Update On Chicken-sitting

I have been taking care of my friend Carol's chickens while she is in London.

It has been so much fun!

I collected 13 eggs on Saturday, 9 eggs on Sunday and 11 eggs today.

Since I added the golf balls there haven't been any broken or eaten eggs.

Yay!

Like my girls, her hens are starting to be really friendly.

I pet and hug each hen, every night, before they go to sleep.

Some are starting to want to be cuddled and a few are still ambivalent.

Hopefully I can break down their standoffishness and make them snugglers.

I love a snuggly chicken!

Cuddliness: really the best reason for having chickens.

Bulghur and Pumpkin Challenge

I was excited to see the ingredients in the Foodie Fights challenge were pumpkin and bulghur.

As a child, I ate more bulghur than white rice, so I'm very familiar with the toasty grain.

Yes, I was that weird kid in school with homemade fruit leather and a thermos of chicken noodle soup at lunch.

And soup with fat, homemade noodles, not the skinny, trademarked noodles.

After much thought and cookbook research I decided to make a variation of Topig (Little Balls), an Armenian appetizer, and a sparkly Mexican pumpkin-lime soup.

Some flavors, like cinnamon, ginger, lime and pumpkin, are meant to be together.

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Bulghur (wheat)Balls

1 cup raw bulghur

2 cups boiling water

3 med. potatoes, peeled and quartered

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1 med. onion chopped

1/3 cup oil

1/2 cup pine nuts

1/2 cup walnuts, finely chopped

1 tsp. cinnamon

1 tsp. ground allspice

1 tsp. ginger

salt and ground black pepper to taste

1 cup raisins

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1 Tbs honey

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1 egg beaten with a dash of salt and cinnamon

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Cover bulghur with the boiling water and let it steam, covered, until the bulghur is tender and the water is absorbed. Boil the potatoes until tender.

Meanwhile, saute the onions in 1/3 cup olive oil. When they are translucent and soft mix in the nuts and spices. Add the raisins and saute, stirring, until the mixture is hot. Remove from heat.

Drain the potatoes and reserve the potato water for the soup. Mash the potatoes. Combine them with the bulghur, onion-nut mixture and the honey. Add more salt and spices to taste. When cool enough to handle, form the mixture into little balls, about 2 inch in diameter.

Let bulghur balls rest for 20mins.

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.

Dip each ball into the egg, salt and cinnamon mixture. Place on a greased or Silpat covered cookie sheet and bake for 15-25 mins., until balls begin to toast on top.

Pumpkin-Lime Soup

4 cups vegetable stock

2 cup potato water

3 cloves of garlic, minced

1 tsp dried sage

1/2 tsp ground cloves

3 cups peeled and diced firm pumpkin or butternut squash

1/2 cup lime juice

2 Tbs olive oil

1 med. onion, chopped

1 spicy dried chile or 2-3 fresh, diced chiles

28oz can of diced tomatoes

Add to taste: Hickory salt or 1/8 tsp liquid smoke, salt and pepper.

Toppings: Cilantro, toasted pumpkin seeds, thinly sliced lime.

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Saute onion with olive oil in a large stockpot. After a few minutes add chiles. When onion is translucent remove from heat and add minced garlic.

Add all of the remaining ingredients and return stockpot to the stove. Turn up heat to med-high. Cover the pot and let simmer until the pumpkin is fork tender, 15-20 mins.

Adjust salt and pepper to personal taste and serve. Offer soup with fresh or dried cilantro, toasted pumpkin seeds and sliced limes.

To serve: Ladle soup into bowls, add bulghur ball and optional toppings.

Notes and Confessions:

Unless you had an unconventional childhood like me, you might not know about bulghur. Bulghur has a very high nutritional value. It's high in protein, fiber and is low in fat and calories. It is also rich in B vitamins, vitamin E, iron, phosphorous and manganese. Its B vitamins complement the folate in vegetables such as spinach, asparagus, broccoli or brussels sprouts. Furthermore, Bulghur does not lose much of its nutrients from its minimal processing (steaming). It retains its high protein and vitamin count.

Yummy! And good for you!

