An Alternative to Sonic Chili Cheese Tots

One of my favorite 'junk food' things to eat is Extreme Tots from Sonic.  If you aren't familiar with that, it is tater tots in a foot long hot dog container that are topped with chili, cheese, onions, and jalapenos.  Oh my goodness, just thinking about it makes me smile.

It's not very good for you, though.  In fact, my wife would tell you that it is more toxic than week old chicken salad in an unplugged refrigerator.  So we're going to make our own, from mostly homegrown and homemade stuff. 

First, we start out with some freshly dug new potatoes.  We store these in the 'mud room,' a room that we kick our shoes off in when we come in the house.  Potatoes are supposed to be stored in a cool, dark place.  This little room has it's own air conditioning vent and we keep the door closed, so it fits the bill nicely.


Potato Storage Room

We pull out a handful or two of nice potatoes and wash them up.  You aren't supposed to wash them prior to storage as you want them dry in order to avoid rotting, so you wash them when you're ready to cook them.  Once they are washed, cut them into manageable pieces.  Chop, chop, chop...

Red and white potatoes

In one of the few things advertised on TV that I've ever seen Tricia buy, this is it.  A vegetable mandolin that chops, dices, slices, and cubes anything you put in it, including your fingers if you aren't careful.  Tricia pulled it out and put the cut up potatoes on the rack, pressed down the handle and it chopped the potatoes into little blocks - tater tot sized, you might say.  The mandolin is a pretty nifty little kitchen gadget.  I'm still more partial to the mandolin musical instrument though.  Bruce Hornsby might tell you to listen to the mandolin rain.


The mandolin

Here are the cut up potatoes right out of the mandolin.


Tater tot sized

We toss them in some olive oil and arrange on some stoneware baking pans and put them into the oven to roast.  You could add any number of herbs at this point.  We generally add a bunch of rosemary along with the olive oil to roast.  The flavor is great, but for our meal tonight, we'll just go with some olive oil, kosher salt and black pepper.

One thing about kitchen gadgets is the clean up.  You know what I'm talking about.  So while we have it out, we'll use it for something else.  We have a lot of tomatoes and jalapenos coming out of the garden right now, so we'll use it to dice up a bunch of tomatoes, jalapenos, and onions to make some Pico de Gallo to put on top of our tots.

Chop, chop, chop

Add some lemon juice and salt and pepper to the container.  During the winter and early spring, we have a lot of cilantro that we harvest and freeze in ice cube trays.  Add a cube or two of cilantro to the tomatoes, onions, peppers, lemon juice, and salt and pepper.


Adding cilantro

And here we have it, folks, some homemade Pico de Gallo.  I could eat this whole bowl.  The name means beak of the rooster in Spanish.  Who knows why it is called that?  I read somewhere that people used to eat it by pinching it between their thumb and index finger, like the beak of a rooster.  Odd, I know.  We eat ours on chips or with a fork.

Pico de Gallo

Ahh!  The potatoes are done.  We'll go ahead and pull them out of the oven and we have chili all made.  So we can say grace to ask the Good Lord to bless this good food and we can start serving...


Hot Potatoes right outta the oven!

It may not look like it, but this is a monstrous pile of food on my plate.  Tricia looked at it as we sat down and remarked, "Going on a trip?"  It has many layers of good items layered in there: roasted potatoes, chili, fresh pico de gallo, and some grated homemade cheese from Rosie's milk on top. 


Extreme Tots - Our Maker's Acres Edition

We enjoyed our meal.  It was delicious.  Sorry Sonic, we made our own Extreme Tots tonight!

High Cotton

There is an old saying that goes something like this: "You're in High Cotton!"  It is usually said in the context of something good, favorable or positive that has happened to someone.  An example would be if someone drives up in a new vehicle - one might say to that person, "Wow, man, you are in high cotton!"



Growing up on the farm, I heard this expression a lot, especially from my Dad.  We didn't grow cotton.  In fact cotton hadn't been grown around or on our farm in many years, although the name of the road that our farm is located on is Cottongin Road.  There probably was an old cotton gin on that road a long time ago, but I'd have to ask around to find out where it was and how long ago it was there. 

The fact that we didn't grow cotton didn't cloud our understanding of what the saying meant.  Things were good!  Literally, the highest cotton was the healthiest plants.  The healthiest plants produced the biggest and most bolls, resulting in terrific yields and profit.  High cotton was a very good thing, just as high soybeans or other crops.  Well, scratch that.  My high corn blew down in the storm, but you get my point.

