Homemade Mayo

MAYONNAISE

    Our latest adventure in the kitchen was making mayonnaise that we later turned some into ranch sauce. We first took a couple of eggs yolks and put them in the food processor with a little bit of salt, dry mustard, and sugar. With the chopping blade on we blended it all up tell fully combined. Then we mixed a little bit of lemon juice and white wine vinegar up in a separate bowl. With the blade running we added half the lemon/vinegar mixture into the food processor. Then we took some corn oil, and with the blade still running, added a few drops and waited a few seconds. After waiting we added a few more drops and waited a little bit more, we continued this process until we saw the mixture start to emulsify. Once we got to this point we just started pour the oil in very slowly, giving the mixture a chance to whip up. We stopped once we got to half the oil was used up, then added the rest of the lemon/vinegar into processor. We then poured the rest of the oil in very slowly. After all the mixing was done we let it set out at room temperature for a couple of hours, then put it in a container and put in the fridge. They say it will last a week or so.

Here is a list of ingredients:
2 Egg Yolks
1 Tsp Salt
1 Tsp Dry Mustard
1 Tbsp Sugar
4 Tsp Lemon Juice
2 Tbsp White Wine Vinegar
2 C Corn Oil

All in all it came out very good and is something we'll continue to make.



RANCH
   We took it one step forward by making our own ranch dipping sauce next. It ended up being very simple to make. We took 1 cup of the mayo and 1 cup sour cream and mixed them up. We then added 2 tbsp of chopped parsley, 2 tbsp of chopped chives, and 1 tbsp of dill weed. Mixed it all up, and we were done. I think next time we'll get a little more creative and add some different spices along with the other ones. We ended up trying out on some fresh lettuce from the garden and it turn out great.
   Both condiments are getting us that much closer to being self sufficient.

Another Moment From The Crafting Corner

                                                                       

With Mr. T's 2nd birthday coming up, my wife thought it would be a good idea to make birthday outfits for all the kids. She was able to find discount fabric to make new dresses for the girls, and with a little sewing, adding some straps on top, and adding a border around the bottom ( I'm not sure what you call it but we'll go with it) and they were all done.

   Mr. T's took a little bit longer. She first had to find some froggy fabric, because it's a froggy luau theme party. Then sew the outer layer with the inner layer, and then sew the frog on the front, She then used ribbon for the arms and the legs. It was a lot of work, but it come out great. Miss D loves to model her new outfit for the camera, Mr T well, not so much.

Too Many Bananas

   Our family goes through a lot of bananas, but with the extreme heat we've been having it's been tough to eat them before they get too ripe. After making banana bread, banana cookies, and everything else we can think of, we had to find a different way to eat them.
   We ended up trying the food dehydrator to make banana chips. We've made banana chips in the past, but didn't think anything of them. After making the first batch recently, we realized what we've been doing wrong. When we made them before, we used bananas that were ripe but with no spots on them. With the new batches we tried using bananas that were heavily spotted and the result was much better. The first batch never made it into a container, they were eaten all up off the dehydrator. After doing some research, I found that bananas that are heavily spotted have as much as three times the amount of fructose in them compared to yellow bananas. Which is why they tasted so much better.

The Garden Tour

Green Bean Bushes

Zucchini in the back, Beets in the middle, and some Carrots in the front 

Two rows of Tomatoes

Corn

Potato Bed 

Irish Potato Barrel 

Some Carrots 

Different types of Winter Squash

Pumpkins in the back, Beans, Broccoli, and last years potatoes mixed in the side garden 

   The slugs did a number on the garden this year. The spot where the carrots are was all filled up with carrots. The side garden had lettuce and broccoli but the slugs ate it to almost nothing. They also ate one section of the winter squash. I'm planting more broccoli and heat tolerant lettuce in both spots for the fall. One of the advantages of living in the woods is plenty of dead trees to make wood chips out of for the garden. They help keep the weeds down but, there is always plenty of weeding to be done.

Ducks

   These are what our new ducklings will eventually look like, they're the ducklings, parents. The two female ducks are the lighter color ones and the drake is the one with the darker head. The female ducks have been giving us an average of one egg a day from each of them. The drake's name is Lefty. The way he got that name is, when we got them in the spring as ducklings I filled up a big tub with water from the hose and put them in it to swim. They looked pretty good swimming, so I left them for a bit to do something else. When I came back he was doing a side stroke barely keeping his head above water. What I forgot to take into consideration was how cold the water was and hypothermia was starting to set in on him. I got them out and heated them up, especially Lefty. When he was back to temperature, the only thing wrong with him was his left wing stuck out sideways at the end. So we had to call him Lefty. Although he may be a lefty, the ducklings are proof he can get the job done.

Berry Pickin' Time

    We have 32 mature blueberry bushes, some are better producers then others, and bunches of raspberry plants along the edges of the woods around us. The berries that I can pick before the kids eat them, we turn into jams for the winter and make desserts out of them for the summer. Miss E is my best picker of them all, she knows how to pick them when they're perfectly ripe. She is also willing to share them with me, if I'm lucky.

Duckling Update

   All together we ended up with six khaki campbell ducklings. Out of the twelve eggs we put in the incubator, two of them were not fertilized or they didn't last long through the whole process. Three of them died in their shell after pecking a hole in it and not much more. We figured out that after 24 hours from the first peck in the shell, if they are not out then we needed to help them. We ended up helping five of them break open their shells. One of the ducklings came out with a dislocated hip and could only drag the one leg around. It ended up not making it.
  We now have six new ducklings to raise tell they're big enough to put in the coop with the other ducks and chickens. Hopefully most of them are   females so we can increase are egg production.