Christmas: 2012

We're still learning how to celebrate Christmas together, and trying to set up our own little family traditions, so Christmas this year was more of a work in progress than a happy fun holiday season.

Not that I didn't have fun. Christmas morning with the hubby was pretty nice. We're just still trying to find that balance between "we know this is based on a pagan holiday and don't feel entirely comfortable celebrating it just because it's become tradition" and "I LOVE CHRISTMAS!!!" (I am more the latter).

We both woke up a bit later than expected Christmas morning (Christmas Eve celebrations with his parents and siblings went on longer than expected because one of his brothers decided to do some unplanned deer hunting that was somehow legal even though it isn't deer season), and had to rush a bit more than I would have wanted.

I made the same delectable biscuits for breakfast that we had for Thanksgiving. I'm serious, these things are just the best ever. So light, fluffy, flaky, and full of flavor.... but anyway, topped a few of those with whats left of the homemade raspberry jam from last summer and the rest with melted butter and warm honey... Ooooohhhh.... they are GOOD. With a small cup of the coffee my sister sent us from Guatemala,  it was a perfect small and cozy Christmas breakfast.

Not technically a gift for him,
but he still liked it.

We had a few minutes to open gifts together , let the chickens out, and gather up this years gingerbread house and other food stuffs to bring before we had to get ready to leave for a family gathering.

I wasn't as surprised by the Britishness of Christmas this year, but more surprised at how my family's traditions have more in common with those of my German friend. Gingerbread houses and Christmas cookies: not such a big thing here. Where as my family would be chowing down on piles and piles of sugar, gingerbread, and spritz cookies, here, it's more about the puddings. And by puddings, it's more cake-like by American standards. So, British puddings. Which are GOOD. There's Christmas pudding (kind of like fruit cake, but with more spices and less like a brick), summer pudding (some kind of pastry thing filled with berries, and, well, that was it for puddings this year anyway. A pavlova also seems to company every single celebration of any kind here, too. All quite QUITE good, but I do miss my Aunt Christy's spritz cookies, and tearing into the gingerbread house together as a family.

My poor little house was mostly ignored this year, so I'm not entirely sure I'll continue the tradition. Well, maybe for our own little one (and do an uber tiny house!).

I went super simple this year, since I learned last year that the warmth and humidity in the air don't work too well with the frosting or melted sugar I use to glue the house together and then glue candy all over the house. So, instead, I used my totally awesome sandwich bag piping technique (read: I'm too cheap to buy real piping bags) and just did frosting designs all over it.

While not as epic as last years Ninjabread house (which I apparently never posted on and will now have to upload photos for comparison, and to puff up my little ego), I still liked this years, and thought it turned out quite well.

I still stuffed it full of Ninjabread men!

Rather than coat the whole thing with white frosting this year,
I opted for outlining tiles and then a light sprinkling of powdered sugar.

Not as cool looking, but classic and pretty I thought.
Also not as melty.

Last years house....

Normal front...

Log-splitting ninja out back

Darn frosting recipe I followed plus humidity and high
temperatures made for a drippy bendy house.

New Nuggets

We have two new baby chick!

Well, by new I mean at this point they are a week old.

Our last batch of chicks is now nearly 3 months old, was early "abandoned" by their mother, but have been fending for themselves quite nicely, and has been moved from the broody and hatching cage (where we put mammas sitting on their nests and leave them until the chicks are about a month old) into the regular coop with the rest of the hens and the rooster.

Cipher, calm as can be, hatching her chickies

Back to the new baby chicks though. Our black hen, Cipher, decided that, no matter what I did to encourage her not to, that she was going to sit on some eggs. So we stuffed a total of 6 eggs under her (3 of her own, 3 Isa Brown eggs). We were hoping the Isa Browns would hatch, since that particular breed of chicken is an excellent layer and lays pretty large eggs, but the rooster, being an Australorp, is also of a breed of chickens that lay very well, as well as are good meat chickens. Basically, we were hoping to create a hybrid chicken that was as good a layer as the two breeds and mix up the blood lines a bit (our Australorp hen and rooster are at least half brother and sister, and there's only so long you can keep up with the interbreeding of chicken relatives before you end up with a bunch of lame hens).

Nugget number 2, peeping out from behind mamma's bum

The day before Thanksgiving, we were blessed with two new peepers: fuzzy tan, as we are calling them, Isalorps.

