Gingerbread House - A Family Tradition

Phew.
Okay, it's 5 PM and we just finished the gingerbread hen house. 4 days after we started. So instead of telling you a bunch of cutely worded details, i'm just going to give the straight facts.
History: my mom and i started making gingerbread houses from scratch sometime when i was in high school. We started with a house, the next year made a horse barn, and another year made a sleigh: that was our real masterpiece. This was the first house my husband and i made and we fittingly chose a hen house to house gingerbread versions of our chickens who are enjoying their second Christmas this year.

Day one made two types of dough. Chilled.
Day two rolled out first dough and baked the house and some cookies. Not stiff enough even when cooled. Hmmm. Austin's humidity is not helping me out.

Day three dough still not stiff enough bake second batch of dough (thanks, Susy!) and completely new walls.

Day four wait for 3-4 hours while husband takes forever wrapping presents and then FINALLY construct the hen house!

 It's all about the creme of tartar to get some really good gluing icing. Fun tip: put icing in a ziplock or plastic bag and cut a tiny bit off the corner to use as a pastry bag. Make sure it's a sturdy bag though: mine busted halfway through and plooped a big blob of icing on my nice roof tiles. Lame.

Merry Christmas everybody! We're off for the holidays but i'll be back for the new year.

Wholesome Wednesdays: Christmas Cookies

Yes. This Wednesday is a joke, but we can pretend that Christmas cookies are good for us, right? Maybe that will make them stick to our bones or rot our teeth and brains a little less.
Probably not, though.

This year i've tried foldover cookies filled with homemade jam. I've baked a few loaves of my favorite nut bread and may just have to bake another as the one i used pumpkin puree and duck eggs in was so good we ate it too fast and i want some more! My husband and i have been rekindling my mother and my tradition of making an annual gingerbread house. We've somehow managed to make this process last 3 days instead of one, but hopefully i'll have some photos of the finished product for you tomorrow. Gingerbread houses rock because the cookies just get yummier as they age and it's fun to pick them apart between christmas and new years. I'm not making my sugar cookies this year, but my favorite (chocolate variety) cookies are on the docket for tonight. Christmas just isn't Christmas without sucking the coldness out of some chocolatey, fudgey variety cookies.

Chocolate variety cookies

Gingerbread cookies for Texas

Sugar cookies with half whole wheat flour

Spiced Pecans

 What are your favorite holiday cookies? Have you succombed to the delights of refined sugar despite normally health eating habits like me? I may have gained 3 pounds, but i'm still enjoying my annual guilty pleasure of holiday cookies and quick breads.    Now, enough typing, and more cookie eating!

Baking with Duck Eggs

Of course i did not take any photos of the loaves i baked, but take my word for it - there was a striking difference between my nut bread baked with duck eggs from the nut bread with chicken eggs. That difference was as much as 3 inches of loft above the bread pan! I had to increase my cooking time by close to 20 minutes... I'm not sure if that was due to the large size of the duck eggs, or some other variation in my recipe. The results were worth the wait though: deliciously moist bread that we snarfed up in about 2 days.

I bought my duck eggs from a fellow vendor at the Austin Urban Farmers Market. I hadn't purchased eggs since we got our chickens last July, so it was an odd sensation, but worth the money. The yolks from his ducks weren't as orange as my chickens, despite the fact that they seemed to be grazing. That may simply be due to our drought and the lack of green forage this time of year.

Duck eggs differ from chicken eggs in a few ways. Duck eggs have a higher fat content and also contain more albumen (the protein in the white). This higher fat and more albumen give duck eggs more structure which creates greater loft when baking. For this reason many bakers choose to use duck eggs for their breads, etc. I really saw the difference in my loaves and plan on using duck eggs whenever possible when i start experimenting with bread again ( I need to take a month or two off, i've gained 3 pounds already and don't want to give up Christmas cookies just yet!). Duck eggshells are a bit more rubbery and harder to crack than chicken eggs as well. I haven't cooked and eaten one, but have read that duck eggs taste similar to chicken eggs, but perhaps more 'ducky' ( duck meat is darker than chicken meat ) with a tendency to cook up a bit rubbery.

For a complete nutritional analysis, check out this great website, duck eggs dot com. I love our chickens and wouldn't live without them, but i'm excited to have a bit more land to add some more poultry to. We had been planning on getting a set of geese to act as sentinels and patrol the front yard for snails. I think we will also or instead have to get some ducks as well. Ducks are great (not as good as guineas) in the garden because they go for the bugs and snails first. You can leave ducks in your garden for about 10 minutes before they start going for your crops. Chickens, on the other hand, will kick up and peck out every bit of green they can get their hands on.


