I had great plans for today, really I did. The problem was that I hadn't completely formulated them when I went to bed last night, so I woke up a tad bit aimless. Days off do that to me. Not that it was a real day off, I had LOTS to do, I just didn't have to work away from home and sometimes that spells trouble. I can waste so much time under the pretense of "research". I began the day by throwing a batch of bread ingredients into the mixer. It was a batch of my very favorite bread...I call it Kitchen Sink because it has just about everything in it. Six grains, six seeds, nuts, two kinds of dried fruit...it is the VERY BEST loaf toasted and makes killer sandwiches. After that dough was kneaded and put aside to rise, I started on a batch of rye. I noticed towards the end of the kneading, the mixer skipped a beat and then when the dough hook came around to the same spot it had skipped, it made a slight grinding sound. It made me raise my eyebrows and purse my lips and I have to admit my stomach did a bit of a clench. That dough got put in a greased bowl to rise and about 30 minutes later, I started another batch of Kitchen Sink. The mixer continued to grind at that same spot, a bit louder and a bit more frequent until it would actually get stuck in that spot and I would have to manually move it so it would continue on its rotation. After doing this for a minute or two, I gave up and moved the dough to my board and hand kneaded a few minutes more, then put it in a greased bowl to rise. Although I have felt guilty before that I don't do my initial kneading by hand, this unintended experiment has convinced me I was doing right all along. These heavy, whole grain doughs really need the muscle that my heavy duty mixer can give it.
Look at the difference between the two loaves!
The one on the left is hand kneaded (albeit not for very long), the one on the right was kneaded by my mixer. I love my mixer! It is a KitchenAid ProLine 600 and it is big and tough and oh so beautiful. I put these mixers through their paces, sometimes making 6-7 batches of bread dough in a day...that's over 45 cups of flour! This is the second KitchenAid Pro 600 I've had. So when it seemed to be mortally wounded, I called Kitchen Aid and explained the situation. They put me on hold for a few minutes and when they came back on the line the sweet woman said they would be sending me out a new one. Save the box, she said, and pack the old one up in the new box and send it back with the UPS tag that will come with the new mixer. Whoa!!! Amazing! I got off the phone and wandered around with my mouth open for a few minutes. Little did I know that at the very moment I was sobbing to the customer service representative (well, I wasn't really SOBBING...), Scott was out in the shop putting together my old Hobart A200, an ancient 20 quart commercial mixer that is a St. Bernard compared to the beagle Pro 600 that stands on my kitchen counter. He took it apart months ago, had it powder coated and has been working on it in fits and starts ever since. Now THAT machine can knead some bread!! So when I return from a week in Virginia with my impossibly happy grandson (who will turn 2 on May 1st), I will have a new KitchenAid on the counter and hopefully, it will be dwarfed by the A200 beside it, all back together and anxious to start growling. Seriously, which loaf of bread would YOU rather have?
So, I was flush from my luck with KitchenAid and decided to call Black and Decker. I have a food processor of theirs (It's mine really, but they manufactured it) and the plastic lid and bowl have chipped in a few different places. I don't work this machine hard, really I don't, certainly not like my mixer, and I have to admit I was a bit disappointed that it hadn't held up better. I thought I would see if a replacement bowl was available and how much it would set me back.
I waited on hold with the same advertisements playing over and over and a robotic voice breaking in every 2 or 3 minutes telling me where I was in the queue. It was only a wait of 15 minutes or so until a real person came on the phone and I told my story (no sobbing this time) and then asked how much a replacement would be. She gave me a price and I asked if there was a discount because the food processor was practically new. She said in that case, give me your address and I'll ship out a new one free. WOW! After giving her my information, I hung up the phone and wondered if I should go buy a lottery ticket. Too far to drive...Instead, I decided to buy some new loaf pans. I have four now and bake in batches and thought four more would be a good purchase. I went on Amazon and found the pans I like-Kaiser Tinplate 10" and ordered four. I added onto the order a book I've wanted, "The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms" by Charles Darwin. The definitive work on worms and mine are doing splendidly, thank you for asking. They especially like strawberry tops, eggshells and espresso grounds, the latter making them rip through those eggshells like greased lightning! When I totalled my order on Amazon and clicked free shipping (the order was over $25), up comes my final invoice and the bread pans were...are you ready for this?...4 for the price of 3!!! I have decided that today the stars are in my favor.
