I tried to hold off on picking them, so I could share the joy of ripe figs right off the tree with my mom who loves figs and is coming to visit soon, but alas, the figs had their own schedule and ripened already. I picked a big bowl today and made a 6 pint batch of low sugar jam that I am not sure will set right even though I did add pectin. We shall see, I guess.

I also made 3 pints of walnut pesto since our CSA gave us a pound and a half of delicious smelling basil. That went in the freezer for later use along with the previous pint I had made.

Tomorrow is my turn to host dinner club. We will be having raw(ish) tacos inspired by a recipe for “Solar Tacos” that came from Alexandra Demetro, a wonderful ND and midwife. I made the taco “meat” out of sunflower seeds and cashews from Azure Standard mixed together with some home made salsa using local, organic yellow tomatoes from Organically Grown Company, onions from our CSA and Anaheim peppers grown by yours truly in our very own backyard. I also made extra salsa, and have a big bowl of pinto beans soaking on the counter for making refried beans tomorrow. I will shred some raw Wisconsin cheese, make some guacamole, cut up some lettuce, and call it a meal. Easy and almost no cooking required!

Summer is wonderful with so many local options. I am waiting for tomatoes to be in full season so I can make a bunch of pasta sauces or at least just can a whole bunch of tomatoes. I really don’t want to buy more canned tomatoes after learning about the ridiculously high levels of BPA in the lining of the cans… Peaches are also in season, and I should probably freeze a bunch for use later in smoothies, peach cobbler and other yummy goodness.

I know eating locally and in season is important for the environment, the economy, and for health reasons, but I am wondering about putting up food for the winter… I am concerned about cost, but mainly about the destruction of enzymes and vitamins during the canning process. Does anyone know what the nutritional value is of canned foods compared to frozen or fresh? And also, adding all that sugar to the fruit and berries still has me feeling ill at ease– all that sugar just can’t be healthy. So is it better to freeze or can? From a nutrition stand point, is it more economical to buy locally when food is cheap and in season, and preserve it for later use? Or is it better to buy fresh food year round, but at a greater expense and from a reasonably farther location? What would you do? I am obviously confused…

Our friend Ellen gave us one of her 10 week old hens– a pretty Silver Laced Wyandotte named Persephone. I was a bit worried about introducing her to our flock of (now just 4) 20 week old, fully grown girls, but so far, all is well.

When we brought her home yesterday evening, the other hens were already roosting in the coop. I let Persephone walk around the yard alone for a bit. She was definitely lost and just stood there not knowing where to go or what to do. I then put her inside the coop, on the lower rung, and waited to see what would happen. Blackie, our alpha chicken dominatrix of a hen, cocked her head and looked angrily at me, but didn’t move. (They are so funny when they sleep– kinda temporarily lobotomized, I think.)

A few minutes later we heard a small clucking, and we realized Persephone had hopped to the upper roost next to the others and was looking out the window. The night passed uneventfully.

This morning, I checked on the girls and the 4 older ones were in the run wanting to get out while Persephone was still just sitting there on the upper roost. I put water and food inside the coop for her, and left her there while I let the others out for a bit. I don’t think Persephone can be let out unsupervised until she knows that the coop is her new home. I doubt she’d know to put herself to bed like the others when dusk comes…

I did let her out for a bit in the afternoon, and she wandered aimlessly around the yard and under the deck for a bit. We held her and she seemed OK with that, but wouldn’t really eat any of the treats I put out. Whenever she got too close to another hen, they’d chase her off, but not really peck at her. I am thinking she must seem like less of a threat since she is so much smaller than the other girls… I actually wonder if they even recognize her as a fellow chicken… maybe they just see her as a crow or overgrown sparrow or something because they have pretty much been ignoring her.

She sure is a pretty hen though, and we are so happy to give her a new home! “The yewwow one,” our Buff Orpington, has been demoted, and the new one is now Munchkie’s “shavorite.” (She still can’t say “ell” or “eff.”)

P.S. I am now pretty sure our red chicken is a Red Star and not a Rhode Island Red. What do you think?

