Last Thursday night I had a really good blog post running through my head as I uploaded some photos, and then the power went out. After five extra long days, we are finally back in business. I hope to have time to share some stories as soon as we catch up on rest, laundry, and dishes. And clean the refrigerator. And remember how to cook.

xoxo Krista

We can happily say that winter has arrived in Olympia. The weather people are predicting a ridiculous amount of snow in the next twelve hours, which will get annoying quickly. Snowy weather around here is quite funny. Everyone forgets how to drive. The grocery store shelves are stripped bare. I think our county owns two snow plows? It’s a special time.

We took this opportunity to introduce the chickens to snow.

Chickens are like cats. They don’t really like new things. Most of the time, they hate new things. Lenora had a strong reaction to the snow, while Ramona was just stoically offended. Pepper was too busy hunting worms to be photographed.

Cold weather is a good excuse for some snuggling.

And also snowball fights.

Don’t worry, I have really bad aim so I didn’t hit any chickens. I hope you’re enjoying some winter weather, too. Send hot chocolate.

xoxo,
Jess

Matcha powder is a finely milled, high-quality, powdered green tea from Japan. You can buy cakes, pastries, noodles, ice cream, candy, and smoothies flavored with matcha. It’s purported to have all kinds of health benefits, but I just like the flavor and energizing effect. We sourced this locally from the Tea Lady. You can also find it at high-end grocery stores, food co-ops, and health food stores. You cannot find it at Trader Joe’s. I checked.

I don’t use a lot of matcha in my lattes – about 1/4 tsp. I add the matcha powder to 8oz. of homemade soy milk (measured to fit my favorite cup) in a small sauce pan on the stove. I whirl it with my immersion blender to eliminate clumps. The milk gets very foamy if you use an immersion blender, so I recommend that you blend first, then heat it. The bubbles can mellow out while the milk warms. I greatly prefer the immersion blender, despite the foam. I cannot eradicate the matcha clumps with whisks, forks and sifting. Heat the milk and matcha, but don’t boil it.

Matcha can taste bitter, so I add sweetness to taste. Some coffee shops don’t sweeten them at all, but Starbucks sweetens their GTLs with melon syrup. It’s a little weird. I use plain sugar usually, but sometimes I take advantage of the exciting syrups we keep around. For example, this Ikea elderflower syrup.

That’s my GTL. Pour into your favorite vessel, and enjoy your Kermit-colored beverage.

xoxo,
Jess

I am happy to report that we haven’t had to buy eggs since Lenora first started laying. I keep enough on hand that we have plenty to pull out for an egg heavy recipe when needed. See that brown pointy one in the middle? Pepper finally started laying! Her eggs are a very slightly different shade of brown than Ramona’s. I think the only reason we can tell them apart is she is still new at this and they are on the small side.

It’s about time, Pepper!

It’s cold, grey, and wet out but at least it isn’t freezing. Everything is covered in a layer of wet leaves.

The chickens love the okara we give them sometimes after making soy milk.

I love watching them get messy faces. Usually they wipe their beaks on the ground to clean up. This continues to be funny each and every time.

I tried to get a picture to share, but today they decided to take a different approach – shaking it off.

We are still keeping the ladies locked up when we can’t be outside with them. No luck catching a raccoon at night in the trap we borrowed. At this point I think it is unlikely we will. Our neighbors have had their flock outside free ranging just over the fence and haven’t had any attacks, so perhaps we will get brave and things will go back to normal soon.

I don’t think I’ve had monkey bread since I was a kid. I remember my aunt making a recipe that includes instant butterscotch pudding. This is a little labor intensive, but the beauty is that most of the work happens the night before. In the morning you just take it out of the fridge to rise for an hour and then bake. You can time it perfectly.

As if monkey bread isn’t magical enough, this recipe includes crème anglaise for dipping. Of course we decided to serve it in (what else?): mason jars.

Since bourbon is my favorite, I added a little extra. I also used some of my stash of vanilla bean in place of extract. I’d never made crème anglaise before. It is divine.

I recommend the recipe highly. Monkey bread is sort of like cinnamon rolls and donut holes had a baby. I will probably be making this for many brunches to come.

What are your favorite brunch recipes? I think I need to attempt a souffle next.

Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home by Jeni Britton Bauer

I’ve never had the pleasure of tasting Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams, but I really wanted a new ice cream cookbook. On a whim I added this to my wish list, after hearing a lot of buzz and reading great reviews. I almost always test out cookbooks from the library these days, so I don’t know what I was thinking. Now that I have the book it is blowing my mind, and I’m already trying to figure out how often we can make ice cream without it affecting our health. Once a month? Twice? It is hard to narrow down just a few recipes to mention: Roasted Strawberry & Buttermilk. Baked Rhubarb Frozen Yogurt. Scarlet & Earl Grey. Bangkok Peanut. Ylang-Ylang with Clove & Honeycomb. Berry Crisp Ice Cream! I could keep going and going. This book is a revelation.

India Cookbook by Pushpesh Pant

Last year I started to dabble in cooking Indian at home, mostly from library books. I don’t even know where to begin with this gigantic book, but it is spectacular. The sections are different colors of lightweight newsprint, separated by gorgeous, glossy photo pages. Levi was just telling me how much he is craving Indian food. I do believe 2012 will be the year we eat a ton of it.

mason jar stamp

Can’t you just picture the adorable tags and labels I am going to make with this stamp?

Homemade Soda by Andrew Schloss

Now this book I did test out from the library, and deemed it worthy of taking up valuable shelf space in our little house. I love that recipes include different instructions for just making a syrup to mix with seltzer OR actually brewing. Some recipe highlights: Coffee chocolate stout. Fermented honey soda. Original orange crush. Chamomile lavender kombucha. An entire section on shrubs and switchels! And herbal/healing waters! I’m think we’ll be trying the lavender grape migraine mitigator.

Silhouette Salt Mill from Crate & Barrel

Our pepper mill broke awhile back and we have searched to the ends of the internet for an affordable, aesthetically pleasing replacement. In the very long interim, we have been refilling Trader Joe’s mills (not intended to be re-usable) until they break (which is often). Finally, we found something cheap that will hopefully hold up. The salt and pepper mills look identical, but actually have a tiny “S” & “P” on the metal piece at the very top.

Schmidt Brothers 15-piece Downtown Block

I have hemmed and hawed about getting a couple really fancy knives that individually cost more than this entire set, and finally decided to try out a decent set of knives and a sharpener. These won’t actually be in our kitchen until February, so I’ll have to report back!

OXO Food Mill

I can’t wait to see what Jess makes with a food mill, something we found would come in really handy in 2011.

Did you get any great food-related gifts this year? Do tell!

We accomplished some things this year. It feels good to make a list:

• We finally added that flock of chickens we had been talking about for years.
• With a lot of help from a friend and some good plans, I built the chicken coop of our dreams.
• We ate for $5/person/day for an entire month, and started buying mostly organic food once we realized we can afford it.
• Jess read her goal of 110 books. I know, she is crazy and amazing. Also, she suffers from insomnia.
• I lost and kept off 40 pounds (no, those extra holiday pounds don’t count).
• Slowly but surely we redecorated our bedroom. We might even share it with you soon.
• We both became better gardeners, and expanded our garden into our first community plot.
• I learned to can, and Jess practically became a canning guru.
• We took an epic nine day family road trip and didn’t even come close to getting sick of each other.
• I turned 35, and learned that it isn’t actually the kiss of death. In fact, I kind of think things are just starting to get good.
• Jess got a second hive of bees, lost them twice, and learned a lot in the process.
• I interviewed for and earned a promotion at work.
• I put a lot of energy into cooking and photography, and saw real progress.
• We blogged more, and gained some readers. Hello, and thank you so much!

Things that were popular in our house in 2011: The Hunger Games series, breakfast pizza for dinner, The Killing, paneer, baby chicks, porcini mushrooms, canning parties, quinoa (finally, I learned to love it), gay celebrity memoirs, Hitchcock films, baked oatmeal, and Little House on the Prairie.

Hopes for 2012: I never say this, but I think I’m going to read more in 2012. I know Jess and Levi both will, since they always do AND I gave them both Kindles for Christmas. We will be adding some new critters to the family. You can go ahead and guess what sort of critters, but I won’t confirm or deny anything. Maybe 2012 will be the year we get better at exercising on a regular basis, and better yet if it comes in the form of manual labor in the yard and house. We made a conscious decision to slow down on the house projects in 2011, but now it is time to move forward. Bonus points for all house/yard projects that improve organization. We have a lot on our plates, and decided against a month-long project for January. I have a handful of projects in mind that we hope to get started ASAP, so stay tuned!

Some photo highlights of our year:

January: a blur of cooking, photographing food, and adding up receipts.

