I wanted to keep my first experience with pea shoots simple, and went with a recipe that comes from the book, Grow Cook Eat: A Food Lover’s Guide to Vegetable Gardening.  As usual, I didn’t follow the recipe exactly, and left out the vinegar.  The recipe given serves 4.  I just threw a bunch of pea shoots on a plate, drizzled them with a little of the dressing, and shaved the parmesan with a veggie peeler right on top of the whole thing.  One word of caution — use the dressing very sparingly.  The flavor of the pea shoots is delicate, and easily overpowered by the lemon and garlic.  I found as little as 1/2 teaspoon to be plenty.  Any more than that, and you won’t be able to taste the greens.  I also found myself shaving additional parmesan into the salad, but I’m a pig when it comes to any kind of cheese.

1/2 teaspoon lemon zest
2 teaspoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 small clove garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon white balsamic or white wine vinegar
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
sea salt
4 to 6 cups lightly packed pea shoots
2-ounce piece parmesan
Freshly ground pepper

It’s official, I like pea shoots.  Because they are so simple to grow, and don’t take up a lot of space, I plan to make them a winter mainstay on my grow light setup.  I think I’m going to try this gorgeous Tofu Soup with Pea Shoots and Radishes next.

I’ve been intrigued by recipes I’ve been seeing for pea shoots.   However, pea shoots are not something I’ve ever seen in any of my local markets, so I did a quick bit of searching online. It turns out growing pea shoots is a snap!  Yeah, I know that was a bad pun. This little project was satisfying on so many levels. I’ve been dying to get out and start planting my early spring garden, but the last two weeks of monsoon-like rains have prevented it.

I’ve had a couple of these wide, shallow dollar store bowls lurking in my cupboard for years, and they’ve never really gotten much use.  It turns out they’re perfect for some quick indoor growing projects.  When I’m done writing this blog post, I’m going to go get the other bowl and get some radishes started.

I had a big bag of sugar snap pea seed I had saved from the garden a couple of years ago.  I put some of them in a glass of water and soaked them for 4 or 5 hours.  Then, I filled my bowl with some growing mix I had stored in a bucket in my basement.  I scattered the pea seeds across the surface, covered them with more of the soil, watered them in, and then put the bowl under my grow lights.

Talk about instant gratification… this is what I had 4 days later.

7 days later ……

… and here we are 10 days later, ready to cut the top couple of inches of growth, easy peasy! Yes, another bad pun.  According to the reading I did, I should be able to cut them again in another week or so.  It will be interesting to see how many times I can cut them.  Now, I just have to decide which way I want to try eating them first.  I’ll let you know how it goes. Now, I’m off to locate that other bowl and some radish seed I know I’ve got left over from a couple of years ago.

As promised, I’ve got a 2 week progress report on the chicks.  Around half of them are developing little, teeny, tiny combs, while the other half are not.  I do believe this little guy is a rooster … which means he’ll probably be on my dinner table some day.  Never, ever forget these guys are livestock, destined for the dinner table.  I’m getting ready to double their space, and I’ve also begun to lower the temperature in the brooder box.  By the time they’ve become acclimated to cooler temperatures, and night-time temperatures become a little more reasonable, I’ll be moving them to larger digs out in the chicken barn.

Here’s a side by side comparison to the picture I took two weeks ago.  They’ve easily doubled in size, and I’m also having to feed them twice as much.  They’re getting a 20% protein organic chick starter, and will eventually be switched over to 18% organic grower feed.

As you can see, chick fuzz is giving way to feathers, and they like to run through the brooder box trying to test out their new wing feathers.  They’re also starting to act as if they would like to perch, so when I get their space doubled I’m also going to give them a rod for roosting.

