So much happening!

The last week has been a whirlwind of activity and insanity. My sister in law came to visit, parties were hosted and attended, last-minutes gifts were ordered, cooking, cleaning, wrapping. 

I'll give a full update soon, I promise.

So I discovered why it seemed that the chickens were slacking off. It turns out that they had a secret stash of about two dozen eggs outside their coop. 

Jay relaxing at home after we returned from vacation.

And meat prep before our party. I had purchased about a 4 pound beef tenderloin over the summer from Giant. I think it was on sale for $8 a pound or so. 

IT WAS AWESOME. Literally one of the best things I have ever made, and so simple. I wish that I had documented each step... and in hindsight, I didn't even take photos of the finished product. I'll have to make it again to post. Basically, I made a rub of salt, pepper, garlic and adobo, then slow-roasted the tenderloin at 300. I finished it by searing each side on the stovetop. I let it rest for about half an hour before slicing it thinly. Then I made a fresh horseradish and creme fraiche sauce, coupled with toast points. 

I'll post more photos from the party and Colleen's visit soon. I think.

In other news, I love the breeder that we originally chose for our Belgian Malinois puppy. However, no breeding has happened/taken since we visited in July (not necessarily his fault), and we really wanted to take our pup home by this time. So basically even if by some miracle, he has a dog bred today - we still would have no puppy until April. Which we have decided is not going to work for us.

Timing wise, it hasn't worked out. I'm evaluating several other options, and if all goes well, we may be taking home a puppy this weekend. There is a female pup who is actually Bear's daughter. I wanted a male, but I mean... her daddy is a movie star. Incredibly intelligent dog from great lines. But she comes with a hefty price tag.

There is another litter that is two weeks old, from Broadcreek Kennels. There is some negative press about them, so while they are local, I am a bit wary. They are also showline Malinois, where we wanted more of a working dog. 

And finally, I happened across a litter of pups on a commercial website, then found a Craigslist listing for the same litter. Turns out that they would have similar bloodlines as our planned original Triple E pup.

In other news, I decided to take that job offer. I gave notice at my present job last Friday. They were upset, but took the news pretty well overall. My last day with the group will be January 17th. 

I'll be taking a week off to prepare for the new job. I'll also begin studying for my Series 7 exam soon. Probably the 2nd week of January. Originally we were thinking of going diving with that week off, but that's obviously not going to work with a new puppy. 

Next year will be an exciting one for sure. Lots of challenges in 2014, but I am looking forward to them.

I haven’t had a slice of bread in three weeks

It’s probably the longest I’ve gone without having bread, rice, or pasta in my life. What I wouldn’t give for a fresh crusty piece of French bread slathered in mashed potatoes and angel hair pasta. Mmmm.

In reality, Atkins is not that bad. The first week was the worst for sure… I felt so bad on the fifth day that I had a PA at work check my blood sugar because I thought I was dying. Turned out that I just needed some delicious salty chicken broth. Your electrolytes can get all out of whack on Atkins, especially during that first week.

There have been some other discoveries, like when I realized that this delicious Caffe Breve that I’m drinking is full of carbs. Crap. I looked at a carton of half & half and assumed that they don’t put that much in the drink. Well… yeah. This drink has at least 16 grams of carbs in it. Crap. Crap. Crap. I decided to search the interwebs about the amount of carbs in a Caffe Breve and it was bad news. So no more lattes, breves or anything. From now on, I’m sticking to brewed coffee with heavy cream and sugar free sweetener.

The other discovery I’ve made is that the Atkins bars and shakes have made me stall. I bought them probably a week or week & a half into the diet when I thought I was going to die. I needed something crunchy and sweet, and they fit the bill. Depending on my cravings, I’ve been eating anywhere from 1 and 3 of those Atkins shakes/bars/treats. Well, the last week hasn’t been good. I drank too many sprite zero & vodkas at a party over the weekend and have probably not been counting carbs as well as I should. This weekend will be another challenge – a one year old’s birthday party and a fun night out with my girlfriends in Baltimore. I think that I’ll choose a drink like vodka and club soda so that I can pace myself better. Those Bacardi & diet cokes and sprite zero & vodkas just go down entirely too smoothly.