February: One of many day trips to Portland.

March: Levi holds up the light fixture I assembled. Also pictured, our “new” bedroom lockers.

April: Alcatraz, one of many highlights of our road trip. Sadly, I lost my photos of about half of our trip when my computer hard drive croaked and they hadn’t been uploaded yet.

May: baby chick invasion!

June: We got a jar of honey from the backyard. We made homemade honey ice cream to celebrate.

July: the chickens moved outside! So many wonderful things happened in July, but this was probably my favorite picture of all year.

I tried to limit it to one photo from each month, but Mount St. Helens was special. Give me a break, July is the summer, two of our three birthdays, and our wedding anniversary. Things happen.

August: the Hoh Rainforest

September: Seattle adventures for my 35th birthday

October: Adventures in Astoria, OR

November: baked oatmeal, still going strong. In this instance, my gingerbread baked oatmeal.

December: a picnic in the park

What a year! Thanks for reading along with our adventures. It is so great to chronicle our journey here. We’re wishing you the happiest new year ever, full of laughter, love, good health, adventures, really excellent gardening weather and plenty of baked oatmeals.

xoxo,
Krista, Jess & our brood

On Christmas Eve, Jess discovered that one of our hives had died. We decided to look for a bright side. There is a ton of honey left to harvest. This will make it easier to move the hive to a different spot as planned. We still have one surviving hive, and we can get more bees in the spring. We’re not sure what happened, although Jess’ theory is that on the day I was stung by several bees she may have somehow killed the queen in her haste to get the thing closed up.

Yesterday, just as our Christmas cheer was winding down, Levi said he heard a chicken noise in the yard and went to investigate. I made him stop and put on his boots because I didn’t want him running outside in his new slippers. The chickens make crazy noises all the time, it wasn’t dusk yet, and a few of the chickens were visible from the door. I will probably always feel guilty for making him change his shoes, even though it is very unlikely he could have saved our precious Hatchet-Face.

Levi returned from the yard a few minutes later, visibly shaken, announcing that Hatchet-Face was dead. I was completely stunned. I ran outside and stood over the huge mess of feathers, just staring at her for several minutes. I couldn’t believe she was gone, even though most of her body was right in front of me. Only the neck was missing and her head was unrecognizable. We’re pretty certain a raccoon was the culprit. What a terrible waste. I am trying to tell myself that it was probably over very quickly.

We were so fond of that goofy bird. We know that keeping chickens means dealing with loss and often short little lives. I just feel so cheated, though. She was our little heroine; the runt who outgrew her flock mates in the end. Despite her rough start in life she was delivering us a beautiful blue egg almost every single day. I have never seen another pure white Easter Egger with dinosaur green legs like her before. It never failed to cheer me up to look outside and see the way Hatchy ran across the yard with such gusto, or the funny exaggerated head-bobbing as she walked. We would be heartbroken to lose any of these ladies, but this just seems so wrong. We were talking about it today, and both realized that in the end it makes sense that she was the one to get picked off because she was a loner (a rebel), often off exploring by herself.

Rest in peace, Mona “Hatchet-Face” Malnorowski. We already miss you.

Time for another baked oatmeal.

This one is a little more decadent and sweet, perfect for a holiday. These small servings work well as one component of a large brunch.

eggnog oatmeal custards
Makes 12 small servings

⅔ cup sugar
half a vanilla bean, split
6 egg yolks
4 cups lowfat eggnog
2 teaspoons freshly grated nutmeg
2 tablespoons bourbon
3 cups oatmeal

Preheat oven to 350° F.

Whisk or beat the scrapings of the vanilla bean and sugar together until the vanilla is no longer in clumps. Add egg yolks and beat lightly. Add eggnog, nutmeg, bourbon, and oatmeal. Stir until combined. The oatmeal will soak and absorb some liquid while you prepare the mason jars.

Bring a kettle of water to boil. Lightly butter 12 wide mouth half-pint mason jars. Place the jars in two large baking dishes. If you don’t have the right jars available, you can use ramekins.

Using a canning funnel, divide the oatmeal mixture evenly between the jars (about 1/2 cup in each). Then pour the boiling water into the baking dish until water comes halfway up the sides of the jars.

Bake for 40-45 minutes, until set. The center should not jiggle.

You can eat them warm after cooling slightly. If you prefer more of a chilled custard dish, cool completely and put the lids on the jars and refrigerate.