A GRASS FED CALF
This is a photo of a grass fed calf. Handsome guy, huh?
John Karger of Comfort, Texas raised this calf on his family land. He fed it very well and took good care of it and he sold it to me last week. I never really had it in my possession. I just met John at the butcher shop, took some pictures and told the calf thanks for becoming our food. Then I went inside the butcher shop and told them how many chops, steaks and pounds of stew meat I wanted and how to package it all. There are a number of families splitting the meat from this cow. It is all part of a grand experiment to try to eat more consciously. Along with the dozen Cornish Rock chickens I am raising for butchering. This calf is so lovely, look at those eyes. The chickens, on the other hand, are just this side of ghastly. I won't even post a picture of them here, at least not yet. They are UGLY! When they get more feathers they might look better, but for now I won't think twice about making them our dinner.
My last morning in Germany I received this good-bye from a goat I passed every morning on my walks. He and his companion would come out of their tiny hut to say Guten Morgan in goat talk. Come to think of it, it sounded much like goat talk in the states...
Our friend Voelker who was kind enough to let me tag along on his way into Italy. At first I was a bit disappointed that I wasn't going to take the train and was still unsure I'd made the right decision as we pulled out of Tom & Cynthia's driveway. But just a few miles into the drive of 8 hours I knew this would be a wonderful trip. Voelker is a sweet, smart man and we talked of many things on our day together. He was a careful driver and made the trip over the Alps incredibly pleasant and informative. We spent the better part of our first 4 days in Italy in Voelker's company and it was good company indeed.
The Alps. There were times during our drive where I was brought to tears by the scenery. Alpine meadows full of color, mountain streams with 200 foot waterfalls, snow capped mountains, tiny villages with churches and tiled roofed houses. The air was cool and so very clean, maybe the best air I have ever inhaled.
This is the top of a submerged church steeple in a town in the southern Alps/northern Dolomites where the Italian government decided they wanted to build a power plant. They relocated the inhabitants of the village and then built a dam and flooded the town. It is a huge lake and Voelker said the entire town lies submerged in the bottom of it. Kinda' eerie in a way.
A mountain pass where we were held up. We went through so many of these tunnels, some of them a mile or so long directly through the mountains of the Alps.
A castle in the Southern Alps. There were many of these and they all seemed to be perched up the side of the mountain. How did they get the materials up these steep mountain sides?
Ahhhh, the town of Marostica. We ate gelato and drank espresso here quite a few times. A walled city with 2 castles-one up the mountain (which you can see in this pic) and one down. In the town square, where I was standing when I took this picture, there is a giant chess board painted. Every other year in the Autumn, they stage a chess game with people dressed in period costume and horses (also decked out) as the chess pieces. It is incredible to see-of course I have only seen pictures.
This picture is a bit out of sequence. This is a tree we saw in Germany. Scott and I were taking pictures of the lake below and I spied this tree with our initials carved into it. How sweet!
Scott and Tom in the square of Marostica on one of our gelato/espresso stops. Marostica was on the way from the town where the Laverda rally was held and Bassano del Grappa, where Tom was staying and where we rode the motorcycle quite a bit up in the hills.
Once again, a pic way out of sequence...our last night in Germany, Cynthia and Tom had a great bar-b-q. Cynthia manned the grill. It was so much fun as all the folks that were traveling to the rally with us met at Tom's and we all got to eat dinner and visit until the wee hours.
Believe it or not, this is Napoleon's cannonball embedded in the side of a building in Vicenza. I mean it is not his PERSONAL cannonball, but it was from a battle fought in Vicenza by his invading armies. Last year while in Vicenza, we were shown this by Piero Laverda and I was impressed (I am a cheap date). So today we walked there again and took pictures (ahh, American tourists). So, I guess that is it for now. We are at an internet cafe called GameOver. Quite a young crowd in here-most of them gaming. Scott and I are trying to catch up on our mail and such. The computer at our temporary place of residence is not working correctly, so we had to find an alternative. Cheap enough really and it is air conditioned!
