E’s SUPER EASY HOPPIN’ JOHN

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2013!!!
Hoppin’ John is a traditional New Year’s Day Supper in the South…and the variations are as numerous as there are households that enjoy it…this is how the Farmer’s Wife fixes it…

Ingredients

4 [15 oz] cans black-eyed peas

1 lb smoked sausage, diced small

1 [16 oz] pkg frozen pepper and onion stir-fry mix, chopped small [I pulse it in my food processor a few times]

garlic powder to taste [we like lots of it]

Creole or Cajun seasoning to taste [I use Tony’s Creole Seasoning]

Directions

Empty black-eyes with liquid into 2.5 quart crock-pot/slow cooker. Rinse cans with about a half cup water each [about one can full, in total], add that to crock-pot, as well.

Turn setting to high, cover.

Saute’ diced sausage, onions, bell peppers, seasoned lightly with garlic powder & Creole seasoning, over medium-high heat in large skillet, stirring frequently, until sausage is browned, and most of the liquid from the frozen veggies has cooked out…add to crock pot, along with all the drippings and pan juices. Cook on high for 2-3 hours, add garlic powder & Creole seasoning to taste, turn to low and cook one hour more…Serve over cooked rice [traditional] or as we like it, over squares of Sweet Southern Cornbread that have been slathered with butter.

Recipes, Please….

I’m going to do something a little different for this blog post…instead of sharing one of MY favorite recipes, I’m going to ask you, dear reader, to share one of yours. 🙂
With the advent of fall, and cooler temperatures, I love to make soups for supper, so I’m looking for some new recipes to try.
I like quick & easy soups, made with everyday pantry staples, and I’m not opposed to using convenience products [canned/frozen veggies, canned cream soups, canned broth]. Recipes that do well in a slow cooker are favorites, too. So are ‘dollar-stretcher’ recipes, especially given the rising cost of groceries in today’s economy.
So, come on, reader-chefs, share your favorite soup recipes with us…one of them just might become our new favorite soup, too!

COUNTRY BREAKFAST BOWL

COUNTRY BREAKFAST BOWL
This was a favorite breakfast of mine, growing up on my grandparents’ farm, and a favorite of my ‘adopted’ daughters when they were little.
Serves 4 (Unless you’re a teenager or a very hungry adult, then it only serves 2…LOL)

Ingredients:
1 small (5 count) can jumbo buttermilk biscuits, baked as directed on can, then split and buttered. (Or you can whip up a batch from scratch, but mine aren’t very good, so I let the Dough Boy do the hard part)
6-8 eggs, scrambled & cooked to your liking
1 recipe Bacon Cream Gravy (see below)

Directions:
Break warm biscuits into bite sized pieces, divide evenly between four soup/cereal bowls. Next, divide the eggs evenly between the bowls on top of the biscuit pieces. Top with Bacon Cream Gravy, and enjoy!

Bacon Cream Gravy
Ingredients:
8 slices bacon, fried crisp & crumbled into “bits” (of course you can use more if you really LOVE bacon)
4 tablespoons bacon drippings
4 tablespoons flour
1 1/2 – 2 cups milk (less for thicker, more for thinner)
2 tablespoons heavy cream (optional)
salt and pepper, heavy on the pepper
A shake (or two!) of garlic powder ( YES, GARLIC POWDER! It really makes the gravy taste a lot better.)

To make gravy:
Put drippings in a skillet over med-high heat. When hot, whisk in the flour until well blended; cook & stir constantly for 3-4 minutes, until bubbly & light golden brown. Add milk & spices, whisking constantly; cook & whisk until the gravy comes to a rolling boil and thickens; add bacon pieces, whisk in the cream if using, remove from heat & serve.

So much to tell…where to start?

We have had a lot going on since the last blog post. The Farmer has a serious case of writer’s block, and the FarmWyfe has been busy with the Facebook page…lol…I know, that is no excuse…but it is the best I can offer. 🙂

We were plagued with vehicle issues that began in late April and were only resolved within the last couple of weeks. So the majority of our attention was focused there, but I’m happy to say the issues were resolved without us having to give up any limbs or necessary pieces of clothing.
Now on to the more interesting stuff…

We have added five little bunnies to the backyard menagerie…they are Flemish Giant X (?). They were so sweet lookin’ I gave ’em “sweet” names…Marshmallow, Butterscotch, Caramel, Toffee, and Cadbury (he/she is chocolate colored)…can y’all guess what colors the others are? lol

We have also added some more ducks, barnyard crosses, hatched from eggs laid by the two ducks (girls) from our original paddling of five (yes that is a correct term for a group of ducks…I looked it up), which consists of a pair of Rouens, a pair of Runners, and a lone Peking drake. We also added some guinea keets and a bakers’ dozen of baby pullets, purchased from a hatchery down south of us.