Curious about duck eggs? Visit our farmers market in January and get a dozen from Munkebo Farms or Purple Goose Ranch. Our market will be open again starting January 8th 2011 10 - 3 at 5109 Manchaca Road.

Attention Austinites: New City Rebate for Gardeners!

Every month City of Austin utility customers receive a little insert with our bill. I normally am irritated by this waste of extra paper, but occasionally they have good tid bits of information on them that's worth reading. With this last bill i saw a note of interest to me and my readers. The city is offering rebates on native plantings this Spring. You can apply now for the rebate and get money back for planting water saving plants. Winter is also the time that the city decides how much they'll charge you for wastewater use. In Winter we should be using the least amount of water all year (unless you have a husband like mine who enjoys 2 showers a day, sigh) because in theory it should rain occasionally and be cooler, thus providing your veggies and yards with more hospitable growing conditions. Not so great this year, the dryest months on record. Another sigh.

The city has a nice website with water saving tips and other info, plus the rebate application for several city run programs. I've taken advantage of several: a free toilet and rebates on my rain barrel and my fancy new front loading washer. The toilet rebate is awesome- my old stinky toilet was replaced with the toilet of my choice, a lovely high efficiency model. I also love my front loading washer and i would have gotten my rain barrel anyway, but didn't mind the rebate at all. As far as i can tell this native planting rebate is brand spanking new and very worth looking into. For more information visit this page.
Basically, the city will pay you money per square foot of land that is turf converted to native plants. You get more money if the turf was irrigated than if not and you have to convert at least 500 square feet. Very cool program.

Water Wise Austin . org is the place to go for all kinds of water saving tips and applications for several rebates you may not have known about. Check it out!

Bread Attempt #3: WOO HOO! Total Bread Success!!!

I've finally done it! I've succeeded at baking a loaf of light and fluffy bread. Granted, it's not as salty or flavorful as it could be as i didn't have the sodium packed chicken boullion the recipe called for, but it's pretty darn tasty, just the right texture and is going to make some amazing egg salad sandwiches!

I picked up this book at a local book store about a year ago. I've tabbed a lot of soup and bread recipes i've wanted to try, but my repeated bread failure made me hesitant to try my hand at any of her yummy sounding recipes. These recipes are not fancy. They're not new fangled. They're just good, basic and interesting sounding breads and soups. After my success today, i'm willing to say this was one of the best $1s i've ever spent. Way to go, books from 1974! While working on the bread i thumbed to the beginning of the book where i hoped there would be, and was happy to find, a section on how to knead, what to expect during rising, and other basic tips (like put the rising dough in a WARM greased bowl and where to and where not to put it to be cozy and rising.)

Everything went like clock work, i learned how to knead, and i used up some of the whey from my failed attempt at mozz the other day to make a delightful loaf of bread, plus a bonus loaflet ( i halved her recipe .)

Woah! Totally doubled! Finally!

 I like not failing. I enjoy succeeding. I WILL i WILL i WILL be able to be a proper homemaker and make loaves of bread for pennies a loaf (without any weird preservatives!).

Foldover Cookies

I'm not a total fan of these, simply because i'm not a huge fan of shortbready cookies or cookies i haven't been eating every Christmas for the past 28 years. They're good though, and definitely taste great with my homemade peach/habanero jam! I had to sub 1/4 cup olive oil for part of the butter and they were super hard to roll out of fold without busting and cracking.

Recipe from Good Housekeeping? (emailed from my Mama)

• 2 cups flour
• 3/4 cup butter or margarine
• 2 egg yolks
• 2 tblspns sugar
• preserves
• 1 egg beaten w/tblsp of milk
• finely chopped nuts

1. Put flour in bowl, make a hole
2. thinly slice butter, put with egg yolks and sugar in hole
3. work with fingers until creamy
4. gradually blend in flour
5. sprinkle with 2 tblsp cold water, make a ball and flatten
6. wrap and chill well
7. heat oven to 325
8. cut dough in half, leave half in fridge
9. roll on floured surface to 1/8 inch, cut in 2 1/2 " rounds
10. repeat with other half
11. place rounds on sheet, put 1/2 tsp jelly, fold in half and pinch edges
12. brush tops with egg and sprinkle with nuts
13. bake 18 - 20 minutes till golden brown

makes 5 dozen. No.Way. Mine made about 2 dozen. Clearly i wasn't rolling thinly enough.

Pretty though, ay? My dinner guests were pleased i'd made dessert for once.

