Creative and Crafty

A pastor friend of ours retired and bought his first home. He and his wife asked if I'd paint something to hang in their home. 

They gave me two choices of wood, both options were long and thin. They gave me a piece of paper with the phrase they wanted and said they'd like the colors to match their light blue wall. 

Here's what I came up with: 

 

Muffins... x4

My favorite zucchini muffin recipe, received from a piano teacher I used to work with. 

They turn out great every time, but there's only so much sweet stuff you can handle. 

Are there recipes for savory zucchini muffins? Of course! And me being me, I wanted to try multiple recipes... Savory recipe #1 was a major flop. It uses chickpea flour, which I don't have, so I substituted almond flour. Google says it's a good substitute and you can swap it one to one... Maybe the recipe was wrong. Maybe I measured something incorrectly. Regardless, the batter was soupy and the muffins took forever to cook. They ended up as strangely textured squishy disks that didn't hold together. Smelled great! 

This little guy was a fan! 

G thought the flavor was good. We ended up frying them in a pan like fritters for breakfast. 

Recipe #2 was a little better. This also uses almond flour. The texture inside reminds me of egg bake. They taste okay. 

Recipe #3 was the best of the three, but not one I'm eager to repeat. It's fine, just not amazing. This uses flour and cheddar cheese. 

A friend of mine sent me a fourth recipe (unprompted!) that I will have to try. Maybe that one will be a keeper! 😅

Herbs and Spice

This is my first year growing herbs in the garden. I have basil, oregano, rosemary, dill, and cilantro. The cilantro has gone to seed. Unfortunately I didn't get to use much of it. I'm hoping to save the seeds though. 

All summer I left them to do their thing. I don't often use fresh herbs in cooking, so I kind of forgot about them. But my dry herb stock is getting low. I brought in a bunch of basil and oregano to dry. 

I washed the leaves and patted them dry. 

Not quite enough to fill the tray. 

These turned out so well I picked a second round. This time I had something else going in the dehydrator, so I left them to air dry. I also didn't feel like patting them dry with a towel. Turns out if you don't pat the water off, they turn brown when they dry. 

The finished product got crumpled up and added to my dry spice rack. Mine is a brighter green color than the store bought stuff. I wonder why. 🤔 

Cream of Mushroom Soup

Another recipe I can use goat milk in!  It's simple enough it didn't take too long to put together. 

This is the first time I had something hot to go in the freeze dryer. You need to let it cool to room temperature before going in or it can wreck the machine. 

I experimented with the trays going in: one had no liner, one had a liner and dividers, one was dividers and no liner, and one had dividers only half full. 

They turned out great! Definitely don't need the liners. 

I broke them apart and stuck them in jars. I meant to come up with the amount of water needed to reconstitute the soup, but I forgot to weigh the soup afterwards, so we'll wing it. Add water til it looks good I suppose. 

What did I do with the half empty tray? Filled it with avocados! 

 I reconstituted one right away and you couldn't tell the difference between a fresh one and the freeze dried one. The clear bag they're in used to hold oxygen absorbers. I've found they're quite good at keeping moisture out!

Chicken Feeder Update

The chickens and ducks didn't really seem to be using their new feeders a whole lot. The feed didn't go down very much, and G worried about them not getting enough food, so he took the tops off the feeders. Kind of counterproductive. 

So, I put the lids back on and stuck feed down the PVC pipes from the outside so that the chickens would see the feed right in front of them and hopefully learn that there was food at the bottom. 

It worked! The next time we checked, feed levels were much lower. 

Zoodles Round Two

Round two of freeze dried zoodles was also a success. Instead of freezing the zucchini on the freeze dryer trays, I froze them on cookie sheets thinking I could break them up later. 

I used a pizza cutter and an unused freeze dryer silicone mat to cut the perfect shape of noodles, then scooped them up with a cookie scraper. Easy peasy. 

They don't take that long to freeze dry. Still, I don't think I'll do more in this form. They're too fragile in the end and break apart when they come off the tray and into the bags. Plus the bags don't hold a lot of noodles. 

Pickles

One thing our garden has been producing is cucumbers. Unfortunately, I haven't caught them at the baby size I want them to be and I end up with some big guys. Cucumber salad is well and good, but I want pickles! 

I found a pickle recipe from Sandor Katz using a brine to ferment them, ready in three days or up to a week. 

He says to keep your cucumbers in a bowl of water in the fridge so they stay crisp until you have enough for the recipe. 

