Making Haroset

Last Friday was Passover and although we aren’t Jewish, our family has long celebrated Passover from a Messianic Christian perspective.  We have a Passover Seder and have a big family celebration.  One of the favorite parts of the meal is eating the haroset.  Haroset comes from a Hebrew word meaning clay or mortar and in the Seder meal, it is meant to remind the Israelites of when they were slaves in Egypt and were forced to make bricks.  Haroset is a sweet dish made with apples, lemon juice, mango, pecans, honey and cinnamon.

In one part of the Seder, we eat bitter herbs (horseradish) on top of matzos to symbolize the bitterness of sin/slavery.  Our eyes fill with water as the horseradish clears our sinuses and we think about the bitterness of being in bondage – as a slave or as a slave to sin.  Then the very next thing we do in the Seder is to put more horseradish on top of matzos, but this time we cover it with Haroset and then eat it.  The sweetness of the haroset overwhelms the bitterness of the horseradish.  This symbolizes the Hope we have in Jesus as He covers our sin and gives us FREEDOM.

It is one of those times where the meal lasts for a couple of hours, filled with good food, fellowship, and meaningful storytelling.  We eat lamb (we hardly ever eat lamb), have great leftovers for a couple of days and that means the lady of the house doesn’t have to worry about cooking all weekend!  But one thing we always say every year is this, “Why is it that we only eat haroset on Passover?”  It is so good and spread on top of matzos is a great breakfast or snack.

There is no rule that states that you can only eat haroset during Passover.  In fact, I read online that Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream makes a haroset flavored ice cream.  Interesting!  If you’ve never tried it, here’s how we make it.  You can make it, too.  We follow the recipe from here: Splendidtable.org and here’s what you need to make this simple, but delicious dish:

v  2 Granny Smith apples

v  Juice of 1/2 lemon

v  1/2 cup fresh mango, peeled and diced

v  1/2 cup chopped toasted pecans

v  1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

v  1 tablespoon honey

v  1 tablespoon Port or sweet wine (we substitute grape juice)

Peel, core, and dice the apples and sprinkle with lemon juice.  Place all the ingredients in a food processor.  Pulse a couple of times to break it up and mix and then sit it in the fridge for a few hours for the flavors to meld.  Then it is time to eat.  Enjoy!

Haroset on Matzo

Haroset.  It’s not just for Passover anymore!

2016 Meat Birds at Nine Weeks Old

Last Saturday we butchered all of our Cornish Cross Meat Birds that met our butchering goal of 6 pounds since a 6 pound birds yields a 4 1/2 pound carcass. Out of 26 Cornish Cross meat birds, 13 of them met those standards.  We butchered them and they now reside in our deep freeze.  I figure that we'll probably butcher the remainder of the Cornish Cross birds this Saturday and that will leave just the Red Rangers to grow for another 4 weeks.

With 13 less mouths to feed in the chicken tractor, I was thinking that the birds would have more space around the feed trough and thus less competition for feed and they should grow faster.  Let's see how that theory played out.  Since the Cornish-X bird we were tracking with the zip tie around his leg was butchered, I just grabbed an average sized bird out of the 13 left.

One of the remaining 13 Cornish Cross birds being weighed

Whoa!  How about that!  He weighs 6 1/2 pounds.  Yes, he's ready to go on Saturday.

6 1/2 pounds

The Red Ranger still has his zip tie on so I brought him into the garage for weighing.

Red Ranger sitting on the scale

Now this is mighty strange.  This week the Red Ranger weighs exactly 2 pounds 15 ounces.

2 pounds 15 ounces

That is not good at all.  He weighed 2 pounds 15 ounces last week!  What's going on here?  My theory tested out for the Cornish Cross birds, but not the Red Rangers. To be honest, I don't know what happened there.  

As the table above shows, the Cornish X bird grew about a pound from last week and weighs a pound and a quarter more than at the same time last year.  The Red Ranger (disappointingly) weighs exactly the same as last week, but is still 10 ounces heavier than at the same time last year.  Hopefully, he'll resume a nice weight gain again. 