Our last day in France we took a train to Annecy, a town on a lake about an hour south of Annemasse. It was definitely a tourist town, but kept up so stunningly with flowers everywhere. Town was packed, but we didn't care. We had a lovely lunch at a Creperia, the best crepes I'd ever eaten. And then the rains came! We walked around getting soaked to the skin so happy to be in France, together, in the rain. We finally did buy umbrellas. This was a stream going through town.
We stopped in a bakery, so we could ohh and ahh. Scott bought a small myrtille tart (kinda' like blueberries) and I took a picture.
This was late afternoon and the shelves were almost empty. The Europeans love their bakeries and rightly so. The superiority of their goods are legendary. 
One of my very favorite things about traveling over here are the trains. I loved trains as a kid and I have never outgrown them. The longer the trip the better as far as I'm concerned. We sit back and read or I write in my journal or we take pictures out the windows or we sleep. Sometimes we just sit and whisper sweet nothings into each others' ears and giggle. Trains inspire romance in that way...no kidding! I know-it makes me sick, too...sometimes. This was our lunch on the train from Geneva to Zurich.
Some really good dry sausage, a loaf of crusty whole grain bread (the kind that leaves crumbs all over your lap) and a hunk of cheese, in this case-gruyere. We ate every last bit and washed it down with a bottle of Pelligrino bubbly water. Now, in Germany, I have the best of all tour guides in Cynthia (some pics of Cynthia and Tom in the coming days). She could have been a history teacher. I have learned so much and things I've heard for years now make sense thanks to her. Yesterday, we all went to the towns of Bregenz and Lindau. At one point on the way there, Tom pulled the truck over to the side of the road at an overlook. We all got out and gazed down at a quaint town below us at the edge of a huge lake (the largest in Europe!!!). This was the town of Bregenz, Austria. On the other side of the lake connected by a small bridge was an island-Lindau, Germany (where we spent a good part of the day-pics of Lindau later) and at the far side were some spectacular mountains-The Alps of Switzerland. It was a breathtaking moment. We first visited Bregenz and walked the promenade that hugs the lakes' edge. The weather was sunny but not hot and the breeze felt so good. There were vendors selling jewelry and other goods, musicians ( a phenomenal guy on a harp!) and even a guy painting pictures with spray paint! Sounds crazy, but what this guy could do with a spray can was amazing. At one point we came upon a giant chess set with two games in progress.
Today, being Monday, Cynthia had to get up and go to work. She took half a day off so, while the guys took the bikes out for test runs, we could go to a neighboring village to play tourist. She showed up from work with lunch for us before we all went our separate ways. This is my kind of lunch! Oh...but I do love Germany!
The bread, loosely translated is pretzel bread and was it ever good. The sausages were very much like pepperoni, but a bit softer. Cynthia told us that they can just hang in the cellar for quite a while and they get drier and drier. We had gouda cheese or cream cheese or butter with the bread and plum crumb cake for dessert. Yum! 
