Whiteley Creek Homestead

At 9:30 the night before last, I counted heads before closing the chicken coop door for the night. I came up with eleven… one short, but it was quite dark inside the coop so I just figured two chickens were huddled to appear as one. The group had always hung close together so it would be unusual for one to be out on its own. I proceeded to latch the coop door and secure the door to the fence that surrounds the coop then returned to the house to get ready for bed. The next morning when Dick went to open the coop, he noticed feathers scattered about outside the fence not far from the entrance door… definitely not a good sign. Upon counting chickens when he opened the door, one was missing. Apparently I had locked Phoebe out! I was devastated. Last night, I went out at 9:15 with a flashlight so that I could count heads and know without a doubt that all chickens were safely tucked inside. I got halfway to the coop and spied… as well as smelled… a skunk in the middle of the yard rooting up the sod. It was far enough away, and he was busy enough not to notice me, that I decided to proceed toward the coop. Just as I reached the path leading through the woods to the coop, another skunk came strolling down the path toward me. I hightailed it back to the house and breathlessly gasped to Dick, “Grab your gun! We have skunks in the yard that are after our chickens!” Dick has a superior aim. He hit the skunk in the middle of the yard with one shot and he was on the trail of the other one. This second one proved to be a bit more of a challenge, but that one met its fate as well. Despite bullet holes in the metal siding of our pole building and a flat tire on our pickup where a bullet had richocheted and gone through the tire’s sidewall requiring the purchase of a replacement tire, our chickens are safer for the time being. Did I say Dick has a superior aim? 

For lunch today, I had planned to roast a chicken that I had purchased through my buying club from a farm in southern Minnesota. It’s just too soon after Phoebe’s demise to consume poultry, so I made a pot of lentil soup instead.  

Lentil Vegetable Soup

2 cups dried lentils (any color), picked over and rinsed (The most common lentils are red-orange or brown.)

1 large onion, chopped

6 stalks celery, chopped

3 carrots, diced

1 can (1 lb) stewed tomatoes

1 T mixed herbs (I used ½ tsp marjoram, ½ tsp thyme, and ½ tsp leaf oregano. It is really a wonderful flavor combo. Try basil, too. You might want to experiment by increasing each amount a bit for an even more pronounced flavor.)

1 tsp garlic powder or 2-3 cloves garlic, diced

ground pepper to taste

4 cups chicken broth or (or veggie broth) plus 4 cups water (If you cut all quantities in half for a smaller pot of soup, use 4 cups broth and eliminate the water.) 

You can add in whatever vegetables you have in your fridge or garden. Chopped zucchini and fresh or frozen spinach are a nice addition.

Place all ingredients except carrots, zucchini and spinach in a soup pot. Simmer for 1 to 1 1/2 hours until lentils are tender. Carrots take 20-30 minutes to cook so add them during the final cooking time. You can add zucchini at the same time as carrots unless you want them to have a touch of firmness then wait until about the final 15 minutes. Spinach is added during the final few minutes just to wilt it. Season with additional pepper and seasoning salt to taste. Serve with a hunk of homemade whole wheat flax bread for dunking. (I’ll share that recipe tomorrow. It’s a new favorite of mine.) To make a complete meat-free protein, I served brown rice pudding with this soup.

Nutritional Information – Lentils are packed with nutrients, fiber, complex carbohydrates, and folic acid. Lentils are a low calorie, low fat and cholesterol free food as well as being inexpensive. Folic acid is one very important nutrient found in lentils. The U.S. Health Service recommends that all women of childbearing age consume 400 mcg of folic acid per day. Most women do not meet this guideline. One cup of cooked lentils provides 90% of the recommended daily allowance (RDA). Lentils provide more folic acid than any other unfortified food.

Lentils are also an important source of iron, especially for women, whose iron needs are greater. Eating lentils with foods rich in Vitamin C, such as tomatoes, green peppers, broccoli, and citrus fruits or juices, helps the body absorb iron more efficiently.

Lentils are also protein rich. They lack only one protein, methionine. Adding grains, eggs, nuts, seeds, meat, dairy products, or eggs will provide a complete protein.

