Wishing You a Happy New Year!

Can you believe tomorrow is 2012? In a lot of ways, this year has flown by for us. It has been filled with all sorts of twists and turns and new adventures. Thank you following along and continuing to support us.

We hope you welcome the New Year safely, happily, and with heaps of delicious food!

From our little family, to yours, Happy New Year!

The Lawler Family

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Dead Simple Raw Kale Salad

As we were planning our holiday menu, I decided I wanted to round out our heavily roasted menu of beef, root vegetables, and potatoes with something fresh. A few weeks back I had a really wonderful raw kale salad while visiting a friend in New York City.

We had a bunch of kale to harvest, so I put a call out on our Facebook page requesting favorite kale salad recipes. Three lovely recipes were recommended to us: Raw Tuscan Kale Salad; Collard Green Coleslaw (swapping kale for collard greens); and Lemony Kale Salad.

But ultimately, when the day arrived, I decided to go with something super simple. Dead simple. And ya know what? It was delicious and super yummy.

Dead Simple Raw Kale Salad

Dead Simple Raw Kale Salad

2 bunches of kale
1/4 C of olive oil
1/4 C of lemon juice (1-2 lemons)
Zest of 1 lemon
Red pepper flakes (optional)
Salt and Pepper to taste

Strip the kale from the stalk and chop up the leaves. Chop until they are pretty small. Whisk the olive oil, lemon juice, and zest together. Stir in salt, pepper and red pepper flakes (if using). Toss the dressing in the kale. A nice feature of this salad is that you can make it ahead of time and the leaves won't get wilty like other salads. It also holds up well for leftovers.

Kaylee says: eat your greens.

 

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AAR: Small Flock On-Farm Chicken Processing

Task: Process A Small Flock of Laying Hens For Use as Soup Birds

Conditions: Given 14 x 2.5 year old Rhode Island Red laying hens, 1 x non-squeamish human helper, 1 x Improvised 'killing cone' (inverted plastic gallon milk jug with bottom and top cut away enough so that an inverted chicken may be inserted and its head accessed through the 'spout' of the milk jug, makes cutting the chicken's throat and bleeding them out easier),1 x 5-gallon bucket for blood, 1 x precursor to the precursor of the "WhizBang Chicken Plucker" (old timey electric drum feather plucker we bought for $50, DIY whizbangs can be built for ~$100), 1 x portable table, cutting board, fillet knife, boning knife, and 1 x propane fired turkey frier or LARGE stock pot  with the ability to dunk one fully feathered bird in 140 degree water for up to 2 minutes to loosen the feathers to aid in defeathering)

The Drum is spun by a 4HP motor and plucks the bath loosened feathers off easily.

Standards: Process each bird, from killing stroke to fully eviscerated, de-feathered and placed into deep freeze, in no more than 30 minutes per bird and in batches no less than 7 birds per day initially, in any weather conditions above 0 degrees F, while retaining all desirable extras such as feet, hearts, and livers.

Basically, you catch a chicken, hold it upside down by its feet (all the blood rushing to its head 'calms' it making transport easier), place it head first into the inverted gallon milk jug with the bottom and top cut away.  You might have to help guide its head out the bottom of the 'cone'.  Place the still inverted chicken over the 5 gallon bucket, locate its jugular vein and carotid artery on the sides of its neck being sure to move as many feathers out of the way as possible, slice the veins/arteries ensuring not to cut the wind-pipe.  Allow the chicken to bleed out for ~2min.  Once spasms/twitching has ceased, we removed the heads, then dunked them into ~140 degree water fully for ~2min or until feathers along the wing tips pulled out easily.  Transferred them to the plucker, plucked them, pulled any remaining feathers by hand, took the now naked chicken back to the propane burner and singed off any remaining hairs, (this also allegedly kills the naturally occurring low-level strains of salmonella that live on the skin of most ground based poultry) <-- could totally be an old wive's tale, I haven't seen the science, then took to the butchering table, eviscerated them in accordance with the multitude of 'DIY chicken processing videos' available on YouTube, rinsed them off, hydro-chilled them, bagged and placed them into the deep freeze.

