Here are the chickens — they’re so goofy looking right now, they seem to be in whatever passes for eighth grade in chicken-dom. Their feet are enormous, and while their feathers are coming in, they’re still not really feathered out (look at their funny tails). But they’re getting little chicken-y personalities, and they like to torment the dogs by flapping their wings. I took the chooks outside for a little air last week, and here’s Raymond watching them. He spent the entire afternoon out there, occasionally running inside to whine at me that there were birds! birds! out there. In…
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This is Raymond, staring at the shed door, because on the far side of that door are four baby chicks in a cardboard box tucked into a dog crate all kept warm by an infrared light. There were six chicks, but I erred and thought they were too hot under the light, and so two of them caught a chill and gave up their tiny little ghosts. They’re resting peacefully in the compost pile. Here’s the little peepers. Saturday morning I called Murdochs, our local ranch store to see if the chicks had come in (they’ve had a shortage this…
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This weekend I started seeds — tomatoes and leeks right now. I’ve blogged before about my seed starting setup, and nothing’s changed since last spring, so I’ll simply send you to this older post if you want to know the mechanics of how I get things rolling every year. This year I’m going to give leeks a shot. I love leeks, and they’re so expensive in the store. I tried them once by direct sowing and they didn’t take, so I thought I’d give it one more shot. For the leeks, I simply filled one tray with seed starting mix,…
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In related topics, there’s a terrific article at Culinate today that touches on many of the same topics we’ve all been discussing over here. Take a look: What is householding? — Making the choice to stay home :: by Harriet Fasenfest :: Culinate.
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I’m finding the recession sort of interesting, and frankly, kind of inspiring. It’s easy when times are fat to get lazy — to buy stuff instead of fixing something or making it yourself, but really, just going out and buying things isn’t the way I was raised. I had one of those moms who if you were bored and whiny on a Saturday told you to “go make something” or better yet, “go outside and make something.” Maybe it’s being from the Midwest. Lan Samantha Chang had a piece in the Sunday NY Times about living in Iowa, and how…
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Sunday was a lovely snowy day. Big fat snowflakes like something out of a movie. About ten, Raymond and I walked to the dog park, and everyone was there which was fun — we walked a couple of laps, all the dogs doing their thing and the “grownups” had a chance to catch up. On the way home, we ran into Anna and Max who were going for a walk with Silas, who is almost three. They had the sled in case Silas needed a lift on the way home. Everyone had that silly smile you get when it’s snowing…
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It’s raining today — a nice soft spring rain, so I took the poor scraggly herbs from the Winter Herb Garden and put them outside the back door. The rosemary seemed particularly crunchy, but it did it’s job — it didn’t die. The thyme has been remarkably successful — the last few weeks it’s been sending out delicious little soft green shoots. I also got my act together last weekend and organized my seeds. As you can see — my “system” is nothing fancy. A couple of cheap bins from Pamida and a paper bag — but by the end…
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To wrap up home-cooking-week, I thought I’d give you all a little summary of the blogs I read most often. These are the ones that inspire my own home cooking, give me interesting ideas, send me off on projects, or that I find inspirational. The Slow Cook — I love this site — although I’m jealous of his long growing season in DC, I always learn something here. Especially about pickling. This was the site that inspired me to make sauerkraut. He’s got a particularly good piece at the top of the blog right now, Food Lessons for Hard Times.…
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I don’t have a photo, because it didn’t even occur to me until this morning that the dinner I made last night was a good illustration of what we’ve all been talking about this week — eating at home is not rocket science. As you can tell from the erratic nature of mid-week blogging, my day job has been a little insane lately. I’m lucky enough to have a remote position with a Big Corporation, but the level of fear and anxiety that working in a Big Corporation entails these days as layoffs fall all around like autumn leaves in…
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NPR has been running a series this week about how people are changing their eating habits during this recession and I’m finding it really depressing. So far, it’s all about how people aren’t eating out, or ordering in, but they’re eating prepared foods out of the frozen food aisle. They had a home economist on yesterday pointing out that a bag of frozen french fries costs about five bucks, and for that you can get a five pound bag of potatoes. Granted, if you want fries, there’s the scary frying part, but as the home economist pointed out, is there…