Karma

Last week we called out our pal Richard Beamer for not having a meat thermometer. We thought maybe we could light a fire under our pal, to get him in to the smoked meat lifestyle we enjoy. We don't know if it worked or not, but we did learn that Karma lurks behind every key stroke.
We have a meat thermometer, and we smoke meat on a regular basis. Lately, we've been using the thermometer for canning dill pickles. It's actual use is a trade secret, but one of the first things we learn when using a wireless thermometer is, never get the wires wet. We got our wires wet this past week in the bath canner.
We also had planned on smoking a big ol brisket on Saturday night. Our regular Saturday night out (Dude's Drive In) takes a week off every July so it's employees can have a vacation, this week is it, so we needed something eat. Our brisket takes two weeks of prep time, and we planned ahead to have it ready for Saturday morning. Thursday of this week we grilled some chicken breasts to chop up in salad, and Big Man fired up the thermometer. According to the readout, the air temperature was 142*. Since neither one of us had burst into flames, we postulated the thermometer was bad. And with too short notice to order a new one in time for Saturday brisket, we had to move the smoke back until next week, after the new thermometer arrives. Some will say it serves us right for calling out "The Beamer".
So, on with the week.
First off, the pickles that killed the thermometer.

Fresh dill, it's how we roll

Next we have a new arrival here at The Acre, chocolate pie. Cupcake had a recipe from long ago she recently found, and since Big Man is king of the pie crust, we combined our efforts for a mouth watering dessert. We used the powdered Dutch chocolate from the ice cream recipe, and we think it really made a difference in the taste.

No Jello packs in this pie

No store bought crust either

Our second new thing to mention is roasted potatoes. We dug up a hill of our blue potatoes a week or so ago, this week on steak night we did a hobo pack with bacon and fresh garden onions. The blue potatoes keep their color after you cook them, and we think they are really neat to eat.

And speaking of garden fresh items, we picked a few more things this week.

Re-potted our cabbage sets this week

Fresh basil, rosemary and dill

Our corn is not quite full yet, so we will wait another week or two on them to mature. The green tomatoes are due to our egg ladies discovering a taste for green tomatoes on the vine. Cupcake lost her sense of humor when we started finding six or seven ready to turn tomatoes eaten each morning. So we picked the ones in the above picture to keep them safe, then we went to work putting an electric fence around the vines. Knowing chickens the way we do, we know once the birds get a jolt or two from climbing under the ribbon, they will leave the vines alone, and by Saturday they were back to patrolling the beans and potato vines for bugs, leaving the tomatoes alone. Problem solved, problem staying solved. (We hope)

Our last pic of the week is our giant sunflowers. We planted one at every post around our new garden fence. Some are doing better than others for some reason, who knows how mother nature rolls? But we can't wait for them to bloom. They are also great deer repellant, so they are pretty and useful as well.

 We ended the week with wings.
K&K

Richard Beamer, Buy a Thermometer

Recently, one of Big Man's pals came to town, and we met up for lunch. There was some discussion of "The Beamer" getting in to smoking meat. The one point Big Man and "Weiffer" tried to impress upon him was, a thermometer was the first step before any meat product can be smoked. Except ribs, they are strictly a timed meat, but we digress.
"The Beamer" can't pull off a smoke like this one, until he gets a thermometer.

We smoked a large chicken roaster, and a flat brisket end at the same time. The chicken we had for dinner, the brisket we sliced and made brisket sandwiches for lunch over the week, and diced up a few slices for Sunday breakfast.
The big project this week was green beans. Our garden has started producing beans on a regular basis, and Pop's garden came in about the same time. So we picked about five shopping bags full, and got a little help when it came time to can.

Kattie Grace has yet to show an interest in stringing and breaking, but she did jump in when it came time to fill jars and can them up. We do believe we are starting to rub off on the next generation.
We had a few beans left over, so we made a small batch of dilled green beans just to try. They are a acquired taste.