We have a new addition to our canine family, too…a Ratchi princess named Cupcake. Sadly, we lost her mommy, our little black Chihuahua named Minnie, when Cupcake and her 2 sisters were only 3 weeks old. So they were bottle babies for a little while. But they adjusted well, and the other 2 little girls have gone to their fur-ever homes with good and loving families.

I am in the process of adding more chickens to the ever-growing flock that roams the little piece of rural Texas acreage we call Caddo Critter Farm. But these will be indoor chickens…yes, you read that right. I will be keeping (some) of these in the house. In a large parrot cage. In the spare room. But it’s okay…these are little chickens. Serama Bantams, to be exact. Maximum weight is usually about a pound, give or take a couple ounces…some only top out at half that size. They come in all sizes in between, and a wide variety of plumage colors and patterns. I’ll be posting more about this in another post.

The Farmer has recently become a snake-killer, out of necessity…he was protecting our flock. We lost 5 young chickens and 2 of the newest ducklings to 2 of the slithering predators…Texas Rat Snakes. Not venomous, but deadly nonetheless, at least to our flock. The Farmer now does nightly “coop checks” armed with a good flashlight and his .22 pistol. Blasted snakes need to stick to eating rats and mice (they are RAT snakes, after all!) and leave our feather-babies alone! Hopefully, the moth balls we scattered liberally in and around the coops and in the feed room will be as effective a repellant this summer as they have proven to be in the past.

Remember all those baby chicks & baby ducklings the Farmer wrote about early on? Well, they are now 4 & 5 month old adolescents, teenage chickens & ducks, if you will (you know the age)… The boys are crowin’ and quackin’, struttin’ their stuff and chasin’ the girls with only one thing on their minds. Girls are still a bit shy, their hormones haven’t quite kicked in all the way. Most are still playing hard to get, although a few of the more precocious young lady chickens have started laying now and then. And so a whole new generation is coming of age in the barnyard…it a a pleasure to watch and a sight to behold.

‘Til next time, y’all take care. I pray your lives are as blessed, and your hearts are as happy and content as ours are…

Of Chickens & Eggs & Cheese & Roosters

Just a few little bits of misinformation I read elsewhere today that I thought I’d clear up. Both made me smile, but please know, I am in no way making fun of anyone by posting these. (HaHa! You thought this was gonna be a recipe post, didn’tcha?)

So many people have so many wrong ideas when it comes to chickens, and those who have never raised them before don’t always know if what they have heard or read is true or false. Here are three falsehoods I came across today. Now, I know most of ya that are readin’ this already know that these are falsehoods, but just in case a new and, as yet, uninformed chicken owner ventures by the coop to visit, I thought I’d set the record straight for ’em. So, to that end, here we go:

1. You can’t eat the eggs if your hen(s) is/are being kept with a rooster. FALSE

Hens kept with roosters will lay fertile eggs, but it is perfectly okay to eat those eggs. They won’t begin to develop into babies unless the hen has started setting on them round the clock. They won’t stay very fresh if left in the nest for several days, so it is best to gather them every day, and refrigerate any you don’t plan to use within a few days time. And, just so ya know, if left in a hot hen house in the heat of summer, they WILL get rotten…(Not that I’ve ever had that happen. lol)

2. Your hens won’t lay if you don’t have a rooster. FALSE

I guess no one ever told my Granny’s layer flock about that rule! All 50 of ’em laid almost every day. lol
Your hens will lay without a rooster, but the eggs will not be fertile. They will only be good for eating. If you want eggs that will develop into baby chicks & hatch, either under a hen or in an incubator, you’ll have to have a rooster.

3. Cheese will make chickens sick because chickens do not produce milk. FALSE

Okay, Henny Penny, just get away from my grilled cheese sandwich. While it’s true that cheese should not be part of a chicken’s daily maintenance feed, there’s no harm in them having cheese as a treat once in a while. Like all treats, tho’, it should be given in moderate amounts. And cheese IS kinda expensive to be feeding to chickens anyway. That being said, most chickens love it, and it is a good source of an extra bit of protein & calcium. So if you do have a chunk of cheddar that has kinda dried out & gotten hard, or your favorite hen is trying to steal a bite of your grilled cheese sandwich, it’s okay to let her have it, if you want to. Personally, I don’t share my grilled cheese with anyone, not even the Farmer. 🙂

Those are the just a few of the bits of misinformation that can cause confusion for newbie chicken owners, & bring a smile & chuckle to those that have become old-hands at it…and let’s face it, we were all newbies once, & didn’t know any better, either.

