Garlic Mustard Dip and Dandelion Chicken Fritatta

Mmm. I just love eating food fresh from the garden, and even more than that, I love eating food that I have found wild in my yard. Tonight for dinner we had a Dandelion & Chicken Fritatta with Garlic Mustard Dip. It was sooooo good.

The fritatta was super easy -- dandelion flower heads chopped roughly with 1/2 chicken breast, 8 eggs, 1/4 cup milk, some salt and farmer's cheese, then pan-fried on both sides. We topped it off with the dip, which was just amazing.

Garlic Mustard is an edible wild plant that grows rampant throughout much of the country. It is considered an invasive weed, and spreads like wildfire, so you can feel virtuous while you pluck it and eat it. It's common name derives from the pungent odor it gives off when you pick it, and it tastes great. Use in dips, soups or salads for a heart-healthy natural addition to your diet. 

To make the dip, I chopped up wild garlic mustard greens in the food processor and mixed them with equal amounts of plain yogurt, sour cream and more farmers cheese. Oh, and some more fresh garlic and olive oil and salt to taste. YUM!

My husband is on the paleo diet, which has me scrambling for foods we both want -- I am more of a fruit, cheese and veggies kind of gal, and paleo is mostly meat with veggies, and only fermented dairy products. Um, hello, did I mention I am a cheese addict???  This meal fit the bill just right for both of us, and even the kids liked it.

Another happy rescue

Watching horses at the farm

The puppy we rescued in January is doing so well, he is a wonderful dog. He was rescued from a high-kill situation down south, where a black dog is less likely to be adopted than any other. This is something that is hard for most New Englanders to imagine, where black labradors are among the most commonly seen and beloved dogs.

My mother breeds Standard Poodles, which are wonderful sporting dogs and great with kids, but we decided we were ready to try something new. And we wanted to help make a difference in some animal's life -- our cats have always been rescues, so we decided to check out the shelters. We spent several weeks looking for the right dog, and wound up at an adoption event run by PawSafe. Boy, are we glad we did.

Trout Fishing on Opening Day

Guinness is half Dutch Shepard and half Beagle. His coloring is all dutch shepard but, clearly, his size is beagle! He is brilliant, and at 8 month old plays wonderfully with the 10 Standard Poodles at the farm. Amazingly, he can actually outrun most of them. He thinks he's a big dog, and isn't scared of anything. He is very freindly, well socialized, and such an easy dog to have around. It's hard to believe he's still a puppy sometimes, he's such a wise soul.

On the trail

Images from the farm

This season my family and I are farm-sitting for my mother while she is working overseas. She has 10 dogs and 4 horses, plus a few cats and aquariums, so there's always something exciting happening!

 

  

This spring is more exciting than most -- a mare which she rescued from slaughter just in time for Christmas has turned out to be pregnant. She is due any day now according to the size of her baby and her udder development, and she's looking very fit and happy.

 Amazingly, the horse came with papers and is of very good quality, something my mom never expected when she saved her from the feedlot. She's a wonderful horse, who seems to have been a victim of the economy.

Yesterday, one of my mother's breeding poodles surprised us, too. We had no idea she was in heat, none of the studs were acting nosy and she wasn't bleeding or anything. Imagine our surprise when we let her out first thing in the morning, and two minutes later saw her doing this with one of the studs!

They stayed tied for about 10 minutes, but I didn't think to grab the camera until the very last moment. The male is licking his nose, so much for dignity. No litter was planned for this summer, but it will be a beautiful pairing, and be a summer litter which is always easiest to care for.

Spring has arrived!

Well, sort of. The birds are here, singing away. Most of the snow has melted. The temperatures are only hitting freezing at night. The sap is still running, and we've made several quarts of maple syrup on our stove. The kids have been playing outside without jackets and the dog is learning that it's OK to go to the bathroom on things that aren't white (though he still searches out those last few snow patches.)

Spring is usually my favorite time of year, but so far it's been pretty cold and only a couple of my bulbs have opened so far. Still, I am working on some pretty dress patterns for the fabric I found in the attic and the ribbons I bought to match. Spring, Summer, Sun -- here we come!

Birthday Wishes

Lucas has begun making lists for his 5th birthday -- in June!  The boy loves parties. Here he has taken a photo of part of his list: Bakugan. Not pictured: Spiderman, Superman, Joker Motercycle, Robin Motorcycle, Catwoman, Pokemon. Do you detect a theme?

April Plans

My mother just got a work assignment working in Issyk Kul, so we'll be helping take care of her horse farm off and on this spring. I'm rather excited, as it means I will have full-time access to her sewing machine and huge dining room table, which is much, much easier to sew on than mine. Just in time to make some dresses for my daughter and I! I already have some pillowcases picked out for baby J. from the local thrift store, and since I need some ribbons to finish them off I am looking forward to picking out some pretty fabrics from the store for me, too. I've been working out all winter and am weighing less than before I got married, so I am looking forward to making some cute little dresses for me! My plan is to make some simple pillowcase dresses for me, too, using a yard of fabric. I had one dress made this way when I was in highschool and I wore it all the time... How I miss it! Alas, when I had my late growth spurt in college (from 5'6" to 5'8") it suddenly went from daringly short to being too short to sit down in... So I passed it along to the Salvation Army to become another girl's favorite dress.