Another project this week was jalapeno peppers. We mentioned earlier that we only planted two plants this year, and still, we are getting peppers on top of peppers. We made a second batch of jelly this week, and decided to share the step by step. Even the most citified city dweller could make this simple recipe.
First, clip off the ends of the peppers and weigh out twelve ounces of peppers. Drop them in whole, seeds and all.

Drop them into a blender with two cups of apple cider vinegar, and one pack of Sure Gel. Blend the mix smooth.

Pour the mixture into a large pot, and stir over a medium heat until the mix begins to boil. Continue to stir for one minute while boiling, then add six cups of sugar. Continue to stir.

Bring to a boil again, and allow to boil another one minute while stirring. Then remove from heat and ladle into pint or jelly jars.

Wipe the mouth of the jars with a wet rag/towel. Then place lids and rings, finger tight, and place into a hot water bath. Boil for ten minutes, and then turn off the heat and leave the jars in the water while it cools enough to remove by hand. The jars should seal before they cool off enough to touch.

The jelly will 'set up' in the jar. We recommend putting a bit of cream cheese on a cracker of your choice, and a dab of the jelly, for a quick snack. It turns out to be an entire lunch for us, but we are professionals.
We ended the week with wings.
K&K

Roots and Chicks

This week we got the planter boxes mounted to the deck and did some canning. It seemed like we didn't do all that much, until we started looking at all the pictures we took this week. So lets get to sharing.
The hold over from last week was the deck boxes. We got out late in the evening and hung them up after the honeybees went home. They were heavier than expected, so we had to call out Jake for strong back and weak mind support. But we got them up, filled with dirt, and even planted our goodies in them. All we need now is a couple of steady showers to set us right.

Six inches deep, lettuce and spinach box

Twelve inches deep, cabbage and carrot box

We started another batch of cabbage last week. It sprouted in just a couple of days, so we will be getting them in the ground, and in the box as soon as possible.

Then we went to work in the garden. We have an entire row of carrots, separated by a walkway down the middle of the garden. We pulled half of one row, then tilled it up and replanted seeds back in their place. We got six pints of canned carrots from that half row.

And we did our first canning of green beans this week. Not a real big batch, but its four more quarts than we did have. Zombies will not slow down our ability to eat.

An added perk to our week was jalapeno peppers. We only planted two plants this year, but they have been turning out peppers like crazy so far. We picked enough for a batch of jalapeno jelly, then made a canning of it minutes after they came off the vine. Now that's fresh.

The dill pickle assembly line continued to churn out crunchy pickles. We perfected the ability to can dill pickles, and not turn them soft or mushy during the process. Trade secret, just enjoy them if ya get a jar.

Our last garden post for the week is potatoes. We pulled up one vine, just to see what was what. If every vine produces like this one did, we will be giving taters away this year.

Blue potatoes make us unique

Some bird related pictures to share.
We said it's hard to name all the birds, but on the chance that we are able to identify and name a bird, we like to share. The first bird, Big Man said looked like an oriole. Cupcake kept calling him "Raven" so to avoid confusion, we just call it "Baltimore" now.

The second bird is one of two white birds we have in the flock. The larger bird we named "chirp" because that's all she did after she hatched. She has a black dot on the back of her head. This bird is also white, and has black dots, and Cupcake kept calling it chirp, Big Man would say it was not chirp, and back and forth. So this bird is now "Diet Chirp"

Last bird picture we share this week is our new additions to the flock. We tried all spring to hatch guinea birds, and were foiled at every turn. Lucky for us, one of Cupcake's school chums has guinea birds, and had a mother bird hatch a batch that he didn't want, and offered them to us. We snatched them up and wanted to thank him official like. Todd Naff, many thanks from The Acre.

