Oven Baked Orange Chicken

After much request on my facebook page, I think I've finalized the receipe - I'd love to hear your thoughts after you try it.

Ingredients

4lb Boneless, skinless chicken breasts
Flour & seasonings for breading
(I used garlic salt, asian seasoning, curry and pepper)
Eggs for batter

Sauce
1 can orange juice concentrate (the type of orange juice you pick will affect the flavor)
1 Tbs corn starch mixed with 1 cup cold water, to disolve
1 Can pineapple chunks (add the pineapple to the veggies below, the juice to the sauce mis)
3 Tbs Soy Sauce
1 packet onion soup mix

2 peppers
4 carrots
(other veggies as desired)

Cut chicken breasts into bite-sized pieces. Dip in egg wash and then in flour mixture. I put them in our deep fryer for 2-3 minutes to brown them up as I have found that it allows the batter to stick better, but you can pan fry in vegetable oil or Crisco. Fry and allow to cool on plate with paper towel, pat to remove excess oil.

For a healthier (*patooie*) version, you can skip the breading, and just bake with the chicken.

Slice peppers, carrots and other desired vegetables (mushrooms, water chestnuts, celery, etc) and toss with chicken pieces and place in 9x13 pan that is sprayed with non-stick spray.

Mix sauce ingredients in small bowl. Pour over chicken and veggies, cook at 350 for 45 min to an hour, depending on how thick your pieces of chicken are. Serve over rice. 

Enjoy!

Chicken Enchiladas

Ingredients
* Broiler chicken
Taco seasoning
Flour tortillas
Shredded cheese
Can green enchilada sauce

Directions
Place chicken in crockpot, sprinkle with packet of taco seasoning and 2 cups water.  Cook on high.  Once done, debone and place meat in a skillet.  Cook with another packet of taco seasoning and 2 cups water on stove.  Simmer until water is gone.

Spray 9x13 pan with non-stick spray, pour some enchilada sauce on the bottom of pan and spread out.

Take flour tortilla and spread chicken in the middle in a line.  Sprinkle with cheese.  Roll up and line in pan.  Once the pan is full, pour sauce over.  Sprinkle with cheese. 

Bake at 350 for about an hour or until cheese is melted and bubbly.

Enjoy!

* I also use rabbit, guinnea hen, or any other yummy meat you can think of!

And a picture of the carnage that is usually left when we have these at home.  I'm actually surprised there were two left!

A Farmwife's Easter Egg Hunt

One of the most fun traditions of Easter is the Egg Hunt.  However, they don't have very many for adults (unless you happen to be brave enough and close enough to take on the crazy moms at Alpenrose Dairy in hunting for diamonds in their eggs - I am not).

On the farm, we get a daily egg hunt!  Here is what it is like for me.

Go outside, and get a big bucket of scratch (cracked corn, sunflower seeds and whatever other treat we mix in there this time)

Head out to the aviary / coop area.

Toss scratch out to the Lovely Ladies.

Some get too impatient and just come and get it from me.

Gotta give treats to the pheseants too!

Look!  Pheseant eggs!

Found one!  Lazy bird didn't want to go lay it in the nest.

Found some in the coop!

Today's Bounty

Happy Easter!

Granny's Fried Chicken

So, a couple years ago my sister-in-law started a great recipe blog to collect recipes from friend's and family.  My dad, ever the creative one, added one of his favorite recipes from his childhood.  Here is a direct quote, and a link if you'd like to find it.

Granny's Fried Chicken

As most of you know, I grew up on a ranch. Not the cool kind, like horse ranch, or cattle ranch… a chicken ranch. And let me tell ya, there is nothing romantic about a chicken ranch. But they do have chickens! We would get a few hundred chicks every couple of months. They were two days old and were supposed to be all hens, since my dad was an egg producer. Well along about 4 or 5 days old it was always apparent that they missed a few roosters. These were destined for the fry pan. Now I don’t remember how old they had to get before they became dinner, but here is the "recipe".


*Find an old galvanized pipe about 4 feet long.

*Grab your "dinner chicken" out of the cage and hold by both legs.

*Hike up your dress to just above your knees and spread your legs with one foot on one end of the pipe.

*Bend over and insert chicken’s head under the pipe so the pipe lays just across the neck.

*Place other foot on other end of the pipe, bending at the knees.

*Hold tight to the chicken legs, straighten knees, straighten your back, look up, and pull on chicken legs.

*When head pops off swear softly under your breath and toss chicken away about 5 feet.

*When chicken stops running around (yes, they do this) go gather him up.

*Cut around the "vent" and pull out the innards with one clean jerk (I think this is an Olympic event in some 3rd world countries).

*Toss the innards on a sheet of newspaper, pick out the gizzard, liver and heart and discard the rest.

*Cut off the legs at the knees and discard. (Except in Africa where they are saved for the cooking pot… yum, right Tyler?).

*Dip the chicken in a pot of boiling water to loosen the feathers and make it smell really good (NOT!)