I'm also excited to begin construction on my improved chicken coop and run next month, once the snow is all gone and the ground has firmed up a bit. My chickens will arrive mid-May, and after a few weeks in the kitchen they'll be ready to make the transition outside. By the fall, we'll have eggs! I can't wait to have my own egg supply again. They are just so much better than anything you can buy at the market, and I love watching the chickens, too.

Our First Chickens: Moon, Phoenix & Aurora

Leprechaun Cake -- St. Patty's Day Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Cake

This ice cream cake was a huge hit at our "Leprechaun Party", and early St. Patty's day celebration last weekend.

Not only was it super easy to make, but it was relative low-calorie (for an ice cream cake) and most importantly: de-lish!

Here's the how and the what:

Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream
Chocolate Cookies
Multi-grain Waffles
Dark Chocolate Chips
Milk
Green Sprinkles


Line a 9 x 5 x 3 bread pan with saran wrap, and take a tub of mint chocolate chip ice cream out of the freezer to soften. I used Edy's slow churned version which has 1/2 the calories of regular ice cream, without artificial sweeteners.

Now take melt 2 cups of Hershey's Special Dark chips with a 1/4 cup of milk over low heat in a sauce pan to make a ganache. Remove from heat.

Crush up 4 chocolate famous amos wafers cookies (or any cookies you think would be good). Rolling pins and mortar/pestles both work well for this.

Now for the fun part:

Pour 1/3 of the ganache into the pan.
Spread 1/2 the ice cream on top.
Sprinkle in half the cookies.
Lay in two waffles.
Pour in another 1/3 of the ganache
Spread the rest of the ice cream.
Sprinkle in the rest of the cookies.
Lay in two waffles.
Pour in the last 1/3 of the ganache

Fold over the saran wrap to enclose the cake, press gently to ensure there are no air pockets in the cake, and freeze overnight. Remove from freezer 10 minutes before serving. Unwrap, cover with green sprinkles, slice and serve.

YUM!

Note about the waffles: You can use any regular cake or lady fingers or cookies instead, of course. Waffles just happened to be all that was on hand, and I was doubtful about using them but they were actually really great with the cake....

Cilantro coming up & New homes for the fairies

The cilantro I planted last week in an old salad container is coming up beautifully. I kept the lid on until this morning to create a humid sprouting area for the seeds. In front is a small glass where I have a couple plants rooting in water, including the only surviving piece of a gorgeous geranium from last year which my puppy attacked.

 

 Here is another set of herbs that I planted last night in individual peat pots (I have a couple hundred I got for free on the side of the road!) Note the closed lid creating a steady, moist environment for the seeds. Also note the SNOW we still have mountains of here, despite the fact that rain and flooding melting everyone else's in town earlier this week. We are so sheltered here on our shady mountainside.

 

Adorable tiny birdhouses I found yesterday for $2 at the local thrift store. They're too small for any real bird, but very cute. The one with a windchime is going in my dogwood tree outside the living room, and the other one, which still has it'sbrand new tags on it,  is going to one of my mother's trees, where the fairies have asked for more birdhouses, small and large. She has many fairy groves on her property, where the trees are each adorned with several windchimes, birdhouses and feeders, and the birds adore the special places. The most sacred tree, the third largest maple in the state, we call "The Mother Tree" and she also has prayer flags and candles around her.

 

Magical Monday

Red-Bellied Woodpecker at the Berry Suet Feeder

Guiness, our 4-month old Beagle/Dutch Shepard

Lucas loving on Jocelyn

Suddenly she's so big! 13 months and she's already figured out how to run. And sometimes teleport, it seems.

Making Sap at Home -- yes, you can!

When you speak to professional "sugarers" they'll usually tell you horror stories about making your own sap at home, how your walls will get sticky and wet, and how it's just not economical. Well, they aren't completely wrong, but it's pretty easy to do it so that you don't have any of these problems.

First off, if you heat your house with wood, use the heat from your stove or fireplace to boil your sap, and kill two birds with one stone.

Second, especially if you are making syrup on your regular stove, turn on all the fans you have, and open a window or two. Your walls don't need to get wet, or sticky, or anything of the sort. The fact is that the sugar is NOT boiling off, only the water, so there is no reason why your walls would drip with syrup no matter what. I can make 4 ounces of syrup on the stove from 2-3 gallons of sap in about 3 hours. Considering the fact that same home-made local syrup would cost me $12-15, I find that quite economical. It generates the same amount of steam (or less!) as making my own tomato sauce.