We'll butcher all of the remaining Cornish Cross birds this Saturday and then that will leave just the roughly 25 Red Rangers in the Chicken Tractor to grow for another (maybe) four more weeks before butchering.  

Work Hard and Then Play Hard

This past Saturday we worked our rear ends off.  After doing the normal milking and feeding and regular chores, we pitched in and butchered about half of our Cornish Cross Meat Birds.  Then we cleaned everything up and headed out across the road to pick more dewberries along the levee and ditch.  I guess we picked another gallon of berries to freeze.  Tricia made a fresh dewberry pie with homemade crust and it was sweet. We savored every forkful as we sat outside with a cup of coffee.

As we looked at the big blue tub of chicken carcasses chilling, we remarked about how hard we had worked.  The afternoon was perfect, with a nice breeze blowing. We had more work ahead of us later on as we had to re-sharpen our knives to cut up the chickens into our standard 8 piece cut-up - actually nine pieces if you count the neck/back/ribcage portion that we use to make delicious and healthy chicken stock with.  As I smacked my purple lips, dyed by the dewberries, I said, "C'mon ya'll - we work hard and we're gonna play hard."  "Time for a treat."

We loaded up in the car and drove into town to our favorite old Drive Inn - The Rocket.  The Rocket Drive Inn is a fixture in Jennings.  I wish I could have found out when it first opened, but I can't find it anywhere.  I do see that Mrs. JoAnn has owned it for 38 years, but I don't know if she is the original owner/operator. Jennings is big enough where it has most of the big-name fast food chains, but in my book, The Rocket outshines them all.  The chain places don't even come close.

The Rocket Drive Inn in Jennings, Louisiana

On this particular day since we just had homemade pie and coffee, we didn't order food.  Instead for a little treat, Russ and Tricia ordered milkshakes and Benjamin and I had Root Beer Floats.  We sat at one of the tables under the awning and enjoyed the ambiance of old school Drive Inns at its best.  It was a little like stepping back in time.  It's off the beaten path a little ways and most travelers getting off Interstate 10 for refreshments don't make it this far before being lured away by Popeye's, McDonalds, Burger King, Taco Bell, Sonic and Wendy's, to name a few.

That means its mostly locals who sidle up to the window and place their orders. The menu is expansive and varied.  There are items such as Tasso Sandwich, Egg Sandwich, Grilled Liver, etc. New additions such as Fried Pickles, Natchitoches Meat Pies, Sweet Potato Turnovers, etc. are painted on the windows.  The service is polite and friendly and you wait for your meal as it is made to order by friendly people with smiling faces.

The Rocket Drive Inn wouldn't be complete without a rocket out front.  It has a light on the very tip of the rocket.  A nest of birds had made a nest in the very bottom of the rocket, so the engines haven't fired off any time soon, but it is poised for take-off.  By the time I walked back to the table, our thick milkshakes and root beer floats were almost gone.

The namesake of our favorite Drive Inn

I haven't found anything on the menu that isn't delicious.  Their old fashioned Cheeseburger is goooood.  The bun is buttered and toasted on the griddle.  The meat is fresh and hand-formed - not the cookie-cutter frozen patty from a box in the freezer.  Fresh cut tomatoes and onions and lettuce and some pickles adorn this masterpiece.  Eat one of these and you'll never pull through the drive through of Mickey D's or BK for a burger again.  The old fashioned onion rings hit the spot.  

I really like the catfish sandwich.  This is a fried catfish fillet (not a frozen square cod patty).  Banana splits and ice cream in a bunch of different flavors are also delicious  options.

Image Credit

We generally like to grow and produce most of our food on our little farm, but sometimes the milkmaid (Tricia) needs a break from the kitchen.  On those occasions, The Rocket Drive Inn, with its nostalgia, good food and friendly service, is on the launch pad right there on Shankland Avenue, ready to blast off!  (Okay, I'm hungry for one of those burgers now!)

Thanks for the Memories, Penelope...

Born: ?  Died 04/25/2016

We have some sad news to report today.  Just yesterday in a post we talked about eating 4 of Penelope the Peahen's eggs for breakfast.  This afternoon Benjamin was picking dewberries on the side of the road and came across Penelope.  She was dead - apparently the victim of a motor vehicle accident.  Benjamin came back to the house and told him mom.  We were sad.  Poor old gal.