My results? The first two weeks were great! The first week I lost 4 lbs and the second week I lost 3 lbs. Week 3 = 0 pounds. In all fairness, I haven’t been great about going to the gym. I’ve only been going about once a week. Starting today, I’m going to be more disciplined. No more Atkins shakes/bars/treats or fancy coffee drinks. Gym no less than three times a week. No alcohol other than vodka & club soda – and those sparingly.

So last weekend I faced a dilemma… what to make for a party. I googled “low carb appetizers” and came up with a bunch of different recipes for stuffed mushrooms. Most of them called for mayo mixed with cheese and artichokes. YUCK. Straight mayo? No thanks, I’ll make my own concoction.

I ended up making shrimp cocktail and my own version of artichoke dip stuffed mushrooms. Both were gone in fifteen minutes… so I’d say that people liked them!

Here is the recipe… it was incredibly simple!

Artichoke Dip Stuffed Mushrooms

Ingredients:

 8 oz softened cream cheese

1 cup Italian blend cheese – parmesan, romano & asiago

14 oz. can of artichoke hearts

2 lbs baby bella mushrooms, cleaned & stems removed

This made about 40 stuffed mushrooms with 1/4 cup of dip leftover.

Drain and finely chop artichoke hearts. I removed a few of the outer leaves if they were too fibrous.

Mix cream cheese, artichokes & cheese.

Stuff mixture into mushroom caps.

Bake on foil-lined tray at 425 for 25-30 minutes, until tops begin to brown.

Enjoy!

Official Party Business

Our Green Carpet Unveiling party is tomorrow, and I’m starting to freak out. We’re going to have between 40 and 50 people coming. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it will be like other parties we’ve had and people will be staggered throughout the day (there’s certain to be lots of staggering by the end).

I have a 16 pound pork shoulder, 5 pounds of London Broil, ~3 qts of buffalo chicken dip, however many mini quiches I can make, 6 lbs of burgers, 4 or 5 lbs of hot dogs, 60 deviled eggs, 100 oysters, 8 lbs of macaroni salad, 10 lbs of potato salad, 4 pounds of cheese, hopefully enough bruschetta (I bought 4 pints worth of tomatoes to make it), and….??? I think that’s all. We’re making Grown-up Arnold Palmers… Sweet Tea Vodka & Lemonade, 2 cases of pumpkin ale for slutty pumpkins (pumpkin ale w/ vanilla vodka in a cinnamon & sugar rimmed glass), 4 30-packs of Miller Lite, plus some wine. OH! And I’m also making mini ice cream sandwiches… homemade vanilla ice cream sandwiched between chocolate chip cookies. Last night I scraped the vanilla beans and infused ice cream with the vanilla. I found that working with vanilla beans is kind of a PITA.

All of our dishes except for the burgers and hot dogs are being made with local ingredients. I’m pretty happy about that. I hope that it comes out in the taste. The meats came from Cedar Run in Sudlersville, the oysters are coming from Choptank Oyster Company in Cambridge, cheese is from Chapel's Country Creamery in Easton, any egg dish came from our chickens, milk products came from Nice Farms Creamery in American Corner, and other various ingredients came from Clayton Farms in Denton. So basically everything came from within about 30 miles of our house. Pretty cool.

Now if we can somehow pull this all off in the next 24 hours, I will be a happy camper. I’m praying that the weather holds out for us. We’ve been incredibly lucky in the past during all of our parties being on beautiful days. Let’s hope that trend continues!

The farm is coming along

We have our first green beans! I didn’t even realize that they were growing until I was weeding yesterday and saw something weird coming off of the plant. It looks like we will be having green beans with dinner this weekend. :)

Our cucumbers are going to be crazy this year – there are about 20 blossoms on our plants and some baby cukes are growing already. We are going to try making pickles this year. I found some recipes for fridge pickles as well as canned pickles. I suppose that we’ll be trying the fridge pickles first. That should be a fun project while my sister in law is visiting.

