What to do when life hands you lemons...

...Make lemonade, of course!!!

Except in this instance, life handed me eggs. Massive beautiful duck eggs to be precise. My wonderful farmer Khaiti had a fridge malfunction and dozens upon dozens of her beautifully packed and ready for the shelves duck eggs froze and expanded cracking the shells and oozing all over.

There was nothing wrong with the eggs except that they were no longer saleable and needed to be used pronto. Her misfortune was my good fortune and yesterday evening I was the happy recipient of a big bowl of duck eggs.


So what did I make? Pasta, of course! I had tried to make pasta from scratch once, thinking that eggs and flour couldn't be that complicated to put together. After that attempt I realised why fresh pasta at a deli is so expensive. If you don't have all the gizmos, it is hard work and time consuming to boot! But I have a good kitchen minion and when someone else is doing the kneading it is not too bad at all!

It is a simple process really. You measure your flour and make a well in the middle. Crack in the eggs and start combining until the dough comes together. Then, the hard part. The dough needs to be kneaded at least 5-10 minutes to develop the gluten which makes it nice and elastic when you cook it. I have no problem kneading bread dough but pasta dough is an entirely different beast. It is hard and dry and a minute feels like and hour! Enter kitchen minion...

After kneading let the dough rest then roll out thin (this demands some vigourous rolling but nothing quite as demanding as the kneading). You can make raviolis by cutting little squares and filling them (in this case, with chard and spinach from the garden and feta from Khaiti) then crimping them closed. Or cut them into ribbons for tagliatelle or linguine. We did some of both and froze what we weren't going to use immediately.


We still had tons of eggs left, so we made more pasta and this time took the lazy man option and just made lasagna! Nice big easy to handle sheets.


Since the greens are in full swing in the garden, we predictably made a chard and spinach lasagna. You would think I would be sick of the stuff by now, but you never really tire of greens that fresh!!!

The lasagna we had for dinner last night and it was delicious.


Thank you Khaiti for your wonderful gift!!!!

We froze enough pasta sheets for 3 more lasagnas which we will be making as soon as mum gives up her Bolognaise recipe...

How does your garden grow?

Well despite the near constant rain, I am pleased to report the garden is growing steadily. At the beginning of the month it was starting to look like a real Potager and not just a bare patch of land.










When I went out a couple of days ago, I couldn't believe it! Things are growing so fast! The potatoes look sooo healthy! We are expecting a bumper crop and all the brassicas are looking fab!!!
We harvested our first bunch of chard and kale two days ago and braised them with some of the rocket from the garden.


I have pretty much used up every available plot in the garden but, much to my husband's chagrin, that doesn't stop me from browsing the seed packets in the local co-op. I know I need to stop buying seeds but I just couldn't resist giving a new variety of plant the chance to grow and feed my tummy (and they were on sale)!!! The last (I promise!) purchase include Hokkaido squash and some Aztec bean I liked the look of. This will definitely be the last one. It is getting too late in the season to plant now. If I try any later they may not mature before the first frost!!!

I can't believe it's not butter - or is it?

I recently went out to Evan's place for a little tuition on keeping a dairy cow. I found him through the Sunday papers. They featured his farm as part of a back to the land type spread. He keeps two lovely Jersey cows on fresh pasture and hand milks them. These cows are living the real deal. They are rotated regularly so that they have fresh green pasture and are 99.99%grass fed, just as nature intended. In case you were wondering what the other 0.01% was, they get a little tasty treat of oats or grain when they come in for milking. They love it!

Jerseys are apparently very sweet tempered cows and are somewhat smaller than other breeds making them perfect for "domestic" use. According to him keeping a dairy cow was very common back in the day and intimidating though I find them, apparently milking the cow was considered kid's work.

I spent a very enjoyable morning with him talking about cow keeping, we milked the cows of course (I even had a go!) and after he had plied me with homemade brie and the best maple vanilla ice cream I have ever tasted, I left with a huge jar of milk and three pints of god's honest rich, decadent jersey cream. (Before leaving I also bagsyd one of the geese and a promise that came harvest time we would have a confit party!)

After pouring lashings of delicious unctuous cream over raspberries and peaches and lightening my coffee with it I decided to have a go at making butter. I had recently picked up some butter paddles at a jumble sale for 25c and was just waiting for such an opportunity to test them out.

The whole process proved to be remarkably simple.

I left the cream out over night on the counter so that it would sour slightly. Then I agitated the cream continuously to separate the solids from the buttermilk. I suppose this part would be traditionally done in a churn but I don't have those kinds of biceps and I certainly don't have that kind of patience so I used electric beaters.

The cream thickened and eventually looked just like whipped cream. If you keep beating past this stage it will look like over whipped cream (surprise surprise!) and after that as if by magic, in one instant, the fat solids miraculously separate out from the buttermilk and Bob's your uncle! You have butter.




If you don't have the convenience of electric kitchen appliances and don't fancy flexing your biceps, I am told that similar results can be achieved by putting the cream in a jar and giving to kids to play with and roll around on the floor. But since I don't have kids I decided to take their word for it.





After that all you need to do is drain the buttermilk away and "wash" the butter. You basically kneed it between the paddles in a bowl of fresh cold water to push out the remaining buttermilk. If you leave any in, the butter will spoil. You need to keep changing the water till it runs clear.

