Bubble Boy likes the new eggs!

Got another present this morning (oh happy day!). Makes getting the ducks out much more exciting, let me tell you.

Because my hens are so young, the eggs are still small (this is normal, from what I have read. They will get larger over the next few months). Compared to a store-bought large egg, they are slightly smaller than that.

I have seen on several websites the comparisons of store-bought eggs vs home-grown, and wanted to see for myself. I had been told that the whites are more firm and gel-like, and that the yolk would be closer to orange than the sunny yellow of a store egg. Sure enough, our egg yolk was a deep orange, highly rounded up instead of spread out and flatter like the store bought was. The store egg ran all over the pan, while the home egg stayed in one place. Interesting.

Best part? My son declared the egg to be yummy! And that would be why I started this whole thing to begin with. To have yummy eggs that I knew from start to finish what feed had gone into creating the eggs. I am thrilled.

Our first egg!

It's a red banner day at my house!

I let the ducks out before daybreak like normal (half-asleep like normal). I latch their pen so they can't pig out on grain all day. Later in the morning, I went back out to their pen to see if there were any eggs....and there was one! Granted, it was completely poo-covered (thank you, whoever you were. You really didn't need to wrap it for me.), but it is our first egg, so I don't mind too much.

I don't know which hen stepped up to the plate and decided to start them off, but I hope it's the beginning of a trend. My friend, who also has runner ducks, told me that the hens are a little competitive and will try to "out-lay" each other. Fingers crossed that mine are the same.

Here is hoping that my days of buying store-bought eggs are nearly over!

Hubby's comment when I called him to tell him we had our first egg? "How soon before we can start selling them?" Probably not in the near future, honey. But, way to be positive!

The bread curse is OVER!

I am doing a happy dance! Look at that beautiful bread. Oh my goodness, it is gorgeous. Smells so good, so soft and airy.

I figured out why I was failing time after time at making bread. And I didn't learn it from a cookbook or from a recipe, but from reading the reviews to a recipe. I found a recipe from AllRecipe.com (for Amish White Bread). I read several of the reviews, and one of them described very well how to proof yeast and what it looked like while yeast was proofing. Knock me over with a feather, I have been doing it wrong all these years.

The tip? I knew that liquids need to be about 110 degrees (I had been doing that!). And then I would add the yeast and stir it in. What I didn't know is that you need to allow the yeast to proof, to foam up. Now this can take several minutes, five to ten, so just be patient and let it work. It starts to look a little bit like tan cappichino foam. Wait until the entire surface of the liquid is covered and then start stirring in the rest of your ingredients.

As for the bread itself? A bit too sweet. Another reviewer said that the recipe was too sweet and to reduce the sugar by a quarter cup (which I did do), and I still found it to be sweeter than I would like. Still, I now know what I was doing wrong, and feel far more competent to try other recipes!

Brings me to the thought that so many of these homemaking skills are being lost. My mother would on rare occasions make bread when I was a kid (very rarely). And she didn't want to be bothered with teaching me how to bake bread. I can understand the feeling, it takes a lot of effort and extra time to teach a child skills. Usually when I would help in the kitchen, I would get stuck on peeling duty (meaning peeling potato after potato, or cutting up things) while she would do the technical stuff, and now that I have a household of my own, I am missing all this knowledge! Like proofing yeast. So when I have these ah-ha moments, I love to pass them on. Hopefully, they are helpful to others.

A reminder of why I stockpile

Tomorrow is payday. Rightly, it is MY payday, which is pretty small. See, I only work about four days a month doing bookkeeping, so my job income is usually just pin-money for the family. The fun cash that comes along that allows us to do things that we normally would do without.

But, with vacation last month, and Hubby missing several days of work, his paycheck was VERY short last time, should be better this time, but that is still another week away.

Bottom line? Bubble boy ate the last piece of bread yesterday night. Skinny boy finished off the milk this morning. We are out of fruit. The good yogurt has been gone for a week now (the horror!). So, mom was getting to thinking today.

Well....I had good luck with the artisan's bread last week, maybe my run at bread killing is over. I could try my hand at making white bread again and see how it goes. I check on-line for "recipe easy white bread" (go with your strengths!). Sure enough, there are tons of them. I pick one that got good reviews and am giving it a whirl. It's been rising for nearly an hour and is looking good (there is hope!).

For dinner, I dug up some dried red beans, a pound of hamburger, some fresh tomato's from the garden, a few odds and ends in the kitchen and am making chili. It's very filling, should last at least two meals, and is healthy.

I buy milk when it is on sale and I freeze it (if in plastic gallons, pour off a cup or two to allow for expansion). So I took out a gallon from the freezer and set it next to the warm stove to thaw.

All in all, even though I haven't bought groceries in close to two weeks, we aren't too badly off! I try and try to buy pantry items seasonally when they are on sale, even if I know I won't be using them right away. Such as, flour and sugar will be going on sale in November and December because of the holidays and increased baking. Sure, I do some baking, but not like a lot of families do. The holidays isn't traditional "baking time" for me. I still stock up on these items at this time! Right now, I am practically out of sugar at my house, because I have used it all up making jelly. Yes, it's the jelly making that uses up my sugar supplies. But come November, I will buy 10 to 20 pounds of sugar and set it aside for next summer and fall. I know I will use it. I shop this way for all kinds of things. Pick up odds and ends, even if I know I have plenty at this time, if the sale price is significantly below the normal retail price.