Anyway, in 1 Thessalonians 5:18, the Good Book tells us, "In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you."  Admittedly, this is a lot easier said than done.  Especially when the storms of life blow in and you're faced with what seems like a never ending stream of calamities.  I'm often tempted to fall into discouragement.  Have you ever felt that way?  I sure have.

There is an old gospel song we still sing at church called "Count your Blessings".  Perhaps you know it.  Here are the lyrics:

1. When upon life’s billows you are tempest-tossed,
   When you are discouraged, thinking all is lost,
   Count your many blessings, name them one by one,
   And it will surprise you what the Lord hath done.
   
   • Refrain:
     Count your blessings, name them one by one,
     Count your blessings, see what God hath done!
     Count your blessings, name them one by one,
     *Count your many blessings, see what God hath done.
     [*And it will surprise you what the Lord hath done.]
2. Are you ever burdened with a load of care?
   Does the cross seem heavy you are called to bear?
   Count your many blessings, every doubt will fly,
   And you will keep singing as the days go by.
3. When you look at others with their lands and gold,
   Think that Christ has promised you His wealth untold;
   Count your many blessings—*money cannot buy [*wealth can never buy]
   Your reward in heaven, nor your home on high.
4. So, amid the conflict whether great or small,
   Do not be discouraged, God is over all;
   Count your many blessings, angels will attend,
   Help and comfort give you to your journey’s end.

Sometimes, many times, we are so blessed even amidst our trials.  You don't have to have riches and fancy things to be happy.  Many times simplicity IS one of the keys to happiness.  Simple things are a blessing.  For example, here is a funny thing I was thinking about just the other day that illustrates the point about simplicity and being content:  When I was growing up, opening a can of sardines was a real treat!  My brother and I would go outside (because they stunk up the house), open up the can of sardines with the little key that came wrapped in the cellophane and pull those little fish out of the can with a plastic fork and we'd gobble them down.  YUM! or YUCK! depending on your perspective!

Some mighty fine eating, right there.

Opening a can of sardines was a positive thing for us.  Sometimes, we'd even get the fancy sardines that were packed in mustard or Louisiana Hot Sauce.  High Cotton, indeed!  We would, however, have to climb on top of the grey Oldsmobile station wagon with the simulated wood grain veneer on the sides to eat them up on the luggage rack in order to get away from the cats who would invariably come running at the scent.  It's all a matter of perspective.  How are we going to view things?

Whether life throws us delicious canned sardines or smelly little fish, it is all a matter of perspective.  (Someone pass the breath mints, please.)  We don't have to look around long to find others in much worse predicaments than we find ourselves in.  And we have a Good God, a loving, supportive family, a roof over our heads, a full stomach, etc. etc.  If we are honest, we must admit, we're in HIGH COTTON!

Butchering Chickens at Our Maker's Acres Family Farm

Saturday morning had been circled on our calendars for a little over 8 weeks.  Chicken Butchering Day - a day anticipated with dread by both us and the birds, no doubt.  Butchering roughly 70 chickens is a lot of work.  A lot of hot, nasty, smelly, unpleasant work - but it has to be done.  This is the second post on butchering meat birds.  You can use the search function on the blog to find the earlier post, if you're interested.  I'm posting on this subject again because, well, we do it differently every time.  We try to improve the process each time we butcher.  I'm not saying our process is the best way to do it.  It is probably not the best way to do it, but it works for us.  This post is a little heavy on photos and probably verbiage, so grab a cup of coffee and get settled in for the duration, if you're interested.

The night before butchering, we try to get the different butchering stations set up, but the previous evening I was picking Benjamin up at Boy Scout Camp, so I had to set up the stations once we finished milking the fist thing Saturday morning.  We have several stations.  First we have the holding pen in which all of the birds are moved to a location close to the butchering process.  Moving them is accomplished by capturing them by net and removing them from the chicken tractor and putting them in a wagon for the short trip to death row.

Wagon of Tears

The wagon is pulled by our lawn tractor, with 18 horses of unbridled pulling power, more than up to the task of transporting the Cornish Cross chickens to their final destination.  We found that the little red wagon will hold 20 birds, so four trips was all it took to transport the inmates.  We do have to put a covering on the wagon as we had several escapees on the first haul.  Why did the chicken cross the road?  Well, to try to avoid being butchered, of course. 