To ensure crispy pickles, add grape leaves or oak leaves or raspberry leaves; all of them have natural tannins. We had some raspberry leaves available so that's what I used. 

I should've followed the recipe more closely. 😅 Mine are not very flavorful. I didn't put enough garlic in (the heads I used were pretty small) for sure. I thought I had enough dill, but I used dried seeds from last year which must not have been enough. 

One thing I did do right was keep the jar on a tray so if it bubbled over, the shelf wouldn't get wet. You can see salt tracks from where the brine came up. 

I do like the pickle texture, and while the flavor is bland, they're okay. I'm supposed to move them into the fridge now that they're ready, but I don't think there's enough space! For now, they remain on the counter. 

Avocado Bread

Yes, you read that correctly. 

My sister sent me a video recipe of someone making it and it intrigued me enough to write down the recipe. 

Two avocados 

3/4C Sugar

Cream

Beat in 3 eggs

Dry ingredients - 

2c flour

1.5tsp Baking powder 

Fold together 

Put in loaf pan

350, 45-50mi 

A bit bare bones, but detailed enough. 

Our pullets are laying! These two smaller eggs are probably from either the brown leghorns or lavender orpingtons. My guess is the leghorns since they are known for egg production. The egg on the left is from our Americana hen Dixie, the only mature hen we have. 

Double yolker pullet egg! 

It's so green...

Still green...

Annnd, still green. 

You can see I didn't cream the avocado completely. How does it taste? Let's just say I'm not going to keep the recipe. 😜 Great texture crust, the inside is a bit gummy textured (like tapioca flour), and it could use some spices. Or cut out the sugar and make it savory? Eh, that's for someone else to try. 🙃

Breakfast of Champions

I'm always on the lookout for hearty breakfast options (variety is the spice of life!) and found this one on Bakerita.com for a quick grain free hot cereal (paleo/vegan). Quite the name. It's a little putzy to put together, but it's very filling and tasty. And I used some goat milk in it! 

Part of the putz is because I have whole ingredients in stock and have to grind them up, i.e. nuts and flax seed. Otherwise it's just a bunch of measuring. The recipe called for almond milk, but we have so much goat milk, I steamed that for the recipe. So rich and creamy. I also used liquid vanilla instead of vanilla powder. 

The recipe says you can mix the dry ingredients together to store it and then just add milk when ready to eat. 

One ingredient is ground nuts. I had leftovers from my first try of the recipe, so I thought I'd mix up dry ingredients for as many batches as I had nuts for. Turns out I had nuts for four recipes. Coincidentally, a quadruple batch fits in a mason jar.

To make it better for breastfeeding, I added some brewers yeast and collagen powder I had in stock.

Annnd because I tend to forget things, I made a cheat sheet for using it. 😅 

I made some for G and myself this morning: goat milk, a splash of vanilla, no salt, and blueberries. I didn't even put any honey in mine. Tasted great! G put some elderberry syrup in his and enjoyed that. We both agreed it would be even better with bananas.

Trampoline Lives On

Yes, we still have this thing. It was a home for the ducks until G gave them more space to roam with some goat fencing. Afterwards, it was empty save for the occasional goat coming in to check things out (or sit on top as the case may be). 

G did some fishing before it was chick ready. The door had come off somewhere along the way, so he reattached it.

The goats love rubbing against the chicken wire. Since chicken wire is meant to withstand chickens and not goats, it bent and broke in places. G fixed a few of those places with hardware cloth, but the goats managed to wreck a few more places in the interim. 

I used twine to weave the wire together. Hopefully that will hold it on. Who knows if the goats will be attracted to the bright color of twine.

The last step was putting logs around the bottom of the wire to hold the wire down and keep the chicks from sneaking under, something I didn't realize until it was too late. 

We moved our half price TSC chicks out there now. They were pretty hesitant to explore; all stayed in the wooden box for a good long time. 

Jip could sense new creatures near him and wouldn't stop barking. I got him to quiet down by spraying him with our homemade fly spray every time he barked (he doesn't like the smell, but it does keep flies away, so he has to put up with it). Eventually he learned. 

One chick didn't make it in the box in her transition from the garage to trampoline. She immediately found the weak spot in the fence and slipped under (a place I hadn't put a log). From there she darted into the wood pile. Great.

I waited patiently and eventually I heard/found her and transferred her safely to the trampoline with her friends. 

