Supper of the blue chicken

It was Friday, April 19. Traffic in Seattle seemed to be horrible in sympathy for the shut down streets of Boston.

Friends were meeting me at a Costco parking lot to give me an unwanted rooster to butcher.

I waited in my car, listening to endless radio chatter about what a sweetie pie this Dzhokhar Tzarnaev was supposed to be. Part of me was indignant. Fine, he was popular, but let's give this a rest, folks. If he really did plant a bomb next to an eight year old, we might want to revise our assessment here.

Another part was internalizing it. When I received the rooster, I was surprised to feel deeply conflicted in a way I had not felt before. "Oh, no." I thought "He's adorable. So cute. Every mother hen's dream for her little rooster. This can't be right." And indeed, the rooster was white and fluffy and proud and very handsome. Well - roosters are almost all handsome. Ask any rooster, he'll agree.

One theory why so many species of birds have attractive males is their beauty reflects good health. Hens prefer mates in tip top condition. They choose ones with perfect, glossy plumage and lots of it.

At any rate, one of the hard things about eating roosters is it seems wrong to destroy such a lovely creature - like vandalism almost. But that's objectifying a rooster and looking away from the real reason it should be hard. Taking a life, even for food, even humanely, shouldn't be easy or fun.

A rooster's looks don't always help him to a happy life and often get him in trouble. The more conspicuous, the more other roosters want to fight with them. The more predators try to eat them. This white rooster would be like a beacon to every hawk in North Burien. 

Before I butchered this little rooster, I had to take a long pause and sort this all out. I had to get distanced from the news, from the senselessness of it all, and my self pity at having to do this. Poor me? Poor bird, more like. Make this as dignified as you can, Sarah.

After a pause, I did. I held him until he relaxed, and then let him go. Then I began to pluck the roo. That's when I got my other surprise.

         Some chicken breeds are blue. 

Not their feathers, their skin. Their muscles. Blue. Really dark, gunmetal blue skin over lavender meat. With violet bones. 

I don't know why this shocked me so much but it did. I was worried my kid would freak about eating a blue chicken. But he thought it was cool and told me I was being silly. Still hedging, I put the rooster in the freezer for a couple of weeks while I figured out how to cook him.

It turns out yes, all silkies, regardless of feather color, are blue underneath. They are prized in Chinese medicine as an ingredient in a healing soup. Most accounts said they taste like chicken (no surprise) but are tough and stringy.

I don't like chicken soup. More specifically I can't even bring myself to eat it. I don't like how all the flavor leaves the chicken and goes into the water. I don't like the smell of boiled skin. The first time I cleaned a wound on one of my hens, her wet, plucked skin smelled like chicken soup.

So although I wanted to respect the culinary tradition, I decided I'd rather respect the chicken by cooking him in a way I would enjoy. And to celebrate the beauty of roosters, I decided to make a colorful meal.

I roasted the bird, and served him with homemade saffron egg noodles, rainbow chard and a dessert tart of meringue and strawberries. Only the tart was as colorful as we had hoped. The chicken, the chard and the noodles all lost their crayon-like vibrancy with cooking.

But Oh Dear Lord was that chicken delicious. I've been cooking and eating meat for the past year, and this is the first time I think I got it right. This chicken was tender as springtime and intensely flavorful.

I did well.

Recipes

Slow Roasted Free Range Silkie

1 silkie or other small, stringy chicken
2 quarts water or whey + 1/2 cup water divided (I used whey from draining Greek yogurt)
1/4 cup salt
1/4 cup sugar
1 sprig each - rosemary, sage
1 tsp butter

At least 24 hours in advance, prepare the brine by stirring the salt and the sugar into the whey or water.

Place the chicken in the brine - it should be covered. Weigh it down so the chicken is fully submerged.



5 hours before dinner, drain the chicken and discard the brine.

Preheat oven to 225

Dry the chicken well and rub skin with butter. For a free range chicken, use a lot of butter.