Bulghur is wheat berries (seeds) that have been precooked, dried and cracked. Bulghur should never be boiled like rice or pasta. Simply, pour boiling water over bulghur, cover and allow to steam.

So in this recipe I used:

Honey - from my Grandfather's bees. He died when I was 4, so this honey is a non replenishable commodity

Egg - from Butter, my pet chicken

Sage - from my garden

Pumpkin - from my garden

Onion - from my garden

Chile - from my garden, dried by me

Potato - from my garden

Garlic - I used one big clove of elephant garlic, from my garden

I love this soup!

I ate 4 bowls. Honestly, I couldn't eat it fast enough. It has so many flavors and textures: Nutty bulghur, rich pine nuts, sweet, creamy pumpkin and sparkly lime.
The pumpkin and lime really complement each other well. The tart lime brings out the sweet pumpkin flavor. The spices are just decadent.

Multiple layers of flavor and texture. Yummy!

And the bulghur balls are delicious in the soup or just eaten on their own. I'm eating them straight out of the refrigerator!

Yum! Yum!

This was so much fun!

Check out all the competitors entries and then vote!

Mashed Potato Candy Bars

These are soooo good!

And weird.

I blind taste tested them on 30 people.

No one could guess the "secret" ingredient - mashed potatoes.

The bars did disappear really fast though. They were popular!

Some of my testers' comments, "Tastes like an Almond Joy." "Mmmm, that's good." "Do you have anymore?"

Mashed Potato Coconut Chocolate Candy Bars

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4 cups powdered sugar

4 cups coconut

3/4 cup mashed potato (no butter/milk/salt added - just plain)

1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 tsp salt

1 Tbs. lime juice

1/4 tsp. ginger

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Boil 2 med. peeled potatoes until tender. Reserve potato cooking liquid for stock*. Return drained potatoes to burner;mash potatoes and add lime juice and ginger. Measure out 3/4 cup mashed potatoes**.

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In a mixer combine 3/4 cup mashed potatoes and other remaining ingredients.

Mix until completely combined.

Line a 10 in square baking pan with tin foil; grease tin foil.

Press coconut/potato mixture into the bottom of the baking pan.

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Freeze for 20 mins. or refrigerate overnight.

Top with chocolate layer - recipe below.

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*Potato water makes a wonderful addition to soups and stocks. I will be posting a soup recipe tomorrow that uses this reserved potato water.

**After taking out the 3/4 cup mashed potato, do you have extra leftover mashed potatoes?

Yum! You now have lime-ginger mashed potatoes. Add a pat of butter and eat!

Chocolate Layer

1 12 oz bag of milk chocolate chips

2 Tbs cream

2 Tbs corn syrup

Using the microwave, melt chocolate chips, cream and corn syrup in a glass bowl. Stir every 15 seconds. Remove from microwave when smooth.

Spread over coconut layer and refrigerate for 1 hour.

Remove and cut.

Eat!

One of my testers asked what the potato's purpose is in this recipe.

The potatoes are a starch and they bind with the coconut and sugar without making the bars floury, heavy, gummy or overwhelming the coconut flavor.

Instead they are light, not-too-sweet and coconutty.

Bon Voyage

My friend Carol left for London today.

(My 4 chickens live with her 18 chickens - like the Brady bunch)

I am so jealous!

She's going to tour London and Paris.

I hope she tries macarons and takes lots of pictures.

Bon Voyage, Carol!

~

I visited the Ladies today.

Carol said I could collect and keep all the eggs while she is on vacation.

Yay! I love collecting eggs!

Today there were 6 eggs.

There were 2 broken/eaten eggs underneath the roosts and another half eaten egg in a corner.

Uh-oh!

Egg eaters!

I'll take some golf balls out tomorrow and try to get them to stop eating their eggs.

Hopefully banging their beaks a few times on the golf balls will stop them from sampling eggs OR I'll have to make a few mustard eggs.

Don't Be A Hero Pickled Peppers

Someone at work brought in 3 huge bags of hot peppers.

I dried all of the red ones and then pickled the rest.

These pickles are not for me!

They are too HOT!

They will be gifts.

*wink*

Don't Be A Hero Pickled Peppers

3 lbs peppers

6 cups vinegar

2 cups water

Combine vinegar and water in a large saucepot.

