Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Garden on Hold/ Vet Castrating Bulls

So, now its official. April 2011 has had the most rain in one month for this part of the world - ever - or as least for as long as the rainfall has been recorded. The record to beat was 11 inches in January of 1937. Can you imagine 11inches of rain in January in Ohio!  We have had more than 11 inches this month. I think our average is only 44 inches for the entire year!

My seedlings are still in their flats. The ground is just too wet to turn the soil. All those broccoli plants should have been out the first of April - but we had too much rain in March and the ground was too wet then.

Tomorrow the Vet comes to castrate the bulls who will become freezer beef candidates. He will also vaccinate everybody and get the bulls who will remain as bulls, ready to go off and join herds on other farms. BTAP Wizard, my favorite bull this year, has been sold to one of my good customers in Indiana. If the weather holds he'll be traveling there this weekend.

BTAP Rufus, another good yearling bull, will stay behind to breed some heifers and then hopefully find a new home later this year.  

The other two may just go on to Maysville to be sold. I could keep them on pasture as grass fed beef, but so far I've had no takers for the grass fed beef I've advertised for the May slaughter. I thought grass fed was the hot thing, but apparently not in southern Ohio!  So, that means they will go on grass plus grain and that's very expensive right now. $6 dollar corn a year ago is now $12 corn so the price per pound must go up. Not sure what the market will bare. May be best to cut my looses and ship them to the sale barn.  I hate doing that. They will end up out west somewhere in a feed lot.

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Pastured Eggs

I've just discovered that I am cool again. I have pastured chicken eggs! I've been raising chickens on pasture for years. I loose a few to coyotes and such that way, but the eggs are simply outstanding. The yolks are very yellow (orange really) and the whites are firm. Slip them into gently simmering water and they roll into perfect poached eggs with no struggle from me.

I read in "Everyday Food" magazine that pastured eggs are lower in cholesterol and higher in vitamin E and Omega-3 fatty acids than eggs from caged birds. This makes some sense in that the girls get a lot of sunshine and fresh air as well as a variety of foods. I still feed them a commercial balanced layer feed, but since the pasture has been growing again they eat only about half as much as they consumed all winter.

Chickens are omnivores after all - they eat just about anything. I compost all my fruit and vegetable scraps through the chickens. They love old bread and leftover rice, pasta, beans, you name it. They, like other birds, also enjoy beef fat.

They also eat ticks, worms, grubs and help scratch through all the cow patties looking for undigested grains and things. That really helps distribute the manure around the pasture which is an added benefit of having chickens on pasture.

So, I am changing my advertising sign on the refrigerator at work where I stash the eggs for my co-workers to purchase. Instead of Free Range Brown Eggs, $1.00 a dozen, the new sign will read, "Pastured, Free Range Brown Eggs, Good For You, $1.00 a dozen.  Ha!

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Gardening in the Rain

We just came off a very hard winter here in southern Ohio and now we get one of the wettest April's on record. This weekend the weather folks are predicting that we will break the old record of nine inches of rain for this month. My garden has definitely suffered from all the bad weather.

I spent an hour this morning weeding, mostly in the asparagus bed. I usually am over flowing with asparagus spears by now but so far this year I've picked a grand total of ten. I roasted them in the oven with a little olive oil, salt, pepper and good shaved Parmesan cheese. Just eight minutes, ten at the most at 400 degrees.  Wonderful! 

This is the first year ever that I've had Forget Me Nots in my flower beds. I planted them last year along with some Columbine and Astilbe in a bed on the east side of the house. I put out three plants and was sure they had perished in last falls drought, but happily they returned this spring and had spread around the bed. They are the most vivid blue. Really beautiful. I'm including some pictures, but blue doesn't photograph true in flowers, so you will have to try to imagine the intense blue color.