She was just a big old bird, but she had been around for, I guess, about 3 years now and we had grown attached to her.  Her formal name was Penelope, but lots of times, I'd call her "P," for short. She was quirky and had a neat personality.  Penelope looked regal with her 'headdress.'  She'd fly over the fence and strut around the yard, walking like an Egyptian, we'd joke. As we drove to church yesterday morning, we looked out and she was strutting across the neighbor's side yard.  We made up a silly song about her and laughed at her wandering ways. 

She would come and go as she pleased.  We didn't purchase her - she kind of purchased us.  She just showed up one day and stayed around.  In the evenings she would fly to the very top of either a live oak tree or a pecan tree and roost for the night, safe from predators.  Although we live in what I would say is "the country," the blacktop road in front of the house is a busy road, with people coming and going and driving quite fast - too fast, to be honest.

Penelope got a little too brave for her own good and got out on the road.  Poor Penelope wasn't prepared for the vehicles that speed up and down the road and met her cruel ate.  We'll miss that big old goofy bird.  Thanks for the memories, P!

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

1 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

2 A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

3 A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

4 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

5 A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

6 A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

7 A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

8 A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

Can You Eat a Peacock Egg?

Of course not!  Peacocks don't lay eggs.  They are males.  If I correctly phrase the question to, "Can you eat the egg of a peahen?" well, then the answer is, "Of course you can!"  Penelope the Peahen lays between 4 - 8 eggs each year and because we don't have a peacock, they are not fertile.  In prior years she would set on them and it was a little futile watching her dutifully sit on her eggs when none were going to hatch.

Penelope the Peahen

This year we decided to go ahead and pick up her eggs.  They are noticeably larger than our chickens' eggs.

Here is a comparison that shows Penelope's egg on the left and one of our hens' eggs on the right.

In a week's time, Penelope laid four eggs and we picked each of them up.  She laid them in the grass, just out on the ground.  In prior years she laid her eggs on top of the flat roof of the goat barn.

Four peahen eggs

So, back to our original question, Can you eat them?  Yes, according to what I've read, they taste no different than chicken eggs, but we're going to find out this morning for breakfast.  I cracked her four eggs into a glass container to scramble them along with one chicken egg to show a comparison in size of the yolks.  You can see that a peahen's yolk in much larger.  I found in cracking her eggs, that the eggshell was harder than that of a chicken egg and the underlying membrane was harder to break. The yolk seemed to comprise a bigger percentage of the egg as opposed to a chicken egg.

Four peahen eggs and one chicken egg

Tricia sauteed some mushrooms, peppers and onions in a skillet.

And I scrambled the peahen eggs, adding some fresh ground pepper and kosher salt.

Scrambling up Penelope's eggs

When the vegetables were ready, we poured the peahen eggs in the skillet and cooked until done.

We were a little cautious at first in trying a new thing.  What would it taste like? Would it have a strong, wild taste?  We weren't sure, but we soon found out.  They were good!  We couldn't really distinguish a taste any different from our chicken's eggs.  We could get used to eating peahen eggs.  With the large size of them, it takes fewer of them to feed our family.  The only problem is that with Penelope only laying between 4-8 eggs a year, we'd best not count on Penelope to feed us.  We'll stick with chicken eggs.

2016 Meat Birds at 8 Weeks Old

Tonight is potentially the last weigh-in for most of the Cornish Cross Meat Birds. At eight weeks old under normal circumstances, the Cornish Cross chickens are ready to be processed and put into the freezer.  Our goal is a 6 pound bird.  Tonight we'll see if the Cornish Cross we've been weighing every Thursday night for the last 8 weeks is ready.

Benjamin had a track meet tonight and we got back late.  That's okay.  The lights were shining brightly in the chicken tractor.  I pushed it forward one length and then jumped inside to see if I could located the two birds I marked with zip ties on their legs.  We had a gully washer (2 inch rain) today, so the birds were wet.  I got a little wet myself climbing into the chicken tractor with 50 birds in it.