Soluble fiber is also found in lentils. Soluble fiber acts as a scrub brush, cleaning the digestive system. This type of fiber also decreases serum glucose and cholesterol and decreases insulin requirements for people with diabetes.

My friend Deb, from across town, called me this morning while she puttered in her garden. She was pulling some rhubarb stalks, so I told her I had a tasty recipe for sauce that has a few flavors going on that you don't find in typical recipes for rhubarb sauce… so yummy. The recipe calls for strawberries to partner with the rhubarb, but I only had raspberries on hand when I snapped this photo. I feared that the seeds in the raspberries would overpower the texture, but there was absolutely no annoying crunchiness. It was smooth as can be. I have since made this recipe many times using both fresh and frozen strawberries.

Rhubarb Strawberry Sauce from www.fatfree.com (The site is actually an archive of vegetarian and vegan recipes. Dick and I aren't vegetarians, but we limit out meat intake to two or three meals a week, so I am frequently searching for recipes to try that are an alternate source of protein. I just happened to stumble upon it during my meat-free recipe hunt.) 
10 large stalks rhubarb, trimmed and cut into 1" lengths
4 cups hulled, halved strawberries
1 cup sugar
1 cup freshly-squeezed orange juice (If I don't have an orange on hand, I use reconstituted frozen o.j. or 100% o.j. from a box… the kind that is pure o.j. not part water.) 
finely grated zest of 1 orange (I skip this if I don't happen to have an orange.)
finely grated zest of 1 lemon
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon salt (optional) I didn't put it in.
1/2 vanilla bean, split lengthwise ( I substituted 1 tsp pure vanilla… not imitation… or 1/2 tsp if cutting the recipe in half. I added it at the very end after it was finished simmering. It adds such a wonderful flavor.
Combine all ingredients in a heavy saucepan.  Stir well and bring to a boil over medium heat.  Reduce heat and simmer, stirring once and skimming off any foam that forms on top, until the rhubarb is just tender, 10-12 minutes.  (I don't bother to skim off the foam. I just get it simmering and forget it.) Remove the vanilla bean and let the mixture cool to room temperature.  Cover and refrigerate.  It will keep for 2 days. (When I make this recipe I cut the quantities in half and it makes approximately 3 cups when I use a 10 oz. pkg of frozen organic strawberries.) It is so good served in a little fruit dish with a muffin or on top of pancakes or waffles in place of syrup.

I am drawn to simplistic labeling on packages. Working as a graphic designer in NYC, my daughter, Lisa, creates logos, ads, and store signage to catch the eye of consumers like me and entice them into buying a product. Although she didn’t design these flour and corn meal packages, she has most recently been freelancing for Chicos, a nationwide company that sells women’s apparel. Chicos purchased the rights to her handwriting so they could create a font that they now use in their catalogs and in-store signs. Lisa will be taking some time off from work outside her home for a while to care for her newborn baby girl born today at 12:09 p.m. Eastern Standard time!!!!!! She has blessed us with our 5th grandchild. Dick and I are rich indeed. 

Every Monday at 12:25 p.m. on the 104.3 KLKS ("KLakes") Radio Station located at Breezy Point north of Brainerd, I listen to a 5-minute segment called "Lunch with John". John, who is an announcer at the radio station, proceeds to describe what his wife has packed for him in his Roy Rogers and Dale Evans lunchbox for that day. The old T.V. show's drawn out theme song plays in the background. "Happy trails to you until we meet again. Happy trails to you. Keep smilin' until then. Who cares about the clouds when we're together."  As it plays John says, "Let's open up the 'ol lunchbox and see what I have today." Then he unwraps the contents in his 50 year-old lunchbox that he's had since he was a kid. His sandwich, which is generally braunsweiger or sardines with mustard on whole wheat bread… or something as equally old-fashioned that were my dad's favorites when I was growing up, is wrapped in wax paper as was common in days gone by. One Monday he said that his 9 year-old granddaughter had come from Minneapolis over the weekend for a visit so she had packed his lunch instead of his wife. He discovered a pita pocket instead of his usual w.w. sandwich. He guessed that was what they ate in the big city. The segment just makes you smile. Lunch is such a simple thing but, when it is packed with thought and care for someone you love, it sends a powerful statement.