Well, we had a death among our hennies.

One of our Rhode Island Reds was acting a bit weird yesterday. She didn’t come to me with the others when I called them to put them away for the night, and first we thought she had jumped the fence… but when we searched for her Dan found her under the hedge in the driveway, just laying there really still. Dan picked her up and put her in the run, and she just stood there… I commented, “I wonder if she is sick,” but didn’t think much of it cause she had seemed totally normal earlier in the day…

Today, when I went to let the chickens out of the run, a bit later than normal (I am trying to limit their time in the yard since they are wrecking it) and check the egg situation, she was inside the coop, dead on the nest. I was such a sad sight. She just laid there with her head drooping. I picked her up and it looked like she had had some runny diarrhea…

I am really sad. She was one of our friendliest hens too.

Gardening is hard work– emotionally, more so than physically, for me at least. You invest so much energy and time and love, getting these little seeds to sprout and grow… and then the heat comes and your lettuce and broccoli and chard bolts practically overnight, becoming bitter and inedible. You nurture your onions– water, weed, and add lovingly add compost… and then your chickens decide to trample and dust bathe on top of them! And eat all your cabbage sprouts and carrot tops, and digging up your blueberry plants’ roots.

And then… then you take a workshop, and realize the weed cloth you thought you so cleverly added underneath your vegetable boxes to prevent weeds from growing into the veggies is actually preventing your tomatoes from rooting deeply like they like to do. Mystery of the stunted tomato plants solved!

So you, on a whim, decide to pull everything out as gently as you can, remove all the weed cloth and replant your tomatoes, cucumbers, melons and a 6 foot tall mammoth sunflower (does this equate a momentary bout of insanity??) hoping that this will help them mature before summer is over….

It’s all very disheartening to realize that I basically have no clue about any of this gardening business… but at least I can say I am learning, right? And maybe next year will be better and easier?

I am going to plant some winter crops and just see what happens. I have some nice organic fingerling potatoes that are sprouting in my pantry– those should be good to go. I am not sure exactly how to grow potatoes, but I know we don’t have enough room in the ground, so I am thinking of doing the bag (or possibly more attractive barrel) method. Should make harvesting (if we get that far) easy at the very least!

I am not sure if our food bill is going down or not… I am obviously not buying a lot of grains, legumes, or nuts anymore because we are still stocked up, but I seem to find other little extras to splurge on all the time. Last month it was ice cream, this month it’s Kettle chips and coconut juice that cost me about $50 unnecessarily…

Azure Standard
Sweet Cream Butter, Salted 5 x 1 lb. $12.35
Seafood Producers Salmon COHO Fillets 10 lbs. $80.35
Natural Value Tongol Tuna, Salted 24 x 6 ozs. $31.65
FFL 7-Sprouted Grain English Muffins, Organic CASE of 12 $26.00
OV Feta Cheese (ORGANIC) 8 ozs. $3.46
Omega 3 Eggs, Large Brown, Organic 1 dozen $3.77 (I think this will be the last eggs we buy for a while!)
Turbinado Sugar (DEMERARA Raw) 5 lbs. $4.95
Rumiano Jack, Raw, Jalapeno (random wt) 5 lbs. $29.79
Kettle POTATO Chips Lt. Salt (KING SIZE) 2 x 16 ozs. $6.66
Amy & Brian Coconut Juice with Lime 36 x 17.5 ozs. $42.30
TOTAL: $241.28

Other food spendings:
$14 raw milk (We are only getting half a gallon a week since I *still* haven’t gotten around to making my own yogurt.)
$99 meat from Thundering Hooves (We had a $90 credit from the last delivery, so we really only paid $9.)
$140 CSA share (This has been pre-paid, but we should really find a way to split this with someone else because we can’t keep up with all the lettuce and greens…)
$100 estimate for “left over” produce from OGC (paid for with my labor)
$18.50 cukes and other supplies for pickling party
$16.25 u-pick blueberries 6.5 lbs
$30 u-pick raspberries
$30 4th of July BBQ
TOTAL: $347.75 (- $330 for prepaid amount and credit = $117.75)

