April 2022 - Coming Home to Eden

Pizzelles

Posted on April 23, 2022April 23, 2022 by ginamcmanig

Okay folks…going to get a little naughty here. I have had a little trouble with sugar over the years. It is my addiction. Some folks drink and do drugs…I like me some sugar. Pizzelles are one of my weak spots. I love them. There will be many other posts on healthy life choices I promise. In this post, I will honor my paternal grandmother Rose. I debated on sharing this recipe because I am Italian and we are kind of funny about those things. I wanted it to be special for my girls. However, here I am sharing it with the world. I thought my family would really like this one. I have altered the recipe anyway.

This is my grandma Rose with her two oldest children. The year was…a long time ago. I am unsure on that one.

My grandma Rose lived in the house I grew up in, in Syracuse, NY. She moved south to Florida and my parents took over the house at some point. I didn’t see her often but she used to send us the most delicious grapefruits which she grew in her back yard. I didn’t care for the oranges. Sorry grandma, they were too sweet for my taste. Those grapefruits however were amazing. Growing up in NYS you don’t get to sample many varieties of grapefruits. You get white and pink from the grocery store. The white ones were bitter. Grandmas were so different. They were thin skinned, tart and delicious. They were not bitter at all. Oh how I wish I knew what variety they were. If you know me, you know I am an investigator type. I even looked up the house grandma lived in (she has passed several years ago) to see if I could contact the new owners to get some seeds or a cutting. To my utter dismay someone cut down the trees and put in a pool.

When I was a kid, I remember visiting grandma in Florida. She would make me lots and lots of fresh squeezed grapefruit juice…as much as I would like. She also made me pizzelles. By chance you do not know what pizzelles are, they are a bland, crisp Italian cookie made with a press or pizzelle iron. They are delicious to me and my family.

Grandma Rose was a spunky little petite lady full of life. She was always working on something. I remember her as an older lady sitting outside our second story windows to clean them. She wasn’t afraid to tell you her opinion either. While I didn’t get her petite size…okay, I got the petite height…just not the width, lol…I have plenty of her spice. I also continue on her tradition of making pizzelles for my family.

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I got this new cookbook about 4 years ago with plastic slide in sheets to protect the recipes. I really like it. I hope it keeps the recipes I use safe for my girls and maybe their children one day.

Excuse my spelling errors and pen over pencil 😉

My variation: I use whole ground organic unbleached spelt flour. I get that locally through Regional Access. The Grindstone Farm picks up there. I use avocado oil in place of the butter from Aldi and add in 2 Tablespoons of nutritional yeast and 1/2 a teaspoon of salt. This combination gives a nice buttery flavor without the dairy. I prefer 2 teaspoons of almond extract instead of the anise & vanilla. I get my extracts from my local co-op most of the time. Sometimes I toss in some flax meal too. My batter is dark because I use unbleached ingredients. Some notes: Do not use extra virgin olive oil…it does not taste good in this recipe. The flavor is too strong. Regular olive oil is fine. Coconut oil isn’t my favorite in this recipe. They tend to brown too fast. DO NOT WALK AWAY while using the iron. They cook very quickly. I overcook a few just about every time because I try to multitask. Don’t do the dishes 😉 Wait.

I have the Chef’s Choice Pizzelle Pro maker. I make these for the kids birthdays, road trips, etc. Or just because… but I am trying not to do that these days!

This dough was made with sifted spelt flour. You can see there is a big difference in color.

You can use a stand mixer if you want but I generally use a batter bowl and a whisk. They whip up fine that way. I do love to use cooling racks. I use these things for everything. You will see them in many posts from basic food uses to holding sterilized canning jars to curing soap, lol. I prefer the stackable. I like Pampered Chef the best as they have a smaller grate pattern so you don’t tend to loose as much food but the first ones I linked work well for most things.

Pizzelles cool and harden quickly. You can shape them if you work fast…and don’t mind burning your hands! You can use them as an easy canolli shell (I use a fat stubby piece of dowel) or make cones out of them.

These dress up a table nicely in a long skinny basket. I hope I have inspired you to make pizzelles for your family! Enjoy! Once in a while that is…and maybe think of my grandma and smile.

B is for Butterfly

Posted on April 23, 2022April 23, 2022 by ginamcmanig

This chalkboard drawing was from years ago when we started homeschooling. As weather warms and I begin planting, I am reminded of butterflies. We happened to find caterpillars in our garden on our carrot greens this year in Autumn which sparked this experience.

We rigged up a house for the caterpillars with some tulle and embroidery hoops and a bowl. We added some sticks and some carrot tops which they were found on for food. It was fun and exciting to check on them daily.

We of course made a study out of the experience. It did not take long for the caterpillars to form their chrysalises. It was really fun to watch first hand.

Soon the transformation was complete and we found these beautiful Black Swallowtail butterflies where the chrysalises had been.

The butterflies were slow moving at first. I can imagine they must be exhausted after such a transformation!

As they emerged, we gently let them crawl onto our hands to release them. They were not very interested in flying away. I imagine they were tired and taking in their new shape as well as their new surroundings. This allowed us to fully engage in the beauty of the process.

This gentle creature allowed us the honor of observing this beautiful experience.

Such a beautiful creature I can share my garden with <3

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Some of the materials from our home library that add to this educational observation:

Mary Azarian is one of my favorite children’s book illustrators. I especially love A Farmer’s Alphabet.

