Very Easy Baked Custard

Big Daddy Geoffrey, our Brahma Rooster

4 eggs
2 1/2 c. milk
sugar or other sweetener to taste
Vanilla
Nutmeg

Beat the eggs moderately well. Put the eggs, milk, sugar and vanilla into a sauce pan and beat gently until mixed. Heat the mixture until hot, but not boiling. Place in baking dish, sprinkle more nutmeg over the top if desired and bake in a 325 degree oven for 40 minutes.

Healthier Eggs

Everyone who has eaten eggs from chickens who run loose in the grass and chickens raised in cages or warehouses knows that eggs from pastured chickens have a far superior color, structure, and taste. One would logically expect the eggs from pastured chickens to also be healthier.

Mother Earth News had eggs tested from 14 flocks in different parts of the U.S.

They found that, as compared with eggs from penned or warehoused hens, the eggs from pastured hens had:

• 1/3 less cholesterol
• 1/4 less saturated fat
• 2/3 more vitamin A
• 2 times more omega-3 fatty acids
• 3 times more vitamin E
• 7 times more beta carotene

This is not a huge sample size, and the article does not go into details such as the variance within the results. Nevertheless, they are interesting results, and there are other studies showing similar results. The article points out what one could easily guess just by looking at the thin shells and pale yolks of warehoused "free range" chicken eggs sold in supermarkets. The USDA definition of "free range" includes hens who live in crowded warehouses and never see a blade of grass in their lives. I have a picture of such a place in another entry on this blog: http://huerto-de-altamira.blogspot.com/2009/01/35000-free-range-chickens.html

Given the misleading USDA definition, factory farms can label eggs from warehoused hens as "free range" and gullible people pay twice as much, or more, as they would pay for factory farm eggs laid by caged hens. As pathetic a life as caged hens lead, the lives led by warehoused hens is probably even more terrible.

On a happier note, my hens have a pleasant wooden house where they roost at night, and in the day time they run around eating whatever plants appeal to them, and scratching in the soil for insects. Here are the eggs I gathered from mine over the past week (minus the ones we ate).

The green and pinkish ones are from the Ameracaunas. The brown ones are from the Rhode Island Reds and Dominiques. The eggs themselves are pretty, but it's what's inside that really counts. The yolks are deep orange-yellow, rather than the insipid pale yellow of warehoused or caged hens. You should see how easy it is to separate the yolks from the whites!

Lentils & Rice

Ingredients

• 1.5 cup lentils
• 1 cup brown rice
• onions to taste
  
• enough olive oil to sauté lentils, rice & onions
  
• enough water to cook rice & beans
• lemon juice, cumin, pepper, salt to taste

I use a slow cooker, but of course you can use a cooking pot of any kind, preferably a heavy one that will maintain a uniform temperature so the rice & lentils will not stick to the bottom of the pan and burn. You can avoid sticking and burning by keeping the heat low and stirring from time to time.

Clean the lentils and rice, put them into a pot, pour in the water and start the slow cooker or bring the pot to simmer. If you want to add flavor, you can sauté the rice and beans before putting them into the slow cooker, or if you are using a cooking pot on the stove, you can saute them right in the pot before adding water. Sauté the onions until they are just beginning to turn brown and add them to the rice & beans after the rice and beans have been cooking for a while.

Cook until the rice and beans are tender and ready to eat.

I like to add the other ingredients toward the end, when the lentils and rice are almost ready to serve.

Terra Cotta Composters

http://www.dailydump.org/products

These are attractive terra cotta kambhas

You can buy a license to "clone" this business to produce and sell these terra cotta composters. Far as I know, these are not being sold in the U.S.

Here is an article that shows one of these kambhas in use: http://www.tribuneindia.com/2009/20090222/spectrum/main4.htm




I found a U.S. terra cotta composter for sale online from $168 to $189. It is not as attractive as the Daily Dump abd cannot be stacked, but it appears to have one technological advantage: a small door at the bottom that can be opened to take out fully composted material.

http://www.algreenproducts.com/catalogue.php?cat=Composter

Desalinating Drip-Irrigation System

http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/4698135/description.html

This patent is for a system that uses microporous hydrophobic materials such as Goretex to desalinate salt water within irrigation pipes that deliver the desalinated water directly to the root zones of plants.

I was thinking that something like this would be good to have and wondered if anyone had come up with a prototype. So I searched the Internet using the terms "desalination salt water irrigation," and found this patent application. Far as I know, this system is not being produced commercially. Based on the drawing that accompanies the patent application, the hydrophobic membranes are around the outer edges of the pipes.

My idea was to divide the pipe into two sections, separated by the membrane. Saltwater would flow along the bottom section of the pipe; water vapor would rise through the membrane and condense along the top of the pipe. The pipe would have small openings just above the membrane, to release the water to the soil. This would be simpler to make than the system described in the patent application, but there may be some reason this would not work well. For example, maybe the water has to be under pressure to keep the holes from clogging up with soil.

Asimina parviflora

http://plants.usda.gov/java/profile?symbol=ASPA18

Dwarf Pawpaw

Making Adobe Bricks