I’m ready for spring.  I’m ready for warmth. I want to start poking seeds in the ground and get dirt under my fingernails, to start tromping in the woods, to see green, to start shedding my winter insulation.  I feel like I’ve been holding my breath, and desperately need to catch it. I feel like I want something, but don’t know what it is.  I haven’t felt like this in a long time. It’s weird, not bad, just strange. I’m sure I’ll figure it out. I always do. Thanks for humoring me… I needed to get that out. The picture above is of one of my sons and I tromping in the woods two springs ago. My other son was the photographer.

This morning I got an early morning call from my local post mistress.   She had some chicken I had ordered , and was letting me know it was ready to pick up.  This was not your typical bucket of takeout chicken, but a box of live Welsummer chicks sent from Cackle Hatchery.   I’ve been dying to own some of the birds, since I first saw their terra-cotta red eggs when visiting a local beekeeper last year.

My current laying hens are about 2 years old, so this spring it’s time to refresh my “flock”. I don’t think an half-dozen chickens qualifies as a flock.  Also, this year I decided that I was going to raise and process my own chicken for the freezer.  I normally buy from a local organic farmer, but thanks to last summer’s drought sending feed costs through the roof, I decided it was time to do it myself.  I was a teenager the last time I was involved in chicken butchering, so I’m going to visit my Amish neighbor for a refresher course when she does hers this summer.

So, back to my box o’ chicken.  Last week I made sure I had my brooder all set with a heat lamp for the chicks to arrive.  As soon as I got the chicks home from the post office, I opened them up and snapped a quick picture for you.

I removed each chick from the box and gave its beak a quick dip in the waterer (filled with warm water) before setting it down in the brooder.   Since the whole point of raising my own organic chicken is to keep my costs down, I put the brooder together using things I already had out in the barn. An old livestock watering trough, and a heat lamp which I’ve used for everything from chickens to baby goats over the years. I also already had a couple of mason jar waterers and a small feeder floating around in the barn.  The only thing I bought were the chicks and  a small bale of pine shaving bedding.

I’ll post an update in a couple of weeks, when the chicks will be a bit less cute, and quite a bit larger.

This is one of my rare posts relating to work, and a past business relationship that bit me in the butt.  Remember when we were kids, and were told to be careful about the friends we kept?  Well, that applies to business relationships, as well as personal relationships.  Several years ago, I maintained a business relationship in which the boundaries between business and friendship became very blurred.  Long story short – the association was doing damage to my business and my reputation in a very small niche industry with a long memory.  It took me quite some time to recognize what was going on, and when I finally did, I realized I was going to have to extricate myself from the situation.  It’s been more than 5 years, and occasionally I’ll run across a current online conversation mentioning the old association. Lessons learned 1) Try to choose your friends and associations wisely. 2) Always get it in writing.

In my blind loyalty, I agreed to allow some of the business’ intellectual property, in the form of original formulations, to be included on a CD.  It was a verbal agreement, nothing in writing.  Yesterday, when perusing traffic statistics for the website, I discovered an entry link with a familiar title.  What I discovered was a link to a full e-book for sale, which included my material, as well as material of a few other business associates.  Upon contacting one of these other businesses,  I found they had not made agreements for an e-book either.

After discussing it with The Essential Herbal Magazine  and Lancaster County Soapworks, we have decided to respond by making the formulas and recipes we contributed publicly available in a series of blog posts.  About 1/2 of the recipes in the e-book were contributed by theses two businesses. A lot of the other material contained in the book is public domain, easily found with a bit of searching on the internet. My personal opinion is that it’s not worth the $27 price tag, especially since we are going to give you 1/2 the recipes for free.

The following formula is one I created several years ago, submitted for use in the original CD, and now appears, without permission, in the e-book.   Over the last few years, some of the ingredients have been discontinued from my website, The Original Soap Dish.  I have plans to reformulate it with more readily available, and less expensive ingredients.  Once reformulated, it will be added to the formulary of free recipes offered on my website.

