Catching up, part II: Canning

Much like the rest of the world, E and I did a bunch of canning* over the summer. We bought all sorts of produce at the farmers' market*, and made it tasteless and potentially poisonous by boiling it under intense pressure in little glass jars. At one point we actually had so many cans to process at the same time we bought a giant pressure cooker that fits a whopping 10 quart jars or 20-odd pint jars, or something like that. (It's also supposed to produce chicken stock in around 20 minutes, but that doesn't consider the time it takes to build up or release the pressure. Still, a major time saver.) Thanks to a couple fantastic books, particularly this one, we had very easy, straightforward recipes to work with, and successfully (so far at least) canned diced tomatoes, roasted red peppers, corn, lima beans (a bit disgusting looking with all the starch floating around in the jar - at least we are hoping that's what it is), and really good salsa made from seconds bought on the cheap.

Before:
After:
Reminders for next year:

• We have already used all of our diced tomatoes -- could have done 10 quarts easily.
  
• Way fewer roasted peppers, or find some suckers to take them off our hands.
• Do some creamed corn as well as whole kernel; the most delicious thai shrimp soup in the world looks simply nasty with whole kernel corn and doesn't have as nice a texture. Or stop being lazy and use a blender.
  
• The salsa recipe (from the Ball book, I believe) could use more jalapenos and cilantro.
  

Catching up, part I: Princess

It has been blissfully quiet with the Colonel gone. Sure, we hear the occasional egg song bright and early at 7:30 a.m. on otherwise peaceful Saturday mornings, but no more chicken screaming "I'm gonna mess you bitches up if you come near my coop". Truly a lovely thing. So, logical time to introduce the Colonel's replacement: Princess.

Princess, as you can see here, is missing most of her beak. Debeaking is a disgusting practice, and done to keep chickens from pecking each other to death in atrocious conditions (she was bought at auction and this had been done much earlier, so sadly we couldn't prevent it). Unfortunately, this left Princess unable to defend herself against the comb tweaking and feather pulling that occurred upon her introduction to our small flock. She earned her name, in fact, because 1) she is so ugly (and was more so all mangy), and 2) she required a lot of individual care: as the other chickens were picking on her, she had to be in the coop alone to eat and drink, requiring at least twice daily herding of the other chickens out of the coop and close attention in general.

E and I found the pecking order battles unpleasant, and in a fit of productivity I built a divider for the run. Better all the chickens be a little crowded and the Princess have a little quiet time than we be stuck with a sad, mangy chicken that required us to actually do stuff.





The divider was promising - Princess enjoyed her space and was eating and drinking well. However, the morning after she received her own little space, the divider failed. Mostly. When we came out to check on her, we found both the Chairman and Matzoh Ball hanging out on Princess' side. Apparently they dug a little hole under the fence and squeezed under. The fence was, however, totally successful in keeping Pol Pot out, who was too big to fit under the hole. Poor Pol Pot sat on the other side of the fence jealously watching the other chickens. Poor fat girl. This more or less ended the isolation phase.











After about a week and a half, Princess got up the courage to leave the coop, and since then has been behaving more or less normally. The Colonel was our best layer (not a big surprise since she was a production bird), but Princess easily surpasses the Colonel, her eggs being gigantic (barely fitting in an egg carton) and constant - at least 5 a week. All in all, we made out in this trade, I think.

The Colonel Gets the Axe

Okay, maybe just figuratively, but it was a near thing. The Colonel decided she was a gender-bending chicken and while that's all well and good, the rooster-like behaviors and aggressiveness were definitely not. It was cute when the Colonel got up in our faces when we went into the pen, it was even cute how she zipped around to always be in front of us (and by extension the camera, photos below). It was not cute when she began crowing in the morning and whenever we went outside. Crowing? Yeah, crowing. At the very least it was some awful chicken equivalent that made us want to put her out of our misery. Keep in mind, these are secret chickens. Secret chickens cannot be crowing. If she had not been genetically guaranteed to be female and was not laying eggs, I would have questioned her sex.