It wouldn't be a posting without some sort of food related pictures. We seemed to have dropped the ball this past week on those. But we did do something new one night. Italian bread. We had sketti with our home made sauce, and we usually fix a french bread to eat with it. Big Man decided to throw in some Italian spices, and bake it in a bread pan. It rocked. Fraidy Mutt loved it, and what was left over we chopped up into cubes and dried them out in the oven for home made croutons. We hate to waste food.

And on the topic of bread, we ran through our twenty five pound bag of bread flour that we picked up at Sam's a couple months back. So that should tell you just how much bread we go through around here. We made another Sam's run this week, and picked up fifty pounds of bacon, and seventy five pounds of bread flour. We plan on making both last until at least Thanksgiving or Christmas.

We made another dozen pickled eggs this week. Big Man has figured out that the blue eggs are just perfect size for a dozen eggs to a jar. They are just a little smaller than our smallest brown eggs, and fit in a quart jar perfect. Plus, how many of you can say you eat blue eggs?

We whipped up a batch of chocolate ice cream one night too. Big Man has never eaten chocolate ice cream, but he sure does put this stuff away.

Our last couple of pictures this week are random. First, we have mums out in front of the house that have already started to bloom. The do this every year, lose their bloom, then rebloom in the fall. Cupcake has the touch when it comes to flowers.

The last picture is a reminder that if you leave your blog camera lying about, you're bound to find a few glamor shots when you download them.

We ended the week with wings.
K&K

Busy Week, No Head

We had a busy week around The Acre this past week. The one thing we were looking forward to, was harvesting our first head of cabbage from the garden. We took a stroll out to the garden on July 4th, with plans of celebrating the holiday with fresh coleslaw, and found our chickens had acquired a taste for fresh cabbage. This struck us odd, because when we first started raising chickens, all the advice we got was to put a head of cabbage in the run for your birds, they will play with it and eat it to keep them occupied. Our birds did none of this. The cabbage rotted, untouched. So, losing our first heads to the birds was unexpected.
We spent one day fixing chicken wire over the row of cabbage to try and save what we have left.

And while we had all our tools out, we decided to go ahead and knock out a project we have been planning. Deck boxes for planting our salad fixings.

We will have to wait until next week for finished product pictures. There is a large patch of catnip under one of the deck boxes, and they were full of honey bees when we got the boxes finished. We decided to let them do their thing and hang the boxes at dusk, after they head home.
We also have a large patch of black eye susans for our honey bee friends. Cupcake is very happy with the patch.

While we were busy working on wood projects, Kattie Grace wanted to do some baking. She made a batch of cupcakes, all by herself.

And that was not the only kitchen time KG got this week. She was invited to a 4th of July party, and wanted to make a dish. She made a batch of patriotic strawberries, dipped in white chocolate. Having a strawberry patch has it's perks.

Chef has to sample

Jake stood guard while she was working with the oven. Cause he's fireman like that.

Then we move to the week in food. First things first, we made our first batch of pickles this week. No "yellow pickles" this year. This year, it's all dill pickles, all the time. Cupcake has been raising fresh dill in her herb garden, and there is a special feeling when you clip dill right off the garden, and drop it into the mix for dill pickles. We know everyone is tired of hearing ours are better than anything you can buy, so we won't say it again. (but they are)

And for the something new item, Big Man made fried peach pies for dessert one night. We had two peaches left over from canning the peaches, so he chopped them up, mixed up a pie filling, and used the extra pie crust we had leftover. We will be adding these to the lineup again.

Filling mix was just right

Cupcake made one of her favorite dishes one night, fried chicken.

Not to be out done, Big Man fried up some squash. Pop has been getting squash on a regular basis, and he has been supplying us for a couple of weeks now.

Then we moved to Cupcake's obsession, fried green tomatoes. We got our first two tomatoes from the garden this week.

We part this week with a few pictures from the garden. Everything is growing right along, we added a flag to the new fence, and our giant sunflowers are coming along.

We ended the week with wings.
K&K