-Here is  The Essential Herbal’s first installment with a free recipe
-Maryanne of Lancaster County Soapworks writes, “If You Are Going to Steal My Recipes, At Least Get Them Right!”
-The second installment from Tina at The Essential Herbal blog, “handcrafted recipes -#2 Whipped Body Butter”
-Number three from Tina,  Handcrafted Recipe #3 – Incense Cones
-Another from Maryanne, who also owns Torchsong Studio,  More Purloined Recipes
-Another from Tina,  Handcrafted Recipe #4 – Melt & Pour Remedy Soap

Multi-Performance Hydrating Cream – From The Original Soap Dish
Gentle enough for under eye use. Makes a good overnight cream. Can also be used like cold cream to remove makeup. 

Part A
Behenyl Alcohol 1%
Emulsifying Wax 5%
Olive Butter 20.5%
Avocado Butter 20.5%
Evening Primrose Oil 8%
AquaEm 4%
PEG-7 Olivate 5%
T-50 Tocopherol 1%
Phenonip .5%

Part B
Water 29%
Phenonip .5%
Antioxidant Compound 4%
Fragrance 1%

Melt Behenyl Alcohol, Emulsifying Wax, Olive Butter, and Avocado Butter together. Cool to around 150 degrees. Add remaining Part A ingredients. Mix well.

Heat water to approximately 150 degrees, and add phenonip. Blend thoroughly with stick blender. Add Antioxidant Compound and fragrance. Mix well. Add Part B to Part A with mixing. Alternate cooling, and mixing with stick blender until mixture reaches around 110 degrees. Pour into jars and allow to cool completely.

I’m so tired of seeing this particular snippet circulate around Facebook, taken out of its original context, and used to bash today’s youth over its collective head.

It originally appeared in the South Bend Tribune, Sunday, Dec. 6, 1959, written by Judge Philip B. Gilliam.   Here is Judge Gilliam’s piece in it’s entirely, however, I encourage you to visit this link and learn the details that put the piece into context.

“Always we hear the plaintive cry of the teen-ager. What can we do? … Where can we go?

The answer is GO HOME!

Hang the storm windows, paint the woodwork. Rake the leaves, mow the lawn, shovel the walk. Wash the car, learn to cook, scrub some floors. Repair the sink, build a boat, get a job.

Help the minister, priest, or rabbi, the Red Cross, the Salvation Army. Visit the sick, assist the poor, study your lessons. And then when you are through — and not too tired — read a book.

Your parents do not owe you entertainment. Your city or village does not owe you recreational activities.

The world does not owe you a living… You owe the world something.

You owe it your time and your energy and your talents so that no one will be at war or in poverty or sick or lonely again.

Grow up; quit being a crybaby. Get out of your dream world and develop a backbone, not a wishbone, and start acting like a man or a lady.

You’re supposed to be mature enough to accept some of the responsibility your parents have carried for years.

They have nursed, protected, helped, appealed, begged, excused, tolerated and denied themselves needed comforts so that you could have every benefit. This they have done gladly, for you are their dearest treasure.

But now, you have no right to expect them to bow to every whim and fancy just because selfish ego instead of common sense dominates your personality, thinking and request.

In Heaven’s name, grow up and go home!”

I’m going to have some things to say, but first, I’d also like to bring attention to another one that circulates Facebook, entitled “To All The Kids Who Survived the 1930’s, 40’s, 50’s, 60’s, And 70’s”. This one drives me nuts too.

What I’d like to say to the young people in my life,  — my sons, Kelie and Kuyler, their friends, Max, Sam, Harry, Drew, Kelsey, Seth, Natalie, and Britni – I see the value in your growing up experience.  It may have been different from mine, but it has value, and I will not devalue it by telling you how much better mine was, that you missed out, that yours would have been better if it was like mine, or any other such nonsense.  The world is a constantly changing place, and the experience of your youth reflects those changes.

Yeah, I drank water from the hose, but that was before my generation polluted so heavily that it was no longer safe to drink from the hose.