Look at that lawn!!! Behind this house and up the hill is where my dad had his worm box...one of the 7 Wonders of my Childhood. My first memories of life are in this house, like when I played with a razor blade I found beside the kitchen sink...the sink was full of water and as I played with the razor blade under the water beautiful ribbons of blood swirled through the water. Unbelievably, it didn't hurt at all and I was enthralled with the colored trails I could weave under the water. And then my mother walked in the kitchen and saw me perched on a chair by the sink. I think she screamed when she saw the water, but what I remember most was that the cuts on my hands REALLY hurt when she pulled them out of the water! It wasn't bad really, nothing that a few band-aids couldn't fix. Weird, huh? Then we moved to this house when I was about 3:
I loved this house! My grandparents lived in a house directly behind us on the same lot and behind them was our orchard. Rich with apple, pear and crabapple trees. My great Aunt Lucy lived across the street and I spent lots of time with her in the old apartment house she ran. She seldom had boarders, so we roamed the big old house constantly. We then moved to West Suffield on the Massachusettes border, but I don't have the pic of that house. But quite a few years later (after a move to Florida and back) we moved to Old Saybrook, a beautiful village on the Long Island Sound. We had a great house there. This is the pic I showed Scott:
He stood there with his mouth open. I let him drink it in before I told him..."Nah, we didn't live here, this was the Inn at Cornfield Point. But we did love to sneak in and wander the halls!" This was actually our home for our first 2 months in Old Saybrook:
And then misfortune befell our lives and our circumstances changed drastically. I didn't get a pic of the house we moved into after this house because it had been bulldozed!!! And believe me, it deserved to be! It was just a few blocks from the Inn at Cornfield Point and a block and a half from the beach which was nice, but it was a tiny summer cabin and we lived there in the winter. Very close quarters for mom and 4 kids! You know they say, "You can never go home again" and I do believe that's true. I like having these photos of the places that formed me, but I am not so crazy about the memories that come with them. My other sisters felt the same way. There were some incredibly difficult situations that we, as a family, found ourselves in. Much of it was unpleasant, rough and sometimes downright scary, but we made it through. We all turned out reasonably sane (I know this is debatable, but really, I don't want to hear it!) and are stronger for it.
It was one of the smallest, so about 4 1/2 lbs. To be honest, it looked pretty scrawny. I didn't brine it as I always do with poultry for two reasons: 1) I didn't have time and 2) I wanted to see if I could tell any difference in the meat. Here it is after roasting:
Lotsa' garlic in the pan, huh? It's great on EVERYTHING! So here's the verdict on the home raised, home butchered chicken: No Difference. Well, really there were differences, but as far as taste went, it was the same as always. Scott said it wasn't a fair comparison because I always brine and this one wasn't, so next time I will brine and compare again. I did notice much less fat in the pan after cooking. And, because I KNEW where the meat was raised and HOW it was raised, I felt better about eating it. And it was really good, but I enjoy chicken, so it most always tastes good. I really expected a phenomenal difference like with the grass fed beef, but really it wasn't that dramatic. 
Boy, did they get the right cake! Tie dye and a peace sign! She was thrilled and thought it was the coolest cake ever!
Now this picture was taken while the chicken in Bernadette's right hand was beating the hell out of her with its wing. She was saying, "Ow!" and laughing at the same time. She kept commenting that my chickens were huge, "You could've butchered these weeks ago..." This afternoon, when I packaged them up for the freezer (they have to chill for a few hours first) I had the opportunity to weigh each of them and WHOA! four of them were almost 7 lbs. each! The smallest was 4 1/2 lbs, and the remainder were between 5 and 6 lbs. Them's some BIG chickens! That's about 65 lbs. of chicken in the freezer, not counting the livers (which were stunningly beautiful...can I describe chicken livers that way? Uhhh, just did...), the hearts, the necks and the feet. Yes, the feet. Now the feet are a story in themselves. This was probably my favorite part of the butchering process. Look at this photo:
The foot on the left is horror movie material. Creeepy! But dip it in gently simmering water for 30 seconds, clip off the toenails (well, obviously it is more like clip off the first joint INCLUDING the toenail) and then PEEL off the outer yellowish covering and you get the pristine foot on the right. And the peeling process is like peeling out of a skin tight spandex shirt. No kidding! It is so cool and if I had been delegated to simply processing the 22 feet, I would've been a happy girl, but noooooo, I had to take part in the whole grisly ordeal. The June 1st massacre is how it will be remembered around here, let me tell you. And to think Scott didn't want chicken for dinner tonight! Why, you may ask, do I want 22 chicken feet in my freezer? Didn't you ever have a grandma make you real chicken soup? When I was a kid you could buy chicken feet at the market (and they looked like the foot on the right). It's what makes chicken soup a delectable deep yellow color and gives it the perfect flavor. I feel rich having all those chicken feet in the freezer! But in the name of full disclosure I have to admit that there are only 21 chicken feet in the freezer as the one on the left showed up after the fact. Like it got OVERLOOKED. How you overlook something like that, I can't imagine, but in the giddyness of the morning, it never got processed and then it was too late. We have other plans for it, but I can't say here what those plans are. So one more picture for you. If you have a weak stomach, you might want to end here and go back to Facebook or the weather.com page or something. This is a picture of Bernadette (the Saint) and I plucking the chickens. See those feet? Whew! Ug-u-ly (as my grand daughter Natalie says)!
