sausage fucking stew

Ok so my father in law ( I literally just accidentally wrote father in love because I adore that man) gave me a recipe for sausage stew, only he calls it Italian soup, he's wrong.

It's not overly italian, and it's not really soupy, it's more like a stew. Regardless it's fucking nom and you should make it for dinner. Even you vegans, you can alter it to have some fucking vegan sausage or fake hotdogs or whatever it is that you eat, and the soup stock, use vegetable. I'm sure it'll taste decent, but I'll be fucked if I'm going to do it, so let me know how it tastes.

This is a quick throw together, likely good on a nice autumn evening or cold spring day, hell it's 30 degrees outside and I'm making it because I know my husband will shit himself with glee knowing that he's not got some crap home made macaroni and cheese concoction to murder his pallet waiting for him when he gets home, ketchup cures all?


Sausage fucking stew

8oz italian sausage
2 cups chicken broth
1 20oz can of tomatoes, (diced)
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp oregano
1/2 cup long grain rice.
1 can 14oz bean medley (drained)
**I threw some frozen vegetables in the mix as there was a minuscule amount left in the freezer.


Anyways, it's a pretty straight forward recipe. For sausage I used Heritage farms double smoked CHEEEESE sausage. I like it because you don't have to pre cook it, and it doesn't get all mushy and tasteless once it's been cooked with the other ingredients. I opted for the cheese ones this time because I totally eat the chunks of sausage when I'm waiting for the pot to heat the oil, and hai, cheese is amazing.

Yeah about that, throw about two tablespoons or splashes or who cares into a big pot. Once it's warming, chop the sausages up into chunks, I like to cube it, you can slice it if you like to choke on enormous sausages  *snicker*, I'm feeding this to kids so bite sized is the way to go.

Huck the sausages into the pan and brown them in the oil...you CAN drain the fat, but I never do, with this sausage I found it didn't really make much oil so cares, I do not.

Once brown, get your chicken broth, diced tomatoes, salt, pepper, and oregano into the pan, bring it up to boil.
I get whatever diced tomatoes and beans are on sale, this time I got the salt free stuff this time because I'm adding salt to the recipe, don't be duped though, it seems a lot of the time, the salt free stuff costs MORE than the fucking regular tomatoes, not much more but you'd think it would cost them less to omit a stupid ingredient so really, buy whatever the fuck you want.

Once that shit is boiling add the beans (drain the crap out of it) and the rice. Reduce it to a simmer, cover it, and let it simmer for like 15-20 minutes, until the rice gets sucked up. If you have kids, note that if you ever make a brothy soup, rice will save your sanity. It sucks up the moisture and makes it a lot easier for the kids to eat, thus saving your time in the laundry room. Even if you don't have kids and you have a husband with the metabolism of a hummingbird, the rice acts as a filler so you may be able to save some money with a little bit of rice usage. I suppose you could use quinoa too but I've never tried. GO CRAZY, I don't care.



That's it, enjoy. Tell people it was a long arduous process that took blood sweat and tears to make such an amazing medley. Celiac friendly as long as the sausages don't contain gluten!

2 ingredient CAKE POPS!

Fast and easy cake pops! Who has time to roll out the cake mix AFTER cooking it, only to have another bunch of steps left?




Ingredients:

•  Tim bits (Donut holes for you yanks!)
•  Popsicle sticks.

Instructions: 

1:After drinking your double double, in a clean and child free zone (cardboard kills people!) CAREFULLY open the box of timbits.

2:Taste one or five to ensure quality and toxicity. We wouldn't want one of our tiny infesters to fall ill due to our negligence.  (Ohh the sacrifices we make...)


3: With CLEAN hands (remember, you just pounded like 8 timbits!) push popsicle sticks into the bottom of timbit. If you cannot locate the bottom, choose appropriate location.

4: Wow and amaze your guests with culinary genius.

yes pinterest, I'm mocking you.

whoa now, It's been a while since my last post. The silkies have all grown and two have gone, science world is the only one remaining, (freaking mink) But we're now at a huge 40+ chickens and counting.