And now for the hall of shame….
EATING OUT: $250 estimated

We did bad this month and ate out a few times and somewhat expensive restaurants: Pambiche (YUMM!) and Farm Café (good, but expensive for such small portions) and at Widmer where Dan gets a 50% employee discount, but it really seems steep to think this part of our food spendings only gave us 6 or so meals…

Today I found 7, yes seven!!! eggs. Three of them were in the driveway, where I found one egg yesterday as well, and 4 of them were in the nests. I’m assuming the ones in the driveway were at least partially laid yesterday since there is no way (is there??) that 5 hens can lay 7 eggs in one day… Speaking of, I’m not sure why our girls like the driveway so much– it’s just a bunch of gravel, but they seem to enjoy dust bathing in it, and maybe also eating some of it as grit?

So anyway, the egg abundance is awesome! Kinda makes up for the whole chicken poop everywhere aspect of having 5 heavy breed hens free ranging in a very small back yard… I traded our next door neighbor half a dozen eggs for some rhubarb for some yummy rhubarb crisp. I just realized I ran out of sugar at the pickling party, so I plan to substitute honey instead. Should be good. It’s been years since I had rhubarb (and since I didn’t know how to pronounce it in English…. I used to think it was “rubberb”– haha!)

Ingredients

1 cup honey
1 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup quick cooking rolled oats
1/2 cup melted butter
1 teaspoon cinnamon
4 cups sliced rhubarb
1 cup honey
2 tablespoons arrowroot powder
1 cup water
1 teaspoon vanilla

Preparation

In mixing bowl, combine honey, flour, oats, butter and cinnamon; mix together until crumbly. Press half of the crumb mixture into a buttered 8-inch square baking dish. Top with the sliced rhubarb.
In a saucepan combine 1 cup granulated sugar, arrowroot powder, and the 1 cup of water and vanilla. Cook together until clear, then pour over rhubarb.
Top rhubarb with remaining crumb mixture and bake at 350° for 45 to 55 minutes.

I guess it’s pickling season! I got 3 cases (66 lbs) of pickling cucumbers from OGC yesterday, and today I had 6 other mama friends over for my first ever pickling party– in fact, it was my 1st ever time pickling! We made 33 quart sized and 40 pint sized jars, ie 13.25 gallons (!!!) of pickles. I really hope they turn out yummy cause we sure poured a lot of effort and love into these home made pickles.

I have no idea if we saved any money. Let’s see if the old cranium can still do some math….

Here is the breakdown of what we used:
66 lbs organic pickling cucumbers $102
5 lbs sugar $4.95
2 quarts honey $15
2 gallons apple cider vinegar $17.78
2 gallons white distilled vinegar $4.50 appx
case of pint jars $8.15 x 3.33 = $27.17
case of quart jars $9.25 x 2.75 = $25.44
spices hot $5.90
spices mild $5.50
spices organic $7.15
sea salt $5.00 appx
5 bags of ice $7.80
Total $228.19 or $0.13 per ounce

Compared to the Woodstock Organic Sweet Bread & Butter Pickles selling for $0.19 per ounce (on sale right now) at our local grocery store, we saved $0.06 per ounce or a total of $101.76. Not bad… until you remember we put in a full 8 hour day. Divide that by 7 mamas and you get $14.54. Which equals a pay of $1.82 per hour. Wow. Ouch.

It was fun though!

This is what we did. I kinda used the Bread and Butter Zukes recipe I posted previously, but modified it a bit as we ran out of apple cider vinegar and sugar. Let’s call them Cucumber Sandwich Pickles.