We averaged ~20-25 min. per bird which we felt wasn't bad and was a comfortable pace.  It was near freezing and our equipment layout was optimized and we were utter n00bs so I would venture that 15-20 min. per bird is a valid goal for our second attempt.

AAR:
Improves: 
1. proper knife sharpening equipment on site.  No matter how careful you are, your knives will dull fast unless you can somehow totally defeather the areas you are making the killing cuts in (you can't).  I would bring every piece of knife sharpening gear I have as well as honing rods to the next event because trying to put an edge back onto blades with sub-standard stones in freezing weather is not a good time.

2. bring one of those long stick lighters for the propane stove.  We had a normal lighter and a piece of wood that we had to use to try and light the burner every time we needed to heat the water back up or get as flame to singe the birds.  This was not ideal.

Sustain: 
1. I felt we conducted adequate research online via web sites and videos regarding small scale chicken processing so that we had a fairly good idea of what we were trying to do.  Having smart phones on-site capable of pulling up those reference videos also helped if we needed to see a certain step-again.  Googling for video results the phrase "humane chicken processing" will show you most of the videos we watched to get us started. The two below were the most helpful.

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A Light and Late Thanksgiving Side

Thanksgiving seems eons away and Christmas is right around the corner, but I still wanted to share this lovely salad that we made for this year's feast.

We spent holiday in Buffalo this year and co-hosted with my brother and sister-in-law at their house. We were responsible for a turkey and a couple of side dishes (including mashed potatoes made from our own Yukon golds!). I wanted to do something with butternut squash, but was not finding anything too inspiring.

Then, the night before Thanksgiving (of course), I came across this recipe from the local blog Brown Eyed Baker. Check her site out for some wickedly delicious recipes. I liked the idea of a salad to help offset all of the heavy traditional dishes. Plus, it's pretty!

A couple of tips: I doubled the recipe since we had a large group. Next time, I'd leave the dressing on the side so leftovers don't get wilty. I ended up not roasting the cranberries or toasting the walnuts and it still turned out good.

Roasted Butternut Squash Salad with Warm Cider Vinaigrette

Photo by Brown Eyed Baker

1 (1 to 1½-lb) butternut squash, peeled and ¾-inch diced
2 tablespoons + ½ cup olive oil, divided
1 tablespoon maple syrup
2 teaspoons kosher salt, divided
1 teaspoon ground black pepper, divided
3 tablespoons dried cranberries
¾ cup apple cider (can substitute apple juice)
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
2 tablespoons minced shallots
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
4 ounces baby arugula (or mixed greens), washed and dried
½ cup walnuts, toasted
¾ cup grated Parmesan cheese

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

2. Place the butternut squash on a sheet pan. Drizzle with 2 tablespoons olive oil, the maple syrup, 1 teaspoon kosher salt and ½ teaspoon black pepper. Toss to evenly coat the butternut squash. Roast for 20 minutes, turning once, until the squash is tender. Add the cranberries to the pan during the last 5 minutes.

3. While the squash is roasting, combine the apple cider, the vinegar and the shallots in a small saucepan and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Cook for 6 to 8 minutes, until the cider is reduced to about ¼ cup. Off the heat, whisk in the mustard, ½ cup olive oil, 1 teaspoon kosher salt and ½ teaspoon ground black pepper.

4. Place the arugula in a large salad bowl and add the roasted squash mixture, the walnuts and the grated Parmesan. Spoon just enough vinaigrette over the salad to moisten and toss well. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and serve immediately.

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Aaaand...We're Back

It's been a bit quiet around here the past couple of weeks due to our post-season vacation. And by vacation, we mean some good quality video game playing for Brett and book reading for Kristie.

But we're back in the saddle and gearing up for projects both at home and on the farm. The biggest news from the past couple of weeks is that our chickens have decided they are done laying eggs. We're getting about one egg a week these days. We actually had to go buy eggs for the first time in 1.5 years!

No eggs means it's time for them to become chicken soup. Our goal is to process all of our 15 birds this week. And since it's our first time doing this, I'm sure there will be lots of lessons learned so wish us luck! We'll keep everyone posted.

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