The Chicken Tractor at night

I put them in my 5 gallon bucket and trudged back to the garage.  Then I place them on top of my workbench for a side by side view.  Yeah, the Cornish Cross is markedly larger than the Red Ranger.

Cornish Cross (left) and Red Ranger (right)

Cornish Cross gets weighed first.  He's pretty heavy.  We'll see if he hit the 6 pound mark...

And....

Yes he did.  Six pounds and 3 ounces to be exact

Tipping the scale at 6 lb. 3 oz.

In looking at the table below, the Cornish Cross gained 5 ounces since last week. Old Boy has been gaining about a pound each week.  This week his weight gain fell off, but he's still a whopping 2 pounds and 1 ounce heavier than last year's birds at this juncture!

It's the Red Ranger's turn to get weighed.  He promptly sits down.

Red Ranger weighs how much?

The Red Ranger weighs 2 pounds 15 ounces this week.

2 pounds and 15 ounces

Let's look at our comparative figures.  Well, this is interesting.  The Red Ranger gained 5 ounces this week.  The same weight gain as the Cornish X and he's 11 ounces heavier than the Red Rangers at this same time last year.

So what does all this mean?  Well, it means that Saturday we'll be butchering most of the Cornish Cross meat birds ~ about 25 of them.  I will weigh them, however, and if any are substantially lighter than 6 pounds, we'll throw 'em back and let 'em grow for a while.  Since the quantity butchered in this batch is low, we'll likely pluck the 25 birds by hand as the Whiz Bang Chicken Plucker is at a friend's house.  The Red Rangers will continue to grow and forage on the pasture for another 3-4 weeks until it's their turn for processing.  Having most of the Cornish Cross meat birds gone will give the Red Rangers more room in the chicken tractor and, most importantly, more room at the feed trough.

We'll show some of the chicken processing pictures from Chicken Butchering Saturday and we'll meet here again next Thursday to weigh the Red Ranger.  By that time all the Cornish Cross meat birds will be frozen solid in the freezer.

Making Beet Kvass with the last of the Bull's Blood Beets

I harvested the last of the Bull’s Blood Beets and we roasted them in the oven.  Tricia reserved 3 of the fattest beets to make a beverage that we hadn’t made in a while – Beet Kvass.  Kvass is a word that means “leaven” or “fermented” and has been around since the Middle Ages. THIS ARTICLE talks a bit more about the history of kvass, where it originated, and how it is made.

Kvass is a very popular drink in Russia and Eastern European countries.  I found it interesting that when western soft drinks reduced the consumption of kvass in Russia, they began marketing it as a patriotic alternative to colas and cola sales fell dramatically.  In response to this loss of market share, Coca-Cola introduced its own brand of kvass.

With the last of the Bull’s Blood Beets, we decided to make beet kvass.  It is a very healthy lacto-fermented drink and we use the recipe from Sally Fallon in the Nourishing Traditions cook book.  Here’s what the cookbook says about the nutritive benefits of beet kvass:

“This drink is valuable for its medicinal qualities and as a digestive aid.  Beets are just loaded with nutrients.  One 4-ounce glass, morning and night, is an excellent blood tonic, cleanses the liver and is a good treatment for kidney stones and other ailments.”  This beverage is non-alcoholic, but the directions in the recipe state that you should chop and not grate the beets as grated beets release too much liquid and will cause it to ferment too quickly.  That will produce alcohol rather than lactic acid.

To make Beet Kvass, you’ll need some fresh picked beets – 3 of them to be exact.

Fresh Beets

We peel them with a potato peeler...

Beet Pulp

And then chop up into pieces of peeled beets.  The beet pulp can be composted or fed to the cows or chickens.

Chop in half and then just cut up into smaller pieces

The beautiful red color stains your fingers and cutting board!

Caught 'red-handed'

Then you simply place your chopped up beets, ¼ cup whey* and 2 teaspoons kosher salt into a half gallon mason jar and add filtered water to fill the container.

*Whey is a by-product when making yogurt or kefir when the milk separates into curds and whey after standing at room temperature for 1-2 days.  Whey is a good preservative.