Bring mixture to a boil.

Pack peppers into hot jars, leaving 1/4 inch headspace.

Ladle hot liquid over peppers, leaving 1/4 inch headspace.

Remove air bubbles.

Adjust 2-piece caps.

Process 10 mins in a boiling water canner.

Yay! for free vegetables!

Another Use For Canning Rings

I have a million canning rings.

There is no way that I will ever use all of them at the same time, so

either I have to start stuffing mattresses or I need to find a use for them.

Egg Sandwich

Grease the rings really well.

I used butter.

Place them in your frying pan.

Crack eggs into the rings.

Cook on low, flip and cook on the other side.

Pop cooked eggs out of the rings.

Serve on round bread or hamburger buns.

Yummy!

Thanks for the eggs Ladies!

I love knowing where my food comes from.

For example, the broccoli seeds that I started in my house last spring, planted and watered all summer and then fed to my Ladies (chickens) last week turned into an egg that I ate today.

Lemon YumYums

These are the easiest cookies to make.

Three ingredients!

Perfect when you have unexpected guests, like your mother-in-law, and you want to impress.

Or if you forget about the bake sale, that starts in an hour.

Lemon YumYums

Ingredients:

1 pkg cake mix

1 stick of cold butter

2 large eggs

In a food processor blend cake mix and butter for 2 mins. Add eggs, mix until thoroughly combined, another 2 mins.

With wet hands roll the batter into walnut sized balls, about 1 Tbs of batter each.

Place on greased cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees for 10 mins., until light golden brown on edges. Cookies will still be soft in the center.

Optional: Roll cookies in powdered sugar before baking.

These are so good! Soft and chewy with crispy edges.

I'm adding a few of these to the giveaway box - don't forget to enter!

Purple Potatoes

Remember waaaaay back when I told you about my purple potatoes?

And how they were so sweet and yummy?

They're actually blue potatoes - a variety called "All Blue", because they not only have 'blue' skin, but blue flesh too.

Do these potatoes look blue to you?

Whatever, it was probably named by a color blind man.

No offense men!

but you're more likely to be color unaware.

This is the only recipe for scalloped potatoes you will ever need.

Really.

No joke.

Write this down.

Ingredients:

Potatoes

Onions

Cream

Salt

Pepper

Nutmeg

Chop onions

Thinly slice potatoes.
Your color choice.


In a greased baking dish layer potatoes and onions.
Sprinkle salt, pepper and nutmeg lightly over each layer.



Keep making layers.

Pour your cream over the top until it covers the potatoes.

It should look like this.
And I hope you are not making this with milk!

No cheating!

You have to use whole fat yummy CREAM.

It won't work with milk - not even 2%.

Sprinkle on some more pepper, salt and nutmeg.

Bake at 350 degrees - until bubbly and light golden brown on top.

About 1 hour.

Now looking at the pics - when it's cold it looks blue, when it gets warmed up it looks purple.

So weird.

But tasty.

October Giveaway

I mailed the prizes from last month's giveaway last week, so everyone should be getting them soon.

Yay!

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to send everyone jars of marmalade and jelly.

I really tried, but they wouldn't fit in the small flat rate boxes.

Sorry.

So, I sent macaroons instead.

I hope you like them!

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Now, on to the October Giveaway.....

I have one box of macaroons left over and hanging out in my freezer.

To win this box:

Post about this giveaway on your blog

and then leave a comment here, telling me that you blogged about it.

The giveaway ends on Sunday at Midnight.

Supposed To Be Butter

This butter was supposed to be whipped cream for my Perfect Pumpkin Waffles, but I turned away for 1 min (!) and it was butter.

Good thing I was making waffles and not cake or something.

Waffles and butter - good.

Cake and butter - not so good.

I threw in a little liquid cinnamon flavor and made cinnamon butter.

It would be easy to make lots of types of butter - lemon, rum, almond, ect.

Pumpkin Waffles - Vote For Me!

This month's challenge, on The Leftover Queen's Royal Foodie Joust, is to use orange, black and sugar.

So, Orange: pumpkin or squash - Black: Dark ale or cola - Sugar

I have to be honest, before this recipe I'd never bought beer.