Then I triple checked the trampoline was chick tight. So far, so good! Although from a distance, it's hard to see the chicken wire, so I keep thinking the chicks are on the outside. 😅 

The first chick ventures out: 

Summer Cold

Getting sick is a rare occurrence for us at Havenacre Homestead, but Jaron and I somehow picked up a summer cold. Maybe it's irritation from the Canadian wildfire smoke. Either way, we are dripping and sneezing all over the place. Perhaps that's TMI. 😅

Jaron got over his cold faster than I did. Mine seems to be making it's way down my throat and into my lungs, giving me a cough. I just got rid of all my expired cough syrup and don't plan to buy more since it's so rarely used. Instead, I did a deep dive on holistic methods to tame a cough. 

Turns out someone did a study and found honey is equally effective as cough syrup. ✅ We have that. Garlic and lemon juice can also help. ✅ We have those too. Some essential oils can be blended with a carrier oil to rub on the chest, neck, and shoulders. ✅ Have those too. 

I started the morning with throat coat tea and a few spoonfuls of garlic honey. 

They say a hot beverage helps because it increases blood flow to the throat and washes away bacteria/gunk there. 

I mixed some doTERRA oils together: 2 drops lavender, 2 drops On Guard, and 2 drops Breathe into 5tsp of olive oil and rubbed it on my chest and feet. Maybe it's a placebo, but it seemed to help. The original recipe was lavender, eucalyptus, and pine, but the blends I substituted have those oils in them and are also used for healing.

Next, I dug around my Pinterest boards and found a recipe I've been meaning to make for herbal pain relief (touted as a Tylenol replacement/pain management tincture). A day late and a dollar short: it takes 2-6 weeks to be ready. At least I'll be ready for the next go round whenever it comes. 

This one is four ingredients: peppermint leaves, echinacea, juniper berries, and vodka. 

Simply mix the dry ingredients in equal amounts (I did half a cup). Put them in a jar so they fill the jar halfway or a little over. Add vodka to the top of the jar. Let sit for 2-6 weeks. The longer it sits, the more potent the remedy. 

As always, clearly label the jar so you remember what's in it and how old it is. 😅

 

Zoodles

It's that time of year again. 

My garden might be slow going, but we do have zucchini! G told me the other day that he doesn't love zucchini. He likes it, but doesn't love it. I.e. we don't need to plant as many next year. Well, I do love it, so I've been putting it to good use: soup, stir fry, and muffins to start. 

A friend suggested shredding and dehydrating it to throw in pretty much everything all winter. It really shrinks down to nothing! 

I found my KitchenAid veggie spiralizer attachment and made zoodles. 

Beautiful curls! But it leaves a lot of pieces behind. I shredded those for dehydrating. 

The first round of zoodles went in the freeze dryer. They came out similar in consistency to veggie straws. Jaron loved them. I bagged them up for later rehydration, probably this winter when we're longing for green...

Bionic Baby

At our last round of NICU follow-up appointments, we met with a prosthetic specialist. They recommended we start Jaron with a prosthetic sleeve to get him used to having something on his flipper. 

Once he's acclimated, they can 3D print attachments to screw into the sleeve. Those can be basically anything we can dream up to make a task easier for him. They want their clients to actually use the prostheses, not let them sit on a shelf getting dusty, so we as parents start the conversation when we notice Jaron avoiding doing a task because of his limb difference. The example they gave was of a boy avoiding riding his bike because it was too hard for him without a second hand. He had tried, got frustrated over and over, and gave up. I think that's the key: frustrated to the point of giving up. 

So far, Jaron has tolerated the sleeve well! I caught him a half second before he smiled which is why he looks hesitant in this picture.

We're not in a rush to get an attachment, but on our radar is something to give him more leverage for crawling and/or to help him pull to standing. He's not quite at either skill, so we'll see how things progress with his determination...

Freeze Dried Bananas

I love banana chips. When I was teaching, they were a favorite after school snack. A few years ago, I attempted to make them myself to cut down on the added sugar. Dehydrating them resulted in completely the wrong texture, so I abandoned the project. Until....we got a freeze dryer. 

The first tray, I peeled the banana, sliced it, and put each piece on individually. Whew. Painstaking and messy. Next tray, I peeled one section and left the rest in the peel to keep it together. Easier to cut and less messy!

It made setting them on the tray easier too.

I cut some thin like banana chips are, but over time the slices got thicker. 😅 We'll see which I like better. 

They didn't take too long to freeze dry, around 15h from start to finish. I've never had anything bubble up so much though. 

The texture is nice and crunchy! Different from store banana chips which are denser, but I do like these! It's going to be way too easy to eat these. I can see Future Emily making a batch of these a week, especially as Jaron gets older and we have more kids eating snacks.