On to new and different things, we're on the verge of being landlords, yep, we have a lovely two story apartment that will house approximately 10,000 tenants, WE'RE GETTING BEES!!

We've been sitting down with the local apiary (literally across the street) and getting all kinds of good mite prevention and treatment info, and we've gone to our first beekeepers meeting to learn all kinds of good mite prevention and treatment info, and we've got books and online resources to learn all kinds of good mite prevention and treatment info, so essentially, beekeeping now a days is a lot of "how to prevent and treat mites"

Either way, we're very excited, even my husband is gung ho for this new venture, pollinate the earth and with any luck, they'll wind up paying rent with luscious honey and a gorgeously pollenated garden!

Here's our first hive, it was plain, and people paint them all sorts of lovely colours, but our bees, they need to know we love them, so I painted a big lovie Bee on the front, and stained the sides with the same stain that I used for my spinning wheel, I'll be sealing the whole thing later today with any luck, and in a month or two we are hopeful to have tenants who call this hive home! (It's merely waiting for it's coat of sealant to protect it for the winter, so there is no top on it. S'cuse the lack of lid.

trouble in the hen house...

ok so they're not yet in the hen house, still the incubator but my house sounds like the inside of a hen house.
Science world is doing awesome, the little diva she is, she really likes to snuggle up in your hand and pinch your finger web to get your attention, if a chicken could snicker, she'd be doing it.

Yesterday we had a pip, and a little bit of progress on egg #2...sadly that egg didn't progress, her little beak hung out the hole and there was plenty of shell broken but the membrane was exposed and started to harden...I let it go all day, then this morning she still hadn't progressed so I preformed an emergency chicken egg cesarian. CAREFULLY with clean hands, paper towel and clean tweezers I picked off pieces of egg and membrane and the chick didn't help me in the least which is worrisome. I could certainly see that she was very much alive, just lazy and weak,

at 8:01 Goldie flopped out of her shell, weak and useless.

So like a true crazy chicken lady I held her in my hand to regulate temperature, monitor her breathing, and give her little squeezes to get her blood pumping, I held her until I could no longer hold her, 

and when I could no longer hold her, I put her in my bra, good thing my boobs shrank.

She was quite happy in there, burrowing and snuggling but it was a pain in the ass to have this invisible force field around the chick with pending toddler snuggles, so after a few hours she started to kick and squirm and peep and open her eyes, so I put her back into the incubator where she immediately stood up and her sister Scienceworld stood on her.

So far so good, she's peeping away in there and driving me mental like her sister (assuming they're ALL FEMALES, *not so subtle hint) 

Looks like things will be good for little Goldie

BEBE CHICKETH!!

We have been pretty quiet, patiently and cautiously incubating these eggs, being absolutely anally retentive about the humidity levels and temperature and coddling these eggs, I have candled a few times, not daily, but enough to be confident of development and movement, yesterday was the due date for the first egg to hatch....and, well, we were in Vancouver visiting friends so we had to get updates from my husband. I face timed him in the morning, about 8:30 to be sure he added water to the incubator reservoir, and he had forgotten, so he did it when we were on the phone with us, then he mentioned something about the chick beeping all night, I'm like "WHAT!?" BEEPING?! (good news) they beep in the shell before they hatch, and right on time she was making noises which was confidence instilling to say the least. When he opened the incubator to add water I asked him to show us the egg and BLAM, a pip. SHE PIPPED THROUGH THE EGG! We were very excited but left her be to bust through that cursed shell, it can take 1-2 days for a chick to fully emerge from a shell, think of it as the birthing process and the first pip being a contraction, they pip, wait a while, gain their strength, then pip again, then so on...

first pip in the morning, RIGHT on target as she hit the date I wrote on the egg shell

So off to Science world we went, we had tons of fun and sadly found this chicken egg information thingy as the car meter was on it's last few minutes, but I managed to snap a photo and talk to Winter (My daughter) quickly about where our chicks were at as far as development...