*Pluck off all the feathers, even the little bitty ones. (Granny didn’t always follow this step very well).

*Cut up chicken in various pieces.

*Roll the chicken pieces in some whipped up eggs.

*Roll the chicken in some flour that you just kinda dump on the counter top.

*Fry the chicken for a while in some Crisco in an electric skillet at a pretty hot temperature.

*Salt and pepper to taste.

Now some suggestions: If you’re frying up white leghorns (pronounced "leg-erns") you will need about 1 chicken per person. There ain’t much meat on them, they are bred for laying eggs, not for eating. Second, and perhaps most important, don’t forget to clean up the flour on the counter right away. If you don’t, some young boy is likely to come along and slap it with his hand. This is very entertaining as Granny lets out a delightful yelp and chases the boy around the house. This could happen several times if you don’t clean it up right away. So be sure to do that. I’m not sure you will be able to find the boy to help clean it all up. He usually doesn’t come back until it’s time to eat the chicken.

That’s the recipe I grew up with. If I recall right, it’s mighty tasty. And Granny loved cooking it. Even the young boy part.

Pop J.

I love my Granny!  She was an amazing inspiration and role model for me.  I wanted to add a picture I put together composing one of her quotes.  Towards the end of her life as she was battling Alzheimer's, she had periods of amazing insight.  This is one of them.

To everything there is a season

Fall has always been my favorite season.  Ever since college when I would drive through the mountains of sourthern Utah through Bryce Canyon and Cedar Breaks with the windows down and the heater up.  The beauty of the mountains, the changing seasons, the crisp Fall air. 

Then I started my gardening.  As much as I love Fall, it was very hard for me to see the end of the garden.

Until today.

Today I went out to visit my chickens and there was Fluffy, and her babies, in the garden.  I'm not sure how they got out of their enclosure, but it looks like they needed more space and the joy of the garden.

So, I had to move over their little nest and give them the garden to use for their forays.  I mean, seeing the garden season end is a little less painful when I know an adorable momma Hen is using it to teach her babies how to survive in life.

Enjoy the pictures!

See that chick hiding back behind the zucchini plant.

Babies for Fluffy

A few weeks ago one of our hens started getting really broody.  She would protectively guard the eggs when I would go to collect them each day. Now, it wouldn't do her any good to guard those eggs, because we don't keep a rooster around.

This may sound silly, but I related her plight to those of many of my friends who have struggled to have kids and couldn't.  Here was a hen who wanted nothing more than to sit on a nest for weeks on end and have some cute little babies to tend and raise and tend.

So, I put an ad on Craigslist to see if anyone had some fertilized eggs that my little Fluffy could sit upon.  I got one response and picked up 5 eggs from her a few days later.

For three weeks Fluffy sat patiently in her little nest (we isolated her from the other hens), and kept those little eggs at just the right temperature. Yesterday we moved her cage/nest and set her up with her own private yard so the big hens wouldn't attack the babies when they hatched and I saw one cute baby fluffy face poking out from under the big fluffy chicken.

Today we head out to feed the chickens their scratch for their evening treat and out pops Fluffy with four little fluffy chicks following her.  It was amazing to watch her teach them how to scratch and eat, and she talked to them the entire time.

Then she climbed back into her nest and called and encouraged her little babies to hop into bed.  They listen a whole lot better than my kids! Soon they all hopped up into the nest and burrowed under the covers (mom) and settled down for the night.

We've been hatching eggs for awhile, but there's something just heartwarming about seeing nature at work - even if she is the adopted mother to those chicks. 

Now I truly understand the meaning of the phrase "Mother Hen"

Tales from the Coop

One of my favorite things about our little farm life is spending some time each day with our chickens and then collecting the eggs. Originally, this was a chore for the kids, but I quickly told them to keep away from the coop - I wanted this chore! (That's the benefit of being mommy, you are in charge of delegating the chores.)


Our second batch of chicks are now laying hens and so with our 14 hens of laying age we're getting a good batch of eggs a day. It's fun to see the different sizes, colors and the great variety that comes from fresh eggs from my chickens.

On Monday I was absolutely shocked to see the size of one egg. I compared it to birthing a 14 pound baby! So, I took some pictures to show just how big this egg got.

Thanks to watching movies on forensics and CSI, I knew that I had to put something in the picture to give context to the size. Hence, the quarter. The egg immediately to the right of the quarter egg is an average size Large egg.

Another picture for context.

The MEGA egg is at the top, the average egg on the bottom. It's about twice the size.

So, I just HAD to crack the egg and count how many yolks would be inside. (When hens first start laying, their eggs often have multiple yolks).

So, upon opening up the egg, I not only see just ONE, tiny yolk.

But also an ENTIRE egg INSIDE the egg.

The shells of an egg are soft and pliable until they are laid, but the inside egg was hard and goey. It was thick, and I couldn't crack it. Yes, I tried.

I have NO idea how this would happen, but I found it just absolutely interesting.

I love the experiences of farm life!