Ingredients

2 pounds organic pickling cucumbers, cut into 1/4 inch slices and spears
1/4 cup sea salt
1 cup apple cider vinegar (I didn’t have enough, so we used some white vinegar too)
1/2 cup raw sugar (ran out, so we used raw honey too)
2 tbsp pickling spice blend (we used Frontier’s hot & spicy, mild & sweet, and organic blends)

Preparation

1. Put slices and spears in a big bowl, toss with sea salt; add ice cubes and let stand 2 to 3 hours.
2. Combine vinegar, sugar, and spices; bring to a boil.
3. Add drained cucumbers; simmer about 6-7 minutes.
4. Pack hot pickles and liquid into hot jars, leaving 1/4 inch head space. Adjust two-piece caps. Process 10 minutes in a boiling water canner.
Yield: about 2 quarts

And here is the impressive (well, I think so at least) result, on top of our kitchen cabinets. Spicy on the right, sweet on the left.

And while the mamas were working, the wee ones were out back wrangling chickens.

Yesterday was our monthly Thundering Hooves drop. I had been up the night before till 1:30 am or so compiling an order of over 1,000 lbs of organic produce for Portland Green Parenting, and completely forgotten about the scheduled 9 AM meat drop. When someone knocked at my door, I didn’t even know what day it was– I was completely asleep and just out of it. Luckily, everything went well and we got quite a bit of nice, grass fed meat for Dan. I know I promised a review, and I am happy to say that Dan was very pleased with the quality of this meat. I’m a quasi-vegetarian (I do eat sea food), so what do I know? But he tells me the meat is fresh, tender, and nicely cut. For our 2nd order, he ordered everything below, except for the marrow bones that I got for making that nice and rich stock that I have been wanting to make for a few months now…

Marrow/Soup Bones $3.80
Beef Sampler Pack $19.00
Ground Beef 6 x $3.99 = $23.94
Hickory Smoked Bacon $6.99
Spicy Italian Sausage $8.99
Rib Steaks $27.29

Today was our biweekly Azure drop. The drop was quite large this time, with almost 2 dozen invoices and enough boxes to take up one entire side of our front porch. The drop is growing, but I am barely ordering anything from them since we are still so well stocked, squirrel syndrome style. I only bought:

Jack, Raw, Jalapeno cheese 5 lbs $26.55
POTATO Chips Lt. Salt (KING SIZE) 3 x 16 ozs. $6.67
Coconut Juice with Lime 36 x 17.5 ozs. $42.30
Total: $75.52

Tomorrow is our OGC produce drop. I ordered over 1,000 lbs of produce for about 30 families. I should really take photos tomorrow to post of the craziness that is produce day…

Other than being busy with all of that, I have also started anew with my demolished-by-our-chickens garden boxes. It’s amazing how much damage 5 heavy breeds can do. They ate absolutely everything except my tomato plants, and those were spared probably just because they don’t have any fruit yet. They also dust bathed on top of my onions, and under my blueberry bushes, exposing the roots of the plants. So aggravating!

I finally just had it with the destruction, and bought a Scarecrow Sprinkler (haha, yes I am evil) to keep them out, and have started replanting. I think it’s late enough in the season to plant winter veggies, but I am not sure since I have never really gardened before. Regardless, I bought some compost and winter veggie seeds today at the nursery, and will plant some more in the next few days. I am excited for the upcoming gardening workshop taught by Toree and Kendra of the Urban Farm School. There are still a couple of spots open, if you are interested in learning how to extend your harvest season.

Speaking of harvests (and I hate to admit it), but we can’t keep up with our CSA. Mainly, we are drowning in lettuce, but we are also getting enormous amounts of fennel that I have no idea what to do with… next year, we need to either split our share with another family, or simply plant more and grow our own food. Anyway, I made this recipe for lunch tomorrow:

Beet, Carrot & Fennel Slaw

3 beets (about 1 pound), peeled and coarsely shredded
3 large carrots (about 3/4 pound), coarsely shredded
1 fennel bulb, coarsely shredded
1 tablespoon brown sugar
3 teaspoons sesame seeds, divided
3 tablespoons olive oil
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice (about 1 lemon)
2 tablespoons brown rice vinegar
1 tablespoon soy sauce
Salt, to taste
Freshly ground pepper, to taste

Preparation

Toss carrots, beets and fennel in a large bowl. Whisk together brown sugar, 2 teaspoons sesame seeds, and next 6 ingredients in a small bowl until well blended. Add salt and pepper. Pour dressing over vegetables, and toss until well coated. Sprinkle with remaining teaspoon of sesame seeds.

