Annabelle the sheep and Buddy the dog are very best friends and do this all the time.  This video is courtesy of Chickens in the Road blog.  Do you not love how confused that second sheep is there at the end?

Not only have we left behind some serious (and beautiful) snow and freezing temperatures, but I had to leave behind my chicken girls as well.  My daughter lives within walking distance of our home and is taking care of my feathered friends while we're here in California.  I received this email from her today and wanted to share it with you in case any of you also have chickens who might benefit from this....

After we went sledding, I checked on the chickens.  They give me 4-5 eggs per day.  We did yoga:

Tree Pose (vrksasana) benefits: Tones and strengthens the legs.  Gives one the sense of balance and poise.

                     People version:

             Chicken version:

Then we worked on Eagle pose (garudasana).   It develops the ankles and removes stiffness from shoulders.

        People version:

               Chicken Version:

Thank you so much, Lisa, for taking the time to help my chickens through this long winter while we hang out here in the California warmth.  I'm not sure they're going to want me to come home if you continue to take such good care of them.  I have to say that Rosie there is much better at the Eagle pose than I am, but maybe it just looks easier because she doesn't have arms.

Chicken yoga is going to catch on.  Just wait, I think you're on to something.

Anyone who knows me is well aware of my self-proclaimed idiocy when it comes to spacial/directional-type things.  I'm utterly horrible at orienting myself to the big info maps at the mall that say "you are here"; I’m fairly certain that I'm not. 

And therein lies the problem.  And the solution, I think.  I’m a really busy person.  But I’m not sure why.  I rarely feel like I have enough time in the day to get it all done, and yet, why?  The story I tell myself is that if I don’t get this done really fast, the next thing won’t get done on time and then all the things will back up and then I’ll never get done.

That last sentence made me feel really stupid.  Mostly because of how true it is and how insanely stupid it is at the same time.  I’m laying it all out here now…. I think that on most days it’s all about getting done.  All that stuff.  Done.  And then I miss the moments and the days and then it’s like “where did THAT year go?  But I got stuff done, right?

So, like I said, I’m turning 60 this year, and it’s rather a big one for me.  I’ve never been 60 before.  I’ve never been older than 59, so I don’t know what to expect.  But I think if I have a choice, I’d like to enjoy it.  To do that, I’m pretty sure I can’t be flying through every day getting stuff done like my life depended on it.  It may require a more thoughtful approach to each day.  Stop.  Sit once in a while.  Listen.  Observe.  I never do that.

My husband and I bought some books at this quaint little hole-in-the wall bookstore a while back and on the bookmark they slipped into the bag it said “Be Here Now.  Be Somewhere Else Later.  Is That So Complicated?”

Maybe not.



So the deal is that last July we traded in our aging, rarely-laying chickens for 6 about-to-start laying, young-uns. 

They were so cute, just a few months old, quiet, although quite frightened of everything, as chickens will be. They slowly grew, and in four months they've become about full-grown, very sweet and docile.

We’ve been waiting somewhat patiently for these gals to start laying and last week we finally got the first egg!  I was pretty darn excited, as you can imagine.  Yay!  Fresh eggs again!

But what we didn’t figure on, is that we now have a coop full of teenage girls with very bad attitudes.  You see, as soon as this one started laying, they all think they’re pretty tough stuff.  They’ve taken to flying out of the pen, just to show us we have no control over them.  I’ll go out there and chase ‘em back into the pen, close the gate and watch them strut around laughing and then ½ hour later, they’re flying out and it starts all over again.

Well, last night, we just about had enough.  Mark went out and informed them that they were herewith grounded and had lost all of their outdoor privileges.  As of this moment they are locked in the coop and hopefully will have some time to think about how they’ve been behaving.  They don’t know who they’re up against.  But man are they mad.  You should hear em out there… they want out!  The sound of six angry teenage girls is not a lovely thing. 

So right now Mark is out buying some poultry netting which we’re going to place over the top of the pen.  Hopefully, this will be a temporary measure until they get the idea that there will be no more sneaking out, but we’re prepared to go the distance.  Who’s in control now, huh?



