While in Atlanta I took some time yesterday afternoon to go to the area called Westside. There was a funky place called The Goat Farm that was a bunch of abandoned old industrial buildings that were now artist spaces and a really cool coffee house. And yes, there were still a few goats.
Jim absolutely hates breakfast for dinner in any shape or form. He just doesn’t seem to understand it, but it was a favorite treat when I was a kid and my mother made us swedish pancakes for dinner. It’s something that Jim moans and groans about so much that I’ve learned to save it for when he’s away, or the kids will ask for it on their birthdays since they have their choice for dinner then with no arguments. I do serve it with either bacon or sausage, just to make it a well-rounded sort or breakfast/dinner. When Jim was away skiing with his brother in February I took the opportunity to make beignets (pronounced “ben-YAYS”) for dinner one night. The small, light, donuts made famous in the French Quarter of New Orleans by Café du Monde.
This was a lovely dough to work with, and I’m going to try it the next time I make regular donuts and see how it works with an icing or glaze.
Ingredients:
Directions:
In a 2-cup measuring cup, combine the water, granulated sugar, salt and yeast. Let stand until frothy, about 10 minutes.
Measure out 3-1/2 cups of the flour into a food processor. With the motor running, slowly add the yeast mixture, processing until fully absorbed. Add the cream and egg and process to form a soft dough. Add more flour, 1 Tbs. at a time, until the dough cleans the sides of the work bowl and is no longer sticky. Continue processing for 1 minute to knead. Place the dough in a lightly oiled bowl and cover tightly with plastic wrap. Refrigerate overnight.
Transfer the dough to a lightly floured work surface and punch it down to eliminate air pockets. Using a floured rolling pin, roll out the dough into an 8-inch square about 3/4 inch thick. Using a sharp knife, square off the corners. Cut the dough into sixteen 2-inch squares, then cut the squares in half on the diagonal to form 32 triangles. Brush off flour with a dry pastry brush and transfer to a lightly floured baking sheet and let rise, uncovered, until doubled in size, about 45 minutes.
In a heavy saucepan or deep fryer, pour in oil to a depth of 4 inches and heat to 375°F on a deep-frying thermometer. Add the pieces of dough, a few at a time, and deep-fry, turning as needed, until golden, about 1 minute. Using a slotted spoon, transfer to paper towels to drain.
Sprinkle generously with confectioners’ sugar and serve hot.
Serve immediately while still hot and just after you've dusted with powdered sugar.
I'm in love with Instagram for my iPhone! My shoes this morning.
As my sister and I were leaving for the airport tonight I ran in the back and snapped a few quick pictures of the new windows in the goat house. After 3 days of absolutely no action out there it was exciting to see some progress this afternoon. Two small windows on each side of the entry door.
And a small window to the left of the back door. There will be one more small window between the two goat doors at the back of the building, but that hadn’t been installed yet. Inside they were putting up the walls finally! Over the thin luan plywood they will be putting up something called Glasbord, which is like a plastic sheeting that will make the whole inside totally washable and easy to keep clean.
The thin plywood being installed on the walls before the Glasbord is put up inside.
Hopefully they’ll have some exciting things finished by the time I get home from Atlanta late on Saturday night.
You may remember this lovely rooster from Williamsburg that I coveted. At $850 that was about all I was going to do with it though. Apparently it was made by an artist that apprenticed in Colonial Williamsburg and is now a hot folk art craftsperson commanding high prices.
Original Rooster Made by Folk Artist in Colonial Williamsburg for $850
He’s got a little kink in the tail from the header it took off the table before I had the stand done. I’ll fix that when I get a chance. I’m pretty happy with the way it came out. While maybe not as beautiful as the one I saw by the artist, I love it more because I made it myself.
