Ok, it’s slightly less exciting on both counts, but a flashy headline draws you in, doesn’t it?
First, the news: We’re opening the door on the Cookblog. (http://landm-cookblog.blogspot.com/) There’s around 50 recipes in there now, including some provided by Nat & Shannon and Angel. We’ll be posting some other requested recipes soon, for example, the best quiche recipe in the world, with three variations (one of which was requested by Shannon), and the grilled clams that made a seafood lover out of Elizabeth.
Our focus is on recipes that we’ve prepared for you at meals at our house, visits to Idaho, etc. In fact, the genesis of the idea was from a visit to Idaho a few years back, when I think Lauren and my mom and Shannon were talking about compiling family recipes into a family cookbook. Janette and I have always intended to keep good records of what we make when we prepare special meals for quests (and that never got too far, either).
At any rate, I think the on-line blog format is the perfect way to accomplish both ends. And our goal is for it to be useable and useful. While our library of cookbooks will still be a treasured resource for new ideas and for recipes we’ve never made, it will probably (hopefully) eliminate the disorganized stack of pages torn from magazines or printed from epicurious.com. It might also be easier to click back and forth between recipes in the cookblog (or have them open in different windows simultaneously) than to have a few cookbooks strewn across the counter.
Second, the chicken update: The chickens are officially teenagers. They eat whatever they want (not leaving anything behind for anyone else) and they might run off when you aren’t watching. What do they like to eat? Marigolds. Gazania. Pepper plants (just the leaves, not the peppers). They eat them all. Somehow the pepper plants survived and are growing back their leaves (don’t tell the chickens). The marigolds and gazania are struggling a little more.
Where do they run off to? Well, Saturday morning I got up early (before 7) and went outside to check on the chickens. Eerie quiet. They’re nowhere to be found. I walked down the long, empty path along the side of the house to the gate. We’ve never seen them exploring down there, because there’s absolutely nothing of interest for them, but there are indications (i.e., chicken poop) that they may have gone that way. But there are no chickens out front, no chickens down the street. Heading back inside through the front door, I hear some quiet cheeps in the corner of the courtyard. They were hiding in the corner behind a bush. Recognizing that it’s me, they come out and resume scratching. This first video is them in the courtyard.
Clever chickens. They hopped over the obstacles we’d put at the bottom of the gate to the backyard and escaped. Fortunately, they wandered back into the enclosed courtyard rather than down the street (or hanging out in the front yard). I watched them in the courtyard for awhile, figuring that no matter what route we take herding them back to the backyard was not going to take more than one cowboy, er, chickenboy. Janette got up after not too long, and we decided the shortest route to the backyard was through the house. Halfway through, I figured I should record it for posterity. Of course, it’s hard to be a filmmaker and chicken herder at the same time… The clip is in the Chicken Report at the top left of the page.
At any rate, there’s now “poultry fencing” on the gate between the front yard and back yard, so there shall be no further chicken adventuring.
But, as they get more adventuresome, they’re also getting friendlier. They seem to like Janette better than me, they’ll come running to see her (not so much me). But they’ll eat from any hand that’s got food. And that’s our week six chicken update: eating out of our hands.
One more note: I’m excited about the red-hot poker (Kniphofia uvaria) that’s sent up it’s blooms last week and is at peak right now. Ours are “Lola”, which are supposed to be the biggest variety. We have three plants out back and two in front. The three out back, in the rich soil of one of the planting beds, are doing great. The leaves are almost three feet high. Two of those three plants sent up their blooms (two each). The ones in the front landscape seem healthy enough, but their leaves are only 18 inches high, and no blooms this year. Of course, I was expecting these plants to take a couple years to establish themselves before blooming, so this is a treat. I wish we had more, but I bought these from a greenhouse that’s gone out of business, and I’ve never seen them in any other nurseries…
