Fall Comfort Food ~ Sweet Potato Gnocchi

 October 1st was the first time I had to light the woodstoves to take the chill off of the air in our home and we awoke to our first hard frost of the season yesterday! The lawn was crispy and white and all of the water buckets for the cows and chickens had a layer of ice locking in the fresh water below. All of this cold weather has definitely left me yearning for warm comfort foods :)

I've been building up a little recipe cache on Pinterest which is where I found a yummy recipe for sweet potato gnocchi but I didn't have all of the ingredients on hand so I took a chance and remixed the recipe a bit and it turned out delicious!

 In place of the ricotta cheese I used one egg, subbed in 1/2 a cup of asiago cheese instead of the parmesan, reduced the salt to 1 tsp. of sea salt in the dough instead of the two she called for and I baked my sweet potatoes in the oven for about 45 minutes at 400 degrees fahrenheit instead of microwaving them.

Now this was my very first time making gnocchi so I had no idea how sticky the dough would be but I found that I needed to use at least 4 cups of flour to get my dough to be workable and not crazy sticky but the original recipe only called for 2 3/4 cups. So I'm thinking my sweet potatoes were much larger than hers but you'll definitely know if you need to add more flour *grin*. 

 With my dough all ready to go I got busy rolling out dough snakes, chopping them into little bite sized pieces with my pastry cutter and then rolling them around with the tines of a fork to give them the little indentations in the photo. Nobody told me how many little gnocchi this recipe made though!!

I kept cutting and rolling and cutting and rolling...

until I had two giant cookie sheets full of them plus more all over the counter. On my final count I had over 200 of them so they all went into the freezer except for the ones I kept out for dinner and we're all stocked up for a good while now I think :)

The kids aren't real big on the taste of sage so I omitted the sage butter that went along with the recipe as well and instead made an easy sauce with basil and homemade chicken stock. 

I used:

1 cup homemade chicken stock

1 tbsp dried basil

1 tbsp arrowroot powder

1 tbsp onion powder

salt & pepper to taste

Mix all of the above together in the cold chicken stock and pour over two carrots cut into matchsticks, two cups of broccoli florets and 3 cloves of pressed garlic that have been sauteed until just tender. The arrowroot created a nice thick sauce just perfect for our fresh gnocchi to be coated in. Mmm, mmm good. Now if only there were leftovers *grin*.

Hugs,

Rosina

Nibble Nibble Little Mouse....

Who is nibbling at my house?
The kids found the hole in the photo below chewed through part of the wall in our chicken house and it was nearly as big as a tennis ball. Something was trying awful hard to get in to either eat our chickens or steal eggs :( Either way not good but we found it in time to board it back over again to thwart any further attempts to break in. I definitely don't want anything to happen to our girls!

I have to say I have thoroughly been enjoying the egg laying winter lull that the chickens have been in though. In the warmer months when we are getting 12 eggs each and every day it can be tough to be come up with creative new way to use them up! I do sell some to my mom and sister when they need them but quite often we have more than we possibly eat and getting 5 or 6 each day is such a nice treat *grin*.

But even with the drop in egg production I ended up with an extra 3 dozen in the fridge the other day right after we did our big two week grocery shop and space was pretty tight so those eggs had to go. Not to worry though they weren't headed for the trash but a recycling of sorts *grin*.

I put all of them into the largest soup pot I had in the cupboard and hard boiled them. Next I popped them into my food processor, shell and all, by the the half dozen and pulsed them into a lovely egg salad buffet loaded with calcium rich chunks of egg shells that would make a delicious and nutritious treat for the chickens :)

Extra eggs?? No problem! LOL. And I know the shells on their upcoming eggs are going to be tougher and healthier for it :)

Hugs,
Rosina

Fluffy Tissue Easter Chicks ~ Kids Craft

Easter time's a coming, Easter time's a coming.... *grin*.

I loved making these fluffy tissue chicks when I was a little girl, twisting little bits of tissue paper on the end of my pencil and sticking them onto paper in the shapes of hearts, chicks and other animals. I'm seriously just like a little kid when it comes the crafting! I can't wait to get in there and cut and paste along with the kids no matter what the occasion LOL.

Since Easter is actually just about here I thought we'd better get going on some special crafts! Out came the construction paper, odds and ends bits of tissue paper, pencils and glue and we got cutting :) This is such an easy craft with such cute end results that you've got to try it if you haven't before!

Cut any color of tissue paper into a whole lot of little 1.5 - 2 inch squares and then cut an egg shape out of construction paper or cardboard for each child plus yourself :) Next take one square of your tissue paper, place the eraser end of your pencil in the center of the square and pull up the sides of the paper and scrunch it all up around the end of your pencil.

Dip the end of your pencil into the glue...

then press your pencil end with the gluey paper down onto your egg cutout and repeat :)

You just keep squishing and sticking your scrunched up tissue paper to your cutout until you've filled the whole thing up and made yourself a fluffy little chicky :) We made ours look like our chicks were popping out of their shells on the bottom but you could even decorate them like easter eggs with different colored polka dots or waves and so on all over them. They make fantastic fronts for Easter cards to. So fun!! I just love the great 3D texture you get from all that tissue paper :)

I had a bit of yellow ribbon in the cupboard so I punched a hole in the top of each of them and threaded the ribbon through to hang them up in our family room window :) It was a good thing I wanted to hang them as it gave me incentive to finally take down the cinnamon stars that were hanging there from Christmas! I know I'm terrible aren't I *grin*.

Have fun making some :)

Hugs,
Rosina

Egg-cellent Easter Grass

With Easter coming up on us at lightning speed I thought that it would be fun to share an Easter project that the kids and I do every year. We make Egg-cellent Easter grass with egg shells that we save for our composter :)
Plus it's a super easy way to bring a little bit of the outdoors in!

There are two ways to get a good egg shell for planting in. You can use either hard boiled eggs or raw eggs but you must make sure that your egg shell is going to be deep enough to hold a substantial amount of soil. So the trick is to crack them really close to the top of the shell leaving a nice deep cavity for planting in. Give the shells a quick rinse and you are ready to move on to the next step of filling them with your potting soil. Using an all purpose potting soil fill a bowl with it and mix in a really generous amount of water so that it is good and wet, not just damp.

With your shells all set up in your egg carton to keep them upright start to spoon in little bits of potting soil at a time until they are about a centimeter from the top of the shell.

Once you have your egg shells filled with soil you can take your grass or wheat seeds and place a solid layer of them inside the egg shell so that they completely cover up the potting soil. The last step is to cover them again with just enough wet potting soil to cover the seeds. You don't want to put to much on or it will take longer for the grass shoots to come through. Place your eggs right in the egg carton in a spot where it is guaranteed to be warm all of the time and in a couple of days the grass will start to sprout up. Your children are going to love watching them grow! If you want to prolong the life of your grass you can give it a little trim every couple of days as well :)

Aren't they just the cutest things ever?!
Have fun creating some unique plant stands for them to! The above ones we created by twisting copper wiring around to make a little cup holder and then fashioned some chick look alike feet *grin*. You could make paper cup holders, use your favorite ceramic ones from breakfast or just leave them in the egg carton to :)

Have fun growing some of your own egg-cellent Easter grass and we'd love to see your egg cup creations :)

~ Rosina