And nevermind about these not being tasty enough for me to eat them.... I've been eating at least 3 a night. (Why oh why am i dabbling in baking bread during cookie baking season? My waistline can compete with fresh bread OR cookies, not both in the same day!)

Wholesome Wednesdays: Legumes

If it were a normal December, I'd be saying things like "brrrr, it's soup weather!" But La Nina is messing with my plans. That's not keeping me from making yummy soup though. I had some good friends over for a simple yet delicious meal of bean soup last night and was inspired to write my praises for legumes, those sometimes gassy forms of near complete protein.

Bean soup with tomatoes, peppers, onions and herbs from the garden, homemade chicken stock, free range chicken sausage, adzuki and black beans, smoked paprika, chilly powder, salt and lots of time.

Dried beans are a wonderful source of protein and they store so well. They can be kept in attractive lines of mason jars on your counter, or be stowed in conveniently shaped plastic tubs in the cupboard. They store for years and take very little effort to rehydrate into delicious concoctions of hummus, falafel, chilly, soup, or just about any yummy side or main dish you can think of. When paired with rice the amino acids chains form near complete proteins, making the ole 'bean and rice' simple meal a vegetarian's go-to meal for healthy, vegetarian protein.

Legumes pack in so much punch, in fact they can be hard to digest. This difficulty is also caused by the stachyrose and raffinose present in legumes, which are not ingestible by the small intestine, and pass down to the colon instead. Flatulence is also caused by a sugar –- oligosaccharide which cannot be broken down. Soaking beans overnight and discarding the soaking water can help eliminate the presence of these pesky elements. Combining the nutrient-rich bean with some ruffage (leafy greens), epazote or just a mixture of other cooked/raw foods can also help to make them more digestible. Lentils cause the least amount of flatulence and have some of the best nutrients, so they may be a great option for folks not desiring to scare away their co-workers the next day. Legumes have quite a bit of iron in them, another reason they're a great red meat replacement that's easier on the body and environment. Beans also have a large amount of fiber in them which will help you to feel full if dieting, aid in 'regularity' and help stave off cancer and obesity by boosting overall health.  You can never have too much fiber, in my opinion.

I could go on and on about beans, but i'll leave it at this: it's easy to buy canned beans. They make a very quick meal. But they're also lacking a lot of the nutrition that's essential to good health. It takes a little extra time to soak beans overnight, but really - is that so much effort? The beans are really doing all the work for you and they only take 45 minutes to cook the next day. You can let them simmer all day long as i did for the soup above, but you don't HAVE to. Go out and buy some dried beans today. You'll be thrilled with their price point: cents a pound versus dollars a can, and your overall health will thank you. The fields used to graze inefficient cattle instead of complete human-feeding foods will thank you as well when they eventually get turned back over to more efficient food raising. Or at least i can hope....    Dried beans! The musical fruit! The more you eat! The more resistant to cancer, obesity, irregularity and general malaise you'll be! hahaha.

What's your favorite use for dried beans?

Ciabatta Attempt= Quasi Success

Well, it tasted good, but was NOT the light and fluffy texture ciabatta ought to be. Why? Cuz bread just don't rise in this here house! (said in a hillbilly type moonshiner's accent).
My husband has been clamouring for his 'favorite summer meal' since we've had all these tomatoes draped everywhere in the kitchen: tomato and mozzerella sandwich on ciabatta. We went to the store to buy the mozz and the bread and i thought to myself "9.50$ for a little ball of mozz! I can do that for way less." Normally i'd be right. In this case i was wrong. I got the milk too hot before i added the rennet and the curds just wouldn't congeal. I added more rennet and finally got some curds, but added them to too hot of water for the stretching part and ended up with completely dissolved and disappeared cheese that i salvaged some semblance of curd from that was at least salty and tasted LIKE mozz. Sigh. Plus my bread didn't rise and we ended up with some seriously filling and dense bread that tasted like ciabatta on the outside at least.
I will master this skill if it kills me! Today i'll be utilizing the yummy whey to make some herb bread (i will succeed, i will i will i WILL succeed at baking!), use it in my cranberry nut bread for the holidays, and maybe add it to the chilly i'm making today to tenderize the beans. Not sure if that works or not. Ha. Maybe it's time to make some mayo as well....

Anyway, may not have risen or congealed, but the flavors were still good and these sammies were a filling and great combination with the season finale of Dexter. What an episode!

 

Not light, fluffy, or full of air holes. At least the crust is perfecto.

 

 Is there a technique in the kitchen or any other homesteading skills you just can't get the knack of?

Frustration is Building....

