Monday, May 21, 2012

We have chickens!

So we are now the proud new parents of triplets!  Furry, messy, curious little baby chickens.  After finding out there are more varieties of chickens then I ever knew, we decided on Blue Wyandottes.  
Millie did a great job helping to take care of them the first week and a half while we kept them indoors in a cage with a heat lamp.
Mike discovered that they loved to sit on his shoulder.  
He made an amazing little chicken coop where our three new members of the family will live and hopefully start giving us some tasty eggs in the next few months!
Free ranging in their new home.


Millie is in charge of naming them.  She named one Lucky, but I think she wants to wait until the other two get a bit bigger before deciding on any more names.  And I am happy to say, we had over a week of hot, sunny weather!

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Farm Fresh Southern Living by Tammy Algood

This is a beautiful, soft cover cookbook full of delicious recipes of the south using fresh ingredients found from the garden, u-pick farms and road side stands.
You'll find lots of photographs of the recipes on many of the pages.  The author always includes a small blurb above the recipe highlighting her feelings about the meal, how often she makes it, how she serves it, etc.
Another treat to this cookbook is that it highlights those fresh farm ingredients.  There is an entire page dedicated to honey, which local southern farm sells it and lots of interesting things about that ingredient. You'll find highlights on cucumbers, goat cheese, peaches, tomatoes, onions, pecans, grits and grains, pumpkins, blueberries and many more items. 
Scattered throughout the book, are names, addresses and websites of some great farms and farmer's markets located throughout the South.  I only wish I wasn't so far off here in the Pacific Northwest!  Despite that this book focuses on southern cooking and southern farmer's markets, I love the recipes and the farm fresh foods that were used.  The photos were great, too.  No matter where you live in the U.S., you can find great farm fresh ingredients to make any recipe in this book.  If you love food, then you'll also enjoy reading about those highlighted ingredients. That really made this cookbook a keeper for me!
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.