When we could take it no longer, our not-so-secret transgendered chicken went to live on a nice farm. No, really! Most generously, Aunt Deb allowed us to trade the Colonel for one of her chickens. (Thanks again, Aunt Deb!) As soon as the Colonel hit the ground at Aunt Deb's she immediately assumed rooster posture and began jumping on all the other chickens' backs, ripping out their feathers, and making a general pest of herself. The Colonel, I'm afraid, is a nasty, domineering bitch. Now at least, she is a nasty, domineering bitch somewhere else. In her place we took home Princess, who may be the ugliest chicken in creation, but is a sweet, gentle, and quiet chicken that lays the biggest eggs I've ever seen (pictures to follow eventually). And so, Colonel, so long and good riddance.

Fresh Pickles

I've taken the day (mostly) off and figure with a little free time on my hands (or at least time during which nothing is extremely pressing) I figured I'd update this with some months old stuff. First, fresh pickles (probably two months ago).

Noticing a glut of pickling cucumbers at the farmer's market, E and I decided to try our hand at pickles for a second time¹. Unfortunately, the cucumbers sat in the fridge for a week and had lost a bit of their crunch. We didn't have any PickleCrisp either (apparently just calcium chloride) and I'm not familiar with alum, so floppy pickles it was going to have to be. As our pickling bucket was not clean, I got lazy and decided on fresh (refrigerator) pickles instead and found a recipe in the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving (p292 "Refrigerated dill slices").

Starting with whole pickles, I started slicing them with the mandoline, but after losing about 1g of thumb, switched to the food processor. The slices were pretty thin, but it was much easier than trying to do it by hand. I quartered ~10 pickles to add a little variety.

The recipe called for both pickling spice and dill seeds, mustard seeds, a bit of garlic, and peppercorns. I never stopped to consider what's actually in pickling spice, but after running out of the paltry 1/4 c we had in the pantry, became quickly interested when I had to make my own. It was a proud moment when I realized our kitchen was sufficiently stocked to make pickling spice from scratch. Most ingredients were unsurprising, with the exception of cinnamon, allspice, ginger and cardamom. Sure enough, when I was done smashing it all together, it looked almost exactly like commercially available pickling spice.

I prepared the jars by first adding the pickling spice, supplemental spices, and garlic, then packed them with the cucumber slices (or spears). After ladling in the pickling liquid I closed the jars up and allowed them to cool. Next, I stuck them in the back of the fridge for a few months and completely forgot about them. A few weeks ago I dug some out and served them to E's family at a cookout. Salty. Delicious, but salty. Hopefully I'll remember to rinse them off before serving them again.


¹ The first batch of pickles were fermenting in the front room for about three months before we remembered them. Although they had not been de-scummed for quite a while, E said they looked and smelled like pickles. We did not eat them to see if they tasted like pickles too. We will certainly try these again, but probably not until next summer. I have a feeling our bucket will be devoted to sauerkraut and other things in the mean time. Another digression: E said "I was thinking at some point we could repurpose the front basement room for temperature-sensistive experiments. Once the oil tank is gone." Best husband ever. And I hereby promise to never mix work yeast with home yeast. Or at least never to eat work yeast.)

Reminders:

• The pickles were good, but too salty
• Do not make so many pickles next time - too many pickles
  

This morning's haul

Apparently we have at least three chickies going, one of which is a monster. This now puts us at over a dozen eggs in the fridge, so we'll either have to get another egg carton or start on ice cream and quiche soon. And really, I'm guessing the onslaught has yet to begin. Fun.

Green eggs! (Well, green egg at least.)

We got our first green egg today, undoubtedly from the Chairman (the Easter Egger) -- all the others should lay brown eggs. Supposedly the EEs lay extra-large eggs, but this one was tiny compared to the others we've been getting. Maybe her eggs will get bigger as she gets a little older. So, we now have confirmed two chickens laying, perhaps three. Shrimpy egg below:

Salt crusted branzini

This bit of background threatens to be embarrassing, but I suppose it's time to embrace it or at the very least amuse myself with the obnoxiousness. Listening to NPR* the other day, I heard a story about a team at UMBI that designed sustainable* indoor aquaculture technologies that can be implemented in an urban setting* - basically, they are raising non-native fish in an indoor enclosure downtown, I believe, with the idea being that this can be replicated anywhere, regardless of proximity to water, thereby eliminating the potential impact on the local ecosystem and need to import fresh food. (You can read more about that here.) A few weeks ago, I found branzini at the farmer's market* when picking up our CSA share*, and thought it was odd. Yesterday, they had more and after asking, I was told that the group at UMBI occasionally brings up their fish to be sold at Mill Valley. Got to love that. E and I decided to pick up one for dinner. At $6, it was totally reasonable, and super fresh - they had apparently been dropped off that morning. Best of all, it gave E a chance to try the salt crusted fish recipe he saw somewhere a while ago.

