Our Easter Egger Chickens and Eggs!

They have only been here a short time but we already love our Easter Egger chickens.

Wary of us on their first day

It took them a day or two to get used to us.
These chickens have surprised me with their intellegence and curiousity.

Checking what I dropped for them.

These bearded ladies have individual personalities.  

Their feather patterns are gorgeous.  We say they look like they are wearing chainmail. 

Two of our Chainmail Chickens!

Smallest yet bravest chicken

Bossiest chicken

The colorful eggs they have provided for us have been a fun rediscovery every day. Sure our 4 hens will never provide enough eggs for our family of 7 on a daily basis.  They are a good start though.  Plus they are a better pet than aother dog.  Atleast the chickens will provide us with a meal once a week.

3 Shades of Green Eggs from our chickens.

Eggs in their storage container.

We are saving up the eggs to make Eggs in a Basket for breakfast for everyone.  Should only take 3 days for our very young chickens to lay enough eggs. Some of our earlier eggs went into making cookies. 

This is how I take pictures of my eggs. In natural light outside on top of artist white paper.  I love how on the white paper shows the best variations of the coloring.  

Big Feathered News!

As if my nutty life wasn't crazy enough we are adding some new additions to the family soon.  With 5 boisterous children, 2 energetic dogs, 2 curious bunnies, a noisy African Grey Parrot and a couple of startlingly large feeder goldfish you would think our urban family was complete.  You would be wrong.

We got Chickens!

This is another step in my family having a more sustainable kitchen.  After many months of research it was an easy decision to make.   The bunnies have been a huge help in cutting down our waste by eating kitchen vegetable scraps.  This will be a huge improvement as the chickens can break down the bunny waste faster than nature can as well as kitchen scraps.

3 different green eggs from our hens

We started with a small backyard flock containing only 4 lovely ladies.  Sorry, no roosters allowed in city limits.  I had hoped to go down to our local feed store and pick out some local chickens, but did not like the look of the chickens. (balding from plucking and or fights)  Instead we ordered our started pullets from a very old and reputable Hatchery. The Murray McMurray Hatchery with almost 100 years in business was an easy choice to make with it's years of glowing reviews.

6 of our eggs from our Easter Egger Chickens

We ended up picking 18-22 week old pullets to start with, as the frail chicks frighten me. (not going to have the kid's first experience raising chickens end in an early death.)  We also have 5 kids very anxious to find their first eggs.  The breed we ended up choosing was the Easter Egger. It is not a recognized show breed, but perfect for our family's needs as an egg production bird not meat.  This breed of bird has a huge variation in feather color/pattern as well as egg color, so it's like the surprise chicken. Who knows what color the chicken will be?  What color egg will they lay? Easter Eggers can lay varying tints of blue, green and even pink eggs.

They were wary of us at first.

Sadly since we live in Las Vegas we are forced to keep them in a coop/run at all times, but my husband has plans for a small track-like enclosed run to go around the outer edge of our yard.  It will give them more area to explore while staying protected from our surprisingly many predators in the city.  To think I was excited to see that Hawk chasing the pigeons through the skies of our neighborhood last year.  There are many other improvements we would like to make to the coop/run in the future, but it works for our current smaller flock of hens.

We sprouted seeds in mason jars for a tasty treat for the chickens.  We purchased the Wheat berries from Bountiful Basket food co-op to sprout for the chickens as well as try to make some baked goods.









One day I hope to have 2 chickens for every family member in the house. Just like this old poster suggests.   We will have to move before then, beause our backyard cannot support a little over a dozen chickens. The girls we do have are a nice start.

Some Sanity in the Madness

It's that time again this year. Time to start your OVENS!! Sorry, had to get that out of my system. Every year I go baking mad and it all starts with the baking marathon that is Thanksgiving.  My very large family still gathers together every year even though we have all grown and had our own families.  In this gorging spectacle my job has always been the pies.  I love to bake, if you don't... tough cookies and nasty store bought brick cookies to you too.  I'll add a few more tips for Thanksgiving to satisfying even the most baking challenged.

Various Thanksgiving Tips

Even with all the dangers of stuffing turkeys people still enjoy doing it.  Nothing like bonding over a family struck down with food poisoning.  To be safer this holiday after draining the excess blood from the turkey heavily sprinkle kosher salt on the inside cavity of the turkey.  Let sit for 5-10 minutes and rinse in cold water.  The salt will draw the excess blood out of the cavity.

A good time saver is to cut all the vegetable for the hor'dourves tray the day before and just store the cut vegetables in an ice bath in the fridge.  You can also cut the veggies in to decorative flowers if the mood strikes you.  The easiest to make by far is a mum.  Cut a criss-cross pattern (4 lines intersecting from 2 different sides in an X) into the top half of a radish and store in an ice bath for it to "bloom" open.

When making your apple pies this year for thanksgiving be sure you simmer the apples in a pan before baking in the pie shell.  If you don't precook the apples you could end up with a large gap between the top crust and the apples. 

A extra tip when making the pie dough crust use ICE cold water.  It keeps the fat from blending easily with the flour.  The less you blend the dough the flakier the crust. I prefer placing all my ingredients in the freezer after measuring out the dry ingredients (salt and flour) into a freezer bag.  In a separate bowl cool the fats (butter or shortening).  I cool all ingredients separately for 30 minutes before blending together as usual.

While baking your pies and the crust starts to darker long before the pie will be done. Make a ring around the outside edges of your pie with tinfoil.

To get that extra golden look to your crusts lightly brush the crusts with a egg wash.  Sprinkle with sugar to give it extra crunch.

Egg wash for browning baked goods. 1 egg whipped with 1TB water.  Brush on baked goods lightly to get a golden sheen.  Then bake as usual.  This will even work well on rolls.

Boiled Eggs

When boiling eggs and you notice a crack forming in the shell as it cooks, simply pull the egg out of the water with a slotted spoon and throughly coat the crack in salt. Let the salt sit for a minute then add the egg back to the boiling water.  The salt will seal up most cracks that form after cooking has begun.

Or to prevent the cracks in the first place add a few Tablespoons of white vinegar to the water.

When making deviled eggs do not over crowd the pan. Leave room to stir the eggs around while cooking.  If you gently stir the eggs while they cook the yolk with form in the center for an attractive uniform base for the deviled eggs.

When poaching eggs add a Tablespoon of white vinegar to the water and the eggs will stay formed better.  Cook as usual.

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