Place the herbs in the bird's cavity, and truss the legs and wings tight to the body.

Place the chicken on a rack in a roasting pan or dutch oven with a tight fitting lid.

Pour 1/4 cup water into the pan. Cover tightly and roast for 4 hours or till temperature reads 160 by the leg bone..

Remove lid and pour in 1/4 cup water if pan is dry.

Turn oven to 450. Roast for 15 minutes or until skin is crisp.

Remove pan from oven. Place chicken on a platter to rest, and set pan on stove. Don't clean that pan yet!

Saffron pasta ribbons

2 Cups flour
4 large egg yolks
1/2 t + 1t salt, divided
Boiling water
pinch saffron threads
1 T Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Snipped fresh rosemary to taste

Place saffron in a heat resistant bowl and pour 1/4 cup boiling water over. Let cool to room temperature.

Place flour and salt in food processor and pulse to combine.

Add egg yolks and water. Mix. It should form lots of small, granular lumps of stiff, tacky dough. When squeezed, dough should form a lump.

If it crumbles, add more water by the tablespoon, mixing well between additions, until it stays together when squeezed.

If the dough is even remotely sticky, add flour the same way - 1 T at a time, mixing between additions until it is non-sticky.

Briefly knead dough.

Using a pasta roller, and working in batches, roll out dough on setting 1. Fold and roll until it becomes very smooth and supple. The dough should be completely non-sticky.

Adjust setting to 2, and roll dough again. Continue to setting 5 or 6.

Then use the wide noodle setting to cut dough into strips.

Let noodles dry briefly (I hang them on plastic coat hangers).

Bring to boil a large pot of water. Add 1 t salt. Add noodles, a handful at a time, stirring constantly to prevent sticking.

After the last noodles go in, cook for five minutes.

Drain.

Place noodles, still damp, in the pan the chicken cooked in. Pour on olive oil and snipped rosemary.

Toss pasta so it picks up cooking flavors from the chicken.

Place in bowl and set chicken pieces over.

Meringue Tart with strawberries

4 egg whites
1 cup fine white sugar + extra to sprinkle
1 t vanilla
strawberries

Set oven to 275. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Place a plate on the paper and trace a circle.

Place egg whites in a very clean mixing bowl, and beat with a very clean whisk at the highest mixer setting.

When whites form a foam, add vanilla and mix.

When foam begins to thicken, start adding sugar 1 T at a time.

Between each tablespoon, mix until the sugar is completely gone.

The foam will thicken, turn white, and expand.

Beat until the foam holds its shape when you stop the mixer and pull out the beater.

Scoop out the foam and form a circle on the paper.

I piped a bit of foam around the edge to form a rim

Bake for 1 1/2 hours. Then turn off oven and open oven door.

Remove the meringue after it has cooled, such as an hour later.

Transfer fully cooled meringue to serving plate.

Just before serving, fill with sliced strawberries, sprinkle with sugar and garnish as you choose.

This dish is very pretty but we found it too sweet.

Noah ate the chicken to the bones. 

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The great dissapearing lawn

It's always scary to move from the idea stage to the action stage.

This week, we took the first step in turning our sloping, grassy front lawn into a garden of fruits and nectar. But before we get to the beautiful vision in our heads, we have to put in the work to get there.

The hill in front of the house looks gracious and inviting, but in reality it has been anything but. The slope is too steep for comfortable mowing - there is always the lingering fear of falling down the side.

It's also too steep to play most games on. Rolling downhill or sledding seem fun except you would end up in a thicket of English Laurel, with a poorly lighted street on the other side. Less fun, that. Especially because we live across the street from a park with a nice flat grassy area plus a good sledding hill. We didn't need a less useful version of either.

So we are going to convert it into a garden.




