Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[Shadrach]

Very late dinner. Cake looks the business.

 

[HiEverybirdy]

Excellent cake. Looks like you're offsetting it with a healthy, shaksuka-type savory dish.

I recently had a very southern US craving for banana pudding and made a batch that nearly put DH and I into sugar coma. You mix sour cream, cream cheese, condensed milk, and cool whip into the pudding. I couldn't find the gluten-free nilla wafers so baked gluten-free white cake and put chunks of it under the pudding. Ridiculous.

Also made "company casserole" from a recipe dug out of my mom's old recipe cards from the 1980s. Has anyone heard of it? We ate it a lot when I was a kid: beef and tomato sauce over layers of noodles and layers of a mix of cream cheese, sour cream, green pepper, and green onions.

I don't know if I liked it back then. I went vegetarian as soon as I was old enough to cook, through my 20s. But I'd been craving this nostalgic dish for the past few years and finally remembered to ask my mom what the recipe was. She plunked that old, red acrylic box of recipe cards on the kitchen table, and all kinds of memories came flooding back.

 

[Perris]

Cake looks the business.

yes it really does!

Expensive business this cake making.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/dundee_cake_22157

Think of it this way: now you have a whole cake, plus left over ingredients to make another one/other things, for the cost of a couple of slices of it in a cafe or shop

 

[Perris]

She plunked that old, red acrylic box of recipe cards on the kitchen table, and all kinds of memories came flooding back.

I hope you have a wonderful trip down that memory lane. Food certainly can encapsulate memories for me too.

 

[BDutch]

Both Sylph and Mow have stopped laying.

I keep wondering why Tonic stopped laying after a month, while Gin keeps giving me eggs. They look the same but are genetically different. Tonic lays light cream coloured eggs, Gin brown eggs.
Other than that I don’t have a clue.

Are you sure you have no hidden eggs? Maybe too much stress from the nasty weather and being inside so much?

 

[Perris]

my lot have been very erratic since the cold snap and storms:
2,2,5,5,6,3,6,2,7,2,4,4,3,2,5,3,4,1,5,3,5 daily tallies.

I've wondered about secret nests but haven't found any. I suspect the mild December temps lulled them into thinking spring was around the corner, and then wham, winter arrived with a bang. Some are actually still moulting, notably Betws who didn't start till mid December and went through the worst of it practically bare, poor girl!

 

[Shadrach]

Are you sure you have no hidden eggs? Maybe too much stress from the nasty weather and being inside so much?

It's possible that Mow was broody enough for her egg laying cycle to switch off. Mow, anybodies guess.
They are definitely stressed by the weather. They liked the spot where the greenhouse and shed was.

 

[HiEverybirdy]

We're having the same issue of almost no eggs. Only 2 hens restarted laying since fall: almost-2-year-old Peck and almost-5-year-old Carrots.

When the past 3 weeks of severe winter weather hit (I don't know how you northern folks do it!), I went searching for a hidden nest because Peck, who had been laying for weeks, completely stopped.

I can't remember a hen ever stopping so long due to weather, particularly a young one like Peck.

Her equally young brooder mate Lil Nugs hasn't even restarted laying from a November molt. She molted at least 6 weeks later than Peck, so maybe she's still on the rebound from regrowing her bodacious feathers. She's as sassy as always, so no worries.

 

[HiEverybirdy]

I hope you have a wonderful trip down that memory lane. Food certainly can encapsulate memories for me too.

Indeed. That red recipe box was one of those seemingly inconsequential items that, decades later, took on immeasurable power as a time machine back to childhood.

We were tickled to find the company casserole recipe written on an index card that I or my siblings had used as a flash card to learn the blend "ir," as in chirp or bird. My mom must've been short on index cards when someone offered her the recipe.

Tax for food and memories talk: genesis of the name Beakwipe. Bebe's like, "Beak. Wipe. Beak. Wipe."

 

[Shadrach]

There

yes it really does!

Think of it this way: now you have a whole cake, plus left over ingredients to make another one/other things, for the cost of a couple of slices of it in a cafe or shop

There is that, but for someone who is trying to eat a healthier diet a limitless supply of cake making ingredients probably isn't the ideal way forward.

The cake is decent. It cooled leaving a slight depression in the centre. Either I overmixed it; very possible, or the oven temperature isn't what it says on the dial, also likely.