I get a kick out of this one…. “We made up games with sticks and tennis balls and ate worms and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes, nor did the worms live in us forever.”  Honestly guys, I never ate worms, and my husband is blind in one eye thanks to a BB gun accident in the woods. Some of the stuff we did was dangerous and stupid.

And, while this one is true, “This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever”, every generation in history has been able to boast the same, including your own.  My generation doesn’t have a corner on the intelligence market.

In fact, my generation has been pretty stupid.  Many, if not most, of the things my generation complains about in your generation are problems of our own making.  I’m not proud to acknowledge that we’ve screwed up your world, and then proceeded to place the blame on everyone but ourselves.  We’ve left you with a mess to clean up, and constant criticism won’t help.

I know I’m over simplifying the issues. I know I’m probably going to get some flak from a few of my own generation (and maybe even my own father).  I know we’re not perfect, so why should we expect you to be perfect?  We made mistakes, just as our own parents made mistakes, just as you will make mistakes.  Some day you’ll be the cranky old dude reminiscing about the good old days, and complaining about “the young people these days”.

You know what’s really ironic?  The very Facebook given to us by the generation we like to complain about, is the vehicle we use to voice our condemnation.  I thoroughly enjoy Facebook, and the privilege  of being allowed into a small part of your world.  I promise not post or “like” anything disparaging about you.  If I inadvertently stumble, saying something insensitive, I would hope you’d call me out.

What I’d like to tell you is that I think you’re intelligent, curious, and energetic.  My experience is that you ask the tough questions, and you challenge me. You keep me young. You make me laugh. You make me cry. You make my life interesting.  I love you.  I value you. I want the best for you.

Now, GET OFF MY LAWN!

My busy season at work is about ready to hit full stride in the next couple of weeks, so I’m trying to get in some last-minute play time before the poop hits the fan.  My husband and I made an impromptu trip up to La Porte in the northwestern corner of Indiana on Saturday to visit a small brewery.  It was a wonderful surprise to discover the brewery was hosting a small fall festival, and had invited several other breweries to participate. In attendance:  Back Road Brewery of La Porte, IN  -  Four Horsemen Brewing of South Bend, IN  - Crown Brewing Company of Crown Point, IN  - Three Floyds Brewing of Munster, IN   –  One Trick Pony of Lansing, IL  -  Shoreline Brewery of  Michigan City, IN.

And there was a cool German polka band, Ein Prosit German Band . The accordion player pictured above was one of my favorite characters of the day. I was completely amazed by the band’s ability to drink beer and play at the same time.

 It was a toss-up between Accordion Man and Pink Tuba Girl.  She was polka grooving so hard we never did get a clear picture of her.

My husband is a plumber (among many other things), and since he’s not a craft beer drinker and my designated driver, he always zooms in on the brewing equipment when I drag him along to visit a brewery.  Back Road Brewery is a small operation housed in an old factory building along some railroad tracks.  My dad would have loved the combination of beer and the occasional train rolling by.

This was me at the beginning of the day, with my nose in my glass. Of all the brews I sampled, my favorite of the day was a Three Floyd’s offering called Snow Weasel, a fantastic dry hopped porter. My second favorite was Back Road’s Blueberry Belle Gunness Stout, which reminded me of some really tasty blueberry coffee I used to buy.

This is a representation of me by the end of the festival, when I decided I couldn’t feel my teeth any more.

When I was growing up, my mom made zucchini relish every year, so now I make zucchini relish every year.   One batch is enough to get me through a whole year of tartar sauce, chicken and tuna salad, and hot dogs.  Yes, I know hot dogs are not one of the best things I could be eating, but I love hot dogs and have to have them every once in a while.  I’m a relish, mustard, and onions kind of a gal. Anyway, I made a batch of zucchini relish this weekend, but it barely put a dent in my zucchini supply.

