Stuffed Onions with Italian Meat Sauce

 

     I love old recipes. It's not really because they are healthier, but usually they are healthier because they involved less processed ingredients. I love that most older recipes are simpler, with fewer ingredients and are usually cheaper and more easily acquired than a lot of modern recipes. I can't even watch cooking shows because as soon as the recipe calls for some expensive ingredient that I might have to go to a specialty store to get I look at the show like mystery horror fiction - fresh terragon? Pickled chives? Veal? Custard? Not going to happen.

     This recipe came out amazingly. I made the meat sauce the day of in the slow cooker, then baked the onions and meat sauce for about an hour in the oven. When I make it again I am going to supplement the hamburger with turkey burger, lowering the price without changing the flavor much, and baking the onion a little bit longer so it's more tender. But came out great for a first try.

Nailed it.

Water Hyacinth Recipe

      The hardest part about eating vegetables might be the texture. Or maybe because it's unusual, or not native to your culture. People question the safety of vegetables they have never heard of, as if it must be unsafe to eat if it's not available at the store, which is illogical. There are a great deal of vegetables we probably should be eating because they are sustainable and local, but aren't. Is that because big business controls everything?

This recipe is great with frozen broccoli if you have no mushrooms.

Water Hyacinth with Mushrooms and 🧄

A recipe by Chrissy.

-  4 cups water hyacinth, sliced into strips the size of green beans.

- 2 cloves of garlic, minced

- 3 teaspoons olive oil or your favorite oil, sunflower is good but coconut is so so.

- 1 cup mushrooms, frozen is ok.

Put the oil and garlic into your favorite cast iron skillet and bring to medium heat, then add mushrooms and sliced water hyacinth. Cook until tender, about 20 minutes, stirring and turning often.

Duck Enclosure and Ducklings

 

     These pictures were taken when the ducks were about three weeks old. My daughter had put a branch in the duck ponds, so they could use it as a ladder, which they needed when they were smaller. Now that they are larger they have no trouble hopping in and out of the water.

One Strange Duck Predator

 

     Not sure what kind of snake this is, here in suburbia, not near any water. But it got itself stuck in the duck fencing, and ended up getting eaten by something, not the ducks.

Ducklings, Week 2 and 3

  

    It's amazing how fast they are growing. They are eating a diet of baby duck crumble and water hyacinth, and nearly doubled in size. No escaping, just had the one predator attempt.

Spiderwort, Spring 2022

 

     Every Spring, around Alban Eilir, all the Spiderwort start blooming. The flowers are open in the very early morning, and as the sun rises they appear to be glowing 🟣. They are amazingly beautiful, and one of the few plants of early spring that is native to this area and edible. 

 

    Every year I transplant seedlings from the mowed areas to safer areas of my place. And every year I have more and more beautiful color in the spring. One year I used the flowers to color eggs, by sticking them to the egg and then boiling the egg in a wrapper. It came out amazingly.

Gratuitous Duckling Photos

 

     After I reinforced the lower areas of the enclosure with mesh wire fencing, we were ready to go and buy ducklings again. This time the store had a cheaper variety, the Pekin duck.

     They start off with yellow feathers and turn white. The store personnel had no idea about gender, but tried to tell me that higher pitched squeaking is an indicator of female birds. I hope they are female for the 🥚.

     On the second day I put some water in one of the containers, and I was so worried it that my daughter figured out how to use a piece of wood as a duck bridge, which they quickly figured out. Then I was worried that the water would be too deep. I said, "Do you think the water is too deep for them?" And right after I said it one of them diced underwater and started zooming around under there. I guess they figured it out.

Gone-lings, not Ducklings

      One of the more helpful learning tools in life can be learning from other people's mistakes. When I teach I often talk about some of my mistakes, to use as examples and to reassure the student that mistakes happen and it's what you do afterward that matter. 

     One of the things I learned is that small ducks can fit through really small areas in any enclosure to escape. It cost me the price of the birds I lost, about $25. 

     So these are not my ducklings, but my gone-lings. I hope they fed one of neighborhood cats or rats very well.

The Ducks Enclosure Part 2

 

     After much deliberation, I ordered a chicken enclosure from the Walmart website for about $300. I am one hundred percent sure that the enclosure came from China originally, as it was written all over the instructions and the box. It was not very easy to put together, largely because the diagram of the finished product showed the door on the wrong side of roof. But after following all of the directions I only ended up breaking one of the welds and had an enclosure. And the door is crooked.

     My daughter helped me with the netting, which is zip tied to the aluminum frame. It all looked great, so we went to the store and came home with three baby 🦆. She was so worried the ducks would be too cold with the night temperatures down in the 50s that she brought them in her room at night.

 

    The next day when I got home from work, the ducklings were gone. It looked more like they had escaped rather than that a predator had eaten them, as there were no mess and feathers. I have no doubt that after they escaped something came to eat them.

     

Spring Garden 2022 Part 2

 

     If I didn't mention it, I planted up my cannas this spring. I am so over losing all of my cannas to frost, from now on I am going to keep them in the backyard again. I am also going to utilizing the punch bowl method to ensure that they are well hydrated in the backyard, which is something I had trouble with the last time I kept them in full sun in the backyard.

     Also included naked onions, naked black beans. My mom gave me some stromanthe and variegated ginger.