The fish was about 1 lb, and came complete with all of its guts.

I haven't had the opportunity to clean a fish before (although I've dissected some), so I watched while E did all the work. After some deliberation we decided not to scale it - partially to save the mess, and partially because we hoped it would protect the fish from the salt.
After it was cleaned, it was time to bury the thing in salt. Most recipes we found called for rock salt, although a few said kosher salt was okay. The consensus, however, was that the larger the salt crystals, the better. We therefore hit the hardware store and picked up a 40lb bag for all of $6.

We laid down about 1/2 inch deep layer of salt on the bottom of a 9"x13" pan (better to hold in the mountain of salt coming), and sprinkled some pepper and scattered a few bay leaves on top. E stuffed the fish with some fresh thyme from the backyard* and laid it on top. Then, he packed salt around the fish, and we stuck it in the oven.An hour later, we pulled it out. Superficially it didn't look much different, but after scraping away the salt (which did indeed form a bit of a crust), it was clear the fish was done. Although it used quite a bit of salt, this was perfectly cooked and outrageously delicious.
The recipe:

One whole fish, gutted, scales on
Thyme
Lots of rock salt
Lemon juice
Pepper
Bay leaves

Stuff thyme into the fish, along with a little lemon juice. Lay on a 1/2 inch deep bed of rock salt in a 9"x13" pan. Cover the fish with a mound of salt. Bake at 425F for one hour.


Eric adds:
Just a note about the salt. We were going back and forth a bit over what kind of salt to use. We figured that a whole box of coarse kosher salt would work, but would be sort of pricey ($2.59 for 3 lbs, according to Safeway's site) and kind of a waste, but neither were we completely comfortable using driveway de-icer. Internet searches ranged from no mention to omigod your children will die.

Fortunately, the kid at Lowes pointed us to something we hadn't considered, which was rock salt for water softeners. Most of them came in these weird football shaped pellets and some of them were potassium chloride, instead of regular old NaCl aka Halite aka table salt, but Diamond Crystal apparently sells regular rock salt in 40lb bags. At $6 for 40 lbs, that works out to about 15 cents/lb,or roughly six times cheaper than using the coarse kosher.

Of course now we have 35 lbs of rock salt, but that's a different story.

Basil, basil, basil, basil, and more basil

The basil has been ready to be picked (heavily) for the past couple weeks, and I've been prolonging the agony by snipping off the tops for some time now. Last night, the work began. The three plants from the community garden yielded about 16 cups of basil leaves. A gigantic head of garlic, tons of olive oil, and a pound of romano/parmesan later, and we have more pesto than we could conceivably eat in a year. There's still another two plants' worth to deal with tonight, not to mention another crop later in the summer. Thank god for the food processor.
The pesto recipe:

3 c loosely packed basil leaves
3-4 big garlic cloves
1/2 c walnut pieces (pinenuts if you're feeling fancy and/or rich)
2 oz shredded parm/romano/anything else that looks interesting
~1/3 c olive oil
1 t salt (E likes more)
1/4 t pepper

Mince the garlic in a food processor. Add remaining ingredients except olive oil. Process until uniformly chopped and folding easily. Drizzle in olive oil slowly while the food processor is running.

Eric adds:
My hypothesis about the salt (and to a lesser extent the garlic and the oil) is that you want pesto to be pretty robust and maybe slightly overseasoned. You're never going to eat it by itself, so the flavor of it when it's not on pasta or chicken isn't a good gauge of how it's going to be in the final dish.

That said, Jess's pesto is excellent.

Nesting boxes

After getting our second egg (or rather an egg from a second chicken), we decided it was definitely time for nesting boxes. Eric built us a great stacked pair of nesting boxes, complete with tilted floors and a little lip on the back so the eggs don't fall out. Soon this phase of coop renovation will be complete with the addition of a little cut out door on the side so we can peak in and snatch up the eggs.

