The hens won't quit

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My best layer

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December 16: 3 eggs

My four hens have barely slowed down for the winter. I’m still getting three and sometimes four eggs a day, faster than I can give them away, since I try to limit myself to eating four eggs a week.

I have one Golden Comet hen and three Barred Rock hens. I can recognize my Golden Comet hen’s eggs because they’re darker brown. She has not missed a day since she first started laying in August. She’s also the sweetest and most sociable of the chickens.

I am not giving my hens any artificial light or artificial heat. I’ve bought the apparatus to do it if they seem stressed by the cold, but so far they seem fine. These chickens are said to be hardy enough for New England winters. Their little house is snug and filled with hay. I also put hay on the ground underneath the chicken house to help keep their little feet off the cold ground. The chickens do seem to be eating more in cold weather. They always have laying mash available, and I take them some kind of treats every day — vegetable scraps from the kitchen, leftover gravy mixed with cracked wheat, and sometimes sprouted legumes. Nothing goes to waste in the kitchen. Every day I also give them alfalfa pellets that I got at the seed and feed store. The pellets contain nothing but ground, compressed alfalfa and cost $16 for 50 pounds. That was the best winter source of chlorophyll that I was able to come up with. I keep ground oyster shells on hand. I also have a big bag of flax seed. I try to vary their diet as much as possible, not only for their health, but for their entertainment. Treat time is the high spot of their day.

One thing I’ve noticed about my chickens. When they were maturing and approaching laying age, they spatted fairly often. Now I never see one chicken being mean to another chicken. I assume this means that they’ve worked out the pecking order, and now they just enjoy each other’s company. If I take them particularly exciting treats (they love leftover pasta — they probably think it’s worms) one chicken may grab the treat and run, but they don’t spat.

Sprout farming

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If you’re not already a sprout farmer, and you’ve been thinking about getting started, winter is a good time to start. During the summer produce season, I don’t think much about sprouts. But during the winter, there’s no better and cheaper source of little vegetables.

The best source I’ve found for seeds and such is sproutpeople.com. They’re in San Francisco, and you can order online.

Audiophilia on a budget

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Infinity SM 152 speakers, made around 1994

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Pioneer SX-3500, made in 1980

The Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network opened its radio season today with Puccini’s Il Trittico. It’s the 79th season of Metropolitan Opera broadcasts, and it’s the longest running classical program in radio history. Lucky for me, I have a new sound system on which to listen to it.

I would not say I’m a true audiophile. I’m way too poor to be an audiophile. There’s no limit to what you can spend on sound systems. But I’ve been to an awful lot of concerts in my life, and when some of the sound in recorded music is missing, or distorted, listening to music is not much fun. I stopped at a second-hand shop in Madison yesterday, and they had a giveaway price on two Infinity SX 152 speakers and a Pioneer SX-3500 tuner/amplifier. The speakers, each of which weighs almost a hundred pounds, each has a 15-inch woofer, two midrange drivers, and a tweeter. The balance controls on the front of the speakers really work. The Pioneer SX-3500 amplifier is a nice match for these speakers. I have a weakness for 1980s electronics. The 1980s was a great period in electronics manufacturing, and prices for 25-year-old electronics are low.

The Saturday broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera have an exciting, old-fashioned feel, a live performance. It’s what radio used to be, and ought to be.

Vegan green bean casserole

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While watching the ABC Evening News (not one of my normal news sources), I saw a commercial for green bean casserole. Once you get something like that in your head, you’ve got to have it.

I wanted to make a high-protein, reasonably low fat, vegan version. I just happened to have some leftover cashew gravy. To the gravy I also added a smooth sauce made from sesame tahini and ground roasted pumpkin seeds. I mixed in some cubed tofu. So the sauce contained nuts, seeds, and legumes. There’s a lot of sautéed onion, of course. The bread crumbs came from the last remaining slice of a loaf of sprouted wheat bread. The green beans were frozen.

If you do a quick survey online of recipes for green bean casserole, what you’ll find is pretty terrifying — heart-stopping mixtures of salt and fat. I’ve never met a traditional dish that couldn’t be greatly improved with good ingredients and some imagination.

Healthy gravy

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Cashew gravy

Gravy is one of my favorite comfort foods, but it’s a sin — all that fat and carb. I’ve rediscovered Rosalie Hurd’s cashew gravy from the Ten Talents cookbook. It’s based on cashew nuts whizzed in a blender with liquid. The cashews thicken the gravy when it starts to boil, just like flour. I use soy milk instead of water to make the gravy richer and boost the protein.

