Early Spring snaps

The only thing green things in my garden (where the snow has melted) — nice young stinkweed. And oh what a healthy crop already. It figures it would be a weed!

The farm team (so called because they’re in their coveralls and tractor dealership gimme caps):

Sadly (ha!), the box of ice skates has been consigned to the storage building until November 2008. I hope.

Hens admiring the view.

The view.

Sometimes it feels as though we’re raising cats rather than cattle (and yes, they each have a name), though they’re certainly earning their keep. Tom says he saw only one mouse running about all winter.

Speaking of chickens, here’s chicken salad. Or rather, fruit salad. This is why we don’t have the chickens or their eggs certified organic; we get several boxes of mostly non-organic supermarket vegetable and fruit trimmings every week. And if the birds aren’t getting 100 percent organic feed, they can’t be organic. To us, it’s more important that they get a varied diet with lots of fresh greens (and reds and yellows and purples). If it was my diet, I’d rather have some non-organic cherries, grapes, watermelon, and lettuce, than a steady supply of 100 percent organic grain. Especially through what can be a very, very long winter before the next blade of green grass appears.

Daniel with one of the new arrivals — the golden boy with the golden calf. I can’t remember what time of day I took this, but it’s all natural light with no help from me, the camera, or iPhoto afterward,

Davy decided to get in on the fun,

Sleeping in the sun,

Finally, a few shots of Easter goodies.

I suprised the kids (and myself, after that flu) with some Bonnat-style Martha Stewart chocolate-filled eggs. Under the weather with limited patience and time spent vertically, I simplified some of MS’s methods. For starters, I made a hole with my small, sharp and pointy cake tester. I enlarged it slowly by chipping away with the tester and didn’t bother with pins, utility knives, or drills. One small “tool” and I was fine. Also, I found I didn’t need to get rid of the eggy inside by blowing with a rubber ear syringe or anything else. Mix up the eggy inside gently, then shake, also gently. Fast and easy. Then, maybe because of our dry Alberta climate, the empty shells didn’t need more than one day to dry completely.

For the chocolate filling, I found some Callebaut chunks at the supermarket and didn’t bother cutting them up any more; I also dispensed with the double boiler, scraping, heating pad, and spreading on a clean smooth work surface. I put the chocolate chunks in a glass bowl and zapped them in the microwave for 30 seconds a shot, two or three times; the Cooking for Engineers website has good information on the whys and hows of tempering chocolate.

I don’t have any clean unused egg cartons, just recycled ones from our eggs, so I set the empty shells in egg cups to fill. It was also how I presented the eggs to the kids, who thought they were getting soft boiled eggs for Easter breakfast. The expressions on their faces were priceless. Mom has almost as magic as the Easter Bunny…

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