This time, mamma hen is so calm and tame, I was able to put my hand under her to check on the other eggs or even pull the chicks out and handle them. No problems. She doesn't care at all.

Sadly, only 2 of the 6 eggs hatched. Two of the Australorp eggs died while hatching, and when the remaining two eggs were cracked open (4 days after the hatching was done, mamma was fully off the nest, and the eggs were cold), they were completely rotten duds.

But we have two new adorable nuggets, and are enjoying our growing flock.

Pretty little chicks being fed by mamma

See? TAME! I held bread crumbs, mamma picked
them out for the chicks, and eventually the little
things started climbing into my hand to feed.

Thanksgiving Down Under: 2012

Another Thanksgiving in Australia has come and gone.

This year, Phillip and I debated between inviting his immediate family over, sharing a giant meal with the two other families in our assembly (plus his own family), or just doing it alone again.

Alone won out. Basically, cooking for us and two (well three really) other families, one of which contains nine hungry children (though one isn't on solids yet) would have been too much for me with the whole pregnancy fatigue thing. Then it was down to maybe just his family.

Honestly, I just got selfish with my holiday traditions and we had it, just the two of us.

Thanksgiving back home wasn't really much more than a big family get-together and a pretty fantastic meal. We really have never had more to go with the tradition than just that. But it was still somehow MORE than just getting together with the whole extended family (and sometimes a few extras) and eating until we had to be rolled around the house to get anywhere. I can't put my finger on it, but there was just... more to it than what was on the surface. Something about just the FAMILY together, a sense of identity as a family, a group, US. Enjoying being with each other to do more than eat massive amounts of delicious food. To sit and talk and joke and laugh (and here is where I start to get teary-eyed).

So when it comes to trying to introduce my own family traditions to a family that has never followed anything similar to it, I tend to just not want to bother with it and horde all the goodness to myself and my husband, and keep it within our own little family of, for now, two.

Though we haven't thrown out the idea of making basically the same meal at a different date to share with others, Thanksgiving is still ours while we're here. It's my American tradition.

So this year, again, I cooked things in small batches for days in preparation of our little feast. French bread was baked four days prior in order to sit and get stale for stuffing (and other purposes at later dates that require stale bread), pie crust was made and frozen, and the day before, I made some spectacular biscuits and pumpkin pie.

This years pie, though, was made with a butternut squash (here in Aussie land called a butternut pumpkin). Also, rather than roasting it, in the interest of saving time, energy and money on our power bill, I cut it into chunks and steamed it. It turned out to be one of the creamiest pies I have ever made. The taste was basically the same as using any other pumpkin, too, with maybe a bit more sweetness.

Day of was, of course, turkey roasting day. Stuffed absolutely FULL of stuffing, our little 3.5 kilo bird went in the oven along with candied sweet potatoes, MORE stuffing, and a random corn "pudding" concoction that was the result of two recipes I found online.

Carving the turkey. I think Phillip was trying to show off my bump.

Le finished table setting.
Biscuits, mashed potatoes (with ranch), stuffing,
turkey, corn "pudding", gravy, green beans,
and, Phillip's favorite, candied sweet potatoes.
Also some grape juice.

We're just adorable, us three.

Experimental butternut pumpkin pie.
Seriously GOOD. Topped with homemade whipped cream.

Playing with my food

Our little chicks that were still in egg form in This Post hatched about three months ago now. But, because of the whole "I'm growing a person and therefore quite exhausted" thing, I didn't get to tell how the hatching went, nor post photos of how adorable the little fluff buckets were (I say were because they've been going through that awkward chicken teenager phase and are not as cute looking now).

We ended up with three chicks. Five hatched but... momma hen stepped on one right after it had finished drying (this happens. Chickens are not very bright, even the best momma chickens do this). Then, momma hen got off the nest permanently in the middle of another one hatching. So, that one died too. Or it died in the middle of hatching and she got off the nest. Either way, we ended up with three little chicks.

Phillip built a pen and cage for them to stay in, so that 1) the cats wouldn't eat our chicks and 2) the other chickens wouldn't kill the little chicks. Again. Nature. This happens. It's what they do and how they establish pecking order. That, and sometimes chickens can be jerks. Like all living things.