Back to the recipe, stir the ingredients well and screw the lid on tightly and then keep out at room temperature for 2 days and then transfer to the refrigerator.  The beets immediately turn the liquid bright red and bubbles cover the neck of the jar, letting you know that it is fermenting.

Half-Gallon of Beet Kvass

When you are finished drinking the half gallon of beet kvass, you can make another batch by refilling the jar with water and sitting at room temperature for 2 more days.  How does it taste, you ask?  Well, it is salty, tangy and bubbly, with a hint of sweetness from the beets.  I won’t say it is delicious, although Tricia really likes it, but it is good and knowing that it is healthy for you makes it easy to drink 4 ounces in the morning and 4 ounces at night until it is gone. 

  

Food from the Ditch

Well that sounds disgusting, doesn’t it?  Not really.  The property just over the road that runs in front of our home is overgrown.  It hasn’t been planted in rice or soybeans in about five years (maybe more than that) and small trees are starting to grow up where agricultural crops once grew.  That doesn’t mean that there’s nothing edible in there, though.

Each year around this time, we keep a watchful eye for blooms in the ditch across the road that signal the soon arrival of dewberries.  Dewberries are a little bigger and juicier than blackberries.  They also ripen a little earlier than blackberries in our area.  They have runners that have a red tinge to them with thorns and they fill the levee and ditch across the road.

Ripe Dewberries

That’s when we get containers and spread out along the roadside ditch looking for berries.  In addition to looking out for dewberries, Tricia also looks out for snakes.

Mom & Son berry pickin'

We generally use quart-sized yogurt or sour cream containers and then have a larger bowl or colander that we dump into as we fill our cups.  With Tricia, Benjamin and I picking, it didn’t take long at all to harvest a gallon from the roadside.  What an easy crop!  You don’t have to plant it, weed it, water it, or tend to it.  The Good Lord takes care of all of that for you.

A quart of fresh berries

Since dewberries have thorns, we get scratched up when picking them, but that’s just part of it.  Usually the plumpest berry is in the hardest to reach place, and you must stick your hand deep into the bushes to get the best ones.  A lot of them will bust in your hand, leaving you with purple fingers.  And of course, you have to eat a few just right off the vine.  It doesn’t get any fresher than that!

A handful of dewberries

We’ll bring them in and wash them up as there are countless little critters like stink bugs and worms crawling on them.  You have to handle them carefully, though because you don’t want them to bust open and lose all the sweet juice that is within the purple-black berry. 

Cleaned up

Once they are completely dry, we’ll process them to separate the juice from the pulp and seeds.

Ready for processing

Then we’ll make dewberry jelly, dewberry pie or muffins, or Tricia will make a syrup by cooking down the juice with a little honey or sugar and we’ll pour that into homemade ice cream to make dewberry ice cream.  That has become a family favorite.  Lots of people buy their own blackberry or dewberry canes to grow and I’ve often thought about buying some and planting them in the yard, especially the thornless varieties, but as long as they grow on their own in the ditch across the road for free, well… I think I’ll just continue letting them grow on their own.

That reminds me.  I don’t think a gallon is near enough.  Benjamin spotted more dewberries growing a little farther down the ditch.  I think I’ll go pick them some more after work today.

Putting Seedlings in the Garden

I’ve been nurturing 9 different varieties of heirloom tomatoes that I planted from seed, hardening them off on the back patio and giving them some fish emulsion to feed them and make them happy and green.

Heirloom Tomato Seedlings

Same thing with two different varieties of cucumbers and 4 different varieties of yellow squash and zucchini.  Thanks to nice weather and mild temperatures, they’ve grown from this:

Cukes, Yellow Squash & Zuccs

 To this in 5 days:

My, how you've grown!

Saturday morning once chores were done, I was champing at the bit to get all those seedlings out of the seed pots and into some soil.  That requires a little work, so I began turning over the soil in the rows with my ‘Cheap-o’ Garden shovel from Harbor Freight.  Yeah, it isn’t a quality tool that will last forever, but at $5 it was priced right and you know what?  It gets the job done. 