We have wanted to do this for years, but dreaded the labor. Luckily, the neighboring community of White Center is home to one of the best equipment rental stores around. For $75, we rented a sod cutter for the day.

sod cutter and some rolled sod

This baby sliced through the grass much more easily than we imagined. It was harder than mowing the lawn, but much easier than rototilling. It didn't take over in quite the same way.



We did learn that if you cut sod, you should remove the cut strips immediately, either by lifting them or rolling them up. Otherwise you won't be able to see where you cut, and will either miss spots or slice up your nice strips into little tatters.


Four hours of cutting yielded 3500 square feet of bare soil. Or rather, soil with cut sod on it. We lifted the sod strips and piled them into long walls which followed the line of the hill.

This was hard work, and really dirty. But it was also fun - like making a fort. Using sod strips as building material was a new experience for us - but was once a common building method. The folks who did it to make homes, without the benefit of a sod cutter, were truly stout hearted.





It took David and me about 12 man hours to roll and stack the sod. It takes weight as well as strength to wrestle the sod rolls. Noah was not able to budge them, but he helped by working the broadfork to loosen the soil.

Here is the slope with two rows of sod walls, positioned about seven feet apart down the hill. The walls ended up about eight or nine inches tall. We expect they will settle with age and time but remain as boundaries to the edges of each garden bed.

In all, we made three long terraces. They should act as water catchments, slowing the percolation of rain into the soil and storing winter moisture for our dry summers. All Meggie knows is she doesn't usually get to this part of the yard so she's excited.



Next we covered the hill with burlap bags.


Seattle is a coffee town. Many of the warehouses for the bigger companies will give you huge numbers of their bags. You just have to ask around and see who has them.


The hill used two full bales of bags - about 1600 of them. Each bag is about 4' x 2', or eight square feet, so we had 12800 feet of surface area.

That means we covered the whole area between two and three bags deep. We hope the bags will block out light and prevent any residual grass from growing back out. More crucially, they should hold the soil in place between now and our next steps - adding mulch and planting the garden.








                                    









Laying out the bags was unbelievably fast. David arrived with the bags at 11:30. Then we built a campfire and roasted hot dogs and veggie dogs. Then we started laying out the bags.


Two or three hours later, the rain started and Noah went inside. By four, David and I were done. The rain weighted the burlap so it conformed with the  contours of the hill.

From our new staircase, you now see a rounded beige hill off to your right.

It looks like some one's paper mache project. Or like a pair of khaki pants cast off by a giant.

As the rain softens the fabric I am starting to see the higher ridges where the walls of grass and soil rise up.

Right now we are all tired. The school break is over so I go back to work and Noah goes to school.



The hill will wait. Soon our buddy Heath will call to ask where we want him to drop some wood chips.

We will be ready!

 To be continued...

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Processing and eating an "extra" rooster

Warning - this story contains serious subject matter and describes the steps involved in slaughtering and dressing a formerly living animal. On the other hand this goes on whether you read about it or not, so you might as well.

One morning about six months ago, I watched a very quiet and personal scene in the chicken barn. One of the hens was ready to lay an egg. The rest of the flock was ranging around the yard, finding bugs and worms. Cosmo, our little rooster, was nearby, but Rose wanted to be with her sister Poppy. The two hens clucked and muttered back and forth with each other for a few moments, then Rose hopped up into the box and Poppy stood watch below, with Cosmo nearby. When Rose showed signs of being ready for the egg Poppy began to make little keening noises at the same time Rose did. Soon Cosmo joined in. It seemed to cheer Rose on, and in a few minutes, the egg came out.

Our hens don't spend much time with their eggs. Rose quickly hopped down, shook herself off, and the trio ran out to join the flock.

The same day  I found myself behind a massive truck full of caged chickens. The cages were covered incompletely with heavy tarp, which whipped around in the wind. A vortex of white feathers swirled in the truck's wake. The hens huddled miserably in their wire pens. I didn't count how many rows of cages there were, but I could have and then calculated exactly how many hens were being transported. Maybe they were going to a nice place where they could run around. I doubted it then and I still do.