Mamma Hen breaking apart grain for her babies

Such cute little balls of fluff!

We were hoping all three were hens. Hens have a purpose: eggs. More than one rooster around and you have fights for dominance and hens going off their laying because they're getting too much *ahem* attention from roosters (roosters tend to pay more attention to hens who are laying eggs, as, well, this would increase their possibilities of actually reproducing. Hens not producing eggs means no babies means roosters give less "attention" to the hens. Therefore, too many roosters means you have no eggs. Which was the main reason we got our hens in the first place. So, any roosters in this batch will get the ax. It is, however, a bit difficult to see what sex a bird is. With chickens though, the rooster's comb starts to develop more quickly than a hens.

We seem to have one rooster. Which, the city-girl side of me thinks is kind of sad, because he's quite friendly at this point. And, well, they're baby chicks. They're still kind of cute. The practical side of me knows though that, if we get too many roosters because we don't want to kill them, we're feeding an animal that, if anything, will give us more trouble in the long run.

This is what happens now when I bend down to feed them

Oh well. Practicality wins out. In the meantime, we're having fun giving our little chicks a nice life of leisure. Their idiot hen mother decided that two months was a long enough time to look after them and left them to roam on their own. So, they've become overly attached to Phillip and me.

I seriously love our little chicks. They're adorable and fun. If I go out at the same time each day, they'll run up and jump on my to roost on my arms and lap No pooping on me thus far... But practicality must win out. 'Tis the way of life well, nearly everywhere unless you can afford to be picky and turn food into some sort of religion.

Please oh please don't poop on my head!

We've got another hen sitting on half a dozen eggs. Tried to stop her (I'd rather have more eggs than chicks) but, she is determined. We've decided already that nearly this whole hatching will be going into the freezer in a year (home raised free-range chicken, yes please!).

Joke was on us (Huge grin!)

So, why haven't I blogged in over two months?

Well, it turns out that, when I wrote my last entry We're Expecting, titling it as somewhat of a joke to get people to knock off with the jokes and question, "When are you having kids?"... I really was expecting.

A baby. Not chickens or a velociraptor or anything like that.

So, yes. I'm pregnant. We're pregnant. Coming sometime around Early May or late April (because babies just choose when to come, if all goes well). And no, we were not aware (fully, anyway) that while we were joking around about expecting little fuzzy fluffy babies, we were in for our own little bundle.

Until a week or so ago, I had ZERO energy. Or, if I did, the half hour I had was put into doing something semi-productive, like washing dishes, or cooking something for dinner both Phillip and I could stomach. So, between near constant nausea (motion sickness bands, anything ginger, and lots and lots of bread helped most of the time!) and the feeling like I just needed to sleep all day left little time and energy for blogging. Add to that two months of pretending like I felt absolutely fine so people wouldn't suspect a thing and time home was mostly spent in a haze of fatigue accompanied by DVDs and much reading.

At the moment, I still seem to go only every other day with having a close to normal amount of energy. But, praise the Lord, I can eat again. I WANT to eat again. A lot. And again, thank God, I have been blessed with a husband who is good enough to me to let me give into my naughty cravings (potato chips, fries, Dominos pizza) only once in a while, and helps keep plenty of fruits and veggies around the house that I actually enjoy snacking on. And no, no abnormal or odd cravings. Nothing really I wouldn't NORMALLY eat either, just a more... intense desire to eat said foods. Like tomato soup at the moment.

Phillip has also decided to cook for us at least two days a week. Real, full meals. He's getting quite good too (last nights roasted chicken legs with potato and carrot with thyme? YUM!). He's just a wonderful helpmeet.

We're expecting....

Chicks!

Ok, so I might have some family members and close friends who read the post title and are a little mad about the fact that I'm talking about chickens and not babies (but really people, who breaks THAT kind of news to close friends and family via a public blog post?).

Explanation:

You may remember that last year at New Years a dog killed all but one of our chickens and our two ducks (I still get a little upset about the ducks.... they were cool ducks). A few months later, we ended up taking two pullets (young hens who had not yet started laying eggs) from my in-laws. We took one beautiful black Australorp and a half Silky half some other breed of chicken we're not sure of. Phillip ended up naming them Cypher and Hawk (but we usually end up calling them by their breed or their color and not their somewhat stupid names).

