Sorry, just can't help myself.

I know... every one sees signs of spring. I, for one, can never get enough.
Spring is simply my very favorite time of year.

These have been here in the yard since my great grandmother planted them, sometime after the turn of the century... well, the turn of the century between the 1800's and the 1900's. Though I never had the pleasure of meeting her, I've been gifted annually of many things that her hands planted. Not sure what these are, even, but they're delightful. I've tried a number of times to identify them, with no success.



Delicate apple blossoms, the promise of apples in the fall.


Nothing says "Spring" like this...





This is a very simple, plain clematis. Sweet and old fashioned, it tumbles over a shepherds hook, above the fish pond. Palest of pink, in the earliest days of spring, it's always a surprise to find it in full bloom... none of that a bloom here and a bloom there for this plant... it's covered, quite suddenly, and a lovely sight to behold.




This is a deciduous Azalea... in a most vibrant orange. It's simply stunning every single year. I was introduced to this plant by my Uncle Hugh, an amazing gardener and a generous kind soul who played an important part in my upbringing.

First fruits!

Well, not fruits exactly... fresh lettuce, like nothing you'll ever taste from a store.
This is Park's Organic Mixed Salad Bowl. Tonight for dinner we had a homemade cheese pizza and a salad that was simply a bowl of this beautiful greenness and a small amount of dressing.


One of my first memories of growing anything was radishes. Spicy and with a bit of a bite, I love them simply washed and dipped in salt. These first radishes vary widely in size. The reason that I picked the smaller ones are that their green parts were already displaying the desire to 'bolt' or set seed, meaning it's time to eat the radish or simply leave it and let it go to seed.

There's nothing quite like picking dinner from the garden, especially that first time in the spring.
Both of these veggies can be grown by anyone, anywhere. Lettuce mixes and radishes are happy container plants if you don't have a 'back forty' to turn. Give it a try this spring and see how good they taste~!

Kitties !

Spring isn't right on a farm, without that amazing moment when you find the kittens.

Farms need barn cats, for a lot of things, like rodent control, but most of all, they give the place a sort of 'je ne sais quois'. You need a cat, or four, for all the moments in life when you NEED someone to climb up in your lap and purr. (and frankly, sometimes you need a cat that will lick your sleeping husband's bald head, but that's the subject for another post)

So, Sunday morning, after a week of watching 'sis' approach near exploding scales of cat pregnancy, this is what I found...

And these are the babies at 24 hours. Fat, lazy, well developed, laid back little pussycats.


Side note... "Sis" was tossed out on a country road (yes, MY country road!). I saw her for TWO days before I could no longer drive by. When I stopped the car and opened the door and stepped out, she climbed right up my leg, screaming her little head off. I was convinced she was probably rabid. She naturally came right 'home'.

How she came to be named sis... uhm.... she's a little loud, and very persisitant, insistant and intense. She's bright and always on the go. She's effective at her 'job' here on the farm. About 10 minutes into her life here, as the boys stood and scratched their heads, one of them (who shall remain nameless) said "geez.... she's just like sis..." and the rest, as they say, is history.
With deepest apologies to my darling daughter, who's qualities far outweigh those of the 'sis cat' and whose presence in our life is without doubt central to our very life breath.\

Same song, second verse....

So, every morning, I take the kid to school, and drive back through the park. I've done this for... well...19 years... and there are NO dull boring mornings... none. I LOVE where I live. I love the morning air, the way it feels and smells, and the softness of it in the earliest of spring.

Anyway,,, yesterday morning, I was driving back home and it struck me that the fog rolling off the river was doing so in the brightest of sunbeams.. which is a little different. The light was beautiful... and the air was crisp and really cold for April. It was just a little bit above freezing and I shivered while traipsing about the river bank.

So, I'm sharing what I saw with the notion that we can find beauty in every place and all around and that we should take a moment to 'collect it' in our minds. To drive on by and miss this would have been a waste... to start my day with three minutes spent soaking it in is one of those 'quality' moments.






The road hone...

