It was actually nice enough to grill last week, instead of this week when you barely walk outside without freezing right where you are. So, we had grilled pork chops, shells and cheese (from a box-it’s delicious!), and peas.
04.06.11 Dinner
This was awhile ago, but it was yummy!! Breakfast bake with potatoes, sausage, peppers, scrambled eggs, cheese, and guacamole. And, of course, strawberry-orange smoothies. Meg LOVES smoothies. She’ll down a 10 ounce sippy cup full before I even get our glasses filled!
04.04.11 Dinner
Bean soup (with my apologies to Andy’s Grandma Plochberger for adjustments to her recipe) and cheddar biscuits!
04.03.11 “Dinner”
After a weekend of lots of food and activity around our house (check the link for the Picasa pictures at the bottom of the page for what we did!), we were ready for something lighter last night. No work for me today, so we had a liter of Millstream Brewery’s Amber Ale with our snack supper while we watched the John Wayne version of True Grit.
03.25.11 Food
Last Saturday we enjoyed our last weekend of nothing to do for awhile by staying home and relaxing. It was wonderful!! Meg and I made banana bread in the morning with orange smoothies made with some creamsicle jelly that never jelled before Andy even got out of bed.
Then, we had meatloaf, egg noodles, and the last of the Grandma corn from last summer (I think I said we had the last of it already, but I found a rogue bag in the bottom of the freezer).
I’m going today to get seeds to start for our garden. We’re looking forward to summer’s bounty already!!
03.24.11 Dinner
More freezer/pantry clean out happening around here: Stuffed clams, the last of the carrots from last year’s garden, and noodles from a packet. We’re working hard to be fancy around here…
03.21.11 Dinner
Southwest casserole, a la Brooke T. and avocado. For once, Meg actually downed her share of the avocado. Guess this means we’ll have to get it more often if she likes it!
03.20.11 Dinner
We’re playing “clean out the pantry” at the Linsenbardt house these days in preparation for new spring and summer goodies that will hopefully soon be coming. So, we had pasta, that honestly wasn’t very good, with tomato cream sauce and bacon. Also, some fruit salad with weekend leftovers.
Chicks!
I’ve talked about raising chickens for eggs for quite awhile now. We finally have the room, facilities, and time for me to be able to start this enterprise, so I’m REALLY excited! My dad had a flock of chickens when I was a kid that finally met their demise to some rampant dogs when I was in middle school. I never really had much to do with the chickens, but we love to eat eggs and this seems like one more step to the self-sufficient lifestyle that I want to lead. If I can manage to keep these ladies alive and well, and we stay in the house for awhile longer, a couple of milking goats are the next step!
I bought 15 chicks from Orscheln’s Farm and Home in Iowa City on March 9. One of our cars was being serviced, so I had to go pick up Andy from work in Iowa City anyway, so it seemed like a good time to go ahead and pick out my chicks. The flock is 5 Rhode Island Reds, 5 California Whites, and 5 Barred Plymouth Rocks. I’m hoping to end up with 12 laying hens when they’re grown up.
I had my spring break last week, so my goal was to use the time off (and Meg was still going to day care since we had to pay for the week whether we used it or not) to modify an outbuilding into a hen house. My construction skills are not great and I, apparently, get frustrated really easily, so Andy helped me to finish up on Saturday. We still need to finish the nesting boxes, roost, and the outdoor run, but the space is usable for the flock to be enclosed in a ring while they get big enough that they won’t be able to escape through the holes in the foundation of the building. Until their move outside, they were living in a box on our back porch, which made the cat and dog more than a little nervous!
This is the building that I hodgepodged into a hen house. I didn’t want to spend a lot of money, so I tried to use mostly found wood, but I had to buy most of the wood for the door. The building has a really cool weather vane on top and a concrete slab to the side, perfect for an outdoor run. I hope to be able to let the hens “free range” in our yard in the afternoons this summer, but I’ll need to secure the garden first, so they don’t eat our veggies before we get what we need.
03.20.11 Breakfast
We didn’t have to play at church this week, so we had time for a leisurely breakfast. Pancakes with granola, and strawberries that weren’t quite ripe, so I softened them up with a tablespoon of sugar and a drizzle of orange juice.
