Anita's Amazing Chicken & Vegetable Quiche

Are you ready for the best-ever MOST AMAZING Quiche recipe EVER??  This is a variation of quiche that I make regularly and as I've tweaked the recipe I keep getting even better reviews.  My son loves this quiche and that'a saying something.  It very versatile: you can eat it "freshly baked", warm, cold or re-heated and it's still great.  It's also made of simple ingredients that are easily replaced if you are vegetarian or can't have dairy and there's no crust so it's low-carb.  I'll give suggestions as I go.  The exact recipe will be below.

This post has nothing to do with the fact that I am trying to get you to eat more eggs so you will buy some of OUR eggs - nothing at all!




I use a cast iron frying pan because I love my pans but if you don't have one you can use any frying pan and transfer the ingredients at the appropriate stage to an oven safe dish.

Remember those peppers I froze last summer??  You'll need about two cups chopped plus 3 or 4 chopped onions.  I stir fry them until they are soft but not caramelized.

I bought this chicken bacon on sale a few months ago.  We tried cooking it and eating it like bacon but it fell so short of real bacon that we decided for the 3 times a year we eat bacon - the real thing is the only answer.  So this package got lost in my freezer until my recent EAT-TO-THE-BOTTOM-OF-THE-FREEZER-CHALLENGE.  You can substitute ham or sliced sandwich chicken or anything else your heart desires but the chicken bacon does make it taste really good!

Chopping the meat while partly frozen makes it easier to deal with.  Add it to the peppers and onions and let it get heated through.

You'll need one dozen free range eggs - preferably from Shalom Engedi Farms!
                                 

Beat the eggs along with 1/2 a can of evaporated milk or almond milk, or regular milk or no milk at all.  Add in 2 Tbsps of dried kale or a handful of chopped spinach or other greens.

Sprinkle home made broth powder or plain salt and pepper to the frying pan mixture.  If your frying pan is not oven safe transfer it to an oven safe dish now - a deep dish pie pan  for thicker slices would work.

Press the vegetables and meat even down into the pan and top with the egg mixture.
Top with sliced fresh tomatoes or if you don't have them canned diced tomatoes.

Sprinkle with 1 Tbsp. of parmesan cheese and bake at 350 degrees for 28 minutes or until firm. It slices really well and can be transferred to the freezer by slicing and wrapping each slice in plastic wrap and tinfoil.

Anita's Amazing Chicken & Vegetable Quiche

2 cups chopped green peppers

4 chopped onions

1 package chicken bacon or other as suggested

1 dozen eggs

1/2 can of evaporated milk

2 Tbsp. dried kale or a handful of chopped spinach

1 Tbsp. home made broth powder or just salt and pepper to taste

4 sliced tomatoes or equivalent of canned diced tomatoes

1 Tbsp. parmesan cheese

Bake at 350 degrees for 28 minutes and ENJOY YOUR EGGS!!

Springtime chores on the farm

Springtime on the farm means lots of things to do.  I am only remembering the quiet of the winter past when I had time to read - ha!  I feel in a frenzy needing to do so many tasks at once that my head is spinning and my body is aching.


Our first batch of meat birds arrived today - cute-little-balls-of-fluff.  We picked them up in their cardboard box crate at the local co-op bright and early this morning - 60 chicks in all.  They squish them in a box together so they can help keep each other warm.   When we arrived the whole store was filled with the sounds of cheeping coming from the many boxes of other customers - maybe that's why they ask you to come in early - the sound is a little intense with so many in one room.  The chicks were hatched within the last 24 hours and they can go 72 hours without food and water because they are digesting their yolk sac so although we went straight home we knew we had a few hours to spare.

We decided to use a different pen to be our brooder box this time around.  The chicks are so little we have them in a big cardboard box for a few days before we let them have the run of the whole pen.  A heat lamp is keeping them warm and toasty and they are all eating and drinking and looking very healthy.  In a few short weeks they will already be ready to head for the butcher - it's unbelievable how fast they grow!

Last week we embarked on a new venture - quail.  We bought 1 male and 5 females from a lady north of Port Perry.  Quail are very tiny birds compared to chickens and lay the most beautiful delicate spotted brown and black eggs I've ever seen.  We're going to hatch out some of their eggs to increase our flock and when the time comes we'll be putting them in the freezer as well.  Right now my kids think I bought them just so I can take pictures of their eggs!

My rhubarb is looking fabulous - I have several clumps in different places in the yard. I was planning to move it all to one spot but then decided not to in the event that tragedy would strike one part of the garden perhaps the rest would survive - that said I've never seen rhubarb killed off by anything!   It's ready to pick so I am trying out a new recipe from a friend and fellow blogger Farmgal.  It sounds delish and it supposed to taste great with beef, lamb, on sandwiches and a million other ways.  Thanks Farmgal!  See her blog here!

