Blueberry Muffins

I've been experimenting with using my stash of frozen berries lately. My great aunt has several blueberry bushes that my mom and I pick from every year. So I decided to test out this blueberry muffin mix from the Back in the Day Bakery Cookbook that I was gifted a couple of years ago. 

 Ingredients:

2 cups flour
1 cup granualte sugar
1 tbsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. fine sea salt
1/4 tsp. ground cardamom
1/4 cup canola oil
4 tbsp. butter (melted)
1/2 tsp. vanilla
2 large eggs
3/4 cup whole milk
1 cup frozen blueberries

Preheat oven to 350〫and grease or line 12 muffin cups. Whisk flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and cardamom in large bowl. In another bowl, whisk the oil, butter, vanilla, eggs, milk together. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour in the liquid ingredients. Stir until combined. Fold in berries gently. Fill cups 2/3 full and sprinkle with sugar if desired. Bake in lower third of oven 20-25 minutes.

Blueberries are one of my favorite foods and last year Adrienne of Mince & Type (formerly of Adrienneats) featured me in a series on her blog about favorite foods where I shared a blueberry and yogurt snack.

Chicken For a Year

So we have come to the end of our chicken journey -- yes, it has been 11.5 weeks from peeps to freezer. My hub did an incredible job raising the 26 chickens and in the last week we lost 2 (which is not uncommon).

The first one to croak was one of our largest roosters -- we had heard that the biggest can unfortunately die from heartattacks and that was apparently what happened. As for the other, we woke up the other morning to find our hoop house destroyed by the cows in the pasture. We watched the cows for weeks scratch up against it and sniff around for the chicken feed and they finally decided to destroy it in our last week. Unfortunately one of the chickens apparently got trampled on in the process. We only had a few days left of raising the chickens so we set up a temporary spot for them in our yard.

Then last Friday, Dustin loaded up the 24 birds and transported them to a processing facility in Marion, NC. It's a small operation that works with independent farmers and is USDA inspected and Animal Welfare Institute Approved. He had the opportunity to watch the process, which he did, and at the end of a long day brought home a cooler full of chicken for our family.

I'm so proud of my hub for committing himself to raising food for our family. We learned a lot in the process and feel so rewarded. Learning more about the food we eat and appreciating the sacrifice we ask of the animals we consume makes our meals so much more purposeful.

You can see more of this story from my previous posts..
Peeps  /  Teenage Chickens  /  Chicken News! 

Teenage Chickens

We've had our flock of 26 chicks for 2.5 weeks -- and yes, these photos are of our chickens that are 18 days old!! These guys/girls are eating machines and it seems like everyday they double in size. It appears they've hit that akward puberty phase between baby and adult, because they are not very pretty to look at...as you can see. 

We are eager to get them outside, and as soon as all of their feathers come in, it will be on to greener pastures for the flock. They will soon outgrow their current brooder box and my hub is finishing up their outdoor hoop house as I type! They're pretty adorable right now to see all huddle together snoozing. But we're not fooled, chickens are fairly barbaric and will quickly fight one another out of stress or boredom. I would say if we do this again, we'll figure out a way to keep them in a shed or something, that much waste in our basement is a bit much. I'm pretty certain, that a chicken is one step away from a dinousaur.

I really enjoyed your comments on my original post about our peeps! It's great to have conversations about the importance of knowing where your food comes from, even if you don't eat meat! Thank you for your thoughts and opinions!

Peeps

Last week we received 26 baby chicks in the mail. Yes, you heard me right.

Rewind... I mentioned our egg laying hens and while they have been wonderful producers, my hub has had an itch for raising something else with a purpose. After tossing around a few ideas, we landed back on chickens. So we have these 26 baby chicks in our basement that we are raising to eventually eat. 

Yes, you can send live baby chicks in the mail. It's pretty routine and the post office calls you when they arrive and you go and pick them up. Kind of crazy, right? The little birds were shipped out the day after they hatched in Pennsylvania and ended up in North Carolina the next day. Huddled all together in this tiny box, I felt like we had just recieved a bundle from the stork. 

Since it's cold out, we'll be keeping them inside for about a month in a brooder box. We have a heat source for them to cuddle under that mimics the warmth of a momma hen, insert (aww). Even though it hasn't even been a week, these little peeps have nearly doubled in size. Their wings are growing in and they have little hints of tail feathers! But here they are in all their baby chick glory..

In our small town, it's quite difficult to find much in the way of local, organic veg or pastured/free-range meat. Well, from late fall to spring anyway. That's the main motivation behind this little endeavor. Have no fear, we're not processing them ourselves (I'm not quite ready for that) but we're pretty excited about having a freezer stash of chicken that we raised and grew all by ourselves on fresh pasture around our home. I'll definitely keep you upated on their growth.

Anyone out there have experience in raising your own animal for meat? Or do you just think we're crazy :)

Cabin Cove Oysters

My friend Juliet (of poppies and posies) recently started a side project, an oyster shuck truck called Cabin Cove Oysters! Awesome, right? I experienced it first hand at a wedding in New Hampshire at the end of summer, and it was delicious. Isn't the converted airstream just darling? 

photos by oh darling