My darling rooster Cosmo

Until this last year I've been vegetarian but I do eat eggs. I can't do that without knowing, either consciously or down inside that something happens to the brothers of all the hens who lay eggs for me.

Whether the hens are experiencing reasonably natural behavior, or in big factory farms in tiny cages, only the hens get to be part of the equation.

From watching my own rooster Cosmo, I knew what brave, admirable and passionate animals these birds can be. They do fight, and they crow. And of course they don't pay the bills by laying eggs.

There is never enough room for them all. Add another rooster to our farm and he'd turn Cosmo into hamburger!

So for a family with chickens,  extra roosters are a real issue.

A happy life for a productive hen

I'm not even going to go into the big AG side of things right now. That's a whole other story. For an urban farmer, you are giving one set of animals a very idyllic existence, but does your responsibility end there?

Some of us buy all female chicks. We know the roosters go somewhere, but we don't worry about it. Others buy straight run - an unsexed mixture of male and female chicks. When it becomes clear who the roosters are, either by feather characteristics or crowing, they either eat the roos or find someone else to do the honors.

Today, I became that someone else. I've known for a while that I wanted to. It seems better for the roos to have normal lives, but short ones, than to be destroyed at birth and go to waste or to be caged, fattened, and killed without ever experiencing normal chicken instincts.



It also seemed better for a rooster to go straight from his home to his demise than to get dragged to an auction, listen to all the unfamiliar animals, smell their stress, spend a day getting schlepped around, waiting to die. That sounded miserable.

So I took a couple of extra roosters from another farmer, and prepared them for cooking.

I will not show pictures. This was my first solo experience with what is euphemistically called "Poultry Processing" - slaughtering chickens. I didn't waste a moment taking pictures or trying to make things pretty. I was 100% focused on doing it well, making their deaths fast, and (honestly) being done before school got out. I had timed things a little too closely.

Leaving the first one in the transport box, I started in. I hung my bird by his feet, with his head in a bucket. Then I used a very sharp, very small knife to cut the big vein on each side of his windpipe. I have never been more glad that the knives of Several Gardens Farm are always sharp. The cut was neither deep, nor was the skin very tough. It was comparable to cutting through a mango.

The chickens bled a lot. I had seen this done before but was unprepared for the metallic smell, or the huge mess one of them made when I let him go too soon and he thrashed around. I tried not to wonder about how conscious they were, instead to make it fast. A friend and I talk about 'suspending empathy' in order to do a hard task well. That's what I did. I had expected to spend more time in prayer during the event. I didn't at all. Too busy. Note to self, next time pray first.

The hardest part of the day was going back for the second rooster. But I had committed myself at that point, so I did.

It was pretty clear when the birds were dead. Their feet cooled down almost as soon as they stopped bleeding. I held them in hot water to loosen the feathers, and plucked them. Physically this was harder and more miserable than killing them. It took longer, gave me more time to be sad, and was hard to do with any grace. Also there were lots of brand new pin feathers, which for some reason was very heartbreaking. But it had to be done. Unfortunately I tore the skin while plucking. I really hated plucking. I liked working alone for the rest of it but I would have liked help with this part.

Then I cut off the head and feet. After that, they started to look like something from the store. It was easier now.

I chilled one bird while cutting open the other. This part was sort of cool. All the body parts were just where they should be. I'm a biologist, and it was a dissection, what can I say?  Most of all, I had to be careful not to break the intestines (I did break them on one and had to scrub him when I was done) or the gall bladder. Taking out the inner organs was a calmer time that let me stop shaking, get my focus and say my belated prayer.

After removing the innards, I put the two chickens in a sink full of ice water to get their inner temperatures down as low as possible. Then they went into the fridge to "relax" for 24 hours. They were in rigor mortis and become less tough if they're allowed to come back out of it.

Then I had time to reflect. How did I feel?