The rooster cruiser

We set up the holding pen on our cement driveway.  Previous times, we've held them on grass.  We don't feed them for the last 18 hour period to ensure their intestinal tracts are cleaned out and have found that if kept on grass, they'll eat the grass and make gutting them messier.  Speaking of messy, once we're done, all the mess is sprayed off of the driveway with a water hose.  No big deal.


The State "Pen" (Ha Ha)

This, my friends, is death row.  If they were waiting for a call from the governor, pardoning them, I regret to inform you that the call from Governor Jindal never came.  The holding pen is built in a triangle.  These guys are in the chute, a contraption built by a good friend in which we funnel the chickens into and then reach in, pick them up, and carry them to the killing cones.  

Death Row

These are the killing cones.  Actually, they are re-purposed traffic pylons in which I cut the tops out of and screwed them between two 2 X 4's upside down.  They make a perfect cone and the rubbery texture holds them tightly for the gory deed that is about to take place.  You can purchase stainless steel cones made especially for this purchase, but I find that the price is much better on these:)


Killing Cone

The chicken is placed head-down in the cone and then I use a very sharp knife to cut the artery which is right beneath the chicken's 'ear'.  You can see the blood flowing vigorously as the chickens heart pumps all his blood out.  Bleeding the bird out like this makes the meat cleaner without the blood clots that you see around the joints of some birds.  We capture all the blood to be composted into the garden.  Nothing on these birds will go to waste, except maybe the cluck.

The blood-letting exercise

Once the bird is dead, you'll move him to the scalding station.  It is imperative that the water temperature is held between 145 and 150 degrees Fahrenheit.  Too cool and the birds' feathers will not come off.  Too hot and you'll cook him and the bird will be torn apart in the plucker.  You'll need a thermometer to monitor the water temperature and a person manning or "womaning" the scalding station that will maintain proper temperature levels.  If it is too hot, simply spray some water into the scalding pot.  If it is too cool, turn up the flame on your burner.

Monitoring your temperature

We use a crawfish boiling pot as our scalder with a butane burner that heats up the water.  A splash or two of Dawn dishwashing liquid seems to help the feather removal process.
 

A hot pot

The bird is dunked in and out of the scalding pot to ensure that the feathers are getting all wet.  Dunk down past the drumstick joint to make sure that the entire bird gets scalded.  I normally dunk 30 times, but you can tell when the chicken is ready when a wing feather and tail feather are able to be pulled out with ease.  Once that occurs, then you are ready for the next station. 

Scalding the birds

The next station is the defeathering station.  This is performed by our homemade Whiz Bang Chicken Plucker.  While it may not look impressive, stylish, or aerodynamic, this contraption is a thing of beauty - an engineering marvel.  I'd put it right up there with Eli Whitney's cotton gin or Samuel Colt's interchangeable parts, but I'm a bit biased, I suppose.  We got the plans off of the Internet and it is put together with things that you might find in any landfill.


Behold The Whiz Bang Chicken Plucker

Here is a look into the belly of the beast.  The disk at the bottom spins when turned on and the rubber fingers on the spinning disk and the stationary rubber fingers on the barrel briskly removes the feathers. 

Feathers don't stand a chance in here

This next picture is an action shot, showing the bird in the spin cycle.  His feathers are being liberated from his nude carcass.  While he spins, you spray him down with a water hose and the feathers fly off of him, against the walls of the barrel and to the ground below.  These feathers will all be composted into the garden.

The Spin Cycle

This process takes all of about 30 seconds.  When you turn off the machine, you have a completely de-feathered bird.  While I walk him to the next station, I do a quick quality control job and see if there are any pin feathers remaining.  Usually there are none, but I have been known to miss a few.  The chief inspector in charge of oversight (Tricia) will promptly notify me of my omission.

The next thing that happens is we remove the bird's heads.  We simply pull the heads off.  We don't want to dull our knives cutting the head and a cut head would leave a sharp point that would cut the Zip Loc freezer bag.
 

Off with their heads...

It's really easy.  Just use leverage and pull and the head snaps off with no problem.  It takes a little practice, but stay calm.  Don't lose your head.


Pop!

Once the head is gone you will remove the feet so that you provide the person staffing the eviscerating station a clean, defeathered, beheaded, defooted bird all ready to be gutted.
 

Jean LaFeet

And here we go.  Two nice, beautiful birds.  Aren't they pretty?  Except, I spot a feather that my quality control guy (me) missed.  Can you see it?
 