To the left, you'll notice our golf ball eggs. Apparently you need to give the chickies some idea of what these boxes are for and hope they eventually get the idea. They actually sell wooden eggs for this purpose, but I would imagine the chickens don't care much one way or the other.

More eggs!

This morning Eric went out to collect our more or less daily egg and found an unexpected egg sitting out in the run. The second egg was lighter than those we've been getting (the new egg is on the right in the photo, from the old batch on the left), and it's unlikely The Colonel was in double-time laying mode anyway, so it's almost certainly another chicken. Given her odd posture yesterday, I'm guessing it was the Pol Pot chicken. It was certainly the Colonel bitch-chicken that pecked and broke this new egg when Eric took it out of the run. Jerk. Sadly we had to throw it away. Hopefully that was a one time thing. Next addition to the coop: laying boxes! (And, if we're particularly industrious, the roost needs to be moved, or a lower one added.)

Huevos, baby!

As of last Monday, our chickens were 17 weeks old. We knew the eggs were coming eventually, but figured it would be a few weeks still. However, one day I peeked in the coop (using the handy hinged roof Eric put together for us) just checking things out, and sure enough:Can't really see it there, can you? A close up (because really, this was that exciting): And this is what we did with it:

From Drop Box

Since then, we've gotten several more. In fact, they are piling up in the fridge already. God help us when the other three start laying.



Although we can't be sure, we think the Colonel is responsible for the early egg laying: she's a production bird, apparently, and is by far the most nest-oriented of any of the chickens. She's also the loudest and the most obnoxious, but that's another matter.

Any interesting egg recipes (or other ideas) are more than welcome.

Chicken moving day

We talked for a really long time about what kind of coop we wanted, and looked at a bunch of books and designs online. As our space was fairly limited (therefore no converted sheds) and we didn't want to spend a fortune (and it's nearly impossible to find a cute coop for under $500), Eric built us one. I threw together a design we sort of used at work, and it more or less worked. We had to leave the bumped out egg boxes off since that wall was meant to be removable and they would be too heavy, and the flower boxes haven't been added yet, but it's fantastic - Eric did a really phenomenal job. I love the cedar shingles, and the hinged roof is incredibly convenient. We also did a single door that drops down to form a ramp, and that has been working really well. As the run is totally enclosed (wood frames and hardware cloth) and there's an overhanging roof, we can leave the coop open all the time - important given our laziness and the absolutely miniscule probability we would wake up to let the chickies out. Eventually I'll add the flower boxes and perhaps the Phyllis Diller photo. Sooner, though, we'll be installing nesting boxes and a small cut-out on the removable wall for easier egg retrieval.

After 10 weeks - maybe more - we finally got the jerks out of the house. In some perfectly logical way, we decided to do this late at night. Really, after weeks of trying to get the coop together and finally being more or less ready, it had to be done. Eric and I both took turns bringing them out. Some behaved better than others. Matzoh ball in particular was awful; the screeching, flapping, and wriggling was a little intimidating. I ended up covering up her head and running through the house - a strategy that seemed to work pretty well. Once we got them into the coop, the chickens were absolutely silent, like we had killed them. It was actually a little unnerving. But, the monsters settled in fairly quickly. After two or three days we finished the run, and they were free to explore the far reaches of their 3' x 10' run.

And now, without further adieu, the chickens

We ordered our chickens from My Pet Chicken in early February, expecting delivery the first week of April. Thinking we were super smarties, we ordered 6 chicks, assuming some would die in shipping, and perhaps one or two would end up being male. On April 1st, a postal worker came to the door with a madly chirping box. Hysterical. She was slightly confused, but cracking up, and I was jumping up and down like some kind of moron. I finished setting up the brooder (only the best for our girls), and Eric came home at lunch for the big release. (While waiting for Eric I was using the computer in the basement for a while, and the chicks were so loud I could hear them chirping all the way down there. Thankfully, they shut up after a while.) So, Eric came home, and we opened up the box, found all of the chicks alive, and transferred them to the brooder. (For the record, the chickens were all born March 30, 2009.)

