Beet and Orange Salad with Goat Cheese

Yummy!

         




              This salad I made from the beets and lettuce in our garden.  It is absolutely delicious and easy to make. The candied walnuts gave it a nice sweet crunch.


Ingredients:                                         
4 medium beets - scrubbed             1/4 cup of orange juice      
and trimmed                                       1 tbs of balsamic vinegar
1 navel orange - sectioned              1tbs of chopped shallots 
1/3 cup of chopped walnuts             1tsp of sugar
3 tbs of maple syrup                          1/2 cup of olive oil
salad greens                                       2 ounces of goat cheese


Directions:
1.  Place the beets into a sauce pan and fill with enough water to cover.
Bring to a boil and cook for 20-30 minutes, until fork tender.  Drain and cool, 
then cut into cubes.


2.  While the beets are cooking, place walnuts in a skillet and toast over medium heat.
     Add maple syrup then cook and stir until evenly coated. Set aside and cool.


3.  In a small bowl, whisk together the orange juice, balsamic vinegar, shallots, sugar and olive oil to make the dressing.


4.  Place greens, orange wedges, beets, in a salad bowl.  drizzle with dressing and add candied walnuts and goat cheese.
    

garlic and beet harvest

                                Harvested garlic and beets last week

Hen of the Month

                                                                      Miss June
                                                                        Priscilla

               
                Every month we will be featuring one of our hens. The month of June's chick of the pick is Priscilla.  She is a one year old Astrolop.  This breed is from Australia.  They are good egg layers and have a very good temperament.  Right now Priscilla is very broody.  All she wants to do is hatch a clutch.  We have to keep chasing her out of the nest box.  But she kept going back in so..........

                     We had to take her completely out of the coop.  Here she is looking to go back inside.

A Bad Egg

                            Every now and then even a chicken has a bad day!

Homemade Mayonnaise

               
        One thing I have been wanting to make with our fresh eggs is homemade mayonnaise.  After three attempts with different recipes, I finally found one that worked perfectly.  The key to making great mayonnaise is in the technique.  I found that using my Kitchen Aid stand mixer with a whisk attachment worked best in getting the proper consistency.
                               1 whole egg & 2 egg yolks
                               1 tbsp of fresh lemon juice
                               1/2 tsp of salt
                               1 1/2 cups of vegetable oil
      First whip the eggs for 30 seconds.  Then add the lemon juice and salt.  Whip for another 30 seconds.  Now very, very slowly, in a thin stream, pour the vegetable oil in the bowl while mixing on high speed. This step is extremely important to help the ingredients emulsify and to get the right consistency of the mayonnaise.  The mayo could be stored in the refrigerator for several days.
                                                 



         

First Salad of the Year

Finally! Our first fresh salad made completely from our garden!

Arugula, lettuce and radishes were our first veggies to come up and were absolutely delicious and fresh.

We wait all year to skip supermarket vegetables and have only our own.

Planting Spring Potatoes

 We finally received our seed potatoes in the mail. We planted them in trenches because, as the plant grows, we hill up the dirt around the potato plant. This is because the potato grows from the seed up to the surface. This method works great for us giving the potatoes an area to grow. 

The trenches are 12 inches deep and 12 feet long.

We planted three types of potatoes:

1. Yukon Gold
2. Rio Grande
3. Sangre (red skin potato)

Spring has definitely sprung around here! All our plants are starting to bud and are growing strong.

This is our blueberry bush. We have to be quick picking these because the birds in our area love fresh blueberries as much as we do.

This is last years herb garden, untouched! Because of the mild weather this winter, everything survived and flourished this spring. We had fresh parsley all year.

Our herb garden includes : sage, parsley, oregano, chives, cilantro.

Our strawberry plant is also a favorite of the birds. However, being so close to the ground, they face another threat, slugs!