Totally cool to see them, I'd be tempted to make our own formaldehyde dead baby chick display but I'd have a hard time murdering embryos with intent aside from to eat, so we'll stick to coloring pages for now

So yay, science world, it was Winter's first time and zomg she had fun, so did I. WINTERLOOKATTHISWINTERLOOKATTHAT I felt like I had a sensory overload, I can't imagine how her tiny self felt.

Anyways, we got back to our island at about 7pm or so and I immediately checked for more pipping...

She'd done some damage, but that's a days worth of pipping, still her little beak sticking through there, she was breaking and beeping away, so I let her be and we tucked the kids in. I posted a progress shot on instagram and people expressed interest in the fact that it was taking her so long to crack the rest of the shell , (which is normal) but I guess she has internet access and wanted to show them up, because a few minutes after I posted that, she knocked a sizable chunk off of the shell...

take THAT nay sayers! You can see her little beak still on the left hand side, and the membrane has been nicely sliced through there on the bottom. So After this photo was taken, I went back into the room with the kids, fell asleep on the floor (Seriously, I was wiped) and woke up to a flurry of very loud chick beeps. 'BLEEP BLEEP BLEEEEEEP" I rushed out of the room and sure enough, there she was, all exhausted and spread eagle--err chicken out of her shell..

life, it is the hardest.

She lay like that panting for a bit, then kicked a few more times and managed to get herself onto her feet where she proved she was pure silkie on diva attitude alone. She snuggled the other eggs and eventually fell asleep in her food dish. Some people say you shouldn't touch them until they're dry, and those people will be upset to see this video but my soft mom heart felt like she needed a loving touch to be born into, so I held her for a minute inside my hand so she felt the comfort of something warm and egg shaped and it calmed her down, then I put her back in for the night.

She fell asleep and my heart melted. She's already so fancy with her fluffy feathers all mcdreamy style.

Silkies are cool chickens, these are bantam silkies so that means they're a small chicken, but their skin is black, and they have black bones too I'll have to borrow an image from the internet to demonstrate this, as I'm not willing to skin one of my silkies.

I find their temperament to be a lot milder than other breeds, they're sweet and ours snuggle, I guess they're more delicate and they must realize it, they absolutely need unicorn horns and tiaras.

Also: silkies have an extra toe:

So after her first night, she dried out a bit, fluffed up, and she's getting cuter.

She's a little annoyed that she is alone in all this but will make a good big sister to her hatching siblings (hopeful that she's not a rooster, can you tell?)

Winter was SO EXCITED when she got to meet her this morning, all attention is on the incubator this morning, but we're letting her adjust as much as we can.

The next door neighbors even came to visit the new arrival, they checked in several times, they're good neighbor also are cousins so that's a plus!

7am visit from her new cousins! This is a very excited and tired Makenna

And this is a very excited Saige, you can see how small the chick is in her hand! 

Oh! I almost forgot, Winter named the chick already, so this post is to introduce our new baby chick to the world, her name?

Science world.

Yes, Winter named her Science World, fitting only because her parents are named 'Cedar' (rooster) and "Star with 3 magic wands and 3 moons" (hen)

So welcome to our home Science world!

Here is a video of her beeping up a storm

(Video of Conrad and Winter viewing a video of the video I just posted)

big fat sadface

Both chicks didn't make it, I suspect it was having too much faith in our old humidifier that worked without incident on many a hatch and now may be running a humidity issue, I was worried that development was stunted for the second egg, but the first one looked like it was going strong until day 19 when I noticed the air pocket was big, but there was no movement, no piping no nothing, so a day late I did an autopsy and neither had broken the membrane, so I think that would be humidity. A new humidity monitor will be found and the next hatch is set for halloween! We're not super sad, we're actually ok with it because we still got to see baby chicks that we grew, just didn't get to see them alive and fluffy! Still educational and we can still look forward to buckle up's next clutch, she's STILL broody, poor girl, but she does have a fancy new coop to call her own, complete with doilies and wallpaper. She will move into it once I get the trap door done on the floor and skirt the bottom, but for now, here is a picture of my daughter Winter with the new silkie coop...