Rhubarb Relish

16 cups rhubarb
6 cups vinegar and 2 cups water
8 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
5 cups white sugar
5 cups brown sugar
4 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp allspice
2 tsp cloves
6 big onions

Chop rhubarb and onions, add all ingrdients, stir well,bring to a boil, turn down and simmer for 3hrs or more until thick.  Jar and process in a water bath canner for 10 minutes at 10lbs pressure.  (check your altitude for pressure in your area)

I went to visit my mom and dad this week and picked up some perennial plant divisions from mom.  We have clumps of the same flowers repeated over and over in the gardens  - lillies, hollyhocks and peonies mostly so I am looking to diversify a little!  I also bought more perennials at a plant sale last weekend so I've been busy finding homes for them all and trying to prevent the chickens from digging them up as fast as I plant them.  I resorted to a section of old wire fencing around one area - it doesn't look too pretty but they need a week or two to grow some roots. Hopefully by then the chickens will have found somewhere else to scratch and peck!

Then of course there is the vegetable garden.  It truly is The Garden of Weedin.  I got a set of coasters with gardening sayings on them as a Mother's Day gift from my hubby.  I hope this is the summer that I finally get on top of the whole veggie garden thing.  I've been working steadily at it but there are days I wish I had a weeding genie to help me!  My kids will do almost anything for me except weed and since they are so helpful in so many other ways I am OK with that.  My garden is in my front yard - not the best place for a weedy mess and certainly not what I would have chosen but for now it's what I got.  My long term goal is to make it a no-till garden a la Back To Eden. It will require some major changes and several truck loads of wood chips so for this year I will do what I can and hopefully by the fall I will be ready to get started for next year.  I'm a little behind where I wanted to be so I am still at the adding-poop part when I could have had many things planted already.  Oh well!

Superwoman I am not.  Time for a bath in some epsom salts to ease the aching muscles! 

HAPPY SPRING!

Eggs - beautiful eggs...

Green eggs - no ham.

The Kawartha Lakes Co-operative Auction Market or just-plain Woodville for short is the not-so-close-by place to go if you're looking for livestock animals.   I've only been there once.  My daughter and I were overwhelmed with the sights and sounds of animals, cars and trucks backing up filled with cages, people and farm equipment. We had only been living at the farm a few weeks and at that point our livestock consisted of all of 6 chickens - if you don't count the barn cats and the city dog.  I was so intimidated by the auction process that we didn't even get a number.  I could only imagine ending up with a cow for scratching my nose at the wrong time.  We decided to just stand and watch and hopefully learn.  Like any other auction - things moved along really fast and I wasn't quite sure how much things sold for or if it was a good deal or not.  We took the wimpy-route and headed for an area of the property where you could buy chicks and ducklings without the auction process.  We just went to look...and walked away with 4 Muscovy ducklings.  Cute little balls of fluff that we didn't have a clue about.  We went back to the car with them in a cardboard box and then scrambled to figure out what to do with them on the way home.

They lived in a hamster cage in our very-back-room (that's the addition to the addition) until the smell necessitated their removal to a more permanent home in the barn.  These ducks have been a great asset to our farm.  They eat an incredible amount of bugs, they are very entertaining in their strange head-bobbing sort of way, and they have provided us with fresh eggs and recently baby ducklings.

Sometime early this spring we were thinking about getting some more chickens but somehow a trip to Woodville just wasn't making it into the schedule with all the other things to do.  Our neighbour Ray was here rototilling the garden when he mentioned he was headed for Woodville the next weekend.  I think going to Woodville is his Saturday morning tradition and one he rarely misses.   Well the two thoughts converged and I asked him if he would mind looking around for us to see if he could find a COUPLE of Ameraucana blue/green egg laying chickens for us.  Somehow he thought "a couple" was 30 chicks.  Mercy - what was I going to do with 30 more chickens?!!  At that point we already had 40 or more.  We were really in the chicken business now!

It takes 18-22 weeks before chicks get big enough to lay eggs so we waited and waited...I had just given up on ever seeing a blue/green egg when finally we had the Dr. Seuss moment I had been waiting for.  GREEN EGGS - no ham.

Most adults would play this cool -  we have increased our egg production.  NOT ME!!  Yippee we have green eggs!!  It was worth the wait just for the coolness factor.

