When Food Sticks to Wax Paper: Salvage Time!

 As you might have already figured out, I love wax paper. 
It's great for all kinds of things but there are some things it just doesn't work so great for.

Kitten Update: Finding Homes and Getting Them Fixed

In the last two weeks we have managed to get one of the kittens fixed and another adopted. All thanks to the women who took these photos, who I met through an adoption group on Facebook. 

 Lisa loves cats in general but works specifically with ones who suffer from a neurological malformation condition called Cerebellar Hypoplasia. Our kittens are perfectly normal but she still helped us out a ton. Often CH kittens are from mamas who contracted an illness or were vaccinated when pregnant.  There are varying degrees from those who just have a staggery walk to others who are basically non-mobile.
She has started a Facebook group and a website Cerebellar Hypoplasia Cats & Kittens if you would like to adopt a CH cat or kitten or learn more about them.

Lisa told us about Pasado's Mobile Spay Station and is helping us find potential adopters. The Spay Stations operated in Western Washington moving to different locations in Pierce and King county daily. They offer reduced price spay/neuter, shots, worming flea and earmite treatment as well as micro-chipping. If you are on public assistance they will fix your pet and give them a flea treatment for FREE. If you visit the page with their monthly schedules (king county-Peirce county) you can find details about what sort of proof they except. 

Then last Sunday Fuzzy Face ( who has now been dubbed Kosmo) went to his new home. We brought the kittens to Lisa's house so they could meet the tabby below that they were originally interested in adopting.

 Once they meet the kittens though it was obvious that the kitten they thought was the right one wasn't. Fuzzy Face stole their hearts and I couldn't be happier with it. I'm glad we found one of them a good home, now two more to go!

This post is participating in the Frugal Days, Sustainable Ways blog hop, head on over to find other great blogs like ours!

Stuffed Squash Blossoms

Squash blossoms, for me, are one of the things that signal that summer is really here. Squash flowers can only pollinate or be pollinated the same day they open. They shrivel up and die so quickly I don't feel at all bad about eating the ones that aren't needed for squash. Often, there will be a glut of male flowers for a few weeks before the plants start producing female flowers and there are almost always extra male flowers. You can easily tell the difference, all the ones pictured here are males. I would have taken photos showing the difference but the squash here right now only have male flowers. Females have a miniature squash below the bloom but males do not. If a female bloom doesn't get pollinated it will stop enlarging, turn yellow, shrivel and eventually fall off. 

With all the trouble our pollinators are in right now its great to know how to hand pollinate and squash are about the easiest thing to start with. Peel the petals off a male flower so only the pollen covered stamen is left. Find a female flower and cover the sticky center projection aka the pistil with pollen; sometimes you can pollinate two females with one male. Insect pollinators do a much better job with less wasted pollen than us humans can manage but if your squash plants aren't setting fruit hand pollinating is a viable option for squash. Here's a post all about hand pollinating.

Stuffed squash blossoms can be as simple or complex as you want and there are hundreds of variations. Do whatever sounds good to you! One thing to keep in mind is how fast these puppies loose quality. I like them as a breakfast or brunch dish or appetizer so I can use them when they are freshest. If you want to serve them a few hours after they are picked wrap them in wet paper towels or real ones whichever you use and put them in something to keep the humidity in.  Plastic wrap, plastic bag, food storage container, you get the idea, and refrigerate. You might be able to keep them nice until the next day but I always pick them the same day I want to use them.

 Just before filling I gently rinse them and remove the stamen or pistil. This time the filling was a mix of mozzarella, spinach, red sweet pepper and herbs. I heated the roughly minced pepper in a dry pan to give it a sort of roasted pepper flavor. You have to keep a good eye on it since you don't want anything to burn, just caramelize.  A more common squash blossom filling is ricotta based. You make essentially the same filling as you would for stuffed shells or lasagna. You also have to be careful not to over stuff the blossoms or they will explode while frying, which can get very exciting and messy.

The stuffed flowers are coated in flour, egg and bread crumbs. I coat them twice in flour and egg before coating in bread crumbs to make sure the coating actually sticks.

 I place the blossoms petal end down in a pan of hot oil to seal them closed then fry them on all sides. You can see the varying degrees of under and over cooking corresponding to how distracted I was with taking pictures and how impatient I was to eat the tasty bites.