I know nothing about beer.

At first it was a struggle to think of a recipe that used pumpkin, beer and sugar.

But then I thought of pumpkin waffles.

After that, the only thing left to do was to buy the beer.

Whew! Who knew that there were soooo many types of beer?

I stood in front of the cooler for a long time.

Finally, the clerk asked me if I needed help.

"Yes! Do you have any dark beer? Besides Guinness?"

"Ummmm, noooo. Just Guinness."

Ok then. Out of a million types of beer I went home with the only dark beer - Guinness.

Now to the recipe!

Perfect Pumpkin Waffles

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup oatmeal flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp cloves
1 1/2 cups pumpkin (canned or cooked)
1/2 cup brown sugar (packed)
6 Tbs. butter, melted
4 large eggs
1 1/2 cup buttermilk (or milk with 1 Tbs lemon juice added)
1/2 cup dark beer

Mix together in a large bowl dry ingredients. Stir in Pumpkin, butter, brown sugar and eggs.
Add milk and beer, mix until thoroughly blended.
Scoop batter into a preheated waffle iron.
Bake until waffles are golden brown.
Serve with butter and warm maple syrup.

I made oat flour by grinding whole oats in my mini food processor.

All of the ingredients.
Look at those bright orange yolks!
Thanks for the eggs Ladies.




I made the buttermilk by adding 1 Tbs. bottle lime juice to 2% milk.
Then let it stand for a few mins. and add the beer.
Why do you even need to use buttermilk?
The acidic buttermilk reacts with the baking soda/baking powder and results in lighter waffles with a higher rise. Have you ever made a baking soda/vinegar volcano? Same idea - poof!



I threw a few chocolate chips into the batter.




Nice and golden.

What do they taste like?

Well, do you like pumpkin bread or cake?

They taste just like that.

However, because there isn't as much flour they don't taste starchy, the spicy pumpkin flavor can really shine through.
Crispy on the outside and soft on the inside.

And they re-heat well too.

Just follow the same refrig or freezing directions

as I used for the In a Hurry Pancakes.

I served mine with home-made cinnamon butter.

Now, how can you vote for me?

Well, on Nov. 1st The Leftover Queen Forum will start voting on every one's recipes.

Please vote for me!

Everyday Pizza

I love, love, love pizza!

Homemade pizza is the best, but when I'm working I want something easy to grab and heat.

So, I buy frozen pizza, but I'm on a spending diet.

-I haven't bought groceries (excluding milk) in over 2 months!-

This is my recipe for Everyday Pizza.

Make up a bunch and freeze them or have a party and eat them all.

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Everyday Pizza

Ingredients:

1 egg

1 cup water

2 1/2 cup flour (plus 1/2 to 1 cup more - see recipe)

3/4 cup white or yellow corn meal

2 Tbs olive oil

2 tsp yeast

1 1/2 tsp salt

Add all ingredients to your mixer.

Mix together.

If you are making this in the winter you will not need to add the extra flour, because the air in your home is dry.

However, if you are making this in the summer or in humid conditions you will

need to add the extra flour.

Slowly add 1 Tbs of the extra flour until you have a moist, but cohesive ball that pulls away from the wall of the mixer bowel.

Your dough should look like this.

It will be quite sticky.

Scrape the dough from your mixer and with wet hands make the dough into a ball.

Place the dough ball into a greased bowl.

Cover the bowl and place it in a warm place.

Let it rise for 30 mins.

After it rises it will look like this.

Pre-heat your oven to 425 degrees.


With wet hands pull the dough apart into 6 separate balls.
Place the dough balls on your greased or silpat covered baking pan.
Let the dough rest for 10 mins.




With wet hands shape/flatten the dough into pizza shape.

Spread 1/4 cup pizza sauce/tomato paste into the center of each pizza.

Bake pizza crusts for 15 mins.

Remove from oven.

Now 2 choices:

A. Let cool, wrap in foil and freeze.

B. Add cheese, spices and toppings.

Return to the oven and cook an additional 15 mins.

To cook frozen Everyday Pizzas -

Add toppings and cheese (you can also add these before freezing).

Bake at 400-425 degrees for 10 -15 mins

until cheese is bubbly.

Yum!