Ready for the Evisceration Station (Think of the movie 'Brave Heart')

We won't go into all the details of gutting a chicken as we've shown that before.  Simply search "How to gut a chicken" in the search parameters of the blog and it will pull up how we do it.  Below you can see Tricia in the process of gutting three birds. 

It is a pretty quick process that involves cutting a slit in the neck and loosening the crop and windpipe, cutting a slit right above the vent (nice name for the butt hole), opening the slit up and reaching waayyy up into the cavity of the bird, grabbing the heart and pulling it all out.  You'll have a long trail of intestine, gizzard, liver, heart, crop and windpipe.  Then simply cut the vent out that is attached to the intestine and reach in an scrape the lungs out of the ribcage.  Then cut the oil gland off of the tail.

Save the heart, liver and gizzards to put on ice to clean and bag for later and throw the rest of the guts into the compost bucket.  You'll want to bury this in the garden or you'll have more flies than Lord of the Flies.


Gutting chickens

Once they are gutted, we wash them off real good and toss them into cooling tanks.  The birds are hot and you want to cool them down quickly.  Keeping them submerged also protects them from the flies which are sure to come once you start butchering.  

Cooling tanks

Once we finish butchering all of the birds, we dump the water off and pack them in ice to age for the rest of the day.  You can purchase tanks to do this, but we use cattle mollasses tubs that we normally catch rainwater in.  I just clean them up real good with bleach.

Chillin' in the hot tub

In the late afternoon once it starts to cool down, we remove them from the ice and weigh each bird and label each gallon freezer bag with the weight.  Then we cut the bird into a standard 8 piece cut up and later move into the freezer.


The finished product of a hard day's work

We ended up with 68 birds.  We started out with 104.  That equates to a 35% mortality rate.  We've never experienced that type loss before.  For the first two weeks, every day we'd find 2 or 3 or 4 dead.  It was frustrating.  I think we just got a weak batch of birds.  C'est La Vie.  Of the 68 birds we butchered, they yielded total carcass weight of 266.75 pounds, averaging 3.92 pounds per bird.  This was also smaller than our previous birds' carcass weights.  I attribute this to the heat.  When it is hot, the big birds are lazy and don't eat as much as the Spring birds.  They just sit in the shade all day.

Discouraging? A bit.  But we can't complain.  We have a freezer full of healthy, home raised birds that we can enjoy all year long.  I can't cry fowl.

The sun sets on a busy Saturday

We were busier than one armed wall paper hangers today.  Not only were there the normal chores to do, but today was Meat Bird Butchering Day and we worked hard and it was hot.  My eyes are wanting to shut and my tired body is wanting to get horizontal in my bed.

Never fear, I took plenty of pictures to document the butchering process and I'll post those tomorrow.  For now, I'll be short and sweet and post a few pictures that remind me of how I'm feeling.  Here is Old Red the rooster, rounding up his crew for bedtime.

C'mon Y'all.  It is time for bed!

As the sun slowly sinks below the horizon, an honest day's work is over.  It makes you feel good to work hard and have the reward of a comfortable bed in a cool house beckoning you for a good night's rest.


Good Night, Everyone!



June 2013 Crop Report

Summertime is upon us and every afternoon I grab the produce bucket and make my way down each row, picking vegetables that are ripe and checking the progress of growth (and pests).  It is always so rewarding to see months of hard work pay off with a bountiful harvest of good, fresh vegetables to eat, preserve, and share with family and friends.

Here is a pictorial progress report of our crop.  First we have a pot full of four types of beans, including Roma Italian green beans, Contender green beans, Dragon Tongue Beans, and Chinese Mosaic Long Beans.  They are accompanied by some freshly dug, new red and white potatoes.  That is a pot of good eating, right there.


Pot full of goodness

We have a wheel barrow that is filled with hay and some yellow squash.  Tricia made this into a nice squash casserole.  You can't beat it. 

Yellow squash

Small Money maker tomatoes are coming in as well.  Tricia uses these to make Mexican rice with gizzards from our meat birds.  I was never a big fan of gizzards, but they are growing on me as long as they are cooked down so they're not rubbery.


Money Maker tomatoes

We pick a handful of nice cucumbers each and every afternoon.  We can't eat these fast enough.  Sometimes the heat really takes its toll on our cucumbers, but so far they are holding up well and producing.


Organic pickling cucumber

The Chinese Mosaic Long beans vined up the trellis with vines 10 feet long and growing.  We've found that they are better when picked young and tender rather than waiting for the beans to fill out in the pods.  This was a new crop for us and one that is a keeper.  They seem to do better in the heat than the normal green beans and produce well.