Shovel-Ready Job

In a post from a couple of days ago, we talked about earthworms.  I discovered a bunch of earthworms while working up the rows.  Five years ago, there weren’t many earthworms at all in the garden.  Now, due to soil amendments and composting, I hit worms with every shovel.  In the post from the other day, I mentioned the clitellem.  That is the part of the worm that is nearest the head.  If you chop an earthworm in half, the half with the clitellum will likely survive and grow a new tail.  In the photo below, you can see the clitellum (raised band) on the left hand side, and that tells you that the earthworm’s head is on the left and tail is on the right.

Heads or Tails?

While we’re discussing that, I also wanted to show you firsthand the benefits of composting and amending your soil with organic matter.  I turned over soil that exposed a four inch layer of mostly rotten hay/leaves.  This organic matter does several things.  First, the organic matter retains moisture in the soil and that comes in handy during the hot, dry months that lie ahead.  Next, it gives the soil some structure and loosens things up so it doesn’t pack tightly after a rain.  Finally, I find that it is a magnet for earthworms.  It is a little hard to see, but if you look at the chopped piece of grass below, the end of it is pointing at a fat earthworm.  He’s working hard to produce castings to get my seedlings off to a healthy start.

Organic matter in the soil

In no time at all I had 24 feet worked up and began to work on the next 14 foot section.  The remaining piece of the row is currently occupied with Chioggia Beets and I’ll be harvesting that in a day or two.

Working up hills for squash

I like to sprinkle some chicken manure to the soil before pulling up the rows on top of it.  That’ll allow the roots to dig down and hit the fertilizer and then take off.

The chicken's contribution to the garden

Benjamin and Tricia helped me and we got them all planted.  Now we’ll just watch them grow and patiently wait until we have red ripe tomatoes, cucumbers and squash to harvest and enjoy.  Is gardening and tending to meat birds, milk cows, and dairy goats hard work?  You bet!  But the benefits are worthwhile, in my opinion.  I like what Joel Salatin says about it:

A Natural Privacy Hedge Out Back

At the southernmost border of our property on our little 5 acre homestead is a fence that we put up on our property line.  It keeps the animals in and hopefully keeps critters out that have an appetite for chickens.  There is a little patch of woods behind the property line.  During the spring and summer, even though it is not my property, I like to keep a 96 inch mowed strip to separate the fence (our land) from the "jungle."

Don't get me wrong, I like the "jungle."  It is shady and cool, providing an overhang onto our property that the cows, goats, and chickens enjoy - especially during the summer.  As I walked along the fence line today, bringing a bucket of water to the pullets in the chicken tractor, my nose picked up a familiar, sweet scent.  The smell was that of the blooms of Chinese Privet.

Privet

Chinese privet is in the Ligustrum family.  THIS ARTICLE tells us that this plant was brought over to the US in 1852 as an ornamental shrub and, like other things (nutria!), escaped and became an invasive species, taking over the understory in many Louisiana forests and across the south.  Its presence has been documented in every Louisiana parish.  It thrives in the shade and grows so quickly you can almost watch it increase in size as it expands its scope.  I will need to mow the little boundary strip quickly to stop its encroachment onto our land.

It makes beautiful, fragrant white flowers that fill the spring air with sweet fragrance.  That's one positive feature, I guess, but many are allergic to it.  After the blooms fade a small purple-black fruit appears that birds eat.  Another positive is that it serves as a great privacy hedge.  I can remember as a young boy making many forts and camps amidst the branches of sprawling privet and wax myrtle trees.  I can also remember not so good memories about the privet. The leaves of the branches can be stripped off, leaving a switch that whirs through the air and can be used to introduce discipline to an unruly boy's rear end.  As a recipient of such instruction, I can testify to the efficacy the privet switch as a tool to bring about sudden attitude adjustment!

Privet Blooms

In reading a little more about Chinese Privet HERE, I learned that it is used as an herbal medicine by boiling and making tea to treat diarrhea, stomach ulcers, bowel problems, chapped lips, and sore throats.  The leaves and bark can be boiled to make a tea to help chemotherapy patients regain their appetites - although it is very bitter.  I guess the thought is if you drink it, the taste is so bad, you'll want to eat something to get the taste out of your mouth!  Good to know that the privacy hedge out back also is a pharmacy should we ever need it.