Maybe Her Last Egg?

I've had chickens for about 9 years. I used to have indoor birds and that got too messy for me. Besides, I became WAY too attached to them and I mourned their passing as if it was my favorite dog or person. Not good for a grown-up. Am I? Hmmm...I'll have to think about that one.

Anyhow, I bought a few chickens to see if I could raise them. Yep. I could, did and do! My one hen and roo are the last ones from my original batch of chickens. You heard right...nine plus years old and still hanging in there. Boy acts like the old man he is. He takes naps during the day. White Hen still looks very young and gets around well.

The pic above is a couple of my eggs to show their color. This is the best I could do with a flash at 6 am today. On the left is a white egg, probably from my leghorn hen, which I bought from mail order. The middle one is green (looks brownish) and is from Peepy, an Auraucana mix and first chicken I raised from an egg. Boy was her daddy and Sweetie was her mom. The blue egg on the right is from White Hen, who is also an Auraucana mix, which I bought. All of these eggs are very large. White Hen was walking funny the other day and I see why. Because she is very old, I think it takes her two days to move the egg along the canal before she can lay. Also, this egg looked like she ate sand and passed it. Must've hurt a bit because it is very rough on the outside. This may be her last egg.

I really hope she starts thinking about retirement. If I was her, I would! LOL!

Holidays at Our House

I hope You and Yours had a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Yes, I'm a little late posting. However, we just celebrated our Christmas last week. My Hubby and I celebrate according to the Julian calendar for Orthodox Christmas. Yes, we celebrated December 25th with our Gregorian calendar family, too. Both were very quiet days, which was really good.

Here's the loot for our 4-legged babies. This is the second year in a row that we've finally convinced our relatives NOT to exchange gifts. I'm thankful for this economy. It helped sway everyone. Anyhow, gifts aren't the Reason for the Season, right?! We've already been given the greatest Gift of all and we could never top that!

We don't buy for ourselves and haven't done so for about 18 years. My Hubby and I have all we want or need. It makes us happy to watch our Angel and Trixie open their gifts.

How simple can that be?!

Take care. I wish many blessings for You and Yours throughout the new year.

Comforts of Home!

Mmmmmm! I know this isn't the most gorgeous picture, but it is a very comforting picture. Just think...these are warm out of the oven! Homemade! I sat down with a cup of steaming hot joe, these biscuits and a jar of lemon curd. How much more comforting can you get?! Here's my recipe.

Scratch Biscuits
2 cups all purpose flour
6 tablespoons of shortening, butter or margarine
3 teaspoons of baking powder
1 teaspoon of salt

Cut all of the shortening into the dry ingredients until nice and crumbly.

Then, add...
1 cup of milk or buttermilk (I add 1/2 cup milk and 1/2 cup of either sour cream or plain yogurt)

Stir this all together until the ingredients are nice and wet.
Dump the dough onto a well-floured surface and knead about 6 times. This will make a few flaky layers.
Pat into about a 1/2 inch slab.
Cut with a biscuit cutter or a floured drinking glass.
Place on an ungreased baking pan.
If you have dough left over, gather it, fold it once or twice and pat into another 1/2 inch slab.
Cut more biscuits.
When you don't have enough left over to cut, make a hand-styled biscuit (see top left biscuit).
Bake at 400 degrees until nicely browned.

Blessings

My Hubby and I are very very blessed. We count our blessings every day.

We have a decent house with a very warm atmosphere. We work at it constantly to get it the way we want.

We are watching our pennies so we can pay off our bills. However, we had to make a not-so-frugal purchase, lately.

Let me explain. We are working hard to pay off our debts...land...mortgage...a couple of credit cards. We are whacking at them really hard. Dave Ramsey is my hero. However, even he wouldn't agree with this purchase.

We had Thanksgiving at our house again this year. It is my holiday to celebrate with family and friends. Our old dining set had a very bad set of creaks and cracking going on. It was 35 years old when we received it as a gift. We had it for 18 years, ourselves. We donated it to someone who needed a dining set. We knew our chairs were on their last legs - so to speak. We actually held our breath during the fellowship as we had done some work to shore up the chairs. So we went out to get something more stable. This is really stable. The price was very good. I hope Dave won't complain too much.

We had our first dinner at the table this evening. It was nice and comfortable and romantic. We needed that!

I made a new recipe and we enjoyed it very much.

Take care. I hope all of you are in a better situation than you deserve. (kinda, sorta what Dave says.)

Chicken News

Hubby and I have decided to be nice to our chickens this year.

We live in a temperate zone, so we don't have much snow. Last year was actually the first year we had any kind of snow since we moved to South Carolina. However, it does get really cold here. It freezes at night and gets to a max of 45 degrees during the day over several of the winter months.

Well, last year we bought a torpedo heater to keep the chickens warm in the barn. No...we didn't cook them! The roof is very high in the barn so we really don't know how well it kept them at a decent temperature. Here's the nice part. We bought wood to lower the roof over the inside part of the barn for the chickens. We hope this keeps more heat in their area so they stay warmer. I'm sure it will. We'll set the automatic thermostat to around 40 degrees so they won't freeze. It's actually nice in the barn for humans at 40 degrees when the barn doors are closed.

Yesterday I helped Hubby with the roof framing. Today the yard boy helped with putting the plywood roof over that.

I'll try to remember to keep you posted on how this works.

Take care. Happy farming!

Can't Sleep

HELP! I've gotten up in the middle of the night and can't sleep! I guess it's a sign of getting older. YIKES!

What better thing to do than update the blog?!

Thanksgiving day, we had a bunch of relatives over for dinner. This is my holiday to cook for everyone. We even had a few extra people at our table this year. We had a really lovely time. I also invited the neighbors next door to come over for dessert. They are an older couple and are really interesting to talk to. They are like an extra set of parents for Hubby and me. We keep an eye on them to make sure they stay healthy. All in all, I couldn't have asked for a better Thanksgiving day.

Speaking of desserts...

Here's my Thanksgiving lineup: yellow bundt cake was made into a banana cream cake. Middle left pic is a cherry and blackberry pie, middle right is pumpkin. Top left pie is apple and top right is peach. I also made a banana cream pie, which was in the fridge. They all turned out well and I didn't have too much left over as most people took extras home.

As I shopped for ingredients for dinner, I noticed something. Reddi Whip (cream...not oil...LOL) was a reasonable price for a large cylinder this year. I paid $1.98. Last year, I couldn't touch it for less than $4.99! Of course, I didn't buy any last year. I used Cool Whip. I try not to use too many things laden with food additives because we don't tolerate them too well in our home. So, I was very excited to get the Reddi Whip.

Did you see the afghan in the previous post? Mom loved it! Now, my brother would like one for his home. I am starting on it. It is a coffee bean brown with baby blue stripes. I'll put a pic of it on this blog as soon as I get it done.

Take care and happy holidays!

Having Fun with Food

My Japanese friend and I were discussing Bento and how popular it is becoming. I have been focused on Bento for the past few days and not so focused on our simple life at home. I've been trying to get my hubby to eat healthier and this may do the trick.

Bento is essentially a stylin' lunch, Japanese-style. It's really cool! You can really get involved in the style of it and the planning of it.

I'm not going to say a lot about Bento here, so please check out my blog at www.cooking-like-crazy.blogspot.com. You'll get to see what I'm talking about and you can check out my first attempts at Bento...don't laugh.

Have a great day!