Category Archives: Healthy Eating

Apr 03 6 comments
Garden, Healthy Eating

Chickens

My wife looks at me sideways every time I mention it, but I would like to start keeping some chickens around. She thinks it may be a lot of work. She may be right. I think it may be worth it, because how can you get any more local than your own back yard?

I have been reading about Ayse’s new chickens over at Casa Decrepit. There are lots of pictures and even a few videos on the blog. They seem to be having fun with it, at least so far. I will have to bookmark their site so I can check back often and see how it is going. I asked Ayse for a few good books or other references and this is what she recommended:

  1. Chickens in Your Backyard for the urban chicken person.
  2. Raising Chickens is probably the better more general book.
  3. My Pet Chicken
  4. Ithaca College Chicken Breed Chart
  5. Back Yard Chickens

The town zoning ordinance restricts the numbers of farm animals that are allowed based on lot size. For example, I could keep one horse, half a cow, three goats or three sheep. There is no restriction on the numbers of chickens, ducks, geese or other fowl. I am not sure how I would keep half a cow, even if that were an option, and which half would I keep? The rear end has the best cuts of meat, but the neighbors might talk…

I like the idea of chickens because I like eggs. Eggs from free range chickens are much healthier than those from farm fed chickens because they have less cholesterol and saturated fat. That is important because I have inherited the high cholesterol/heart disease genes from my Father’s side of the family. The thought of chickens out in the yard cleaning up all the insects has appeal. I also think the kids would get a big kick out of it and it would be a good lesson for them on where our food comes from.

There are, however, some downsides:

First, we have lots of wild life around. I know there are many raccoons, which will kill chickens. I have lay in bed and listened to coyotes howling and yipping at night, and we have seen a large black bear attack our pear tree last fall. I don’t want to lay in bed at night and worry about my flock being ravaged by marauding animals.

It does seem like a lot of work. First, hatching the eggs, raising the birds, building a chicken coop, then cleaning it out, feeding the chickens in the winter, etc, etc. All that for a few eggs?

Still, the idea of walking out in behind my house and collecting up a few nice freshly laid eggs and making breakfast, has a certain appeal…

Popularity: 3% [?]

Feb 13 1 comments
General, Healthy Eating

Home Brewed Beer

I have been reading about Jay’s beer brewing experiment on his blog.  Quite frankly when I was reading his last post, Bottling my Home Brew, I was on the edge of my seat!  Quite the page turner, that is.  I remember my neighbor in Schenectady was an avid home brewer, but his process seemed a lot more involved that what Jay describes.  As I recall, he turned out some pretty dern good beer!

Perhaps it would be fun to try this myself, a nice bitter goes down well after a hard day’s work around the Castle.  Jay is using the Cooper’s micro brewing kit, which gets good reviews.  What is nice about the Cooper’s kits is there are several kits with different flavors available which is great if you are just getting started.  I think, once you get the hang of it, you could customize your recipe and come up with some really unique brews.

The aforementioned neighbor had been micro brewing for several years and he had all sorts of contraptions and gizmos.  If one were to peek into his kitchen window on any given Saturday, you could expect to see a scene somewhat like Frankenstein’s lab with a large pot of boiling wort on the stove and him at the table madly capping bottles of beer from last weekend’s batch.

At the time, to me at least, it seemed to be a lot of trouble to make beer, especially with the great variety of commercially produced micro brews available at the store.  But who knows, if it really is that easy, and the price of beer (as with everything else) keeps going up, it may be fun to try.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Feb 05 0 comments
Healthy Eating

Shrimp and Asparagus

Every once in a while I come upon something good, so good, in fact that I feel it is my duty to share it with the world. Well, at least that part of the world which may have not heard it before, which could be you, if you only knew what I was talking about. Anyway…

A few Christmas’s ago, my lovely and intelligent wife bought for me a cook book called The Silver Spoon. That is not the whole story, The Silver Spoon is to the Italians what Betty Crocker is to us here in the US of A. It was translated and converted into a format the most Americans can understand about three years ago and is quite popular. I heard about it one day as I was driving somewhere and listening to NPR, both of which happen on a daily basis.

