Introducing our girls

I thought after talking about my girls in the pasta blog I would introduce them too you.

one of my babies only a day old

We have 15 girls of 1 year old and 19 pullets (babies I call them). At this stage we have no fully grown roosters but there is a rooster amongst the babies. We look like we are going to keep him.

Our Rooster - still a baby

One of our 1 year old Girls

Our only white girl (kids call her Snowy)

When you start thinking about getting chickens you can't just go to a market, select the cutest and bring them home. Oh no, there is allot more too it.

Firstly you need to check with your local council for rules and regulations regarding back yard chickens so I suggest you do your research first!

Professional set up

Home at last

My set up (we sit the light on top)

Time to bring them home? If there young you will need a light, a good sized home (old fish tank if its big enough) or just a cardboard box. You will need to cover the top with wire so the air can flow freely and you will need water and food containers. You also need to look around and choose a produce you are happy with for food and any questions you have (and you will have plenty!) I am not going to go into all that too much as I am more about the cooking than the research on chickens.

Our coop, it started as an old playground

Our girls and there perches

When they're older they will need a decent place to live outside with plenty of room for scratching and roosting.

Not to mention the laying boxes where they will lay their eggs. As it turns out they will happily share (sometimes laying in one box at the same time!). 

Homemade laying boxes

Oh and they will make allot of mess. You will need to clean out the coop at least every few weeks. If you keep it clean they shouldn't smell too much but after allot of rain or hot weather it may very well start to get on the nose.

Checking out the adults cage

One of the babies feeling the freedom!

I use a dog kennel for the baby's at night

Collecting the eggs. I personally do this every day. If I am home I will go down a few times in the day to collect them. I don't like to leave them there as we have had the occasional problem with eating there own eggs.

See the difference?

Fun with eggs

Some of our collected eggs

 This seems to happen mostly when the egg is not viable (for example it is rubbery instead of hard) but to be honest I really am not sure why they do it.

Sorry not edible, but great for the worm farm!

  

Do be aware if you have older girls and you bring in new girls or younger ones, you must let them get use to each other before you put them together. If you don't you may have trouble on your hands. 

My poor baby. I can report she has fully recovered and has feathers!

They don't like new friends. I have left my babies in the coop beside them for a while and they will be there for 4 months before I let them together permanently. They have been introduced a few times but not for long amounts of time and not all the adults with all the babies.

Our girls love getting out and about

And then you have to decide, am I going to let them out into my yard? Personally I prefer them to get out and roam around. They dig up the weeds, find all sorts of good things to eat, and it is much better for them and there eggs.

As you can see I love my girls, they were even at our wedding!

 

Pasta

Being from an Italian background, we made all sorts of things from scratch. There is something to be said about making your own food, and a time and place for the pre-packaged products.

When making my pasta I really don't add much to it at all. I leave all the good stuff for the sauce.

To make my pasta you will need

2 cups plain flour
4-5 eggs (depending on size)
extra flour for dusting through the process

I am lucky enough to have my own chickens so I use fresh free range eggs from my own girls.

With flour in a bowl, make a well in the centre. Crack your eggs straight in the bowl. Some people add a little water or oil, that is completely up to you, if you do I suggest you do it when you first put your eggs in the flour.

I use what i call giant chopsticks to mix it all together but a wooden spoon or even a fork will do.
Mix it all together until it starts to form a dough, if it looks to wet, add a little more flour but don't over do it. Its harder to add water to the dough after its almost mixed so its better for it to be wetter and add more flour (which is why i would usually add the 5th egg).
Kneed the dough until its all combined well and your happy with it and cover to rest, either under a tea towel or in the fridge, I just use a tea towel on the bench. Leave it for about 30 mins or an hour.

Now the fun part. What sort of pasta would you like?
You can make lasagna sheets, spaghetti, fettuccine, tagettali, ravioli, tortellini or you can get creative and roll it out like I did.

I can't tell you what this pasta is called because it seems to have many names, including stringoli, truccioli, maccheroni al ferro, maccheroni al ferretto, and maccheroni inferrettati. And this all depends on what part of Italy it comes from and how big or small it is and so on and so on. One thing is for sure, its worth the effort.

So to make the pasta I did all you need is a wooden skewer and the dough you just made.

Cut the dough into little pieces, roll them out like a little sausage

put the stick on the dough or rap the dough around the skewer like I have 

and roll it out a little on the board. 

Make sure you have plenty of flour on the stick or it will stick to it.

Gently slip the pasta off the stick and place it on a floured tray.

When you have them all done you can let them sit for a bit under a tea towel or you can cook them straight away in a pot of rapidly boiling water. I can't tell you how long it will take (anoying I know) but I can tell you to keep testing it, It will likely take around 10 minutes. Strain the pasta and add the sauce of your choice

 Mix it with your favourite sauce

This is a steak sauce, I used the steak you would use for a slow cooker, 2 bottles of tomato pomodoro, a chopped onion and garlic and salt, cooked it off until the meat was falling apart.

Then serve with your favorite cheese. I use Romano, Parmesan or when I am lazy Tasty cheese. 

Almost forgot! this will feed 4 very hungry people or 6 normal serves.
Sometimes I will serve my pasta dishes with crumbed veal or beef with a salad on the side

Welcome

One of my girls

Hi there,

So while cooking in my kitchen, I was posting photo's an suggestions on facebook to my friends and they were loving them. so I thought it would be nice to start a food blog only what i do is more than food. So you will find things from, what I get up too in my garden, to what i use them for in my kitchen, to kitchen scraps and waist and what to do with them, like feeding them to the chickens or worm farming.

My babies, not long now girls! (and 1 rooster)

Just a note for my readers. All the information I post here will be my opinions and what I like to do. Everyone has there own way of doing things and sometimes what works for one person doesn't work for someone else. So take a look, if you like what I have posted then by all means give it a go, but if you don't, that's fine too.

So enjoy the read
Tiredmumma

They do love my grapevine