• I didn't feel guilty. I don't tend to feel guilty once I've made my mind up to do something. I've made my peace.I didn't expect to, but you never know. Guilt can blindside sometimes. 

• I did feel really sad. I wish things didn't have to die. I wish I could ignore it if it has to happen. I think about the other chickens - will they miss these two boys? Sad felt appropriate and I didn't try to block it out.

• I also felt sort of like a criminal. I was afraid a neighbor would see me and turn me in. I found this interesting because most people eat chicken, but you never see the viscera and the blood. Eating a chicken someone else killed = normal. Killing a chicken = j'accuse!

• Oh yeah - the blood. I did not expect to feel so compulsive about cleaning everything that might have touched blood. I went into this concerned about the salmonella in the guts - a real, solid fear. But the blood was sort of a melodramatic reaction I don't usually have.

• I expected to feel gratitude for the roosters, but I would no longer choose that word. Gratitude is for a gift willingly given. When I milk Meggie, and she turns to me and licks my hair as I do it, I'm grateful to her for sharing her bounty. These roosters didn't get a choice. I don't have a word for what I felt toward them in honor of their unwilling sacrifice. But just calling it gratitude is too glib.

• Hungry. I timed it to be done before school got out, but I forgot to fold in time for getting lost on the way to picking them up. So I didn't get to eat. Anyway I didn't think I'd want to. But I did. I have a very hearty appetite.

Two days later, we ate the first of the two roosters. We had our expectations set fairly low. I could see that he was thinner and stringier than a chicken from the store. This makes sense. He spent his days actively seeking food and interacting with other birds, not resting in a cage being fattened up. His life was spent being himself, not being prepared for slaughter.

The whole roast bird was small enough that our family of three ate every bite in one sitting -  and we are moderate meat eaters. The meat was juicy and chewier than a purchased chicken. But oh my - the flavor was superb. We ate the bird roasted with salt and lime but without extra flavoring. The meat was rich, herbal, meaty, and packed with intensity. This sounds corny but the meat tasted like a concentrated essence of sunshine and fresh air. It was clean and nutty and somehow innocent.



To his great credit, Noah ate every bite of the bird and sucked the bits of extra meat off the bones. He is a fussy eater but  he never wastes meat. When his friends leave part of a drumstick, he gently reminds them that meat is special and should be treated with respect.

I think I will do this again. I expect the mechanics to get easier, and my feelings to reach some kind of steady state. Next time I raise a flock, I will certainly choose straight run and plan to eat the roosters, but I may put my feelers out for people who want their roo's dealt with in the meanwhile.

In a dream world somewhere, every animal can live a long, happy, productive natural life. In the world where we live now, this does not happen but at least we can let them fill their shorter lives with as much meaning and dignity as possible.

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Making a souffle

Lots of eggs - chicken and duck

Strange things happen when you have an essentially unlimited supply of eggs, but none stranger than Our sudden infatuation with the souffle.

To me, this concoction suggests a nineteen fifties housewife making post-golf brunch for her hubbie and his boss. When my cousins came over for dinner, they had never made nor eaten a souffle, and were as skeptical of us making one as they might be of us hunting a unicorn. The reputation of souffles as fussy, collapsible, kitchy and anachronistic is overrated. If you have an electric mixer and a working oven, a souffle is within your grasp.And unless your doctor has you on a strict diet, one serving will do fairly minimal damage to you diet.

The one proviso is you really do need to eat it within a few minutes of baking.

This recipe was modified from the Joy of Cooking.  It serves 6 to 8 people as part of a meal.

Recipe

6 Eggs
1 1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup flour
1 Tablespoon butter
3/4 teaspoon salt
pepper to taste
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar (optional)
1/2 cup shredded cheese

Preheat oven to 350.Butter a souffle dish, or a Pyrex bowl if you don't happen to be set up for souffles.It's a myth that only a straight sided dish works.You may powder the outside of the dish with finely grated dry cheese, such as Parmesan.

white sauce in the blender

Make a white sauce: Melt butter over low heat and stir in flour. Let flour cook till slightly golden. Stir in milk, a bit at a time, breaking up lumps as you go. When it's all stirred in, bring it to a gentle simmer, stirring continually to keep the bottom from burning.