I started with simple materials. A large piece of basswood that I bought on eBay, a wood ball that I found by searching the internet, some steel rods and sheet steel that I bought at Home Depot, craft paint, crackle paint and shoe polish! The stand I took to a local welder and had made to my specifications. I spent less than $100 in materials. I did most of the work at home, and spent a few hours at the Woodworkers Shop to use their great sanding machines and band saws.
I thought I had downloaded all of the photos I needed for this post, but of course as I sit down to work on this I realized that somehow they didn’t all get on there. I’m in a hotel room in Atlanta tonight waiting for the BlogHer Food ’11 conference to start tomorrow morning, so there’s not a thing I can do about it right now on my laptop. If anyone would like to see more details on how I actually made the rooster, just leave a comment, send me an email, hire a skywriter, send me a smoke signal. Something. If there’s any interest I’ll post more. If not, I’ll consider this a done deal.
Remember these guys? They’ve gone from this…
To this…
Here they are at about 3 weeks old
Regular chick on the left and bantam on the right. The bantam is actually about a week or 10 days older than the other.
I wish I could tell you there was exciting things going on with the goat house construction, but we have had relentless rain the entire week so there is absolutely nothing new to report. The carpenter’s are working in their shop making the frames for the small windows and hopefully they’ve started on the storage cabinet for the goat house as well. We had our framing inspection on Tuesday and that got approved without a problem. As soon as the rain stops they can start with putting the interior walls up and the exterior siding and roof.
They cannot finish that up and start the chicken coop fast enough for me. I’ve got chicks busting out all over the place here and I need a bigger coop!!
Oh, and this is what happens when you let your goats roam free around your yard all day. Your ornamental trees get a little bare on the bottom. I can’t wait for that fence to get built either!
It’s been a crazy few days. Between Evan’s adventures in botany, his and Maia’s 11th birthdays (which were yesterday), and getting ready to go to Atlanta with my sister for the BlogHer Food ’11 conference, I’ve been a little busy.
Sunday night I was up baking sugar cookies until 1:20 AM.
Maia went with a mustache theme for her class cookies
Evan went with a cowboy and rocket theme, but I ran out of time to decorate the rockets.
Here's a sampling of the three styles of mustaches Maia had.
And here's a few of the cowboy-themed cookies for Evan's class.
This is the fourth year I've had my lovely tree peony and of course it started to bloom just as it started to rain this week. Today, during a break from the showers, I ran out to take a picture of it while I could. It figures the first year it has lots of lovely blooms on it instead of just one or two meager ones it's getting completely beat up by the relentless rain.
This entire week has been a comedy of errors. I guess that would be the right word for it.
First there was the pregnant goat who turned out to not be pregnant, just very very fat. Let’s not even get into all the time, energy and lost sleep over the kids that will never arrive.
Thursday my son, who will hereafter be referred to as “the Knucklehead”, decided with his friend that it would be a good idea to rub poison ivy all over their faces. His friend told him (the Knucklehead claims) that it was a good way to get out of going to school). Brilliant, huh?
Saturday was my sister’s 50th birthday. She was having the party up at her weekend place in Stafford Springs, CT, which is about a 2 hours drive from me. I ended up spending the entire time worrying about Evan, who was clearly miserable and suffering greatly, and finally ended up taking him, in the middle of the party, to the local emergency room. They wouldn’t give him a shot of steroids there for some reason; claimed “they didn’t do that”, which is what his friend, Knucklehead II, had to get that morning at his doctor’s, only to be sent away from the ER with a prescription for steroid pills and arrive at the local pharmacy 3 minutes after it closed for the day. Two hours later we returned to the party in time to grab the leftovers of dinner, and I missed an opportunity to get to know a bunch of my sisters’ friends that I hear about all the time.
Evan thought it would be a good idea to rub poison Ivy all over his face
This is what Evan normally looks like.
Smoked Honey Anyone?
Birthday Sugar Cookie Mustaches
I thought since our towns' farmer's market officially opened this week that a farmer's market photo was appropriate.