I don’t think this gravy would work very well for something like biscuits and gravy (one of my favorite comfort foods). But it’s great as a sauce for things like basmati rice. Make a lot and use the leftover in casseroles of the type that call for canned cream of mushroom soup.

You can also used blanched almonds. Cashews and almonds, by the way, are the least expensive nuts right now at Whole Foods. The price of walnuts has jumped all of a sudden.

Books: The end is near

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My Sony Reader, displaying a free Google book

As an early adopter of computers (the early 1980s), I well remember the questions about what the computer was good for and the sometimes derisive skepticism about the future of the computer and the computer’s ability to replace things. Now you know.

I believe that electronic book publishing has now reach critical mass. The powerful economic forces behind publishing (publishers!) have realized which way this is going to go. They are already jostling with each other and working out their competitive strategies. For example, there’s a big conference in New York next month for digital publishers. Such conferences are happening all over the place these days.

So far, the big players are Amazon with its Kindle, Barnes and Noble with its Nook, and Sony with the Sony Reader. There are constant rumors that Apple will soon release a reader. There are a number of electronic readers that are not as well positioned in this market. For example, my former employer the Hearst Corporation recently announced its Skiff strategy, which is mostly an attempt to try to keep the big publishers from losing control (good luck with that).

Publishers are right to be worried. It remains to be seen who the dominant players will be. Plus, the new technology opens up publishing to the little people.

Sony has an interesting strategy. Sony seems to have realized that it can’t compete with the vast book content available from a competitor like Amazon, so Sony is the first to sell electronic readers compatible with the ePub standard for electronic books. Sony has converted all of its electronic books to the ePub standard, and Sony also is distributing free Google books through its electronic book store. What a gold mine that is!

Another free source of free ePub books is Gutenberg.org, though the ePub format is still considered an experimental format at Gutenberg.

Want to make your own electronic books in ePub format? An open source ePub editor, Sigil, is in the early stages of development, but it works. Adobe is supporting the ePub format.

There’s even a free program that will download content such as newspaper feeds and automatically load them into your electronic reader — Calibre.

Yep, I’m experimenting with these tools. My only electronic reader so far is a Sony PRS-500, which is three years old. However, when Sony announced its support for the ePub format earlier this month, they also announced that those early adopters like me who bought the PRS-500 could get the PRS-500 upgraded, free, to support ePub format. I had to send my reader to Sony to have this work done. But Sony upgraded the reader and returned it to me by next-day air the same day they received it at their repair center.

I don’t plan to buy a new electronic reader until we find out what Apple is going to do. If Apple releases a product, it probably will be more than just a book reader. It probably will be a tablet computer. It will have a fast Internet connection. It will handle music and video. That’s what the rumors say, anyway.

What does this mean to you as a reader? Sooner or later you’ll have an electronic reader. Sooner or later, instead of browsing for books at the mall, you’ll browse for books on line. As for older books, instead of haunting used book stores you’ll haunt Google books, Gutenburg.org, and the specialty on line sites offering electronic books.

Best of all, anyone can be a publisher. The niche market will explode.

Oh, and even better than that, you’ll no longer have to fill up your house with book shelves.

Sprouted wheat bread

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I’m an experienced sprouter, and I’ve meant to experiment with sprouted wheat bread for a long time, but I never got around to it until today. Why sprouted wheat? The grain is much more nutritious after it’s sprouted, and it’s said to have other healthy virtues. The bread turned out very good — surprisingly light with a moist crumb and chewy texture.

I used a quart of sprouts (having started with a cup of wheat kernels). I ground the sprouts very thoroughly in the food processor. After grinding, they looked pretty much like dough made from whole wheat flour. To that I added half a cup of water with the yeast, about three-quarters of a cup of King Arthur whole wheat flour, and about half a cup of flax seed meal. I’ve included pictures to show that the dough looked, and behaved, pretty much the same as whole wheat flour.

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In the sprouting jar

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Ready for the food processor

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Kneaded

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Rising

Ruralpolitans?

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Wall Street Journal

I have often wondered why we weren’t seeing more signs of a dropout movement, or a back-to-the-land movement, during this economic downturn. Maybe it’s happening. The Wall Street Journal had a piece this week about migration to rural areas, calling these back-to-the-landers “ruralpolitans.” It’s a rational thing to do. And yes, having the Internet makes it easier and diminishes the feeling of isolation.