Add pepper to taste and remove from heat.

I don't actually do all that. I place the milk, butter, flour and salt in a high speed blender and run at full power till it heats up and steam starts to come out the lid. Then I drop in the cheese and run another 60 seconds, turn it to low and mix in the pepper.

This makes a perfectly smooth, creamy white sauce, but it does not work in a standard blender, only a fast one like the Vitamix. For such a farmy, DIY person I sure love some electric appliances a lot.






Separate the egg whites from the yolks.

You can do it like my mom taught me to - pour the yolk from one half of the shell to the other,over a bowl.

Or crack the egg into a (clean) hand, cupping the yolk in your palm and letting the white pour through.






                                           


                                                                                                                       

Pride goeth before a fall. if you make the arrogant mistake of separating your last egg into a bowl with the other whites, you may ruin them all.

Always always separate each egg over an empty bowl, not over the precious egg whites you've already separated.

 Even a tiny bit of yolk in the whites will cause them not to expand when whipped.

fluffy beaten whites

Place the egg whites in a mixer bowl. Add the optional cream of tartar and whip till they are white and puffy like cumulus clouds.

Bright yellow yolks

Put the egg yolks in a bowl that will hold at least twice their volume.Add about 1/2 cup of the white sauce.

Stir to combine with the yolks, then mix the yolks in with the rest of the white sauce. This sounds fussy but adding the sauce in two installations keeps the heat from cooking the yolks.


If that happened you would get blobs of grainy yellow crud in your souffle, and the magic would be destroyed.

Trust me. My wisdom comes from experience.

Stir in the cheese if you didn't do it during the high speed blending above.

Mixing in part of the whites to lighten the mix

Now it's time to fold the yolk mixture into the whites.




Folding is delicate work. Start by mixing about 1/4 of the beaten whites into the sauce mixture. Stir gently, with a wide spatula or wooden spoon. You are trying to incorporate air into the sauce so it's lighter.

Gently folding

Then scrape all the sauce into the beaten whites, and gently, with a spatula, lift the whites up to mix them in with the sauce. Keep gently lifting whites from the bottom and setting them over the sauce. Don't stir around and around. The more gently you do this, and the more you lift rather than stirring, the puffier your souffle will be. When you only have a few spots of pure whites left, you're done.

Over mixing to the point where it's perfectly uniform will break too many air bubbles in the whites and your souffle will not by as puffy.




Scoop the mixture into the dish and place in the center of the oven rack.
























Bake 30 -40 minutes, until dark golden brown on top. It will puff up substantially and have a little 'hat' of golden brown crust over a body of creamy, puffy orange-yellow fluff.

Serve immediately.

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Buttermilk: a love story

I knew a lovely woman whom a mutual friend described as having a voice like buttermilk. The sound was husky, scratchy, and raw. I thought he was comparing those qualities to the flavor of buttermilk, but he later explained that the parallel was "you don't like it at first, but it's addictive, and soon nothing else will do."

He might have added that her earthy voice, like buttermilk, is one of those old fashions due for a revival.

Originally buttermilk was related to butter. The farmer would save up cream until she had enough to churn. She would agitate it until the fats formed a golden buttery mass, and the liquid separated out. It might take days to accumulate enough, and the cream would sour. The butter had a "cultured" flavor, the liquid was downright sour.

The sour, low-fat liquid was buttermilk. The farmer might give it to a very thirsty child,or mix it with slops for the pigs, take advantage of its acidity as a souring or leavening agent. It was not considered a gourmet treat on its own.

