Gearing Up for Spring

Winter sure is hanging on here at The Acre. We secured a little more cold weather juice, it keeps the hearts pumping here at The Acre.

Odin's Valhalla Java

Good thing, because...Monday, it snowed.

Tuesday, it snowed.

Sunday, it snowed.
In between, we did some usual stuff. Big Man baked a Ribeye Steak pot pie, which was a new dish.

Smoked ribs.

We baked a pizza one night, we are starting to get the hang of this, and a 17 inch cast iron skillet sure makes a crispy crust

We also put a new twist on apple pie this week. Grapples showed up at Wal-Mart, and we bought a few bags. Grapples are apples that taste like grapes. They rocked the apple pie.

We made more butter and laundry detergent. We leave with a couple of animal pics

And "Chicken Wing Sunday", we always end with Chicken Wing Sunday.
K&K

Ice Ice Baby

We have had all four seasons here at The Acre this past week. It started out with ice.

 In between the start and finish of the week we had spring and summer. Some days in the 40's, some days in the upper 60's. We planted our onions, peas and salad fixings, we always plant our peas around St. Patrick's day. Speaking of, we skirted the corned beef and cabbage for home made pizza. It's still legal, we added green olives.

We smoked meat one day. We smoked enough for a few meals all at once. We found a recipe for a beer brine chicken, so we gave it a whirl. We took a whole chicken around five pounds and soaked it for twenty four hours with garlic and Slap Ya Mama with about a quart or two of Pabst Blue Ribbon from the Man Cave Bar.

  It turned out really well. The meat was tender and had a unique flavor. We picked the bones for chicken pot pie and chicken salad for Cupcake's lunch this coming week.

And we added a few ribs to the smoker. Wade's meat can't be beat for rib smoking, we will never go back to Wal-Mart sold ribs.

And what would all that meat be without a fresh made apple pie?

Our big project for the week was chicken eggs in the incubator. We ordered a half dozen lavender Amerucana's for hatching. We waited two weeks, but the good old USPS lost the package. So we ordered another half dozen from another farm, and they arrived in two days. We added a dozen or so of our own Amerucana eggs to the batch. We love raising chickens from birth to layers, it's been an Acre tradition since Cupcake arrived.

It takes twenty one days from start to hatch, so look for results of our project in three weeks. We ended the week with Chicken Wing Sunday and snow.

K&K

Blackhawk Down

We had a loss at The Acre this week, a hawk killed two of our egg ladies. The first bird made it home to the coop with a hole in her, we thought she had been shot. Until the second bird made it back to the coop with a hawk on top of her. In police work, we called that "a clue".

Red tail hawk, be more accurate

We have to keep the girls cooped up until this bird of prey finds something else to feed on, they are illegal to kill, so we gonna have to wait this one out.
Other than hawk drama, we had a typical week. We made butter, smoked meat, and did some baking.

Smoked ribs, Big Man getting good at this

Fresh butter

From scratch dinner rolls, to eat with the fresh butter

One DIY project we did was canning related. We ran out of home made pizza sauce after Big Man figured out how to make from scratch pizza dough. So we broke out a few of our remaining cans of tomatoes, and whipped up enough for another dozen pizzas.

Canned tomatoes, with fresh basil added

Blended tomatoes, ready to add the sauce makings

Heat to boiling, then can 40 minutes in a hot water bath

Twelve home made pizzas, ready to eat

As always, we leave you with....

Chicken wing Sunday

K&K

Spring Flours

With winter in it's death throws, everyone is looking forward to spring. April showers and spring flowers and all that. We are too, but you may have noticed the spelling of the title? We noticed this week we have a diverse collection of flour.

We have from left to right: Biscuit flour, bread flour, self rising, pie crust, seasoned and all purpose. Until last week, dinner rolls have vexed Big Man, which really throws his OCD in to overdrive. But after discovering bread flour, mystery solved.

Dinner rolls, done right

And with the pressure off, pizza dough became the focus this week. We made one pizza last week with store bought dough, and our home made sauce.

We should have taken a pic earlier

Big Man thought he could make dough, and we should make it in cast iron (shocking, we know). So we did, and it turned out better than we expected.

Dough pressed out, ready for making. With one left over for next time

Ten minutes in the oven, coated in olive oil

Toppings complete.

End result

Bottom of the crust, crispy

Winter still made its presence felt this past week, we had another pretty good snow fall, and the deer came for a visit. Cupcake shared a couple apples with them, and they expressed their gratitude.

"Neener Neener"

We also used the smoker, and made another apple pie. We have hit on apples that make a real difference in home made apple pie, and Cupcake says she could eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner, which is high praise.

Smoked Ribs, this batch from Wades meat counter

Apple Pie

We also did usual stuff, home made butter and another batch of laundry detergent. We ended with Chicken Wing Sunday, so the world is as it should be.
Next week we look forward to putting our lavender chicken eggs and ameracauna eggs in the incubator. It's chicken hatching season.
K&K

Playing Hooky

Last week was a slow week around The Acre, but the first day of this week week we got to play hooky. School was closed and Cupcake stayed home from work due to a quick moving storm that iced up the mountain pass we travel to town on.
Reflecting back on the week, we share a few pictures and projects.
First off, home made dinner rolls. Dinner rolls perplex the Big Man, and is still a work in progress. Here we have home made butter, and the leftover butter milk we used in the roll dough.

The next little project was garden seeds. We started our tomato plants this past week, and they just started coming up. We also started some more herbs, because we are fresh herb kind of people around here.

Basil

Window herb garden

And on our snow day, we decided to make a from scratch deep dish apple pie.

Cupcake working the slice and spice detail

Home made butter tops the mix

We sign off this week with a little nature.

Plus chicken wing Sunday was a thing, it's our thing.
K&K