Munchkie loved this slaw, and when it was all gone, she wanted to drink the dressing from the bowl and said, “Yumm, salad juice!”

Zucchini is in season locally, and we are drowning in it! Here’s a couple recipes I am going to try. I have never really pickled before, so this should be interesting…

Bread and Butter Zukes

2 pounds of small zucchini, sliced
1/2 pound small pearl onions
1/4 cup pickling salt
ice cubes
1 cup cider vinegar
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon yellow mustard seed
2 teaspoons celery seed
1 teaspoon turmeric seed, slightly crushed

In a small bowl, toss zucchini and onion with salt. Cover with ice cubes. Let stand for two hours, then drain.

In a small saucepan, combine the vinegar, sugar, and spices and bring to a boil. Add the zucchini and onions, reduce heat, and simmer 6-7 minutes. Pack the vegetables loosely into canning jars. Pour the liquid over the vegetables, leaving 1/2 inch space at the top. Cover jars and process for ten minutes in a boiling water bath. Place the cooled jars in a dark cupboard for about a month before opening. Makes about 2 quarts.

Zucchini Hash Browns

2 1/2 cups grated zucchini (I used both sunburst squash and zucchini)
1 egg, beaten
2 tablespoons butter, melted
1 cup bread crumbs
1/4 cup minced onion
1/4 teaspoon garlic
1/4 teaspoon oregano
1/4 teaspoon red pepper
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup olive oil for frying

Preparation

1. In a large bowl, combine zucchini, egg, and butter. Stir in seasoned crumbs, minced onion, and seasonings. Mix well.
2. Shape mixture into patties. Dredge in flour.
3. In a medium skillet, heat oil over medium high heat until hot.
4. Fry patties in oil until golden brown on both sides.

Yes, that is embarrassing photo evidence of the nasty ass Krusteaz bread crumbs I used. Please forgive me (Dan picked them out, I swear). I choose to believe the organic, local zucchini and fresh eggs from our own backyard flock make up for them. Notice how HUGE that one egg is? It was literally the size on a duck egg, and had 2 yolks. No wonder our hennies cackle so loud every time they lay an egg– some of these things are monstrous!

Yesterday, Munchkie and I visited Bella Organic farm with friends to pick blueberries. We picked 6 1/2 lbs, not counting all the ones that went straight into Munchkie’s and my mouths. Yumm! They were delicious, and just $2.50 per pound. What a deal!

I dislike the thought of jamming them because of the insane amount of sugar called for in every recipe I find… maybe I should freeze them instead to have on hand later? Although based on our history of eating 5 lbs of frozen blueberries every 2 weeks from Azure, they wouldn’t last too long… so I think I will make pie!

Ingredients
Makes 1 pie

FOR THE FILLING
1 tablespoon lemon juice
5 cups fresh berries
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 cup raw brown sugar
2 tablespoons arrowroot powder
1 tablespoon butter

FOR THE CRUST
2 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup cake flour
1 tablespoon raw brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 lb butter
1/2 cup ice water

FOR THE GLAZE
1 egg white
1 tablespoon cream
1-2 tablespoons raw brown sugar

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Make the filling: Sprinkle lemon juice on berries. Mix flour, sugar, and arrowroot powder. Add to berries, and toss lightly. Set aside.
2. Make the crust: In food processor with dough blade, mix flour, sugar, and salt. Using a pastry cutter or two knives, cut in butter until coarse. Add ice water, and mix gently until moist. Form two balls, and roll out one of them to line pie plate. Spoon filling into unbaked crust. Dot with butter. Roll out second ball, and cover pie. Fold edges of top crust under bottom crust, and flute edges. Slit top of pie to vent.
3. Make egg glaze: In a small bowl, beat egg white with 1 tablespoon cream. Brush top of pie with mixture, and sprinkle with brown sugar. Bake for 10 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 degrees. and bake until filling bubbles, about 45 minutes.