Almost everyone who hears about these new-fangled-eggs (that are actually old-fangled if you think about it) asks HOW COME?  So here's your birds-and-bees moment for the day.  Chickens lay eggs according to the color of…….. their EARS.  Really. Betcha didn't even know chickens HAD ears (yeah - me neither) White eared chickens like leghorns lay white eggs.  Brown eared chickens like our red-sex links lay brown eggs and black chickens with green ears (I have not personally ever seen their green ears) lay green or blue eggs.  Just for the record the roosters only part in this is fertilizing the eggs so they can hatch into chicks - he doesn't influence the color of the eggs.

So what do green eggs taste like?  Well - like an egg.  Nutritionally all the eggs on our farm would have similar nutritional quality because they all eat the same bugs, green stuff and feed. The color of the shell is just an interesting side bar.

Most of the eggs currently sold in supermarkets are nutritionally inferior to eggs produced by hens raised on pasture. That’s the conclusion that Mother Earth News has reached following completion of the 2007 Mother Earth News egg testing project. The testing has found that, compared to official U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) nutrient data for commercial eggs, eggs from hens raised on pasture may contain:

• 1/3 less cholesterol

• 1/4 less saturated fat

• 2/3 more vitamin A

• 2 times more omega-3 fatty acids

• 3 times more vitamin E

• 7 times more beta carotene

Mother Earth News also reports: We think these dramatically differing nutrient levels are most likely the result of the different diets of birds that produce these two types of eggs. True free-range birds eat a chicken’s natural diet — all kinds of seeds, green plants, insects and worms, usually along with grain or laying mash. Factory farm birds never even see the outdoors, let alone get to forage for their natural diet. Instead they are fed the cheapest possible mixture of corn, soy and/or cottonseed meals, with all kinds of additives.

Happy Chickens and Ducks at Shalom Engedi Farm -  free ranged chicken eggs - now in three colors to choose from! (that's my commercial) 

There you have it.  Green eggs - no ham - and I like them Sam I am!!  Move over Dr. Seuss!

Backyard Chickens in the City

Sometimes the waiting just GOT-TO-ME. I felt as if I was spending so much time waiting. So - we decided to get CHICKENS for our backyard. Thankfully, we live in a city where backyard chickens are legal but just because they are legal doesn't mean your neighbours will approve. We certainly got some strange looks when we announced our plans - we weren't really asking for permission but we thought giving some of them the heads up was a wise thing to do.

Thankfully, our neighbors were delighted! On one side we have a young family who moved from the country to the city so mom could be closer to school - they thought it was a great idea - they have since become our main chicken-sitters if we need to go out of town overnight. Our neighbors on the other side are an older gentleman and his wife and he had chickens as a child - he was also fascinated with the girls. He says he especially likes the quiet sounds they make. We've given away some eggs when we had an over abundance - a great way to keep goodwill happening!

If ever you think to start this little project for yourself let me tell you - start up costs for us were CRAZY! That's mostly because we're CRAZY!! We built them the nicest coop on the planet! We started with our kids old playhouse and remodeled. We had help from a dear friend Mr. Lew. He came back numerous times to make modifications to our original plan. One of the doors opened up backwards and it was very awkward so that had to be changed, we added a roof to the outdoor area so they wouldn't get rained on or snowed on, we moved their nesting boxes, added roosting bars…I think our eggs cost us about a dollar a piece at this point and since we're moving we can start all over again when we get there!



I still find it completely amazing to go out in the morning and find a little pile of fresh eggs. I feel like a proud momma - wow - they did that "all-by-theirselves"! We decided on Red Sexlinks because that's the kind you could get from the hatchery ready-to-lay. It was the best thing for us but we didn't get to see them grow up from little chicks - maybe next time. They lay the most beautiful brown eggs of all different sizes. I thought chickens laid small eggs at the beginning of their egg laying life span and the eggs got bigger as they aged - NOT. They lay teeny tiny ones and monster sized ones the next day. For those of you who do not know - YOU DO NOT NEED A ROOSTER TO HAVE EGGS. Yes, that was a surprise to me as well. I had quite a conversation with a neighbor as they tried to convince me otherwise.

One day a little boy from down-the-street came over to visit and see the chickens. He stood with his hands on his hips and said: NO WAY YOU CAN FOOL ME. THOSE ARE ROOSTERS. I KNOW WHAT ROOSTERS LOOK LIKE AND THOSE ARE ROOSTERS. He could not be convinced! I told him he could call them whatever he wanted - they laid eggs!

Both of these examples have led me to agree with many others who say: WE HAVE LOST TOUCH WITH THE SOOURCE OF OUR FOOD. Food comes from a grocery store and that's where the thinking ends. No wonder the farmers in my rural area have signs that say: Farmers feed Cities.

I am looking forward to having the space to have even more chickens. It's just one step but it has opened up a whole new world to my family and besides the EGGS ARE DELICIOUS!

My long-awaited adventure of God-proportions continues...