I have 2 pictures of us plucking, this is the close up (I know you are thanking me for that). In this other picture we don't look too happy, but believe me we are ecstatic, just concentrating REAL HARD!
Plucking was my second favorite job. Chopping the heads off and digging out the insides were my least favorite. I had to turn my head when the axe hit the chicken. And I was HOLDING the chicken. Could've been a disaster there, huh? But Scott (the Great Axe Wielder) was paying close attention as he swung that axe, although I could tell he wasn't crazy about that being his job either. Initially, we were going to put the chickens in a cooler, close the lid and pump the cooler full of CO2 through the drain hole, which would have made them pass out before suffocating them (just for the record, this is not the way I want to go). Seemed more humane, but the cooler we had was too big and the smaller coolers didn't have drain holes and the only cooler that MIGHT have worked was in Lily's car at the Kerrville Folk Festival. Plan B was The Axe. After they got the axe, we had to dip them for about 30 seconds in simmering water. This allows one to pluck all the feathers out fairly easily. I mean they just pull off. Easy, yes. Fast, no. Chickens have LOTS of feathers and when they are wet they stick to everything! Dipping a chicken:
Scott wanted nothing to do with the plucking. He was all for the gutting, but no plucking for him. Can't account for taste, I guess. I learned so much today and after it was over and the mess was all cleaned up and the birds were "chillin" in the fridge (I guess there's not much else to do but "chill" when you have no head and no feet and your insides are gone!) and I was lying on the bed after a shower feeling like I had just come back from war, I couldn't believe it was all done. It seemed pretty easy overall. That, of course, is after the fact. It reminds me so much of having a baby. While in the throes of labor, it is easy to think, "I will never do this again...in fact I will never have sex again in case this happens by mistake...", but then an hour after the birth you cannot remember the pain or the freak out you had earlier. It's just a feeling of, "Wow! That was wild! And look what I have for all that pain and stress! A freezer full of free range chickens!" And that, my friend, is that.
It was a fun dinner and a chance to be really creative. You know it's funny that when the parameters narrow, it seems like it creates an opportunity to push the envelope in a different way. The "rules" for this dinner were as follows: Vegetarian and Seasonal with Locally Sourced Ingredients. So the list of available ingredients came first and the menu evolved from there. Really if you think about it, that's the way we SHOULD eat. Here is a pic of one of the hors'd'oeuvres, Herbed Roasted Baby Potato Halves made with new potatoes fresh out of Boggy's fields! They were served on a bed of amazingly beautiful, crimson amaranth leaves.
Design~Build~Live provided us with the best group of volunteers ever. Young, capable and efficient, they knocked me out with their willingness to tackle any job from grilling pounds of beautiful yellow squash (the hottest job of the evening which earned Lisa a 2 minute vacation to the walk-in cooler...ahhh..heaven!) to washing piles of dishes and smiling angelic smiles throughout! They helped the repast proceed smoothly and with lots of laughter and joy. Here are Effie & Lana cleaning up.
And a photo of Mary Ann at the end of the evening finally getting a chance to relax a bit with a glass of hibiscus mint tea before the packing up and loading begins.
Thanks to all the volunteers and all the generous growers who, along with Boggy Creek Farms, provided all the ingredients for this wonderful feast. And if you are ever in the Austin area on a Wednesday or Saturday morning, drop by Boggy Creek Farms at 3414 Lyons Road. They are open from 9-1 and have lots more than the best produce around! Go and be inspired!
A week later, I opened a package of hamburger and had the opposite reaction. The meat seemed so fatty! But I patted out the burgers and cooked them up and there was NO fat in the pan! They were quite lean and incredibly delicious...the best beef I have ever consumed. And we have a freezer full! Next week, short ribs!