In an issue of Real Simple Magazine, I ran across the following woman's memory of her father's lunchbox. Her retelling eloquently and lovingly expressed my own feelings toward my father's lunchbox that he carried to work each and every day to the Minnesota State Highway Department in Brainerd.

This is what Tina Yost shared in the magazine article about "the everyday treasure that once belonged to her father, Royce H. Martin, who died in September 2004 at age 81. He had sandcasted his name on the aluminum handle and jury-rigged the latches, which tended to release unexpectantly, to stay shut. When Yost was about five years old, her father started coming home from his job as a powerstation operator with a cookie or some candy for his youngest daughter in his lunchbox. Every evening she would greet him, anxiously waiting to see what surprise he would offer from the lunchbox. In the final days of Martin's battle with cancer, he lamented that he had scant material possessions to leave to his three children. At his bedside, Yost told him that she wanted his lunchbox. She went to the garage, where it had been stored among his many projects, and blew the dust off and looked inside. There was still a piece of waxpaper- her mom's handiwork- lining the bottom, and she brought the box to him. His eyes lit up as he ran his fingers across the raised letters of his name. You could tell he was proud of it. The lunchbox sits on a Tina Yost's bookshelf as a reminder both of Martin's ingenuity and the knowledge that one can live a rich life without a six-figure income or a big bank account."

My father's lunchbox was constructed of a rigid black plastic rather than aluminum. I hold fond memories, like Tina's, of waiting for his arrival home from work to see if he had left a cookie in the bottom of his lunchbox. Now I wonder if he left one on purpose just so my siblings or I, whichever one of us made it to the lunchbox first, would not come up empty-handed.

I ran across this lunchbox at a yard sale recently that is the very one pictured in Tina Yost's magazine photo except that the handle has been jury-rigged rather than the latches. I display it in my bed and breakfast's railroad car tearoom alongside Tina's story.

Happy 4th of July! This is what I made for lunch today… hamburgers, coleslaw, and a vanilla milkshake… so 4th of July-ish! Holidays are SO fun.

Beef Burgers

Serves 6.

1 lb. ground chuck (ex. lean ground beef or ground bison)

½ tsp salt

¼ tsp pepper

½ tsp dried thyme

½ tsp dried oregano

1/3 c grated mozzarella cheese

2 oz. fresh mushrooms, diced

½ lg onion, chopped

1/3 c diced fresh tomatoes (Don't skip these. It's what makes these burgers juicy.)

Place ground beef into a bowl. Sprinkle with seasonings and cheese. Sauté mushrooms until softened and onions are translucent but not browned. Add tomatoes to soften towards the end of cooking time. Add to ground beef and mix well. Form into patties and cook in pan until done. Serve on whole-grain bun that has been buttered and toasted upside-down in skillet until lightly brown and crusty or wrap burger inside a Boston lettuce leaf.  Note: One time I didn't have any tomatoes so I added salsa and diced dill pickles. The additions are keepers.  

I picked this season’s first substantial number of strawberries today. I walked out to my patch without a bowl thinking that I would be able to carry them in my hand but, when the berries began to spill onto the ground, I found a pie tin in my potting shed to hold them. Without a second thought, I knew that this special occasion called for a shortcake. I pulled out two partially filled boxes of baking mix to make biscuits. One box was Arrowhead Mills Whole Wheat Baking Mix and the other box was Hodgson Mill “Insta-Bake” Whole Wheat Baking Mix. Both biscuit recipes on the backs of the boxes were the same except one called for 2 tbsp butter and the other used 2 tbsp oil. The only other ingredients were 2 cups baking mix and 2/3 cup milk. Despite my better judgement, I dumped in the 2/3 cup milk thinking that 1/3 cup seemed more reasonable for the amount of flour. Both boxes stated this amount, so wouldn’t you think it couldn’t be a misprint? I had pancake batter rather than biscuit consistency. It was easily remedied by adding 2 more cups of baking mix. The end product is very light with good texture. We now have many more biscuits than the amount of strawberries to serve over top, so tomorrow’s lunch will be chicken a la king.