As time passed, fewer people made their own butter, and those who did used well refrigerated cream  so the resulting liquid was no longer sour. And then, as people do, they started craving that tangy, refreshing beverage they had scorned as waste food when it was abundant. 

Nowadays the buttermilk you buy, and the buttermilk I make at home are made from whole or reduced fat milk. It is inoculated with beneficial cultures to create the sour taste. The butter making process has been left out. 

Recipes:

Buttermilk

1 Quart Milk
1/4 cup cultured buttermilk or 1/4 t buttermilk culture or mesophilic culture

Warm the milk to 30 degrees C (about 90 F)
If using buttermilk, add 1/4 cup milk to the buttermilk, mix them together, then mix the mixture into the milk.
If using culture, sprinkle it over the milk and wait 10 minutes for it to hydrate
Mix the milk thoroughly to incorporate the culture
Cover and let sit at room temperature. The time it takes to thicken will vary with temperature. We keep a cold house in the winter, and it often takes 24 hours or longer. Check. When the milk is thick, tangy and sour, it is buttermilk. Refrigerate until needed.

  

Buttermilk Pancakes

The acids in buttermilk make it very special for baking. It combines with baking soda to act as a leavener without needing to use baking powder - a flavor I deeply dislike. Its acids act as a tenderizer, so pancakes or other baked goods have a very pleasing mouth feel, as though you'd used extra butter.

Done to a golden brown

1 cup flour
1 cup buttermilk
1 egg
1 T sugar
1/2 t salt
1/2 t baking soda
2 T melted butter

Mix together dry ingredients.

Mix together butter, buttermilk and egg until well blended

Lightly mix wet and dry ingredients. A few lumps are better than an over mixed batter.

Heat a frying pan or griddle on medium high heat. Grease lightly.

Pour out 1/2 cup batter per pancake. Let them cook until they form bubbles that pop leaving holes in the surface. 

Not ready to flip

Big holes that don't close - ready to flip

Flip. Count to thirty and the other side is done. Check the pan often. Too hot and you will burn your pancakes, too cool and they will stick.

I assume you already know how to serve and eat pancakes.

Buttermilk Cucumber Soup

2 Cups buttermilk

2 Cups peeled and seeded cucumbers, finely shredded

1 Clove garlic, finely crushed and chopped and minced

Salt and pepper to taste

1 t olive oil

Borage flowers to garnish

Mix it all but the last two ingredients together. Chill. Serve garnished with borage flowers and drizzled with a tiny bit of good olive oil.

Buttermilk Fruit Smoothie

1 Cup Buttermilk

1 Cup Frozen Strawberries or Blueberries

1 Cup cut up frozen peaches

Sugar or honey to taste

Add to blender in listed order. Blend until smooth. Drink

A smoothie of buttermilk, peaches and blueberries rivals anything you can buy, make or even imagine. 

It tastes like something woodland faeries might eat.

Buttermilk Spoonbread

1 cup cornmeal
1 1/2  cups boiling water
2 T butter
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
2 eggs
1 t salt
1 t baking soda

Heat oven to 375. Grease a 2 quart baking pan or better yet, grease a cast iron skillet.

Cut up butter and toss with cornmeal. Stir in baking soda.

Pour boiling water over cornmeal mixture and stir to break up lumps. Cool for 15 minutes

Beat together eggs, buttermilk and salt.

Gradually add wet ingredients to cornmeal mixture, stirring well to break up lumps.

Bake 45 to 50 minutes. You may drizzle milk or cream over the surface to keep it from getting crispy (but why would you? I love a crispy surface). Spoon it out onto the plate; the texture is between a souffle and cornbread. Serve hot.

 

Buttermilk Mac n Cheese

Substitute buttermilk for regular milk next time you make home made mac n cheese. You will love it. You can use cheap, not very sharp cheddar and it will still be really sharp.

Buttermilk on its own curdles when heated. Use a starch (cornstarch, a flour roux, tapioca) to thicken. Don't freak when the sauce separates - wait, stir, and soon it will come together again.

