Doodle Review: Once Upon a Flock

When I first dove into the world of backyard chicken-keeping, the connection I felt to my ladies and the desire to just sit, drink coffee, and watch them was something I wasn't sure spoke for a healthy mental state.  I found myself fascinated by their individuality and quirky behaviors. It didn't take me long to realize that, even though I had gotten chickens of all the same breed and color, they were very different and needed names, something I hadn't considered initially. It also wasn't long, before I was completely in love. The author, Lauren Scheur, perfectly validates this experience in Once Upon a Flock: Life With My Soulful Chickens. 

Much like Lauren, I not only love my flock, but I also have a love for power tools and being outside in my backyard. Creating and learning has been one of my favorite parts of keeping chickens and is clearly hers as well. She breaks out the books and tools when she gets an idea, even building a small, low to the ground coop for a special needs chicken, much like one we built for our Cornish X hen we couldn't bring ourselves to have for dinner. She even has a Buff Orpington who acts like a weenie, just like mine. 

This sweet, easy to read, book is something everyone who has a small backyard flock should read. The author deals with different personalities, broodiness, health issues, and the surprise of having a boy when you don't want to annoy your neighbors. A delightful addition to the stories are her illustrations. She manages to weave words, photography and these perfect drawings to lure the reader into loving her flock as much as she does. I read this book in two evenings and I highly recommend you do the same.

Fried Egg Sandwich - The Fresh Egg Cookbook Recipe #2

So I cooked breakfast for the family this morning, before work and school, for the first time in ages. Everyone has gone their own way in the mornings for so long, but I super wanted to try this one and thought it would be a perfect way to start the day. I was right.

This was super easy, just making a sandwich with the perfect ingredients. Normally I like eggs over easy, but I decided I didn't want these to be that messy. So I broke the yolks as I was frying these eggs, got the bacon fried up, toasted the english muffins and threw a touch of butter on them, then I slapped it all into a sandwich with a slice of cheddar cheese.

Delicious, wonderful, having these as often as possible. Booya.

Chili Rellanos - The Fresh Egg Cookbook Recipe #1

One necessary part of a chicken farm is an egg cookbook. At least one, if not many, many. So I grabbed my first one, The Fresh Egg Cookbook by Jennifer Trainer Thompson.

I love it! My husband and I both have been reading all the cool info she shares about breeds and such (I'll share the review of that part of the book soon) and I just love learning new stuff. I made the decision to cook every single recipe, so I can learn as much about the amazing impact fresh eggs have on our health.

So, the first recipe I chose is a variation on a favorite of mine and what I order at every Mexican restaurant, Chili Rellanos. They are so delicious, with rice, yum. This version is more of a casserole and instead of breading for the chilis, has an egg layer that really is a wonderful addition.

The first thing I did was hit the store for some peppers and cheese. It's too early for peppers from my garden, so Kroger it is. I got 3 poblano peppers and 3 anaheim peppers. I thought a comparison on taste would be excellent, since I have never cooked this dish before.

I started with placing the peppers under the broiler, and turning a few times, for about 20 minutes. Then I pulled them out and because I don't have any aluminum foil (I keep forgetting, dammit!) I placed them in the casserole dish with the lid on and let them continue to steam for about 10 more minutes.

In the meantime, I went ahead and mixed together the eggs, milk, salt and pepper, and flour.

After the steaming portion was complete, I peeled the charred skin off of the peppers (super easy part) and I cleaned all the seeds and such from the inside, cutting them in half. Then I laid half of them across the bottom of my large, Pampered Chef, casserole dish. I love me some Pampered Chef.

I sprinkled most of the cheese over the halves, then added the other half of the peppers, layered the remaining cheese and topped it with the egg, flour, milk mixture, well mixed.

The recipe called for it to be cooked for 25-30 minutes, so I did 30 minutes in the dish with the lid on, then 5 minutes without the lid. 

When I took it out of the oven, it still looked pretty yellow and a little soft, but I was starving and made the rushed decision to dive right in.

Despite my hurry, it was delicious. The eggs really added a lot to the recipe, leaving it a little lighter than the rellanos I buy at the restaurant. And because it was layered instead of stuffed peppers, there was more variety in the flavors. Things were able to mix a little more.

