Archive for November, 2005

Something new

Saturday, November 19th, 2005

We built a chicken coop this fall for our new hens. Here it is in it’s half completed state.
chickencoop.jpg

We finally finished it 2 weeks ago. Just in time for…Eggs! The one on the right is a store bought egg and it’s quite a bit larger. Hopefully the egg size will increase as the hens mature.

firsteggs.jpg

We have tons and tons of hamburger from raising cows. It only took 5 years, but we finally realized we could make sausage with it. We’re both big fans of all kinds of sausage. Bill made a smoked all beef summer sausage. MMM, it’s delicious.

summersausage.jpg

English Muffins

Saturday, November 12th, 2005

I’ve been working with sourdough for about a month now. I’m still not getting quite the rise I want, but I am producing edible bread. Could be because I’m using not using any white flour or vital wheat gluten. I’m pretty good with making bread with dry yeast, so this whole not producing totally awesome bread in kind of disheartening. Makes me want to add some dry yeast to the dough along with the sourdough starter.

Today I made english muffins. As always, I subbed whole wheat for the white flour. They turned out very tasty, but lacked all the air pockets I was hoping for. I still have about 10 raising, so maybe they’ll turn out better. But for now, we’re heading in to town to investigate wood burning stoves and make a trip to the library.
englishmuffins.jpg