The inside is a little ridiculous, I have to do something with the roof as it being exposed wood like that is making me crazy, and well, I may or may not have built them a soon to be solar powered chandelier...I'll update with that once I finish it.

Sorry to disappoint with the eggs, more chicks on the way so I'm sure we will have better luck on the next hatch!

Going to have to replace those photos ASAP! 

Adventures in egg incubating

DAY 18!! 

Scroll down to the bottom for the lastest update!

WHOA it's been a long time since I updated *sorry* but I've been posting daily progression of our incubating silkie eggs and I thought this would be a cool place to share it.

I used to have chickens before we had kids, I guess I was the broody one, we had them again last year but I busted up my back and we wound up re-homing them because Mike *husbandperson* was over stretched in his daily duties with my being a cripple as it was, the chickens just added to it.

ANYWAYS, a few months ago we decided we would get some chickens, we started with day olds, well, I think they were more like five day olds, polish crested, they were ridiculous and lived in a makeshift brooder in my bathroom. Every morning Winter would wake up asking how they were and making sure they had their morning snuggles, we had a hard time leaving the house because she wanted to hang out in the bathroom all day. When the very distinct chicken smell became too much to  bear, they moved into the shed, and Winter would have slept in there too had we let her. Since then we have re-homed the crested rooster, his name was potato.

It got warmer and we moved them into the chicken tractor in the garden...Winter still got up daily to go see them, I managed to get my hands on a pair of Silkies, one rooster one hen, they are the sweetest snuggliest most ridiculous birds ever, we adore them, after the silkies I got 4 guinea fowl, we use them as an alarm system for predators, they make a horrendous noise when threatened, and during the day they groom the chickens, so any threat of mites or ticks is prevented with the guinea fowl, good that they're useful as they are the DUMBEST animal on earth. Seriously, remember that game Lemmings in the 80s? They're THAT stupid.

So now we have 4 araucanas who lay lovely green eggs (well, they did, now they're all hypersensitive about being moved to a new home and I'm waiting for them to get used to it so they can lay again, 12 birds and not a single egg isn't really great numbers, so we're waiting for another enclosure to be built for the silkies, oh wait, on Sunday we picked up another silkie hen, and the enclosure they're currently in is too small for the birds to sleep in, it was meant for 2 and we built an extension, so as far as a run goes, they're golden, but sleeping, some sleep on top of eachother, well, at least it's warm.

We will ultimately have three enclosures, one for the silkies and a guinea fowl, one for the auricanas and two guinea fowl, and one for the polish and likely another hen mate and guinea fowl. The silkies will be separate as to not mix the breeds if I'm incubating eggs.

Let's stop for a second so I can name all the birds, well, I can relay the names Winter has bestowed upon them...
 Polish crested: Annie and Potato
 Silkies: Buckle-up, Cedar (rooster) and, wait for it "Star with three magic wands and three moons"
 Araucanas: known as "the supremes" or Squirts, Bottle, Sock, and Unicorny.
 Guinea fowl: Emilee (incidentally the same name as our pug) , Toenail, Silk and Acorn

Ok, so I pulled a silkie egg to incubate, then another, then another, one turned out infertile so it got turfed. Strangely enough, the day I pulled the first egg, Buckle Up went broody, so she was hoarding the araucana eggs, I have since suckered her into using a golf ball, a golf ball that says "practice" across it so if she could read, she would know she was being duped.

Fluffy butted snuggle face. 

Before the egg is laid:

• The egg is fertilized
• The zygote divides and begins to grow
• the cells segregate into groups of specialized function
• the embryo nearly stops growing between laying and incubation.

Here she is face first so you can see the amount of cute we're bound to see upon witnessing her babies hatching, or "patching" as Winter says

Day one in the incubator, I grabbed the eggs on September 19 and 20 so in 16 days we will see the first chick if all goes accordingly and I don't bust an egg while trying to document it's progress.

this is day 1 of the candling, and day 2

this is day 1 of the candling, and day 2 looks pretty much the same so I'll spare you. In the photos you'll see some writing on the eggs (The date) and an X and an O, marking the top and the bottom of the eggs so I can rotate them daily, this keeps the chick from fusing to the shell

During incubation:

• The area pellucida and area opaca of the bastoderm develop

Day 1 - 2

things start to develop quickly, as chicken egg gestation is 21 days!