And for a little extra frugality, do what the native americans did -- collect the sap at night and let it sit outside overnight. Most likely, in the morning the sap will have some ice on the top, and that ice has none of the sugars in it. Discard the ice, and you have less sap to boil! The Indians would do this over and over again, until all that was left was syrup.

Happy Sugaring :)

It's Maple Time! Fight cancer and diabetes with your favorite sweet stuff.

We've had a few warm days here and the maple sap is really running. I collected over 5 gallons, and today I anticipate just as much. I tapped fewer trees this year, just 5, but it looks like we are getting just as much sap. I boiled down half the haul in three hours yesterday and made a pint of perfect syrup. This morning I am rendering the rest down. Of course, it's still really cold out, so I can't have too many open windows to let out the steam -- I have the front door cracked open and my window box, too, in the kitchen. And of course I am running the wood stove as usual, making it super warm and toasty in the house.

Last year I used all gallon jugs to collect the sap from the trees, which works great when the sap is slower, but not so much when you're getting over a gallon a day. So this year I am using buckets on the biggest producing trees -- three of the trees are right on a small stream's banks, and they run like crazy.

For more info about Maple tapping, check out my previous blogpost: http://healinggreen.blogspot.com/2010/03/how-do-you-juice-tree.html

In the year since my last maple post, it's also come out in scientific journals that Maple Syrup fights bacterial infections, inhibits cancer growth and contains natural acids that benefit diabetes and other metabolic disorders. So eat up, and as always, ENJOY <3

Garden Planning

This year I have just a few things planned for the garden. To eat, I am planting tomatoes on the trellis next to the clematis, among a bed of basil and tomatillos. I am planting early, indeterminite (tall growing) vines. San Marzano paste tomatoes for canning and drying, and black cherry tomatoes for the kids to pick and eat. Tomatillos are for making verde sauce for my son, and my husband gets some early hot peppers, perfect for our cooler climate (Padron Peppers). I bought all my veggie seeds at anniesheirloomseeds.com which has a wonderful open-pollinated selection and doesn't charge too much for shipping.

Yesterday my family and I picked out flowers to surround the chicken run: morning glories, moon flowers and and fragrant sweet pea. We also bought cilantro to grow right away in a container. Kmart was having a wonderful "buy one get one free" sale on their seeds which is worth checking out.

I can't wait to get planting! Today is a dreary rainy day, but the maple sap is boiling away on the stove and I have a pile of peat pots waiting on the counter. Of course, it's still a bit to early here to start anything but cold weather crops -- but I am going to start a tray of cilantro today in an old salad container. Honestly -- I love my supermarket, but rather despise the fact that package all the salad inside these huge containers. Plastic bags would work fine, too! But I have found a great use for these containers -- seed starting. I use them every year before recycling them.

New chickens and a wattle run!

What? Wattle what? Wattle is a sort of free fencing you can weave from saplings, twigs and vines on your property. You can build houses, shelters, and furniture out of wattle, too. I've always particularly admired this sort of wattle on the left, and have been planning since last fall to make a wattle arbor on the property somewhere -- since we're not moving after all! At least not for a couple of years. So I've decided to give in and make my home all artsy rather than keep it simple for prospective buyers. Who know when the economy will really shift, and a girl's just gotta be able to DO stuff, you know?

So, along that vein, I have reserved a new flock of chickens, due to arrive mid-may. This time, I want to move their coop behind the house and build a huge run so they can be fenced in rather than free-ranging all the time. I've picked a spot under a bunch of pine trees that will offer natural shade in summer, and less snow burial in winter. It will also drop lots of needles for them to play in and help keep the run fresh and clean. I was planning on making the run with 2x4s and poultry wire, but as I was looking at my pictures of wattle trellises and pondering the vast forest of saplings out back which I neglected to prune last summer,  I thought, hey, wattle RUN! Some people do this by making solids walls (one man even calls his wattle coop a "castle" as it is son impenetrable) and others use nails to secure wattle, while some use loose wattle with wire between for their sheep. I still plan to use poultry wire, because I want to be able to sit and watch my chickens, plus I don't want anything sneaking in if I miss a spot. So the whole run will be wired in, all 6 sides, sort of like a box car. But a very very pretty boxcar!

I'm also buying a bunch of morning glory and shell vines to cover it with pretty flowers (one hopes). I don't generally have much luck germinating morning glory, for reasons unknown to me. I have tried everything, every method I know of -- if anyone has any suggestions, for the wattle or the vines, please do give me some. It'll be a pretty shaded spot.This year I will try nicking the seeds and putting them in a damp paper towel, see how that works.

I'm sure you're all just dying to know what sort of chickens I am getting (9 chickens, 7 kinds!) but I will just tell you for now that they are all rare or heritage breeds, and they are all know to be calm and docile, perfect for run-living and being around small children. More about the birds soon, I promise.