Be Blessed Y’all! Until next time….

Hatch-a-holics

I think the Farmer & I have become hatch-a-holics. We’ve hatched two batches of barnyard (mixed breed) chicks from eggs produced by our hens, 21 the first time & 12 the second time. And now, we are closing in on the hatch dates for the duck eggs & goose eggs that have been incubating in one corner of our cottage’s kitchen. Being too big to fit in the auto turner, the Farmer has had to turn them several times a day, which he has done faithfully. (I suspect he’s turned ’em at night a few times, too.) But, today (Monday) is the last day to turn the duck eggs! They should start hatching on Wednesday…7 of them, 2 from our Fawn/White Runner Duck & 5 from the the Rouen Duck. Since the two lovely ladies lay eggs that are markedly different in appearance, we will definitely know which ducklings came from which duck, it’s the sires that will be questionable (monogamy is not practiced in our barnyard). Drakes are Runner, Rouen & Pekin…curious to see what the babies will look like. Goose eggs will still need to be turned for a couple more days, since they take a few days longer to hatch. Figure they should start hatching on Friday. 🙂
Then the incubator will given a rest…maybe….I’m thinkin’ about ordering some hatching eggs…any of y’all have some Black Copper Marans??? LOL

Blessings Y’all!
We’ll catch ya later!
The Farmer’s Wife

 

Farm Fresh News (from the Farmer’s Wife)

We have 21 new chicks hatched over the last 3 days!! 4 eggs remain in the incubator to see if they’re gonna hatch…culled 8 others that did not appear to be alive when checked by candling…eggs were either clear, indicating infertility, or appeared to have embryos that died early on. Have another couple dozen or so ready to go into the incubator in a couple of days. We have become hatchaholics. 🙂
Judging from the fluffy “chipmunk cheeks” many of them are sporting, “Mr Big”, the EE roo was a busy boy…lol…we had 5 eggs from Penny, our EE pullet that hatched…but there are a great many more chicks with the fluffy cheeks…lol…so apparently we’re gonna have a lot of half-EE’s joinin’ the flock…I also used my granny’s old farm-wife method of sexing the chicks…holdin’ ’em upside down by their li’l feets…all those that simply hung limp (which, if I remember correctly, indicates that they are pullets), I marked with a blue smudge from a Sharpie…all those that struggled to right themselves (indicatin’ that they are cockerels), I left unmarked…in a few days, I’ll do a feather sex comparison of the wing feathers and see if the results are consistent…of course, it’s been a *ahem* “great many” years and I was just a little girl, since I watched my granny do her gender test on chicks at the feed store…lol…I coulda forgotten which was which in the intervening decades.

The other bit of news fresh from the farm is that Bucky & Belle, our bottle-babies, are “big kids” now!!!! No more bottles!! They are drinkin’ their milk from a bucket! And I, their human mommy, could not be happier…I (“Mommy”) decided the time had finally come a few days ago to wean the babies from bottle to bucket because one (12 oz) bottle was not satisfyin’ ’em. And they were too impatient to wait for me get their refills ready!!! Bucky drank his milk from the bucket first rattle outta the box; Belle was a bit more stubborn about it (she was also a bit more stubborn about takin’ the bottle after her natural mother died). Well, bein’ the soft-hearted farm-mama that I am…I ended up givin’ in and lettin’ Belle have a bottle on Thursday…she sounded so pitiful. On Friday, I got tougher…lol…no bottle…come Saturday, she decided to be a good little girl & drink her milk from a bucket, like her brother. So we’re finally bottle free…Yippeeeee!!!!
All in all, “our babies” are doin’ great! They have free run of the back yard (along with the chickens, ducks & geese), which shares a fence with the pasture where the rest of the goats live. Our hope is that they & the other goats can see, hear, smell, “talk to”  & get used to each other, without fear of Bucky & Belle gettin’ bullied. The plan is to keep them in the back yard for a couple more weeks, then move them to the pasture with the rest of the herd. They’re eatin’ goat feed & greenery very well (they especially love the young tender leaves on the low hangin’ tree branches that the Farmer lops off for them) and when the second bag of replacer is finished off, that will be the end of their days as milk-fed kids. But, I’ve got a feelin’ they’ll always be referred as “the bottle babies”.
Well, I reckon that’s ’bout all the news there is to tell…at least for now….
Y’all take care & I’ll catch up with ya later..’til then, I hope ya feel as blessed as I do! 🙂