Life...

Sometimes, life's adventures take up more time than allows for writing.

Here on the farm, we've recently dealt with illness, much rain, a new job, death of a much loved animal and some general re-evaluating and restructuring life and times as we know it.

More about those things later, perhaps, but in the meantime...

...signs of spring on the farm.












Beautiful reminders of how life cycles around fresh and new each spring... pale green, fragile in appearance, but actually strong it it's desire to preserve itself for the future.

Assignment

Today, I give you an assignment.

Write a brief, concise and sincere thank-you to someone who means the world to you.
This may be someone who realizes this, or someone that you've not shared this with till now.
Say what they mean to you.

Email it, handwrite and mail it, or really, even txt it...

Life is short. While blessings are many, we often fail to express it to the people that mean the most.

English Muffins

English Muffins rank way up there among favorite breakfast foods with my 'boys'.
My youngest especially is quite self sufficient with his breakfast when we have them on hand.
I encourage self-sufficiency at all time. (very big grin)

Recently, the price of the store bought English Muffins has escalated. Even the store brands are in the price range of $2.50 for six muffins. A teenage boy, ONE teenage boy, can eat 6 muffins in a maximum of two days. Double the teenage boys, add a husband, eat one yourself... I'm sure you can see my point, both financially and from the standpoint of quality of what you serve your family.

Oh, I am so not inclined to pay these prices, especially for something that contains preservatives and has been sitting around refrigerated for weeks.

Recently, I've had a particularly good run with my sourdough starter. Unlike folks who can keep starters for years and years, I tend toward starting one up and keeping it going in the winter months and abandoning it entirely in the summer. But this particular one has been very flavorful, easy to maintain and good.

Now, I've made English Muffins from scratch before and have a good recipe for that, as well, but decided to try my hand at sourdough English muffins.

And the results (made them 3 times) were pretty darned good. AND, of significant importance to me is that for very little effort and time, I produced between 16 and 19 muffins each time for a total expenditure of less than $1 each time I made them.

Warm off the griddle, they're unsurpassed. Popped into a gallon ziploc, they've kept as long as they lasted. I froze two to see how they held up and they were very, very good, split, toasted and buttered of a morning.

So, this is what it looks like... recipe to follow.

They are a fairly fast 'mix'. I have left it a pretty soft dough, sometimes soft enough to make it a little difficult to cut into muffins.

You mix up the 'mother' and sit it to rise. It can rise overnight, or all day, or just 4 or 5 hours, whatever suits your schedule. It should about double in size and be a very spongy thing that looks a bit stringy and gooey when stirred. I cover my mother for these muffins, so I use a large red plastic bowl with a fitted lid. ( I will snag a photo of this the next time I make muffins)

Whenever it suits me, I mix up the muffins using the mother, cut them out and let them rise. Depending on the temperature of your kitchen, this takes 3 to 5 hours. You're gonna need to check them every hour or so, to determine how the rise is going. More about that later.

As a cutter, I use the time honored 'tuna can'. It is the perfect English muffin cutter.
If you don't have a tuna can which has been cleverly repurposed as a muffin cutter, please feel free to make some tuna salad for lunch or give the cat a treat. Plain and simple, tuna can cutter is the way to go.

You also want to dust your work surface and your rise surface fairly generously with corn meal. I used white corn meal, it's what I had on hand. I used a sheet of wax paper during the rise phase. While it isn't necessary, it makes lifting the soft muffins easier. You get far less 'distortion' and weird shaped muffins, at least that first few times you try it.

There's a little trick to the 'rise time' on muffins. You want them to rise so that they are at their peak. Then you get all those nice little nooks and crannies that soak up whatever goodness you put on them. You want to 'maximize' the nook and cranny factor. There is a point at which they 'crash' or simply 'give it up' and they are done. If this happens, you're gonna need to start over. If you don't start over, and cook them anyway, just don't tell anyone that they were supposed to be English muffins. Pretend you have invented a new 'roll' recipe! The top of the muffin, as it approaches perfection should be slightly domed, as the ones in the photo.