My garden is stagnating. I've heard from gardeners all around town who are having the same problem. No rain plus weird inconsistent temperatures is stalling our veggies' growing patterns. Broccoli and other crops put in around September did their thing and are setting their second batch of crowns, but it seems that everything put in after that is just sitting. Waiting. Germinated then stalled. My garden is plagued with snails, which do their best to eat up all my germinated kale seeds and beet greens.


What is a gardener to do with weather doesn't do its part? Get frustrated, for one. And make due with what you have and what does work. And, add some fertilizer in hopes of making your plants happier. Seaweed is a great tonic to add to plants any time they need a little extra boost. You can buy powdered seaweed that you add to water and feed the soil and foliage for a little boost. If your crops are nice and green but lacking crowns or fruit, add a fertilizer with a large middle number. If your crops are just sitting there doing nothing, add some high nitrogen (first number) fertilizer. Side dressing with compost is always a good idea: make your own or purchase some from an organic nursery. No rain means you'll need to water a little more than you'd like, but cooler temperatures should keep the garden from drying out. Highs in the 70s aren't going to make your broccoli or cabbage any happier, so be sure and water on those mornings.

And at the very least, eat up what is available. This strange 'indian autumn' is at least providing more tomatoes and peppers, so have a nice hot bowl of chilly! Broccoli greens are edible, so even if you aren't getting the prize winning crowns you hoped for you can have a nice saute. And if you just can't stand watching your seedlings sitting there in a coma - head out to your local nursery and buy some lettuce and chard starts. They'll fill up the empty spaces, act as living mulch, and be edible in no time. Hopefully! You can also provide water and seeds for the local birds that will bring some welcomed color back to your desolate landscape.

Here in Austin we're lucky to have mild seasons great for growing veggies all year long. Sometimes the weather doesn't cooperate and things don't go as planned, but that's part of being a gardener: there's always a new challenge and something new to learn. At least the garden isn't covered with 3 feet of snow!

In Austin Tonight? Come to our Market!

Just a quick second post to remind all my Austin readers that my husband and I will be at the Austin Urban Farmers Market from 6-10 tonight for our special holiday event. We'll be joined by about 20 more vendors including artists, farmers and foodies with a raffle drawing at the end of the night. If you can't make it tonight, we'll be there for our regular hours tomorrow too, 10 - 3.

Tonight should be quite fun, though and worth checking out. Live music run on a solar powered stage, samples of delicious snacks, and a craft booth for the kiddos, or anyone so inclined.

I hope to see you there, and if you do come by stop by The Relic Jar booth to say hello and receive a dollar off your purchase for being a loyal An Austin Homestead reader! I've made some fresh herbed pasta, holiday herbal wreaths, neck warming pillows, and so much more (including some super gorgeous gourd ornaments!). Stop by for groceries or holiday gifts, or just to hear some music!

Attempt at Bread #2 = SUCCESS!

Last night i started out this bread, and i did it right! I awoke to this in the fridge, and continued following my friend's recipe, with minimal mistakes. Here's how i did:
I did the sponge correctly this time, and woke up with it looking like this:

It's supposed to look like this! Yay!

OMG, this mixer is so awesome. How did i live without one?

The mixer really made mixing up the dough easy and efficient.

 On second thought, I either need to find a manual for this, or get some instruction....... i don't think the dough is supposed to climb up and clog the beaters....

I had to wash my hands to take this photo: this dough was SUPER sticky and globbed all over myself while kneading, even when i added flour. I finally got it to a decent consistency. Not sure if this is normal or if i had my water to flour ratio a bit off.

 Has it risen? Hard to say.... oh, and i remember my friend said to cover with plastic wrap, i've been using a towel.... am i in for failure once again?

A nearly indecipherable difference, it had in fact risen.

I have hope! It stretches and acts much more 'alive' than my previous attempt, and has definitely risen at least SOME.

On with some saran wrap AND a towel and back into the cozy warm lit oven for another hour.

Woo hoo! Not only did it rise, it actually rose to 'poofing above the pan' as it was supposed to! Maybe not as much as it COULD have risen, but i'm pleased.

And how does it look 45 minutes at 350 degrees later?

Up to temperature! Gorgeous! Delicious!
My first successful loaf of bread! A new world has opened up to me. Now i'll start experimenting with adding things to this loaf ( i added some sunflower seeds this go round ) and then start looking for a new recipe using this same 'starter sponge' technique. I like the technique and the proofing in the fridge, but i'd like a more interesting loaf. Maybe oatmeal? More grains? Veggies added?  Feel free to email me your favorite recipes. But please include 'how to' tips, as i'm by no means a pro!