No more weeks of winter for the turkeys

upside down birthday cake

Today my baby is 20 years old! Where oh where did the time go?

She requested a pineapple upside down cake, so that's what she got. It is, after all, her big day.
I got this recipe from Martha Dixon's Copper Kettle Cookbook

In 1954, Martha started hosting a local cooking show "Martha Dixon's Copper Kettle", WJIM Channel 6 (now WLNS), which led to her cookbook in 1963.

Martha Dixon's Pineapple Upside-Down Cake

Topping:

1/4 cup butter

3/4 cup packed brown sugar
9 slices pineapple

9 maraschino cherries

Heat oven to 350°F. In 9-inch square pan, melt butter in oven. Sprinkle brown sugar evenly over melted butter. Arrange pineapple slices over brown sugar. Place cherry in center of each pineapple slice.

Cake:
1/2 cup butter

1 cup sugar

2 eggs, beaten until light

2 cups cake flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

Cream butter and sugar until light & fluffy. Add eggs and beat well. Add sifted dry ingredients alternately with milk and mix well. Add vanilla. Pour cake batter over fruit. Bake in moderate oven (350 F) 30 to 35 minutes. Turn onto large plate and cut cake so there is a whole slice of pineapple for each serving. Garnish with whipped cream and a cherry.

I modified her recipe just a bit. My 9" square pan was full of fudge, so I used a round cake pan. It took a bit longer to bake & only held 7 slices of pineapple. I had no maraschino cherries, so I used frozen Michigan tart cherries. I don't have cake flour, so I used all-purpose flour. Aside from all that, the cake was wonderful. As a bonus, it prevents scurvy.

thrifty chick-n-soup

I usually cook two chickens on the weekend & use the meat to make soup, enchiladas, sanwiches, etc. throughout the week. Same goes for vegetables. Buy what you need for the whole week & chop them up on Sunday. The great thing about cooking the whole bird is, once you get it started, you can pretty much leave it unattended for a couple of hours. This leaves you plenty of time to read a good book, clean the house or watch the Nate Berkus Show.

Todays recipe - boil your whole chicken:

Take the bird out of the bag. Rinse him inside & out under cold water & put him in a huge pot. (A lot of recipes call for vegetables to be cooked with the chicken & discarded when done. I suppose it gives the broth more flavor, but I don't want to throw out my hard-earned veggies. So, for me, it's just a lonely chicken in the pot. He'll get visitors later.) Fill the pot with enough water to cover the bird & bring to a boil. As soon as the water starts to boil, turn down the heat & let him simmer in the hot tub for about 1 1/2 - 2 hours. You will know the meat is done when you pull on a leg bone & the meat falls right off. Turn off the heat & let the pot cool. When it has cooled some, you can ladle the broth into jars for future use. Pick the meat from the bones, pack in a bowl & refrigerate.

Weekday chicken Soup Recipe:

For this recipe, I chopped-up any cooked chicken that wasn't pretty enough for a chicken sandwich. About 2 cups?

plus...

8 oz. dry noodles

3 quarts chicken broth

A couple carrots & stalks of celery, chopped

A handful of chopped onion

salt, pepper, dried dill

In a soup pot, bring the broth to a boil. Add the carrots, celery and onions. Cook until the carrots start to soften up. About 10 minutes. Add noodles. Cook for another 5-6 minutes. Add the chicken and seasonings. Cook until the chicken is warm & noodles are cooked.

Farmhouse Organization

I need to get organized before I get lost in heaps of laundry & papers & the Hoarders tv crew can't even find me for an interview. Ok, I may not be that bad. I just have the spring-cleaning bug. Yes, it's only January. But the weather here has been strange, at best, & it sure feels like spring. With four kids, one job, one farm & a house, I have a lot to organize! I've spent a lot of time on my pinterest page looking for organizing tips I can use. I think I've found a few good ones. My main problem is that I don't have a lot of money to buy the fancy organizers & I don't want a bunch of plastic boxes floating around my house. They're ugly. My first & best idea came from Martha Stewart with her office in a trunk. I already had this box filled with out of season decorations. I put the decorations in the basement (where they should have been all along) & now I have a mini office for all my housewife papers, kid's school papers, receipts, seed catalogs...

On to the kitchen. I hate wasting food. No matter how I try, we still throw a lot of food to the chickens. So I hung this by the refrigerator to remind us all to eat those leftovers! It's just an old picture frame. I painted a piece of plywood with flat-black paint & had my husband attach it to the frame. Then I tacked on a ribbon & hung it on the wall.

On to the laundry room. I found this fruit box in the barn (along with many other boxes & scraps of barn wood). It looks a little rough because it had been out there a long time. But, it was sturdy & serves its purpose.

Tomorrow, I'll start washing all the animal's feed bowls & buckets. Fun, fun.

Michigan Badass Stew

Our go-to winter recipe is "put some veggies & a slab of meat in the crock-pot & cook 'til done." Today's recipe uses all Made in Michigan ingredients. Why? Because they are the best. I'm not making that up. It's a fact. Texas has their beef. Iowa has corn. California has tofu. Michiganders have venison. So, let's start with the venison. My husband butchers all his own deer. He starts with roasts & steaks & all that good stuff. The leftover pieces are labeled "stew meat" or "burger". Don't let the name keep you from thinking outside the box. Stew meat is also great for pot pies & pasties. This badass stew requires 3-4 lbs of stew meat (depending on the size of your pot). Next up, are the veggies. I grew potatoes in the garden this year. What I got was a bowl full of baby potatoes. These are great, because they require no chopping. Just scrub 'em up & drop 'em into the crock-pot. (No need to peel potatoes if you grew your own, thus avoiding pesticides & poisons.) I did peel my tiny onions & cut the ends off. (Apparently, onions do not have enough time to reach their full potential in Michigan.) Carrots & rutabagas grow well here. I peeled & scrubbed a rutabaga & some carrots, cut them into big chunks & threw them in with the other root vegetables. Stir up the meat & veggies. Pour in 2 cups well water & 1 bottle of Badass beer. It tastes amazing & of course, it's made in the Great Lakes state! Plus, you have 5 left to enjoy while supper cooks itself. Cook it low & slow. When hubby gets home from working in the cold, he'll appreciate a warm meal. Serve with salt & pepper. Save the carrot peels for your chickens!

nanny cam

I don't understand why old people are obsessed with the weather. I probably never will. What I do know is, I am officially "old". The first thing I do in the morning is check the weather channel. I have eyes, I can see if it's raining. I have skin, I can tell when I need a coat. For whatever reason, the exact number is now important to me. With that, I can tell you it is 50 degrees & sunny today. A perfect day for the broilers to head outside to "chickie daycare". All of our chicken pens are full. So we rounded up a scrap of fencing & a tarp, patched it together & put the chicks out to pasture. This is the last batch of broilers I am raising until spring. With any luck, the broilers, turkeys & old hens (plus any venison we bring home) will last us through winter. Eat up little chickies!

Chickie, it's hot out there!

90 degrees in September? In Michigan? If your chicken walks around like this, she's probably not hurt (like I first thought). She's just coolin' her pits. On hot days like these, make sure all your animals have plenty of fresh water! We (by that, I mean my kids) check on them about 3 times per day. Our free-range chickens have shade whenever they need it. They like to dig holes under the trees & hide in them. For the rabbits, we freeze water bottles & they lay down next to the bottle to keep cool. And yes, sometimes I steal an ice bottle for myself.