framing fowl -daily living

[framing fowl]

Last weekend on Monday was a great, lazy relaxing day. I had stuff to do but decided that I wanted a break. It was great! MyT Man went with his friend Dr. Chris to go mow his 35 acres. While they were gone I ended up going to a barn sale. Picked up a HUGE WB canner -does 9 quarts at once. I'm going to try and resell it on CL because it is way too big for me. I also picked up 3 stainless meat slicers -one manual and two motorized. The motors work but I have to do some cleaning on the slicers to see if they are salvageable or not. I wouldn't have bought them except this was a fundraiser for the farm where they care for adults with mental disabilities.

We got invited out to dinner tonight which should be fun. Dr. Chris and Dr. Lou are very interested in business, histroy, agriculture and politics. They're the sort of people that you can carry on an intelligent conversation with all evening and laugh and have a great time and totally disagree and everyone is still friends in the morning.

Today I stopped at a couple of garage sales before work. I picked up a cider press with a motorized grinder for $25 which I am super duper in LOVE with! I also saw some sheffield china at another one so when I got to work, I called in the patter to the china replacement people and got a quote on what they will buy. I'm going to stop back on the way home and look more carefully at the condition and see if I can make some money on that.

Tomorrow's plan in garage sales and cooking. Monday is still up in the air.

Oh, I sold the chickens last weekend. It was either sell them or buy more feed and I had already agreed that we weren't wintering them over. I didn't want to hang on to them so long into the fall that I didn't get good prices for them. So, off they went. I actually ended up breaking even on everything including the feed so that was fun. I had a fun summer with them, had the eggs, learned a lot in the process of acquiring them and now will just have our neighbor get eggs for us when he goes to the country from his egg lady.

The gal we got our beef from wanted to know if we wanted pastured chicken mid-October. I asked for prices and they're asking $3.50/lb if you buy 15 chickens or more. $3.75 if less than 15. I told her I would think about it because we still haven't eaten enough beef out of the freezer to make room for them but the variety in meats would be nice. So then she e-mailed me back today and said, I know you process your own chickens and it doesn't bother you. If you want, we could come up with a live price for you and you could just butcher your own if you wanted. So I'm waiting to find out how much that would be. How awesome is that? She also just ordered her own copy of Nourishing Traditions based on my recommendation because her favorite beef recipe was posted in an article from Sally Fallon.

 

[framing fowl]

So my beef lady said I could have my pick of her meaties the day before processing if I want to process myself for $10 each! So if I pick good and they dress out at 3.5 - 3.75 lbs, that's about $2.75/lb for organic, pastured chicken! Plus I don't have to deal with the stink!

Off to go pig out on beef to make room in the freezer for chicken.

Oh, and I'm loving my Naturopath! I'm about to go shopping for size 8 Levis!!! All of my weight was carried in my hips and thighs so the hormonal and adrenal stuff she's got me on is totally working! And I ate fried green tomatoes for breakfast fried in my rendered lard.

 

[framing fowl]

The porchetta was a hit! I started off by toasting some fennel seed with red pepper and then grinding it. It was so yummy smelling I almost wanted to roll in it. Very weird, I've never had this sort of reaction to a food or spice before. It was how I would imagine a cat feeling around catnip. So I read up a bit on fennel to find out what was going on. Turns out the fennel seed reacts strongly with estrogen production which is what my body is needing to do right now so it made perfect sense.

I went urban foraging tonight after about a 3 month hiatus. It was too hot and I had too much going on to walk the dogs and the naturopath had said that if it was relaxing to me, to do it but not to do it as exercise. Well, we came home with treasure! We found 2 auto ramps! They're the old heavy duty solid ones! MyT Man was very happy when he saw what we had drug home! And it was a really nice evening for a stroll so that was good.