Long Beans (18 inch long pods)

Here are some Anaheim peppers.  We like the flavor of these as they have a little more 'zing' than a sweet bell pepper, but aren't as hot as a cayenne or jalapeno.  These are great for cooking and adding flavor to meat and rice dishes.


Anaheim Peppers

These are Purple Beauty Sweet Bell Peppers.  I like the way these look and taste.


Pretty Purple Peppers (alliteration is great, isn't it?)

The tomatoes are absolutely loaded up and are going to keep us busy blanching, freezing, and canning in a week or so if we can keep the stink bugs off of them. 

Nice Heirloom Tomato

This is another type of squash we grow called Ronde de Nice.  It is another type of zucchini that is round (hence the name) and originates in Nice, France.


Ronde de Nice Squash

I would be remiss if I didn't give an update on our other "crop," the one we're most proud of - our kids!  We moved Laura Lee out of the dorms at LSU and back home for a couple of weeks before she heads to Hot Springs, Arkansas to be a camp counselor all summer.  The semester came to and end and she did fantastic, providing a bumper crop of good grades.

Packing up the dorm on move-out day

She posed in front of West Laville Hall, her home for the last semester.  Time flies.  It seems like it was just yesterday that we moved her in!


Laura Lee and West Laville Hall



Farewell, dormitory!

In other crop news, we went back to LSU for an awards ceremony for Russ at a 4-H Banquet.  Russ won a nice 4-H scholarship resulting from his hard work showing his Dairy Cows and writing a terrific essay.  The scholarship will really help to defray some of the costs of college.  4-H is a great program!


Russ is posing with the Crafts, donors of his 4-H scholarship.

In other crop news, Benjamin attended Boy Scout Camp all week long and I picked him up today.  He had a great time and was excited that his Troop won the 'golden tent peg' award for keeping their campsite clean.  Tricia and I are curious to see if that translates over to keeping his room clean!....


Benjamin at Camp Edgewood in Gillis, Louisiana

That's it for the crop report today.  Looks like a nice harvest, thank the Good Lord.

I found my thrill

On Blueberry Hill.  New Orleans' own Louis Armstrong (and also Fats Domino) sang that famous song purportedly about a 'make-out' spot in Taos, New Mexico where the singer met his love.  While our blueberries aren't planted on a hill, we don't live in New Mexico, and there's not a lot of making out that goes on around our blueberry bushes, we are thrilled when we eat them!  (Smile)

They are ripening right now.  They don't all get ripe at the same time and we generally will pick around a pint every day for several weeks.  We try to pick them everyday as the birds have an affinity for them as well!


Time to pick the ripe ones!

We have 9 blueberry bushes bordering the pasture fortunately out of reach of our goats who will eat anything and everything that gets too close to the fence.  In the picture below you can see 3 of them along with an unflattering shot of Maggie, our Jersey heifer in the background.

3 of our 9 blueberry bushes

Blueberries bloom in the early Spring with a multitude of blooms that honeybees love and then they fill up with berries at varying stages of development.

Our bushes, I think they are the rabbit eye variety, fill up with berries and then the plant droops over with the weight.  You have to be careful when mowing around them.


Drooping limbs full of berries

Here are some that are a few weeks from maturity, still light green colored.

Here are some that are blushing.  They must have seen someone 'making out' nearby...


Beautiful, blushing blueberries

Then thy get reddish-colored.  If you're impatient and eat one of these, they're sort of bitter.



Red Blueberries

And finally, some in the cluster start to ripen.
 

Ripe blueberry

They're easy to pick, but it is a time-consuming process, going round and round the bush finding all the ripe ones hiding amongst the foliage.

Will this go in the bucket or straight into my mouth?  Hmmm...

We'll bring them inside, pick the little stems off of them if the stem stayed on the berry, and wash them up real good.  We have lots of little bugs crawling around that we don't want to eat.



Washed up blueberries

And finally we'll put them in a quart sized Ziploc bag and pop them in the freezer.  They freeze solid, but individually so that you can pour out exactly what you need for blueberry muffins, blueberry pancakes or waffles, blueberry kefir smoothies, etc. 

Freezing the berries for later use

We will be THRILLED to eat them.  I can't wait.  Not only are they delicious, but they are loaded with a multitude of micronutrients that make you healthy, happy, wealthy and wise.  Okay, I exaggerated a bit about the wealthy and wise part.