More Fairy

 Our fairy lamp connect contacted us early in the week, and said she had a new lamp for sale. This one was blue, or "milk glass" made by Fenton. We gave it a look over and found it too was in pristine condition, so we added it to our collection.

Other things this week, we tried a new biscuit recipe. Angel biscuits was a simple recipe, and you can make it up to five days in advance. Lawman whipped up a batch on Thursday while he was stuck in the house because of rain. We kept it out in the garage in a large bowl until Sunday morning.

We used the food processor to mix the frozen butter and frozen lard into the flour.

These are going to be our new 'go to' biscuits. The recipe makes enough for a large group and can be made in advance, which cuts down on prep time when we entertain. 

Cupcake found a recipe for homemade granola mix, and she whipped up a batch mid week for us to snack on.

Our last update this week falls under the 'tin foil hat' category. Back in September, our ducks just stopped laying eggs, sudden like. Our chickens were too young to be laying yet, so we went several months without fresh eggs. You may have heard, there is a shortage of store bought eggs these days, so we felt the pinch like everyone else did. A few weeks ago, our chickens started laying, and we would get four or five eggs a day, but we have over forty chickens, we thought we should be getting more than that.

Lawman saw an article on the Tweeter that said the companies that make chicken food stopped putting protein in the mix to cut down on home egg production. And this started around September of last year. The person who posted the article said she changed her chickens over from layer feed to goat feed, and egg production went through the roof. Goat feed is the same price as chicken feed, so we figured we'd adjust our foil cap and give it a whirl.

One week in to feeding goat feed to our girls, now we get over two dozen eggs a day. It's a problem not a lot of people have these days. 

At the end of the week, we tuned in to watch Wrexham claw their way to a tie in the 4th round of the FA Cup, and put a box full of eggs out for roadside sale. No nap after that game.

K&K

Fairy Lamp

 We hit pay dirt this week. Cupcake saw an ad for a fairy lamp for sale in the great city of Narrows. We made contact with the seller and asked to pay for it online, but they were only interested in cash payments. So, we got up bright and early the next morning and made the schlep to Narrows, so we could be at the doorstep at 0900hrs.

There are no cracks, chips or repairs, and the bottom is stamped with the man who invented them's name. Research says these are the most sought after of all the lamps.

It's obviously been in someone's family for generations. They stopped making them around 1850, so we're thinking we've got a 200ish year old antique on our hands. 

This was the big deal for the week. The rest of the week was pretty much staying out of the world's way, so we thought rather than showing that we made another batch of blood orange marmalade, we'd do a recipe. 

So we started off with two bags of blood oranges. We juiced four or five oranges until we had one cup of juice.

After we had our cup of juice, we sliced the ends off of the rest of the oranges (because the ends look funny) and put the oranges in the food processor for slicing.

If you don't have a food processor, slice them as thin as you can with a knife, thinner is better.

After slicing, we put the oranges in a large pot and covered with water, and brought it to a boil. Boil the oranges for at least twenty minutes.

After the mix boils for twenty minutes, drain the water off and weigh the oranges. 

Put the oranges back in the pot, then measure out an equal amount of sugar.

Put the sugar in the pot with the oranges, and add your cup of juice to the mix.

Set the heat to medium high, and stir the mix until the sugar dissolves. Bring to a boil and stir from time to time. Let the mix low boil for at least thirty minutes, the color will get darker and start to thicken up a bit.

Jar the mix into either jelly jars of pints, your choice. Then water bath for 10 minutes, just like any other jelly. 

While the marmalade was cooking, Lawman made a batch of grape juice. 

Have you ever lost a bag of grapes? We did. But we found it a couple of days ago. The grapes had gotten a little soft/mushy. We hate to waste anything, so we decided to use them for juice. We jarred them up in four quarts, added 1/8th of a cup of sugar to each jar, then filled the jars with boiling water. Then we left the jars in the canner while the marmalade was cooking down. After about thirty minutes, we took the juice off and put the jelly jars in the canner.

Earlier in the week, Cupcake requested homemade brownies. And what Cupcake wants, Cupcake gets.

And The Boy requested blueberry muffins one night, and Cupcake stepped in to whip up a batch.

We ended the week with a couple of pretty good naps, and chicken wings.

K&K

Score

 We got a call from our neighbors this weekend, asking us if we could use extra steaks? Well, yeah. Z and A slaughtered a calf and filled up their freezers but still had a few steaks he couldn't fit in, so they boxed em up and gifted them to us. We plan on putting them to good use.

Earlier in the week it was cold and rainy, and that called for comfort food. One of our favorites is chicken pot pie. Cupcake likes her chicken shredded instead of cubed. And what Cupcake wants, Cupcake gets.

No "Crazy Granny" store bought pie crust for us

While we had chicken on hand, we also made a big ol batch of chicken and noodle soup.

Another indoor activity we like to do when we can't get outside is cranberry juice. Just about all the stores are letting bags of cranberries go for less that a dollar now, so we can do juice on the cheap. We did four more gallons this week.

All three kinds of our birds are giving us eggs now, so all is right with the world.

We know we've mentioned our Blackstone griddle in the past, but we're going to mention it again. Anything you can cook breakfast and dinner on at the same time rocks. Are we right?

We put a quick crust on a pot roast while we fixed breakfast. We even had The Girl and The Boy-in-Law over for Saturday breakfast. And Sunday breakfast too. 

We ended the week with naps, leftover pot roast sammiches and cherry cobbler.

K&K

Bake a Cake

 Over the holidays, Cupcake found a recipe for an orange slice cake that uses the orange slice candy that's popular during the holidays. But, we had so many baked goodies that we put it off until after the new year. Lawman got caught in the house on a rainy day this week, and figured it was a good time to give it a whirl. Lawman broke out the fresh eggs and got to slinging some flour.

The orange glaze just set it off. We're going to keep this one in the rotation.

Another recipe we wanted to try was blood orange marmalade. Our two steady readers may remember that we've always made orange marmalade, but it's very labor intensive. This recipe was simple, and with our food processor now, it was even easier.

Our birds have started laying on a pretty regular basis now, we get four or five eggs a day, so our 'on hand' eggs are plentiful. It gives Lawman enough eggs to put his OCD to good use. With the shortage of eggs and insane egg prices, we promise not to forget our friends when we parlay our egg empire like Bubba Gump Shrimp.

One last new recipe this week was gingerbread pancakes. Everyone loves gingerbread cookies so this one seemed like a no brainer. 

After a week of baking and eating, we decided to round out the week with old friends. 

Wings and naps.

K&K