It's Spring!

It was a beautiful weekend!

Hoosick loved playing outside, we played fetch for awhile until Hoosick decided she was tired and never went to get the ball again. She was also happy to take a nap in the warm sun.

 
The crocus are up and looking beautiful!

The little red things are our bleeding heart! The hostas are also starting to come up, but didn't take a good picture. I can't WAIT til everything comes awake this spring!

Sunday Update

STRAWBERRY GRANITA

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup warm water

3 cups sliced strawberries

2 Tbls. lemon juice.

Put sugar and water in blender and mix until sugar dissolves. Add strawberries and lemon juice and blend til smooth.

Pour in an 8x8 pan and freeze for 3 hours

GOUDA CHEESE

Made a much firmer curd than the cheddar.

Here it is in the warm water bath.

Had to immediately work the curd into the mold. The curd is much creamier than the cheddar was at this point.

The first make shift cheese press didn't work very well, too off balance. The one shown above seems to be working much better. It gets pressed for a day, and then it will soak in a brine for a few hours, be left to dry, waxed and aged for about 8 weeks.

CHICKEN NOODLE SOUP

I made a whole roasted chicken Friday night for dinner. I've had a hankering for homemade chicken noodle soup so I used the leftovers to make a huge amount of soup.

Plenty for lunches this week AND three containers for the freezer!

Spring is almost here!

And it's time to start thinking about adding to the flock! I'm very excited!
We decided we are going to get three new little ones.

We are definitely going to get a Silver Laced Wyandotte


I really like the Speckled Sussex

I also really like the Buff Orpington


The problem we are having is WHEN we are going to get them. I was going to get them from our feed store, but they don't get in until mid-May, which wouldn't be an issue if we weren't going on vacation for a week in the beginning of June.

Bread and Butter Day

This morning was very productive.
I made homemade butter, made half into honey butter. With the buttermilk by-product I made biscuits. And I made a huge loaf of sweet french bread.

To make butter, just take 1 pint of heavy cream. Put it in your stand mixer, and turn on high.









You go through the stages of whipped cream.









Keep mixing and you get butter and buttermilk.











Drain the buttermilk off and save for reuse.






Take the butter and knead under cold running water to get all the extra buttermilk out (if you don't do this properly, the butter will go rancid in a few days.) until the water runs clear.

I mixed in some salt in half of the butter, in the other half, I mixed in 1/8 cup honey, 1/8 tsp cinnamon, 1/4 tsp vanilla extract.

With the buttermilk, I made a batch of buttermilk biscuits.

They taste so good with the fresh honey butter on top! YUM!

 We are headed to my in-law's this evening and are having a late "brunch" for dinner. I thought it'd be good to bake up a loaf of sweet bread to have with the homemade honey butter and peach jam I have leftover from two summers ago. I hope it tastes as good as it looks and smells!

Pulled Pork

So decided to make some pulled pork for the Super Bowl.  Couple days before, defrosted a 3.5 pound piece of pork shoulder (a pig from the Rhodes farm).  

 Night before, put some dry rub on it, and refrigerated overnight.

This was going to be North Carolina style barbecue.  Meaning instead of a tomato base and sweet sauce, it's a vinegar base.  Cider vinegar, liquid smoke (since I was doing in crock pot), Worcestershire sacue, garlic, onion and pepper flakes, cayenne pepper, mustard powder, garlic, and a little sugar. 

Poured about half the mixture on, and set the crock pot on low.  

 About 8 hours later before game time, it was good to go.  Pulled apart easy.

 Pulled out the bone, shredded, and mixed in the rest of the sauce.  

 Served up on some fresh baked rolls.  Darn tasty. 

Homebrew- English IPA update

Now 3 weeks after bottling.  Last week it was carbonated, but had no head.  So now it must be fully carbonated.  Taste is descent, but I hope it improves with some more bottle conditioning. 

Hops have been ordered

Just a quick note - hops for the garden have been ordered!   It turns out that the local homebrew store sells hop rhizomes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhizome) and a better price and more variety than our usual seed and plant catalog. 

They should be ariving by April, we ordered two rhizomes each of Nugget and Cascade, in case we have bad luck starting them.  Nugget is a strong bittering hop, while Cascade is a finishing hop used to add aroma and flavoring.  Nugget is described as herbal and spicey, while Cascade imparts citrus and floral aromas that are popular with American Pale Ales and IPAs.

More info on hop varieties: http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter5-3.html