I am looking forward to making this with fresh, garden peppers and the anaheim tasted the better than the poblanos, I felt. They had a little extra bite to them. Lucky for me, that's what I'm growing. :-)

A couple of things I would do differently:

1. I would cook it without the lid until the top was golden and let it sit for 5-10 minutes afterwards. The eggs weren't as set as I would have liked.

2. I would buy a higher quality cheese. I went with the Kroger brand Mexican blend shredded cheese and there was a noticeable residue from the cheese that I was not thrilled with.

And that's it. The recipe was perfect and the addition of the layer of egg mixture was brilliant. I highly recommend this one.

The Truth About Cooking Hard-Boiled Eggs

EDIT: 5/11/16  (see below)

I am terrible at peeling hard-boiled eggs. Truly. I always ruin a few so completely the whites are thrown back to the chickens in shame and the yolks are salvaged for the devilly part. As a result, I have spent several years pretending they don't exist. My kids and husband love them, but when they mention it, I just let my face go blank, in complete denial.

I've been a backyard chicken keeper for a year now and I've decided I can no longer pretend hard boiled eggs are a thing of the past. I follow various forums and Facebook groups about chickens and enjoy reading what folks share about their self-declared perfect way to make hard boiled eggs. This weekend, I had some extra eggs and I decided I would experiment with three separate ways of cooking them and see if any of them could work for me. I used all fresh eggs also, one was about a week old, but otherwise, the eggs were from that day or the couple of days before. Who wants to have to care about waiting two weeks, am I right?

1. Steaming: This is the method I hear my fellow chicken folks discussing the most. So, I started on the Incredible Egg site with a recipe called:Easy Peel Hard-Boiled eggs. I don't have a steamer I could place in the pot, so I grabbed some hardware cloth (because we all have tons of that lying around) and bent it so it could fit in the bottom of the pan, keeping the 4 eggs out of the water. I filled the large pan about 3/4" deep with water and turned on the heat to bring it to a boil before I placed the eggs. I made sure the water wasn't touching the eggs.

2. Boiling: Next up was the standard way I've been cooking eggs with an interesting twist. Marc wrote this glorious blog post on how to make the perfect hard-boiled eggs depending on how much you like them cooked as well as for ease of peeling. He cracks the shell before boiling (check out the picture to the right), just enough to keep the inner membrane intact. 

3. Last of this experiment was baking the eggs, according to this from Alton Brown. This was certainly the easiest method of the three recipes. I just popped the eggs in my fancy Pampered Chef muffin stoneware and stuck them on the center rack.

For my results, I'll start with my least favorite option, baking:

First of all, I love Alton Brown, but I'm not with him on this. This was by far the worst method, because the eggs weren't cooked through. As a result, the peels clung to the eggs like it was a love affair.

I have a fairly new oven that has not given me temperature issues previously and I waited for the pre-heating to complete before I popped them in to bake, but they simply weren't done. The egg whites were still runny (see the picture to the right). I was super disappointed, because this would have been such an easy approach.

My second favorite method was the boiling with the cracked shells. This was fine, as long as you aren't terrible at peeling eggs like I am. I followed the instructions in the recipe exactly, not adding salt or anything to the water.

I'm a little sad this one wasn't super helpful with peeling as I love the details he provides. Clearly a lot of love went into this post. Check out my horrible eggs on the left.

This method was clearly no different to me than my usual difficulties. I didn't find the crack in the egg before boiling was more helpful than cracking them afterwards.

But we have a winner, without doubt.Steaming! This method certainly made all the difference when peeling these eggs and they were cooked perfectly. I didn't have much of an issue peeling them at all, two of them even peeled about perfectly. I highly recommend using this method when making hard-boiled eggs and it's certainly going to be something I don't have to avoid anymore.

UPDATE: So one more thing to add to the peeling miracle. I read on one of the many chicken pages I go to of a woman who uses a spoon to slide under the membrane under the shell and pop the shell off. This is true and worked like a charm for me yesterday. Check out how amazing these eggs look.