This is a forgiving recipe, and measurements don’t have to be exact. I use honey, but you could use sugar if you want. I tend to like more of vinegary tang than sweetness in my relish, so my recipe uses quite a bit less sweetener than most recipes. Also, most recipes call for celery seed, but we all know how I feel about celery (it’s an evil, vile vegetable and my husband is allergic).  My standard substitution for all things celery is fennel.  If you like a little spice you could add some jalapeno to the recipe.  My husband is a big baby when it comes to spicy foods, so I’m close friends with the many bottles of hot sauce that inhabit my kitchen.  One of these days I’ll get around to giving you my recipe for homemade tequila hot sauce.

Zucchini Relish
1 monster zucchini (about 3 pounds, or 8 cups)
4 large onions (about 1 pound)
2 large red and/or green peppers
4 tablespoons kosher salt
2 1/4 cups cider vinegar
1 1/2 cups honey
1 tablespoon turmeric
1 tablespoon dry mustard
1 tablespoon nutmeg
1 heaping teaspoon ground fennel seed
1 heaping teaspoon ground coriander seed
1 heaping teaspoon salt

Shred or finely chop zucchini, onion, and peppers.  A food processor makes quick work of it.  Sprinkle the 4 tablespoons of salt over the chopped veggies, mix it in well, and set it aside for a couple of hours.  I’ve seen some recipes that call for letting it sit overnight, but I’ve found a couple of hours does an adequate job of drawing out the excess water in the vegetables.

 I went outside and planted a row of snow peas for the fall garden while I was waiting. Then I got my canning gear out, and got my jars washed and ready to receive the relish.

Next, rinse the vegetables well in a fine mesh colander with cold water.  Squeeze excess water from the veggies and place them in a non-reactive pot.

Add remaining ingredients and bring to a simmer.  Continue to simmer for about half an hour, until the relish begins to look a little translucent.   Ladle the relish into jars, and process in a boiling water bath for 15 minutes.  Yields about 9 half pints.

My husband and I used to be beekeepers.  About 5 years ago we decided to hang it up for a while.  As a two business household, we found ourselves increasingly busy, and knew we were going to have to choose to let a few things go.  A man made us a good offer for all of our equipment, so we decided to take him up on it and sold it all except for a bee suit and a smoker.  For some reason, my husband couldn’t part with the suit and smoker.

This spring a colony of bees set up housekeeping in a burn pile on the edge of our property.  Because of the drought this summer, we haven’t been able to burn the pile.  My husband figured he would get into it this winter and remove the honey before we burned the pile in the spring.  It’s one of those locations that doesn’t offer a way to save the hive.

Today we were treated to a sight that had us yearning for our beekeeping days.  The colony in the burn pile decided to swarm and settled on a branch in a nearby mulberry tree.

Normally, swarm season here in Indiana is during May and June.  We were a little surprised to see a young, newly formed colony swarming in July, especially considering the drought and how little forage has been available.  I called another beekeeper I know to see if he wanted to come catch the swarm, but he wasn’t available, so the swarm is most likely going to fly away over the next few days and set up housekeeping elsewhere.

I guess this is going to make my husband’s job of removing the honey from the burn pile a little easier.  Swarming is basically a part of bee sex, and one of the ways they propagate. For a number of reasons a hive will decide it needs to form a new colony, so it will raise a few new queens.  Prior to swarming, a bunch of worker bees will gorge themselves on honey to take with them to their new home.  Once gorged on honey they will leave the hive, usually settling somewhere nearby while they wait for scouts to direct them to their new location.

This swarm may leave right away, they may stay on this branch for a couple of days, and in rare cases they may even begin building comb right there on the branch.  One of the reasons it was so easy to get in close to take these pictures is due to the bees being gorged on honey.  In this gorged state, their flight is slow and lazy, and they are very mild mannered.  They are incredibly intent on the task at hand, very non-aggressive, and not inclined to sting.