Whenever anyone asked me what I missed most about leaving California, I’m sure they expected me to say the weather or the ocean, but without hesitation, the answer was always Trader Joe’s.  I honestly never expected to see one here, so you can imagine my euphoria when word got around that they were coming here to Omaha.

Entering the store this morning was like an emotionally nostalgic homecoming.  I wanted to hug the the bags of avocados, the shelves of wheat bread, pita, hand-made tortillas.  I wept as I placed my Pastures of Eden feta cheese in the basket and picked up the container of Garden Patch Veggie juice, my grade B maple syrup and crunchy almond butter.  Yes, it was busy; crazy crowded, but to me, I was the only person in that store.  Me and Trader Joe go way back.

Back in the 70’s, I shopped at that very first Trader Joe’s store in South Pasadena.  It was small and bore little resemblance to the stores of today, but it was unique even then and offered stuff you couldn’t get anywhere else.  When we moved to Santa Cruz, I was without Trader Joe’s for several years until one opened in Capitola.  That was a happy day, I’ll tell you.  But when we left California, I was pretty sure I was saying good-bye to T.J.’s forever.

Of course, that all changed this morning.  It was a happy reunion, but then as I was leaving the store and blissfully walking through the parking lot with my grocery cart, the case of wine I had sitting down on the bottom rack fell off.  Wine bottles went rolling everywhere, and one lay broken by the curb, spilling it's precious contents.  That's just so me.  Yes, I was hoping no one saw that, but of course they did.  And as I quickly attempted to retrieve the rolling bottles and return them to the box, a Trader Joe's employee came running out with a clean-up crew while one guy ran back in to pick up a replacement for the broken bottle.  Man, I love that place. 

And I love the idea that they're here now.  Cooking in the Circle B Kitchen just got a whole lot more fun.

Today is my birthday, and while it seems I should be lamenting the passing of years, I find that turning 59 might actually be OK.  Yes, I know, one year from now I might be feeling different about birthdays, but I sort of doubt it.  I love birthdays – always have.  And the older I get the better perspective I have on the whole aging thing.  Sure, I could get all bummed out about getting older and wish I were 30 again, but the truth is, I don’t.  30 was hard work and 59 is fun.  That’s the bottom line.  I’ve had a great life so far, but it’s never been this much fun, so why the heck should I complain about this birthday?

The fact is, this is the youngest I’ll ever be again for the rest of my life, and I know for a fact that the day is coming when I will wish like heck to be 59 again.   So my plan is to celebrate being this young and having the good sense to be having such a good time.

I think it would have been helpful to me when I was 30 to have someone mention that life doesn't end when you hit 40, or 50.  And I'm going to tell you that it gets even better after that.

There’s just no doubt that being a Grandma is more fun than being a parent ever was.  And, coincidentally, I happen to have just about the most awesome grandkids imaginable, which truly adds to the fun.  And then we get to have days like this together.  This is the third of our Kids in the Kitchen series.  The first day we made homemade pasta, the second we made ice cream sandwiches and here we made stuffed pizza sticks and chocolate mousse.

Mingled in with the fun were some educational moments like how to separate the yolks from the whites,

how to whip the egg whites and how to melt and stir the chocolate with the egg yolks and how to whip cream, all necessary steps to making chocolate mousse.

But most of it was just fun, like rolling pizza dough around string cheese to make stuffed pizza sticks.

We also made a pizza with the leftover dough.

And, of course, eating it all was the best part.  If you don’t have any grandkids,

go find some and make some fun food with them.  And then maybe hire an industrial cleaning service after they leave.  I was in total awe of the mess, but also quite intrigued that one thing stayed very clean the whole time… their napkins.

Printable Recipe for Stuffed Pizza Sticks

Printable Recipe for Chocolate Mousse

Firstly, let me just say up front that here in the Circle B Kitchen we don’t eat beef, pork or lamb, and we haven’t for about 20 years.  I will explain that in a second, but having just said that, you can imagine how that limits what we cook and how we cook it.  We do eat poultry and seafood, so most of our meat dishes have one of those two ingredients.

So why you might be asking don’t we eat more meat?  We first made the decision not to eat red meat because it seemed like a healthy choice to make for ourselves, and we still feel like that’s an important factor in our cooking.  We also have chosen to avoid processed foods, chemical additives and those things with high salt, fat and sugar contents.