The chickens are about 8 weeks old now and get bigger every day. At first we were allowing them access to the garden, but then they started eating all of our plants. So chickypoos are now banned from the garden, although one or two seem to find a way to get stuck in there every day. I’m hoping that once their permanent run is constructed that they’ll be less likely to want to get in to the garden. We should be getting our reward of fresh eggs in about 2 months. Supposedly our black stars will start producing eggs at 16 weeks, which is July 29^th. Our silkies (the white fuzzy chickens - Mouse and Dresdy) aren't very smart and are definitely near the bottom of the pecking order... but they are so freaking cute and SOFT. They feel like bunnies! We've been trying to make the chickens more tame by handfeeding them treats and petting them. When they hear the back door open and see someone, they all come running. It's pretty adorable.

Here is Jay having a mealworm frenzy with the chickypoos

As I think I mentioned before, we are planning to have a green carpet unveiling. It seems that the party keeps getting pushed back to later in the year. When Jay and I talked about a date, it now seems that our party will be at the beginning of October. I really wanted to still have fresh tomatoes to make bruschetta for our party, but I suppose that I could can my bruschetta mixture. Who knows, I may still have tomatoes in October. I sure hope so!  I found this recipe for canning bruschetta that I will probably try out:  http://motherskitchen.blogspot.com/2008/08/bruschetta-in-jar.html

Part of the fun of the party that I’m planning is that I want to use all (or at least mostly) locally-sourced ingredients. I’m sure that most of the firemen sure to be at our party won’t appreciate it, but I know that most of my friends (and the firemen’s wives and girlfriends) will enjoy it.

Here is the first draft of the menu... we may add or remove some items:

Chips & Salsa (fresh made salsa from our garden vegetables)

Deviled eggs (fresh from our chickens)

Duck w/ goat cheese, shallots, apples wrapped in phyllo (locally sourced duck and goat cheese, if I can find them – shallots from our garden, apples from a local orchard)

Bruschetta (fresh made from our garden on homemade bread)

Buffalo chicken dip (we’ll tell everyone it’s an unlucky chicken)

Salad (not sure on this one yet, but we have Bibb lettuce growing in the pallet garden)

Quiche (made with our eggs and garden vegetables)

Pulled pork (from Cedar Run cattle, a local farm)

London broil (also from Cedar Run)

Sandwich rolls

Fresh pickles from garden

Chocolate chip cookies

Brownies

I want to have a signature cocktail and do a twist on Long Island Iced Tea. I'm trying to think of a fun name to call it – Delmarva Iced Tea sounds kind of lame. I’m going to experiment with it, but it’s going to be some kind of peach sweet tea with a kick. I’ll probably make it with peaches, peach nectar, vodka or rum, and iced tea.

I’m also in the process of attempting to grow rosemary from cuttings. We have a rosemary bush that is completely out of control, and I was thinking that it would be nice to give little potted rosemary plants to our guests. There will be a little sign that says, “Take a piece of our garden home with you.”

Please disregard the neighbor's overgrowth on the left. We're planning to send a formal complaint letter to the county so that he will finally have take care of it. He hasn't taken care of his property in years and told us the one or two times that he stopped by that he was planning to mow his yard. Uhh, yeah. It's not much fun to constantly battle his foliage, plus it's a haven for mosquitoes.  

Some more exciting news on the home front - we should have our siding completed sometime around July. This should fix our leaky family room window situation, which I'm pretty concerned about because of the weather forecast for tonight:

THERE IS THE POTENTIAL FOR SOME STRONG TO SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS
LATE THIS AFTERNOON AND TONIGHT AS A COLD FRONT ARRIVES. ANY
STRONGER THUNDERSTORM COULD BE CAPABLE OF PRODUCING LOCALLY
DAMAGING WINDS AND HAIL. IN ADDITION, HEAVY RAIN COULD ACCOMPANY
THIS SYSTEM WHICH MAY RESULT IN LOCALIZED BUT BRIEF FLOODING. AT
THIS TIME, THE GREATER CHANCE FOR A SEVERE THUNDERSTORM APPEARS TO
BE ACROSS DELAWARE AND MARYLAND TO PERHAPS INTO SOUTHEASTERN
PENNSYLVANIA.

Jay sealed up the chicken coop today, which was having some leaking issues along the back of the coop. So hopefully our chickypoos will be safe and dry tonight.

I'm planning to post a recipe soon, but that's it for now.