Then salt it to taste and voila!!!!











The whole process took about 20mn and this was the yellowest butter I had ever seen! I had heard that milk and cream from grass fed cows was yellower than milk from the grain fed cows which tends to be much whiter, but now I have seen it with my own eyes. No wonder they add all sorts of dyes to butter. In the olden days, it was yellow of its own accord!!!









Of course nothing is wasted in my kitchen. I used the buttermilk to make little rolls which we had for lunch slathered in butter with a duck egg and spinach Spanish omelet!!!! Country living at it's best!
Can't wait for my next delivery!!!!!!!!!!!

Cover up in the Country

I have been asked why it is that I am always covered from head to toe like an old babushka while out in the garden. I had harboured dreams of gardening virtually nude in order to transform my pasty white skin to a warm golden brown but those hopes were quickly dashed.

You see I live in the middle of tick country. And I don’t just mean those pesky ugly and disgusting wood ticks that burry their head in your skin and suck your blood. Those I might just about be able to live with. No I am covering up like a fundamentalist’s wife because we also live in deer tick land. And deer ticks in this part of the country often carry Lyme disease. And that is no joke.

Overreacting! I hear you say. Well actually I thought so too. Until my husband was diagnosed with it a week ago. After suffering sever flue like symptoms for a few days (chills, fever, aches and pains), a clear telltale sign of Lyme disease appeared; a red bulls eye on the skin. One trip to the emergency clinic later and a prescription for three weeks worth of antibiotics, he is now thankfully on the mend. We never even saw the tick and we were lucky the bull’s eye appeared (you can have Lyme without the bull's eye showing up) as Lyme disease is difficult to diagnose. Without early diagnosis, there can be complications and very scary long term problems.



Luckily the peak season for ticks is now behind us. They will probably come back with a vengeance in the fall but I am not taking off my clothes any time soon. All the rain and the hot spring we had mean that the mosquitoes are really bad this year… Sigh. The joys of country living….

Transplanting and Sowing

I know I haven't updated you on the garden since the end of April but the beginning of May brought with it a frenzy of activity from which I am only just catching my breath. With the thermostat registering high 70s it was a race against time to get all the seedlings transplanted and all the seeds sown. It seemed like all our free time was spent in the garden.


We transplanted leeks, kale, chard, broccoli and cabbage and direct sowed some too. After they settled into their permanent home we planted potatoes, onions and garlic.We transplanted the brussel sprouts and planted some peas and sowed carrots and parsnips, spinach and lettuces.




In good old Blighty we tend to talk about the weather a lot. This is mostly because the weather is so changeable. You can leave the house in the morning in a t-shirt with your sunnies on only to return drenched and cold if you forgot your brolly and scarf. You must always be prepared for every eventuality. Well it seemed the Midwest is no different, though people often chide me about the weather in the UK.

After two weeks of the hottest May weather on record, we were all set for a week's break from the garden when the beautiful weather turned sour. And I don't mean the "stay indoors it is going to rain non-stop" kinda weather - (mother nature saved that one for June). I mean the "get your winter coat back out it is going to freeze tonight" kind.

After having gotten all the plants transplanted we had to run out and cover them with whatever we had on hand to save them from the overnight freezing temperatures. Out came the paper cups, plastic sheeting, old blankets and glasses.It was a close call, but thanks to my husband's speed and ingenuity, we didn't lose a single plant.

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The end of May saw us plant popcorn, squash, sunflowers, beans and herbs. The return of the hot weather was good for the plants but also good for the weeds and we spent many a day outside
weeding.




We mulched the tomatoes to help keep the weeds down in the tomato patch. That helped but the grass still crept through a little and needed cutting. Still, by the end of the month, most of the hard work was done with. We popped out every now and again for some maintenance weeding and to stake the peas and tomatoes. Really all that was left now was to sit back, water and watch them grow.

Project Potager

As the winter snow melted and the sunny days became more and more common, our thoughts turned to Project Potager. Not one to do this in half measures, I wanted to plant a large garden that would keep the household supplied with fresh veggies and have plenty to spare for my canning, freezing, salting and dehydrating experiments. Not to mention being able to give some away to friends and family!

A Country Dream

For me one of the biggest attractions of country living was being able to grow my own vegetables. I have to confess to being a bit of a foodie. I have always enjoyed good food and no doubt will continue to enjoy it. But I was also concerned about what was in it, how it was grown or raised and how fresh it was.

Lately I have been nursing the dream of being able to have my own little veggie garden, raising a few animals and being self-sufficient as much as possible. I know it is a romanticized view of country life and I think the River Cottage series must bear some of the responsibility for starting me on this path.

Not everything in the country has lived up to expectation and things always require more work, energy, time and money than you think they would but I still think this is a dream worth pursuing. The satisfaction I get from being able to do something for myself instead of buying it in the store is immeasurable and I am often amazed at the simplicity of it.

I am not yet raising my own animals but I have connected with some wonderful small farmers in my area who are keeping me supplied with eggs and dairy and who are raising the livestock for me. I am looking forward to the duck, turkey and pig harvest but in the meantime I am keeping busy with my very first veggie garden.

And so with the early spring thaw, we set about digging the garden.