Another of our favorite illustrators is Gyo Fujikawa. A to Z Picture Book is lovely.

We love all the books Dianna Hutts Aston & Sylvia Long have in this series for young children. A Butterfly is Patient is a great book for this topic.

For older children Maryjo Koch has some awesome books. Dragonfly Beetle Butterfly Bee is a great book.

Here is a nice matching game we use. I did add the names of the butterflies on the cards as the game uses males and females to match which was too hard for a young child in my opinion. Butterfly Wings: A Matching Game.

Nature Anatomy is a nice resource.

I like these old Simon & Schuster books: Children’s Guide to Insects and Spiders. I like the illustrations.

Here are a couple extras that we have just added to our library. We have not read these yet. These are from The Good & The Beautiful homeschool curriculum company. We use some of their curriculum.

I hope I have inspired you to learn more about butterflies with your loved ones! Happy Exploring!

Apple Preservation

Posted on April 22, 2022April 23, 2022 by ginamcmanig

Apples. What do we think of when we think of apples? I think of cool crisp Autumn days. Fireplaces ablaze to take the chill off. The smell of smoke in the air. And in our home, the sweet, heavenly scent of apples fragrant fruit wafts throughout the house as we preserve the bounty.

We make and can lots of sauce with the apples. We also make and can apple pie filling. We freeze apple crisp filling too. We make apple pie jam. With the sauce we often make apple leather. This allows us to enjoy those delicious apples year round in many ways!

I like to roast my apples for sauce. In my opinion, the flavor is much better than that of steaming them. The sugar concentrates and the sauce has a wonderful flavor. I do not add anything to my sauce. It is delicious as is. These beautiful red fleshed apples are Almatas.

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After roasting until soft as you see here, I run the apples through my **Kitchen Aid** mill. The mill makes light work of making sauce. All I do is wash and half or quarter the apples and roast them. The mill spits out the skins and seeds. This attachment is actually called a **Fruit & Vegetable Strainer**. I do use the **wide tray** too. I have used this set up for more than a decade.

From this point I either can my sauce in a **water bath canner** or make leather. We ALWAYS have some fresh off the mill. It always tastes SO good that way!

My kids love fruit leather. I always make apple leather during apple season. It is a great way to take applesauce on the road! I love my Excalibur dehydrator. I have used mine for so many things since 2014. For leather you will need sheets in your dehydrator.

I like to can sauce in quarts and pints for our family of four living at home. Apple pie filling in pints and jam in 8 ounce jars. I love the seeing my pantry fill with food for the year! Happy preserving!

Hatching Chicks

Posted on April 22, 2022April 23, 2022 by ginamcmanig

This year for the first time, we hatched our own baby chicks. We decided with the world the way it is, it would be a good investment to make in our own food security. I have never been interested in hatching eggs before. I am a big believer in nature. Every year our hens hatch out their own babies. THEY are much better chick mothers than any human I know…they are chickens! It is SO MUCH easier to let hens hatch out and rear their babies. It requires nothing from us humans other than to let them sit on a clutch of eggs. Let’s not forget about having a rooster. The eggs need to be fertilized eggs in order to produce a baby chick. After a momma hen sits of her clutch of fertilized eggs for 21 days, they will hatch. Momma usually sits for about two days once the hatching begins then abandons any remaining eggs in order to tend to the needs of her hatchlings. Watching a momma with her babies is beautiful…chickens, humans, any type! Momma hens protect their babies fiercely from other chickens. They teach them what to eat and drink and where to find it. They keep them warm and safe. They teach them how to be chickens!

So, this year with shipping issues, we decided it would be best to have our own incubator. We had lost 11 of our new hens to a predator. Instead of having to have more pullets shipped in the mail, we would hatch out our own. At least this way the birds would not have the stress of shipping. Everything would still need to be done to mimic having a mother hen, but that was okay with us in this situation. We already have everything for that.

Every time we have bought chickens for either meat or eggs, we have bought day old chicks which are hatched in a giant incubator and shipped in the mail to our home. Pretty horrible trip for the little things being tossed around for a couple days in the mail just after hatching. No mamma hen. Hatched, sexed, boxed, sent. So, not the best way, BUT necessary for us to start our own flock.

We have a child who is sensitive to corn and soy. She started reacting to eggs since this is what chickens are fed. Corn and soy, whether organic, free ranged, or not. All of them are fed corn and soy. I did a lot of research on this and we decided to raise our own without corn and soy. We were successful. My daughter was able to eat eggs without reacting.

I went online and asked around in some groups I was in to see what incubator others recommended. The Nurture Right 360 was recommended over and over so this is what we bought. I really liked that we could watch the whole process. It is very much automated for ease of use. It maintains temperature, humidity, and rotates the eggs. It has external water fill and you can simply unplug the turner at lockdown time. It made things very easy.

We bought shipped eggs to replace the birds we had lost. See the pictured eggs with marker on them. They were beautiful BUT I DO NOT recommend buying shipped eggs for hatching. It significantly reduces their viability. I learned that a little too late. For the price of hatching eggs and the poor hatch rate associated with shipped eggs, I would rather either find someone local or buy chicks online. It was not worth it for our purposes. That was our first experience with hatching. Our second experience was with our own barnyard mix. We hatched these for our neighbor. That went better. We used a dry hatch method the first two times.