Buttermilk also does wonders for mashed potatoes. Substitute it for some or all of the milk and some of the butter. It adds a hint of tanginess and a punch of richness without adding extra fat.

You can just drink buttermilk, too. But I don't think anyone does.

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Blossom by Blossom, Spring Begins

Late January and the dark is getting to us. The days are getting longer, but we are locked in shadow. The ducks ponds freeze at night. Goats really appreciate warm water to drink. They drink more of it, which is important for their urinary health and of course for milk production.

In the Pacific Northwest, the dominant season of the year is this winter/spring hybrid- endless, rainy, hinting at hopeful. Sometimes I think it starts in January with the first openings of midwinter flowers and ends in June when it finally stops raining for three glorious months.

All around Several Gardens Farm, in tiny ways, Spring is waking up.

The very first blossoming is the catkins of the filbert hedge. Filberts are wind pollinated, so they don't need to flower when the bees are active. Instead, their bare winter branches are suddenly alive with fuzzy, dangly "boy things". The female flowers are extremely subtle, but they are the part that will ripen into nuts later.

I could not get a good picture of the tiny, hot fuchsia female blossom, but here are the catkins.








Next comes the cornelian cherry dogwood. This brilliant yellow seems to be a special color - a way to start the season. Here are the fat, swelling flower buds against a grey sky.















The imposing camellias are getting ready to flower (later this month).

A single branch, with its waxy dark leaves and tissue paper flowers, is a centerpiece.

If you cut a branch while it's still in bud, the flowers that open inside are much paler pink than the ones that open outdoors.


You can make a very pretty arrangement by mixing the two of them.









But what about the edibles?

The artichoke is alive but beaten down by rain and freezing. When we get to our last frost date, I'll pull back all the tattered leaves. Strawberries are also looking pretty bad but in reality, gearing up for a comeback.


A stray habenero in the greenhouse. Pepper bushes love heat, and don't take off until the hottest part of summer. But once up, I find them remarkably tough, often surviving the mild freezes in our unheated greenhouse and limping into the next year still alive.

Any forgotten onions will provide tasty greens through our mild winters.







Cabbage gets sweeter with frost. So do Jerusalem artichokes. I dig up a few of them whenever I feel like it (which given how much work they are and how indifferent I am to them, is pretty rare).

 Arugula just keeps giving. This plant is the offspring of our summer crop. A few leaves at a time, it spices up salads all winter.

Miners' lettuce sprouts

The miners' lettuce and nasturtiums are not perennials, but they come back from seed every year.

Fava bean blossoms

These little miners' lettuce sprouts will self-thin to a couple of hardy plants. I think I'll do a story just for them when they're in season. They are pretty, tasty and easy to grow; winners in every way.





And ah, those pretty fava beans. I did not expect to find them in flower mid-January. Here's to pleasant surprises. They are usually grown as cover crops or as food, but they are semi-attractive ornamentals, and also have a lovely, waxy fragrance on warm evenings.

The oyster mushroom log has stopped putting out new growth but the old ones are still edible in soups and as flavoring, though too tough to enjoy on their own.

Of all the bee hives, the healthiest and most active is the Warre. If it stays this prosperous, expect to hear more about it in the coming year. But - it is the only hive with the full south facing exit and a wall behind it, so there may be extenuating circumstances.

 Winter is a good time to see the underlying structure of things.

The fat clusters of buds that stick out on fruit trees are the future blossoms. Thin buds that cling tightly to the stem hold leaves. You need both, so careful not to winter prune away all of your next year's fruit!









Winter or early Spring is when you check your espaliers for shape.I apologize for the clutter in this picture, but hopefully you can see that the tree is growing nicely - balanced branches starting to put out little side spurs where apples will form.

 And who isn't grateful for the Bergenia and the Beauty Berry for giving color at this time of year. I ask nothing else of them, but simply give thanks.