• at 18 hours: the alimentary tract appears
• at 19 hours: the brain crease begins to form
• at 20 hours: somites appear
• at 21 hours: the brain and nervous system begin to form
• at 22 hours: the head fold begins to form
• at 23 hours: angiogeneic clusters appear (heart tubes)
• at 24 hours: the eyes begin to form *squee*

day 1-2

Day 3

• The head begins to turn onto it's left side
• The tongue starts to form
• The amnion completely surrounds the embryo
• The tail has appeared
• Wing and leg buds are visible

day 3

Day 4

• The somites extend to the tip of the tail
• the toes begin to form
• the allantois is visible 

day 4

Day 5

• The reproductive organs begin to form *please be girls*
• The bones of the legs begin to form
• The crop begins to form

Day 5

Day 6

• The beak becomes visible
• The wings bend at the elbow
• The allatois begins to fuse to the chorion
• The gizzard begins to form
• The intestines beign to loop *oh great*

Day 6

Day 7

• a row of feather germs appear on the tail
• the sclera of the eye begins to form (sorry about the daily flashlight)
• feather papillae appear on the thigh
• the leg now bends at the knee

day 7

Day 8

• Three rows of feater germs are visible on the tail
• The inner eyelids begin to form
• The egg tooth (small bump on the tip of the beak) begins to form
• The bone marrow cavity of the femur begins to form

The candling is still showing a silhouette of a chick but soon it'll become harder to see as the chick will start to fill the entire egg cavity!

Day 8

Day 9

• The upper eyelids begin to form
• The knee caps begin to form

day 9

Day 10

• Claws begin to form
• The comb is now visible
• Flight feathers appear
• Feather tracts appear over sternum
• Lower Eyelids Develop

The chick is getting a little more difficult to see as she grows, but the pronunciation in veins is amazing, Also, I get the feeling that chicks hate being candled.  11 more days!! SQUEEEEEEE!!

Day 10

Day 11

• The toe claws begin to curve downward
• The bottom of the feet get their pads
• Feather germs on the back and tail look like long tapering cones
• The beak begins to harden
• The comb appears serrated
• The embryo begins to draw calcium from the eggshell to grow her bones and teeth, just kidding, chickens don't have teeth :P

Day 11, good profile there!

Day 12! 

• Scales appear on lower legs
• The embryo grows and moves like crazy
• The ribs begin to ossify (turn into bone)

day 12
  

Day 13

Not much to look at as she's filling the entire cavity, She's getting harder to candle and is a little more lethargic, likely from all that growing, I'll keep taking pics though, times like this makes me wish I still worked in a vet office to use the xray, no wait, I take it back, I don't wish I still worked in a vet office.

• The fingers of the wings are now covered with papillae
• The left and right collarbones now fuse to form the wishbone

Day 13

Day 14

• The Embryo turns its head towards the blunt of the egg, where the air pocket is
• The skull has become to ossify (turn to bone)

Day 14

Day 15

• The scales, claws and beak are becoming firm

Day 15

Day 16

• The embryo turns it's head towards the air pocket at the blunt of the egg
• The chorioallantoic cavity lines most of the inside of the surface of the egg shell (the membrane around the fetus

Day 16

Day 17

ZOMG! How exciting! Whoa! Look how big the air pocket got! So odd how accurate the daily development is! Today is day 17 and the beak is clearly and very turned towards the air cell! Tomorrow the beak will break through the membrane but I think this chick is an over achiever because it looks to me like its already happened!! FRIDAY!! As celebration and a nod to my clear excitement I'm not even going to do any bullets! KA POW! Nice job chicken little!

Day 17

Day 18

• The beak breaks through the inner shell membrane
• The lungs begin to fully function, as I can PROVE as I have video evidence! 

And the video! 

Stay Tuned...