We had ordered one red sex link, one silver laced wyandotte, one easter egger, one barred rock, and two australorps. The Colonel (the red sex link, closeup at left) soon showed herself to be a bitch-chicken, the most aggressive and territorial of all of them and earned her name within the first few weeks. The Chairman (also at left) seemed to be second in command, and was breifly called "Ducky" which was later replaced by her current name. Interestingly, she was a hulking beast of a chick - by far the largest - and has actually ended up the smallest of the adult chickens.

At right are the chicks at 4 weeks - they had begun to feather out pretty well by this point, and were happily roosting in their brooder (from left to right: the Chairman, the SLW Matzoh Ball, the Barred Rock Pol Pot Pie, and the Colonel; underneath: the two australorps we later gave away). As it turns out, they had feathered out enough to fly a little, which of course wasn't obvious until one escaped (below). Covering the brooder with chicken wire was an easy fix. This, however, did not stop the incessant wing flapping that later caused the entire office to be covered in a super-fine pine shaving dust.

By 6-7 weeks (below) the monsters were getting filthy, the office was covered in dust, and we were really looking forward to getting them the hell out of the house.

The Garden

Thankfully, Eric is much more on top of the garden than I am. Early this year he picked up some compost, and after the deluge was over (I think we had like three months of rain) we were able to get the garden beds in order. Well, one of them, at least -- you can see in the "after-ish" fence picture (taken in May) we put down sod on one bed to welcome the chickens (it lasted about a week after they moved in). Here is the start of our garden (again, late May): Along the back in the far corner are 3 cucumbers and a bunch of pole beans, and the pole beans stretch along the entire fence. We also have one grape tomato plant against the short side of the fence at the far end, two brandywine tomatoes (from the farmers market), a couple eggplants, a cubanelle pepper plant, perhaps, and a squash and zucchini plant in the nearer bed. There are a few basil plants and marigolds scattered throughout as well. After a couple months, this is what we have now: So far we have gotten a bunch of beets (from our bed at the community garden), more cucumbers than I can count, and a ton of squash and zucchini too. Again, lucky for us, Eric has started seeds for a fall garden too. Hopefully we can get brussel sprouts to work for us this time around.

One thing I've noticed that is really unfortunate about eating produce almost exclusively from your own garden (or a local CSA to which we belong, further exacerbated by shopping at the local farmer's market) is that you really do overdose on local seasonal vegetables. I think we ate beets almost everyday for a month. I was dreading them, until I made borscht (recipe from Joan Nathan's Jewish Cooking in America - a fantastic cookbook), which we promptly scarfed up. Now, we are thinking up creative ways to eat cucumbers, including a really delicious thai cucumber salad that I've made twice and will probably do, yet again, this weekend. As for the zucchini and yellow squash, I've sauteed both with onions a few times, stuffed yellow squash (much better with zucchini), and just made zucchini cream soup - super easy and very delicious.

Zucchini cream soup:
Saute 1-2 chopped onions until they begin to brown. Add 1.5 - 2 lb. chopped zuchinni. Continue sauteing a few more minutes, then add 6c stock (don't use chicken bouillon, it overpowers the soup), 1/2 c oatmeal, and salt. Simmer 15-20 min. Blend well and strain soup. Add plain yogurt prior to serving if desired.

Garden reminders:

• Don't plant cucumbers and beans together -- the beans will strangle the cucumbers.
• Put the trellis up for the beans when they are planted if at all possible -- it is very difficult to move them without breaking them later on
• Brandywine tomatoes are enormous!
• Farmers market plants are fantastic
  

A new fence out back

When Eric bought the house, there was a massive stump in the backyard with some grotesque number of rats living underneath (think the rosebush from Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH). There was also a chain link fence, cut out around the stump, and generally not in great shape. The first major outdoor projects outside were raised garden beds and a new fence. Eric installed the garden beds the year before last, and built us an awesome fence earlier this year. Unfortunately, I don't seem to have any "before" pictures, but here are a few "during" and "after" shots. Come to think of it, the one on the bottom isn't technically an "after" photo -- it's more a "late-during". Eventually we'll stain the fence, and perhaps add some embellishments on the top. For now, though, it's doing a great job of keeping the chickens in (and semi-hidden) and keeping the riffraff out.