We are by no means fanatic about any of this.  We made this decision quietly for ourselves and respect other people’s right to eat and make these choices for themselves.  And I will happily cook meat for the meat-eating members of our family from time to time.  We do not believe in imposing our choices on others around us, and believe me, I still miss a good pot roast!

Having said that, I recently pledged my support for the Meatless Monday movement which brings me to the other reason why we don’t eat beef, pork or lamb.  Much of the degradation of our planet is directly related to the meat industry and the pollution and greenhouse gas emissions that are fueling global warming.  Of course, the issue is much more complex than that last sentence I wrote, but there is no doubt that industrialized meat production is a very big problem.

We eat meatless many nights of the week, but we have pledged ourselves to eating meatless on Monday to support this growing movement to reduce meat consumption worldwide.  So every Monday I will be posting a Meatless Monday meal on my blog in the hopes that I might encourage others to do the same, or at least to promote what we think is a very huge issue for us all.

You can read more about Meatless Monday here. 

So one day last week, my granddaughter, Leah, and I decided to spend the day together, and we also thought it would be most fun to make some pasta and turn it into raviolis.  So that’s what we did and we were right… it was great fun.   Leah is 8 and a very creative, ingenious child, so it was no surprise that she turned out to be a superior pasta-maker.

First we made the dough...

Then we made the stuffing (4-cheese) and made our raviolis....

Then we ate them...

And we decided that making pasta is really fun and quite delicious.

Printable Recipe for 4-cheese Ravioli

No matter how much we love to cook (or don’t), we all have one very nasty nemesis who is hell bent on keeping us out of the kitchen.  This is one MacDaddy of a bad guy.  You know who I’m talkin about, right?  Yeah.  That’s right….NOTIME!!

I mean how MANY god-forsaken moments have you said “Oh, I so want to make that, but I have NOTIME”.  Or, I was going to make (fill in the blank), but I had NOTIME!  Or “That looks so good, but I have NOTIME to cook like that”.

We have all had a seat in this boat. 

So what to do??  How to dispel this ogre from our midst and get back in the kitchen?  The truth is, it’s not that easy.  Life is hard.  We’re busy.  Often, there really is NOTIME, and that really makes us feel like not cooking.  Sometimes it makes us actually hate cooking.

Oh, NOTIME can be a cruel master.  The tyranny of the urgent.  But we are smart.  We are wily when we want to be.  We can fight back!  And how do we fight back, you ask?

MEATBALLS!  We make meatballs.  We make meatballs that taste really good, but only take 5 minutes.  Meatballs are only the beginning, but they are a very good start. 

These are no ordinary meatballs…these are porcupine meatballs, and they were invented back in the 1950’s when I was a kid and my Mom was working and she had NOTIME.  I made these for my kids when I had NOTIME and they loved them.  Still do.  Porcupine meatballs were actually originally invented by the Campbell’s Soup Co. as a weapon against NOTIME.  All you needed were three things…a can of tomato soup, ground meat and rice.

I have updated this meatball to be even tastier, but still possess the speed and agility of a great NOTIME weapon.  Here’s what you’ll need….

...you'll need that and a lb of ground meat (I use ground turkey) and 1/2 cup of

And it has to be Uncle Ben's cuz it's parboiled and converted and whatever that means, it makes the rice cook better in the meatballs.  As in faster.  Did you know that converted rice is actually a little more nutritious than regular white rice?  Just found that out.

So you pour your beautiful organic soup in a large skillet, and while that's heating, grab your pound of ground meat (I use ground turkey.  I think I said that already).  Mix it with 1/2 cup of U.B. rice and a little salt and pepper.  I add some chopped onion cuz I like to.  Form your meatballs and drop them in the soup.  Simmer, covered for about 20 minutes.  Remove from the heat and let them sit another ten minutes or so and the rice will swell and your meatballs will take on their porcupine-ness.  To serve, just spoon that luscious sauce over the meatballs.  You will lick your plate.  I promise.

Porcupine meatballs go really well with leftover mashed potatoes and a little green salad.

My work here is done.  Go forth and cook!  What you do with all that extra time is up to you.

Printable Recipe