On Friday last, my wife came home with a pound of fresh shrimp. I was thinking that I could cook them in some sort of white wine sauce and serve them up like. Instead, I looked into my copy of The Silver Spoon and found a recipe that looked deceptively simple called Shrimp and Asparagus.

mediteranean shrimp ingredents

Ingredients:

  • about a pound of shrimp, peeled and deveined
  • about a pound or so of asparagus, rinsed.
  • 1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
  • 1 tablespoon white vinegar
  • 1-2 carrots
  • 1-2 celery hearts (AKA celery)
  • juice from 1/2 lemon, strained
  • salt/pepper to taste
  • olive oil for drizzling

Cut the bottom inch or two off the asparagus, bundle together and cook standing up in boiling lightly salted water for 16-18 minutes, then drain (I didn’t cook standing up, it seemed to taste just fine).

Bring 2 cups of lightly salted water to boil in a sauce pan, add the vinegar to the boiling water, then add the shrimp. Blanch for 2 minutes then drain.

Carrots And Cellery

Slice the carrot and celery in to thin long strips and place on a serving dish. Place the cooked asparagus on top of the carrot and celery slices, then place the shrimp on top of the asparagus. Add salt/pepper to taste, drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle the lemon juice on top, mix and serve immediately.

mediteranean shrimp and asparagus

Goes well with brown rice or whole wheat pasta, recommend a nice chilled Chardonnay.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Jan 18 3 comments
Healthy Eating

Balsamic Vinegarette Dressing

This time of year, I crave green food.  I don’t know why but a fresh salad really tastes good.  I like to mix the green and red leaf lettuce with some fresh spinach.    Add to the greens some cucumbers, artichoke hearts, throw in a few pitted olives and perhaps some roasted red peppers and some feta cheese.  Mmmmm, my mouth is watering just thinking of it. Of course all of this is trucked in from Florida or California, so it goes against my attempt to buy local grown food.

Keeping with the Mediterranean diet theme of late, I’ll add my favorite salad dressing recipe to the mix.  I like to make my own balsamic vinaigrette dressing because I like to know what I am eating.

Ingredients:

  • 1/3 cup of good balsamic vinegar, doesn’t have to cost a fortune, but something decent
  • 2/3 cups of good extra virgin olive oil, beware of what you are buying, there are lots of fakes out there
  • 1 Tbsp of yellow, deli, or honey mustard
  • 1/2 Tsp of black pepper
  • 1 Tsp of garlic powder or 2-3 garlic cloves minced
  • 1/2 Tbsp of basil leaves, either fresh or dried

Combine all the ingredients in a used glass jar and shake. Serve. If the vinegar taste is too strong, a little more olive oil can be added.  For some reason, the mustard is key, without it, the mixture separates into oil and vinegar before you can pour it on the salad.  Also, store at room temperature, if you put this in the refrigerator, the olive oil will turn into a white lump of goo that is hard to mix back into the other ingredients.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Jul 22 0 comments
Garden, Healthy Eating

Grilled Potatoes

This is one of my summertime favorites, small new potatoes cooked on the grill. We had a bunch of old potatoes in the bottom of the vegetable bin that were showing signs of life last spring. I cut them up, leaving 3 eyes (sprouts) to a chunk and planted them in the garden. They were growing great up to about two weeks ago, that is when Potato Blight struck.

potato blighted plants

Potato blight is a water mold that kills the leaves then the stalks and finally works its way into the soil and turns the tubers (potatoes) into rotten gray mush. It was responsible for the potato crop failures in Ireland during the 1845-46 years causing famine and a mass migration to the United States. By extension, it could be said it is also responsible for several of my ancestors being here among other things.

So, what is one to do? Well, dig up the potatoes and eat them before they go bad, of course. The small new potatoes are delicious in just about any potato dish. Since we are cooking out on the grill again tonight, I thought I would cook them on the grill too.

diced potatoes ready to be cooked on the grill

potatoes-wrapped.jpg

I cut the potatoes into nugget sized chunks. Put about 1/4 chopped onion and a little bit of green pepper from the garden in along with 2 tablespoons of water and 2 table spoons of butter or oil. The oil keeps the potatoes from sticking to the foil while they are cooking. Wrap the whole thing up tight because the steam from the water is what is going to cook everything. Place on the grill for 30-40 minutes.  I usually flip the whole foil wrapped package at about 20 minutes or so.  Cook until the potatoes are tender. Set aside and let cool for about 10-15 minutes. Be careful unwrapping because the escaping steam will be very hot.

grilled potatoes

Everyone agreed, these little potatoes are delicious!

As for prevention of potato blight; once it is established, there is very little that can be done. Using an anti fungal helps if an outbreak is expected. Otherwise, dig up all the effected plants and burn them, bury any effected tubers two feet deep or deeper, kill any voluntary plants that start growing the next season and don’t grow any potatoes for at least three years.

Popularity: 3% [?]