That way, when we hit a tight patch and there is not a lot of money for a while, I know I have plenty of toilet paper, shaving cream, flour and all the other necessities of life. There is peace in that!

Hankering for Cheesecake

I was out at hockey try-outs with Skinny-boy (you rock, kid!), and was pondering what to make for dinner. Pfft! Let's get to the important stuff. What to make for dessert!

My first thought? Cinnamon Rolls. Oh, I have a cinnamon roll recipe that uses my bread machine that totally rocks, but, sadly, it takes two hours in the bread machine, an additional hour to rise outside the machine, plus baking time, and....well, it's after 9pm. OUCH. Oh-kay. Can't do cinnamon rolls. What else can I make today? Hmmm....I have a few pounds of cream cheese in the fridge (a friend of mine gave me a huge loaf of cream cheese). Logical thing to make? Cheesecake!

I love the internet. You want to find a recipe on a whim, best place to look. And, I don't need a foofy recipe that requires 24 oz of cream cheese, a spring-form pan and a water-bath. Sweet heavens above, I want a down and dirty recipe for us lazy people!

Found one off of Kelloggs website. Okay, so their recipe calls for a Keebler Graham Cracker Crust. My solution? Use what I have on hand! What did I have? (This is bad...) I had Mini Teddy Grahams. It's okay, you can laugh. I put them into a sealed bag, tap-danced on them, and then used a rolling pin to crush them. Melted a few table spoons of butter in the microwave, mixed the crumbs and butter together, and pressed them into the bottom of a glass dish.

Other than that, I followed the recipe (pretty much). I skipped the sour cream topping, and used my own blackberry jam (after only one week of setting, it is jelling nicely!). Oh goodness! How yummy was that!

Hubby and I sat around the fire pit last night, talking and listening to the ducks, eating homemake cheesecake. Life doesn't get much better than this.

Two left and two arrived--my ark stays full.

Yes, that needs a little explanation.

We have had leopard geckos. Two of them, Blake and Gloria. My oldest son, Skinny Boy, begged and begged for them. So, it was Christmas gift of 2005. Wow, that was a LONG time ago. Minor miracle right there that we have managed to keep them both healthy and hale all these years! Anyhoo...oldest son has long ago lost interest in the geckos. It has become a chore and not a joy to have these geckos. They are never handled or watched. You know how it is with kids and animals.

We offered the geckos to science teachers (gee, I figured they would be a good object lesson! I thought wrong.), offered them on-line. Nope, no takers. Yee-ahh. They have been on our version of animal welfare, the black hole eating worms and crickets. At least the chinchilla is cute! Geckos aren't really very "cute" to me.

I had given up on getting rid of them. Resigned myself to having them until Skinny Boy leaves for college (packing them into his car with him and making him take the blasted things!). And then, this week, a young friend of mine asked me if I would be willing to give them to her. Would I?! I would LOVE to give them to you! Here, take all the stuff that goes with them too! Enjoy them! Be fruitful with them! End of the story? She is thrilled to have them, and I am thrilled they are gone. A happy ending!

The two new arrivals? Well, we got our four ducks (as hatching's) from Holdderread this past spring. I am so thrilled with my Indian Runner Ducks. I love watching them in the yard, seeing them chase the dogs, eating the bugs, digging at the dirt. I am excitedly anticipating eggs, but realize that it will be a few months yet until that happens. I've already mentioned to my husband that I would like to get a few more in the spring, but I don't really want to do hatching's all over again (raising ducklings in the bedroom is an intense, and pungent affair).

Hubs was looking online last night and saw an ad for two pair of ducks originally from Holdderread that were looking for a new home, hatched this spring, just like mine! Bonus, they are the same age as mine. Yes, hubby was joking, but I wasn't. My sweet man drove up, looked at the ducks, and brought me home ducks. Just in time for our fifth anniversary. Nothing sez love like a pair of ducks for your anniversary!

There you have it! Two animals out, two animals in. The two new ducks are the dark gray ones, they are called "blues". We have named them "Lady Grey" and "Blue Crew". Must be a guy thing, 'cause I am not sure what hubby is referring to! I have a FLOCK now! I love it!

Bread Success!

Look at that beautiful loaf! And yes, it tasted as good as it looked.

I made the dough early this afternoon, went and did some errands outside the house, came home, cut off a ball of dough and put the rest of the dough in the fridge for later. I love that part about this recipe...I have many loaves of bread just waiting to be baked inside my fridge. It's a beautiful thing.

The instructions said to cut off about a pound worth of dough, approximately a grapefruit size of dough. Well, perhaps my mental thought of a grapefruit is pretty small, or the loaf didn't rise well for it's second rising (a possibility). I was disappointed at the size of the loaf and worried that it was a sign that I had, once again, killed the yeast.

Hoping against hope, I baked it. I pulled it out about five minutes short of the recommended time (perhaps because it was too small). It turned out crunchy on the outside, soft and airy on the inside. Wonderful with butter, and perfectly yummy with my tomato salad.

I tell ya. This bread is the bees knees. Check it out! http://www.foodess.com/2009/03/artisan-bread-in-five-minutes/