Doing more cleaning and getting rid of stuff. I had a bunch of gilding supplies and gold leafing so I finally got in contact with someone I know in DC and he said he would buy the entire lot from me! I don't have time for gilding projects now and the money could go toward debt so we're still negotiating on a price but I'll make a tidy profit on that!

I made 3 pies last weekend and I think I've almost perfected my crust recipe. I want to sell pies through the holiday season. I think I'll offer two fruit, a berry, a pumpkin and a chocolate and if I get really ambitious, I might try my hand at pecan... My boss has said she wants some and knows some of her friends that will buy them and she said I could put up a small display in the gallery on the front counter and take orders!!! My goal is to have ten orders per weekend. This weekend I want to finish perfecting the crust (trading for a couple more crock weights and that old cookbook from Tom) and I owe another one as a thank-you to a friend. Then on to business!

 

[framing fowl]

Today I ran errands and stopped at Big Lots. I don't normally go there but I'm glad I did. They have got great prices on olive oil and grapeseed oil! They also had smoked herring with no extra chemically stuff. I also picked up a few apples, a couple of peaches, 35 lbs of tomatoes and about 5 lbs of peppers that were all seconds at the farmers market.

I got all of the peppers roasted except for the Hatch's. I'm going to see if I can sell them to my boss on Tues because she loves them. Have to deal with everything else tomorrow. I'm also making a salami tomorrow so we'll see how that turns out.

Then this afternoon I spent painting our utility trailer that we bought earlier this summer. MyT Man had it all sanded and cleaned up so I got the primer done on it. Then I did some weeding and checked the sweet potatoes. I think they need to stay in the ground at least another 3 weeks.

Tomorrow's projects are kitchen stuff: kimchi, sauerkraut, pies, dealing with the tomatoes, raspberry muffins, and salami. Then the outside stuff is painting the trailer. Once that is done, winter can come and we'll have everything buttoned up and ready which is a good feeling.

 

[framing fowl]

Rained yesterday so no trailer painting. Ran errands, made up a huge batch of salsa: 1/2 gallon is fermenting and I canned 7 quarts. Also started the salami.

 

[rathbone]

love what you said about the fennel seed. Very interesting.

 

[framing fowl]

Do you ever use it in your cooking rathbone?

Not much to report around here. I've been covering my fig tree that I thought had died last winter but completely regrew in hopes that the figs will ripen after such a late start. I also dug 10 gallons of sweet potatoes this weekend. I've got 2 squash plants still doing their thing but everything else around here is done.

We've been working extra hard on the buying and selling and MyT Man has had a couple of small welding projects come in. Our goal is to be debt free other than the house on Dec. 31st. We're in the home stretch and really cranking on that.

The major upset around here lately has been FIL offering us a free house in OR if we're willing to move back there. He's being needy and manipulative right now and it's been really hard for MyT Man. He's not being tempted by the house itself but is realizing his folks are getting older and that we do have unfinished business back there. We'll both feel better after this morning when MyT Man calls back there and gives him the official "No." He would have said it immediately on the phone when the offer was made except his dad prefaced the offer with, I want to ask you something and not have an immediate answer. I want you to think about it... So we've "thought" about it and just need to call him and move on.

 

[rathbone]

I use fennel in spaghetti and love it -I often can't afford to buy the italian sausage to put in the spaghetti and realized that what I love most about the sausage is...fennel. So now I just add that to the sauce.

 

[framing fowl]

I use fennel in spaghetti and love it -I often can't afford to buy the italian sausage to put in the spaghetti and realized that what I love most about the sausage is...fennel. So now I just add that to the sauce.

I never put two and two together on that one!! What a great idea!

 

[framing fowl]

Still here, although not much going on. It seemed like I was making good progress with the stuff from my naturopath for awhile but seem kind of stuck right now. I'll be discussing it with her at the next appointment. I just feel like I've got the blahs the last couple of weeks and hoping to snap out of it soon. Trudging would be a good word for it. Maybe this weekend getting a few projects caught up will help since I'm not going to an auction...