Devilishly Good Eggs

The chickens have been laying eggs regularly. As you can see the blue/green eggs are about half the size of store-bought white eggs and Henrietta's brown egg is a little bit bigger than the blue/green eggs, but still smaller than those from the grocer.

Pete fixed some eggs with his hamburger the other day and didn't think they tasted any better or worse than store-bought. Well, the chickens are just beginners. I'm sure they will soon be producing eggs that will be sought out by gourmands around the world. In the meantime, we had enough to make a nice egg dish for us.

After some consideration, I decided deviled eggs would be a perfect dish for Halloween. I looked for a festive recipe online and was delighted by a site devoted to deviled eggs called The Deviled Egg Gourmet.  There are some great tips and tricks on preparing deviled eggs on this site.

I started cooking the eggs at the Savory Centre (the name of our stove) and perused the website for an interesting take on deviled eggs. There is a really good step-by-step guide for the best way to boil eggs on The Deviled Egg Gourmet as well.

In the end, I decided to combine a few recipes to make the egg yolks a little bit colorful with a slight bite.  I used pimento in hopes that the yellow would turn orange - that didn't happen. I added horseradish to spice up the taste - that was good. The spider tops are made from kalamata olives.

Henrietta's Halloween Deviled Eggs

6 hard boiled egg yolks

2 T mayonnaise

2 T finely chopped onion

2 T roasted red peppers

2 t horseradish

salt and pepper to taste

Mix ingredients and pipe or spoon into hard boiled egg whites. Top with slices of black olives.

Loons and Goons

Orange Loon by Derrick Higgins

Mercer's loons and goons celebrated Halloween on Friday afternoon.  I couldn't get home in time, but Pete was good enough to make it downtown in time for the pet costume contest at Aunt Esther's Attic. The Weimaraners didn't participate, but there were a lot of fun dog costumes.

In Mercer folks don't limit the fun to dogs, all kinds of pets get into the Halloween spirit, including fish and birds.

Members of the Woods and Blooms Garden Club were at the Pocket Park giving out free s'mores.

Ginny, Bev, Kathy, Jan and Shari

Eggcellent!

Pete found an egg in the chicken house on Thursday - the chickens' first egg!  Well, one of the chickens first egg. We're not sure which one.

Was it . . .

Pearl?

Or, what about . . .

Flora?

How about. . .

Henrietta?

We know it wasn't Henrietta. She is a Red Star chicken and should lay brown eggs. What's more, she seems to be having a hard time getting the idea of what her laying box is for. I think she believes it is a litter box.
Pearl and Flora are both Araucana chickens. Araucanas lay bluish green eggs - just like the one Pete found.

The egg was inside the hen house, but all the chickens were in the yard and none of them were doing a victory dance.

It's a mystery and as of today there are two!

Oh My, It's Pie

It started with a Granny Smith apple tree near Williams Electric and a little inspiration from Bayfield's Apple Festival.

Pete conferred with Gwen on an apple pie recipe and took off early Sunday to gather the ingredients from Snow's. We already had the apples from the tree beside Williams Electric.

Let the preparation begin!

Pete peeling apples.

Maddie Jo enjoys apple peelings.

Gracie thinks she
might enjoy one too.

Peelings for all pups.

Asher doesn't want
to be left out.

Preparing the crust.

Oh my, two pies.
One with lard, one without.

They went into the 400 degree oven for 15 minutes and then for 45 minutes at 350 degrees.  The house smelled heavenly. When they came out of the oven the dogs could not ignore them.

"Are these for us? One for you and one for me."

"No, little dogs, those aren't for you."

"I'm not looking at them."

"Maybe just a little taste."

Apples Today

The 50th Annual Apple Festival is going on this weekend in Bayfield.  Pete and I made the drive up on Friday. The leaves were still at their peak and the town was just beautiful.

A festive downtown
I didn't know there were
dolphins in the Lake

Pete enjoyed an apple dumpling

We walked down the street and listened to the music of the Blue Canvas Orchestra, tasted apple treats and meandered through the crafts.

The Bay was colorful

and so were the
town's gardens

The visit wouldn't be complete without buying some apples.

On the way home from Bayfield we stopped and picked out a few pumpkins for Halloween.

Lots of pumpkins to choose from

Pete pays for
our pumpkins

Along with two pumpkins we purchased an acorn squash for dinner. I got out my trusty Alice Waters cookbook from Chez Panisse, Vegetables, to check on the baking time and temperature.

In doing so I found out that Ms. Waters enjoys baking the squash with cloves of garlic stuck into the flesh.  I took her tip and added to it.  After halving and scooping out the seeds I filled the two halves with garlic, sauteed onions and BUTTER! I baked the squash skin side down in a baking dish with about 1/4" of water (so the skin wouldn't burn) for 45 minutes at 400 degrees.

The squash was delicious, but what I'm really looking forward to is Pete's apple pie. He and Gwen have already had a telephone conference to discuss the ingredients and the methods. Today he is off to the store to get a few things, then this afternoon the house should be filled with apple pie aroma.  More on that later.

Chip Chip Hooray

It starts out with a pile of sticks and branches collected from the woods. The goal is to minimize the pile with Chip, the chipper.  Chip is my favorite piece of lawn equipment. Today I needed to make enough chips to cover the area between two raised-bed gardens. It took about an hour to collect the pile of sticks and I will probably need another pile of equal size.

A carpet of cardboard.

My colleagues at the Chamber of Commerce have been giving me all the empty cardboard boxes for a month now.  I use them to cover the grass between the raised beds - a weed barrier. The plan is to cover the cardboard with chips.

Pete starts up the chipper.

Maddie Jo watches

In about an hour the pile was gone and the area was covered with an inch thick layer of chips.

Another inch, another day. Maddie toasts the progress with Pete.

Cheers