When this phase is reached you're gonna 'bake' them on a skillet or covered pan of some sort. I use my tired old electric skillet for a couple of reasons. It works beautifully each and every time, and it fits on the counter, kind of out of the way, as I usually get the muffins to this phase while I'm also cooking dinner. (So, dinner may be at 7:30 instead of 6, depending on the rise of the muffins) A good dinner plan this evening is anything with a long baking time in the oven or a slow cooker selection.

In my experience, it is important to 'bake' each side for the two separate times. You always end up with far more beautiful muffins with a nice 'nook and cranny' quotient.


The recipe made around 18 for me, so it took two 'rounds' of this type to complete the batch. With minimal attendance by me, the time frame for two batches was an hour.

Timing is one of those things that keeps a lot of folks from trying such a thing. Again, this hour was spent in and about the kitchen, making dinner and occasionally flipping the muffins.

As they are done, you need to cool them. The original recipe that I started with made a huge deal about exact times for cooling. With two batches, folks, that's a pain! I simply laid the first batch out on the cookie sheet to cool, while I baked the second batch. By the time I had finished, there had been several 'walkby muffin snatchings" and I had far less muffins to deal with. When they were all relatively room temp, I popped them into a gallon ziploc. The moisture in the muffins will sort of evenly distribute overnight and they'll be perfect.



I have yet to need to figure out the perfect timing for storing them. They disappear that fast.

And if you simply don't need 18 muffins (not even stored in the freezer), pop some on a plate and trot them over to your neighbor's house. They'll love you even more.

Recipe:

Sourdough English Muffins

2 cups flour (I used a combination of bread flour and white wheat, sometimes I throw in a handful of whole wheat)

1 cup sourdough starter
1 cup of buttermilk

Mix these ingredients thoroughly. It makes a very wet sticky dough. This is the 'mother' or 'madre' or sponge. Cover this tightly to retain the moisture and wllo it to rise overngiht, or until it has coubled. When it's ready, it will be frothy and easily stirred.

To the mother you will add:

2 tablespoons of sugar
2 tablespoons of melted butter
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon of baking soda
Flour - an additional 3/4 to 1 cup

Stir, then knead, using extra flour if needed, but you want to maintain a nice soft, almost wet dough.

Sprinkle your work surface with corn meal and put your dough on it. Flip flop the dough to get both sides covered with enough cornmeal so that it doesn't stick. Roll it about 1/2 inch thick.
Check the measurement the first time or two... 1/2 inch is about perfect.

Cut with the tuna can cutter. Transfer cut muffins to a place to rise. I use a sheet of wax or parchment paper on a cookie sheet (and when I ended up with more than I expected, the lid of the bowl that I used to mix them up in). You're gonna want to generously dust that rising surface with some more corn meal. Let them rise until doubled in thickness, a bit more than an inch tall. If the room is warm, it happens fairly quickly, a cooler room requires more rise time. If they 'over-rise' they'll 'fall' and your texture will be lost. Try to avoid that. You want to catch them just as they're a little over an inch tall and the top is still domed... If they start to sag at all, go ahead and cook them.

Bake them in a covered skillet at 325 degrees. If you're not using an electric skillet, you'll have to guess where this is, on your stovetop, in the grand scheme of low/medium/hot. Bake them on each side for exactly 10 minutes (20 minutes total) then flip them again, for another 5 minutes on each side (another 10 minutes total). Each side of the muffin will have baked for two sessions, but a total of 15 minutes. It works much better for texture and appropriate color to do the two different timed 'flips. I actually use a timer on this, as I am easily distracted during the 10 minute time frame.

Cool them at room temperature and place in a ziploc bag. If your muffins are dry at all, then the next time you bake them, remember to keep the dough 'almost sticky' soft and put them in the ziploc before they are cool, so that they 'steam' a bit in the bag.

Go ahead... give it a try. You'll save a lot of money and get a muffin that is so tasty and good that you will no longer want a store bought one...