I have two good sized flats of plants I started from seed. This year I did away with the grow lights and just set the flats in south facing windows in an unused bedroom. They did pretty well. The ground is too wet and cold to work but I am hopeful with the warmer temperatures expected this week that next weekend I can set them out - with the exception of the tomatoes, melons and peppers.  I'll be putting out broccoli plants and some herbs including borage, flat leaf parsley, chamomilee and rosemary.  For some reason I can't get any of the lettuce seeds to germinate in the flats so I'm hoping to direct seed those in the garden.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Prime Rib

Monday we celebrated my Dad's 88th birthday. I hosted the family at my house and prepared the big 7 rib roast I'd had cut from the last beef slaughtering. I roasted it in the AGA for 3 1/2 hours and served it medium well. It was a perfect piece of meat with a thick layer of fat on the outside but very finely marbled meat. The flavor was wonderful, one of the best rib roasts I'd ever eaten. The fine marbling is a hall mark of the Limousin breed of cattle. Still, the meat was tender and flavorful.

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Hollandaise

One of the many advantages of raising chickens for eggs is having fresh eggs to make Hollandaise, Bearnaise and other egg based sauces. I taught myself to make Hollandaise sauce when I moved into my first real apartment and had my first real job. It's not difficult but unlike making cookies or cakes, it is as much technique as it is following a recipe. French cooking has always set itself apart from other cuisines mostly because their cooks developed techniques or skills or arts - what ever you want to call them - that allow them to take a basic technique and by substituting various like ingredients have at hand a plethora of different foods.

Hollandaise is a very good example of the beauty of French cooking technique. Once you learn to make good Hollandaise sauce, you can then make a variety of interesting egg based sauces to add flavor and interest to your meals. For more on that see Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking", volune 1.

So here is my recipe and technique for Hollandaise Sauce - which I think is good on everything but corn flakes!

Ingredients:

2 egg yolks
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
6 to 8 tablespoons cold butter
pinch of black pepper
pinch of salt
pinch of cayenne pepper (optional)
a few grates of nutmeg (optional)

I use a small Corning Ware pan, but any small, heavy bottomed, straight sided skillet or pan will do.
The trick is to keep the heat low enough to melt the butter and cook the eggs without scrambling them.

Begin by whisking the eggs and lemon juice together in the pan. Slice a stick of cold butter into tablespoon sized slices. Set the pan over low heat (you can use a simmering double boiler if you like). Add a slice of butter to the pan and whisk it around until it is melted. At this point, I stick my finger in the pan all the way to the bottom to feel if the pan is hot enough. Be careful, but you should be on such a low heat that the pan feels very warm but not burning. If the butter isn't melting, turn the heat up a little bit.

Continue whisking the butter into the egg mixtures one slice at a time until you have used 6 slices. If the sauce is beginning to thicken, cook and whisk a minute or so longer and you are finished. Season with salt, pepper, cayenne and nutmeg.

If the sauce is still thin add the rest of the butter one slice at a time.  The sauce is accomplished by the eggs absorbing the butter. Some yolks may be bigger than others and will take more butter. If you have used the entire stick and the sauce is still thin, turn up the heat a little more and continue whisking. The sauce should begin to thicken in a minute or so. When the sauce has thickened to the consistency you like, season and serve.

You can keep left over sauce in the refrigerator for about 36 hours. Cover it with plastic wrap and refrigerate immediately. To use the sauce, set it in a small pan over low heat and add a teaspoon or so of very hot water. Whisk well until sauce returns to desired consistency. I always save some back from an evening meal to have for Eggs Benedict the next morning. Heaven!

Now that you have learned to make Hollandaise, try Bearnaise next. For Bearnaise substitute tarragon vinegar or white wine vinegar and dried tarragon for the lemon juice. Boil a tablespoon of minced shallot in a half cup tarragon vinegar until the mixture is reduced by two tablespoons. Cool, then add egg yolks and proceed as with Hollandaise. Omit the cayenne and nutmeg. This is wonderful with beef. In fact, this is a must with any cut of beef from burgers to prime rib.

Mousseline or Chantilly sauce is Hollandaise with a 1/2 cup whipped cream folded into the prepared Hollandaise just before serving. It's very good on mild fish, souffles and asparagus.

Don't get discouraged with the whole process. You have to develop a "touch" to make this well but its worth it.