The thing about some breeds of chickens is that they can be good layers (like our red Iser Brown), good for meat (our little Australorp, though they're good layers too), and good for going broody. There's also breeds that are well known sitters (once they go broody they will not leave the nest unless you force them) or good mothers. Basically, chicken breeds are as diverse as dog breeds, and depending on what you want in your chickens, you get various breeds.

Hawk, aka, the yellow/tan one, sittin' on a whole bunch of eggs.
Spoiled girl, I bring her her own dish of food and water.

Hawk has tried to go broody once before, but outside of their shed, so we had to try and move her at night (chickens are funnily calm at night) so that she wouldn't get eaten by quols. Silly thing.... She decided she didn't like being moved to safety and got off her eggs. Which... was ok since we get to eat the eggs. This is the second time she's gone broody and she's chosen one heck of a spot to hatch her chicks again. It's about four and a half feet off the ground, where our chickens roost at night. So, chicks hatch, try to walk out of the nest and.... not pretty. Phillip is building a small enclosure to put her and the eggs in, to keep them cosey (and safe from plumets to death and out idiot cats, and neighbor's idiot cats) from scraps of wood and chicken wire. We'll move her there sometime this week since she's only got maybe a week left until the eggs hatch.

Apparently the nesting boxes I make sure are full
of soft, fresh hay are not good enough.
It must feel safer to hatch babies 2.5 meters off the ground.

Another fun fact about chickens: once they go broody, you can get them to sit on any eggs, not just their own. So, since our hens have been tandem nesting the little Silky has some Australorp eggs under her as well. We also were given a few eggs of unknown type (two were probably Australorps) from my in-laws  two days after she started sitting, and chucked those under her. (Well, next to her, because to put them under her you'd probably loose fingers she's so angry if you get near her). She (and the black one for some reason started helping) immediately started moving them underneath her.

The good thing? We should end up with a few chicks of multiple possible varieties. I'm hoping for at least two healthy hens to share with people or, well, more eggs, which we also share with people. The bad thing? Our one laying hen, little black Australorp, is still basically sitting on top of the broody Silky and laying eggs. Which that dumb hen then takes under her. So... we have no fresh eggs and will end up with a bunch of rotten and un-viable ones at the end of this sitting. The little lady has already pushed two very rotten ones out from under her, but is sitting pretty on at least seven more eggs.

Ch-ch-ch-Changes!

Hmm, so there have been a few big things that have happened since my last "lazy blog". Perhaps I'll spread them out so as to encourage my lazy self to blog for my... 5... readers.

We bought a car.

It's a very Australian car. And it was from a family friend here who was, sadly, recently diagnosed with cancer and is quickly "going home to glory" as he says. This little old man is quite lovable, really, and I've only seen him and his wife maybe 5 times? But he knows my husband's family very well and the both of them are just... sweet.

So he said that he wanted to give my husband and his siblings first go at the car when he was gone, and, since the other two boys already have new-old cars, they thought Phillip and I should take it. Which was... quite a blessing (a very mixed blessing because, little as I know this couple, it's sad to think of him leaving us). This lovely little man decided that he'd rather be rid of the car and know someone was enjoying it before he died, so, we have it now.

$1000 for a '93 Holden Commodore. In very good condition. And... it's an automatic, which means I'm now really learning to drive here. Phillip had a little manual when we got married, still have it, but, I never learned to drive an automatic (hangs head in shame). And what with having to learn how to shift gears, as well as sit on the right-hand side of the car and drive on the left-hand side of the road on roads that are much narrower and have little to no shoulder to slide on to and are, at times, chock full of blind corners and people who like to drive in the middle of them because there is no middle line in the road... I just didn't learn much in his car.

Driving in an automatic here on the left-hand side, while easier than a manual, is still tripping up my brain a little. I may be used to it from the passenger side, but when I go to make a turn, instinct kicks in and I start to go into the wrong lane. Or if not go into it, instantly think "wait, no, that's wrong" and have to turn off instinct and actually really THINK about how I'm driving. It's almost like being a beginner driver again. Which is annoying.

But I can DRIVE! At least into Sheffield (the town closest to us) for minimal (and more expensive) grocery shopping, and to the in-laws place and my few friends that live, well, within walking distance (but only when it's rainy. I still enjoy my walks).