Its this little place in Litchfield that is open from 7 to 7, Tuesday to Saturday. If you didn't know it was there, you'd drive right past!

It just looks like someone's house with a red barn attached. You walk in through a door, up a set of stairs and into what looks like an old summer kitchen. Before you are all the tools for mass bread baking. To the left, a giant wood fired oven and just beyond, the rack of bread with little handmade tags telling you what each is. In the center is a little table with cookies and danish.

There is no one else there. Its the honor system. You pack up your bread, you calculate your total, you make your change.

The bread is stone baked, making it crunchy on the outside and soft, yet chewy, on the inside. There is peasant bread, olive herb bread, parmesan foccacia, wheat, Tuscan, Jewish Rye, apricot almond and a few others.  I have officially given up buying bread from the grocery store in lieu of this bread!

While I know I can bake bread myself, and I do, its not the same. Its not wood fired, nor stone baked. And if I'm going to buy bread, I'd rather it be from a local place.  Knowing my bread was baked fresh, just 10 minutes down the road, by neighbors...I like knowing that!

Free Rangers and the Sly Fox...one chicken's near death experience

Poor Miss Agnes got the scare of her little chicken life yesterday. She and the girls were wandering the front yard, not ten steps from my front door and a fox came out of nowhere and tried to abduct her!

I'm thankful that I heard the commotion and ran out. He took off out to the back path, chickenless. But there was a mound of feathers on the lawn and I knew it was Agnes' feathers. I was praying it wasn't Agnes! It was only feathers, though, so I started doing the head count and calling them in.

Josephine was in the pen, Hilda & Bertha were behind the shed, the four bantams were under the pear tree, Mildred was in a nesting box and poor Agnes was hiding in the garden. I checked her over and there was no blood, so Mr. Fox only got a mouthful of feathers! She was terrified, though. Needless to say, they stayed in the pen the rest of the day.

I worry about letting them out now, even with me being there. I know raising chickens means dealing with predators. I've got the shotgun loaded and handy now. And god help that fox if I see him near my chickens again, because I'm fairly handy with a rifle, pistol and shotgun, but there's not much I can do if I'm not there. I know I just need to let it go and let nature take its course, but they're pets to me...feathered cats that lay eggs and whose poop makes good fertilizer!

Mmmm...granola

I've been wanting to make granola for a while now. I picked up organic rolled oats, milled here in Maine, when I picked up my order from KLFI and collected other odds and ends when I remembered, like golden raisins, dried cranberries, almonds, pecans, flax seeds, sunflower seeds and mini chocolate chips (because I like a little chocolate in my granola).

I read about 6 different recipes and eventually said to hell with it and did it my own way.

I threw the rolled oats in a bowl, added honey and melted butter (no idea how much, but kept adding until I felt that the oats were coated), mixed it all up, added pecans, almonds and flax seeds, mixed it up again and put it on a stoneware baking pan in a 350 degree oven.  I baked it for about 40 to 45 minutes, stirring it up every 10 minutes or so to get an even golden color throughout.

After I took it out of the oven, I let it rest for a bit, let it cool and put it back into the bowl so it could go into the fridge for an hour to really chill down (didn't want to be adding chocolate chips to mildly warm granola...talk about messy if I did!).  When it was finally cold, I added the raisins, cranberries, sunflower seeds and chocolate chips, and transferred it all to a giant glass container with a tight fitting lid (to keep the air out and the freshness in).

Talk about YUMMY! I've been eating this for breakfast and its really tasty.  Plus I have the added pleasure of knowing that I made it and that I have enough left over ingredients to make up another big batch...well, minus the rolled oats, but I'll pick up another pound or two of those with the next KFLI order. So the initial cost of making it gets spread out between two batches, which is better than spending nearly $5 a box for a granola cereal that will barely last me a week!

Chicken Day Spa

Last night, as I finished fencing the garden, the girls decided it was the perfect place for dust bathing and catching bugs. They spent a good 20 minutes rolling and kicking.

The video's poor quality. I only had my cell with me, rather than the new camera. Silly me, I didn't think I'd be videoing crazy chickens rolling around in compost and manure.