This really isn't a recipe that has measurement.  "Measurementless" recipes make my husband crazy, I think that is so funny! My family has always cooked without measurements. I guess the family has it's own "measurements' of sorts. We know what we mean when we say "cover the bottom of the pan with oil" or  "do blank just until blank happens".  So I'm sorry if the lack of measurements irks you but really, lighten up! This turned out without anything being precisely measured. Just make sure you have enough stuffing for all the flowers you have and egg, flour and bread crumbs to coat all the blossoms. 
We ate these along side bread and scrambled eggs that we mixed the extra filling into for a breakfast that was both filling and light.
What do you do with squash blossoms?

This post is participating in The Homestead Blog Hop and Mostly Homemade Mondays , Frugal Days, Sustainable Ways, HomeAcre Hop, Green Thumb Thursday and Real Food Wednesdays, check it out to find other great blogs like ours!

-Week 9 & 10 in Review- (and then some)

Life is happening and other things-namely blog related-are getting put on hold.

 Last weekend my grandparents come to visit and we missed a family get together after AJ and Cal got attacked by a wasps nests in the barn wall. We all felt too crummy to go anywhere or do anything. 

Morning after

Day of sting

 
We picked blackberries this week and get one kitten fixed and right now I am starting to make salsa, pickled eggs, beets and dilly beans. 

Only half our black berry harvest this go around.

The Blueberries

 












I'm going to write about all these little events separately but I just wanted to give you a quick update and let you know I hadn't died or given up blogging.

More (real) posts coming soon!
Kindest regards
Emily

A Bad Day to Remember

When I woke up this morning, I felt off first thing. The weather was horrible. Drizzly and muggy, my least favorite thing about living in western Washington is the "not-rain" that accomplishes nothing but annoying me. To pair nicely with the dismal weather, it's almost that time of the month again.  My body must be ragingly unhappy with me because, ahead of schedule, it is already making me miserable.
 I kept thinking all day: you really should have just stayed in bed.

I'm sure the ladies know what I'm talking about but for the (rare, maybe?) male reading this, who is uncomfortable with hearing mention of womanly things; would you really rather be oblivious? I think its better if I am open, blunt and honest about what we all go through, same as I am with most things. If you at least sort of understand what is happening and why you have a much better chance of coming out of things ahead. 

Forgive me if this get rambly I'm firing on half cylinders at best folks.

The base of the soup: onion, leek, carrot and potato.

The day didn't start out that bad. I picked a nice pile of peas, beans, tomatillos and a few sad tomatoes and even made a yummy potato soup that I will share the recipe for soon. But as the day progressed, I felt worse and worse. I actually seriously considered the possibility that I was coming down with the flu. I should know better than that. This is definitely one of my worst times yet but it is clearly not a flu. For whatever reason, my pelvis feels like it's slowly being broke in half along with general crumminess like, well, the worst flu. 




As the day drug on like a half dead actor in the dessert, I realized I would have to make another trip out to the chickens to close them in for the night. Sometimes things get better for me around bed so I held off for as long as I could, but it only got worse. The chickens are a good half mile (there and back) from the stables, where our apartment is. It's not that far at all when your body isn't trying to punish you for not being pregnant. 
I seriously contemplated just leaving the coop open. I couldn't do that, I wasn't dead yet and pain never killed anyone so I got Cal up and we started out for the chickens , very very slowly. 

You have to understand, I have been doing this almost every night since we got the chickens. One of the barn cats, who is never interested in being touched and mostly just races circles around me, started following us to the chickens. I thought she would turn around by the time we got to the pond and at one point I thought she had, but no, she came all the way with us, there and back. At no other time, day or night, has she ever followed me anywhere outside the barn. 

 
Sometimes, animals can understand what you need better than any human. I will never look at that cat the same again. I am thankful for the blessing of company on a dark walk and a reminder that god works in mysterious ways.



This post is participating in the From The Farm Blog Hop, head on over to find other great blogs like ours!

Storing Eggs: Method and Science

I forgot that my camera was still in the trunk from picking berries this weekend and let AJ drive off with it, so I apologize in advance, but the photos will be phone camera ones so don't be too hard on them!

I have realized that people who didn't grow up with chickens (and some who did!) probably don't know even the basics of storing eggs or why it matters.
 I mean, how could you? Its usually wrong in the store bought eggs so unless you think to read about this subject or someone tells, you will be none the wiser.