How to Chowder

Lawman had a lot of free time on his hands this week, so he made another batch of chowder. Since he had time like that, he photographed along the way a "how to" in case any of our three or four regulars wanna try this at home.
Before we get to that, we start off the update with "The Girl". She came down with the flu this week, doc confirmed it and gave her this neat mask to wear.

She was really excited about wearing it too.
And she grabbed a shot of "The Boy" trying his hand at adulting.

We're still at the stage where both of them think piling dirty dishes in the sink is "cleaning up after themselves." Baby steps.
Now, on to the chowder.

Dice up one whole onion, two potatoes, three carrots and as much celery as you like. Lawman prefers to use the tops and leafy part of the celery for cooking, he thinks it adds more zip, but it's your chowder, do what you feel.

Use at least four cans of clams. Lawman added one more can this week, because if some is good, more is better.

Open the cans and drain the clam juice into the diced veggies, put them on medium high heat, and cook the veggies down until they are tender.

While the veggies are getting happy, Lawman starts the sauce. 1 1/2 sticks of real butter, melted.
Then add 3/4 cup of flour. We like the local mills seasoned flour for our gravy and whatnot.

Add the flour to the melted butter and whisk it down until all the lumps are out.

Add one whole quart of half and half to the butter/flour mix and whisk until it's well mixed. Keep heat under it, but don't let it boil.
After the veggies are as tender as you want them, add the butter/flour mix to the veggies, turn down to medium low heat and keep a stir on it. Never let it come to a boil.

About ten minutes before serving, add the clams to the mix. All the clams need to do is warm up. If you cook them too long, they get tough. And nobody likes tough meat in their mouth.
We also made a batch of olive bread to go with our chowder.

We're not sure why everyone wouldn't cook in cast iron, but some folks resist it for whatever reason.
And Lawman made another batch of home made English muffins to start the week off. We enjoyed these all week long for breakfast.

Home made English muffins, home made butter, home made blood orange marmalade? Yes please!
We had family that was feeling a little down, so we made a batch of baked burritos and a batch of baked spaghetti with a pone of homemade baked bread and dropped it off to them.

A sort of food related topic, we picked one of the pots of ginger. We use thin slices of this fresh ginger to our mint tea for dinner every night.

And a sweet tooth for the week, homemade chocolate pie.

Scratch made buttermilk pie crust

Roll it out on parchment paper, much easier to maneuver

No instant pie mix for us

We started the week with a beautiful sunrise Monday morning

We went back to ending the week with wings. (with a side of oysters)
K&K

Snow Way?

We had our first real winter weather this week, like most everyone else did. The weather forecast was calling for the storm to go north of us, and we were only going to get flurries, maybe the ground would get covered. Cupcake gave Lawman a teardrop weather predictor for Christmas, and it kept saying "snow". Well, we woke up to about six inches of snow.
We've been preparing for snow since last April so we love to see it come when it comes.

While we were snowed in, nothing is better than comfort food. Lawman made a batch of clam chowder for dinner one night. Actually, it started out as a side dish to porkchop night, but it ended up being a meal in its self. When it all came together we started tasting it, and a taste turned into a spoon full, which turned in to we ate most of it. We dug in to it when Pop got here and ended up not taking any pictures before it was almost gone. We cut Pop out a pint and we  kept enough for lunch the next day. We stopped in town and bought more clams, so next week we promise to have a how to. Maybe. We'll see.
The next day, Lawman still felt the need to be in the kitchen, so he cut up a bag full of blood oranges and made Cupcake a batch of marmalade.

Fillet of blood orange

Fillet of orange peel

Eight jars should hold us

And it's an orange party in everyone's mouth

Lawman spent the last few years in the People's Republic fishing for perch. He got skilled in the art of fillet. We found it is easier to fillet the peel away from the icky white part of the orange peel. Some people boil it and scrape it, but it's so much faster to do it this way. All you need is a sharp knife, and we have a whole lot of that here at The Acre.
And just because we had snow, it didn't slow us down going old school on laundry. We still hang our sheets/bedspread and whatnots outside to dry.

Just before the snow came, we loaded up the little old man down the street with a truck load of wood, and he mentioned he had eaten all of his cake and jello we made for him, so we took the snowed in time to fix him another batch.

And the end of an era happened this weekend. We always end the blog with wings, but this week we ended the week with oysters. Deep fried, spicy, oysters.

K&K

Oysters Everywhere

This week we added a new dish to our weekly rotation at dinner. Cupcake has decreed that oysters will now be a weekly thing. As long as we can get them.
In the People's Republic, oyster season was any month with an "R" in the name, we're not sure if we can get them commercially around here outside of the season. I guess we will find out in May?
Anyway, Lawman always fixes oysters for Christmas and Cupcake really liked them, so we had them two weeks ago with Thor's red meat offerings. This week when Lawman was doing the weekly tradin, he was instructed to pick up more. He found half pint jars at the local Kroger, which worked out just perfect. He bought three jars, and now we have a snack on chicken wing Sunday, and a regular pint for Thor's red meat offerings.

Thor's Day oysters

Chicken wing Sunday snack

Cocktail sauce and slap ya mamma wasn't doing it for Cupcake, break out the Tabasco

Newest Thor's day offering in the works

The glass for the solar heater arrived this week. Lawman caught a semi-warm day and added it to the heater. We're getting a pretty good flow of warm air. Fraidy Mutt is happy with it anyway.

Lawman broke out his new griddle and whipped up Saturday pancakes.

Mid week, Lawman took all the predators he's punished so far and drove them up to Draper to sell off and free up some real estate in the freezers at our house and Pop's house. There's not much money in it, but it paid for a tank of fuel, so we're calling it a "push". Because he was gone most of the day, we had a quick meal for dinner. We opened up a jar of our fresh from the vine to the can sketti sauce. Lawman put some olive loaf bread on to rise before he left and baked it when he got home. This one turned out great. We ate every bite of this one.

The Beamer got us craving another buttermilk pie, so that went in the oven early in the week.

And Lawman saw a recipe for Bailey's Irish Cream cheesecake Sunday, so that happened. We got the BIC in one of the oyster pictures. We were kind of excited about this one and dropped the ball on pictures.

The lovebirds spent most of Sunday evening around The Acre, so we made them potato soup for dinner.

And we ended the week with wings. And oysters. Cupcake says we may bend a bit and end the week with oysters, and maybe a wing or two as a snack? Details as they become available.
K&K