Ouch

This week got off to a rough start. Delilah broke her horn and that got us worrying about how we could help her recover. She didn't like all the attention and she went to great lengths to avoid us. She appears to be doing ok now and she's slowly returning to her normal personality. She doesn't have a role to play in my diet but we are hoping to milk her when she gets older so we'd hate to lose her.

I also had a bit of a melt down earlier in the week because I was having a difficult time getting motivated to prepare foods in the evening. Last week was very productive ... this week less so. Delilah's broken horn was certainly weighing heavily on my mind and I simply hit the 'food prep wall'. Going forward I will need to have more meals frozen and ready to heat up so I don't have to spend time in the kitchen if I need a break.

I also have to admit that I could use some more variety beyond yellow zucchinis. I have been freezing bags and bags of sliced zucchini for the past few days ... I will enjoy them in the winter but for now I wouldn't mind a few tomatoes. A couple tomatoes are starting to turn a wee bit pink so we're getting close!

Zucchini weekend

The garden has erupted with zucchini so I spent most of the weekend trying out zucchini recipes. I started with a recipe for zucchini feta pancakes ... they were quite good. I will definitely make these again because they taste great and they freeze well. They took 4 cups of zucchini and 1 cup of feta cheese along with some green onion, parsley, eggs, spices and some flour.


I made some mozzarella on Sunday morning so we could make some zucchini quiches in the afternoon. We used about 4 cups of mozzarella to make the two quiches. It was worth all of the effort but I am going to go through a lot of cheese at this rate.

We also barbecued a feta cheese stuffed zucchini for a meal. All in all a great tasting weekend.

The garden is kicking in

The garden is producing a good supply of cucumbers, onions and zucchini which we're enjoying daily. Last night we had barbecued zucchini with a simple cucumber salad made with yogurt, salt and vinegar. Simple meals are so very delicious. You can focus on the tastes and appreciate what you are eating easily - it's wonderful.

We have dozens of green tomatoes on the vine but so far none of them want to be the first to turn red. While we wait for the tomatoes I've been making some pickles for winter and as soon as my green peppers are ready I'm going to make a couple of jars of a simple cucumber relish with peppers. That will go well with my Lilly burgers :)

Annual pig roast weekend

We hosted our annual pig roast this past weekend. Approximately 85 of our friends, family and neighbours came over on Saturday to enjoy a pot luck dinner. We look forward to this weekend every year and we are so thankful to everyone for making the trip out to our home.

On Friday night we had a small party so we could start off the weekend with some fun and laughter. Everyone there knew about this blog and they wanted to create a unique picture for this update. The picture you see is of one of our recently hatched chicks that was brought in to the house for a late night photo shoot.

I enjoyed talking to a lot of different people about my diet. They had a lot of questions like .... Why I was doing it .... How was I feeling ....
How do I find the time? It was wonderful to have everyone express such true interest in what I am doing. I was humbled and inspired. My answers were the same for everyone .... I'm doing this because I can .... I feel great and this doesn't take as much time as you think ... I often eat very simply without much preparation. A number of couples want to schedule a visit that includes a goat milking session followed by cheese making lesson and then a dinner. We haven't set a date yet but I'm looking forward to it.

Of course I had to create a new rule for the diet so I could eat the pig roast. The new rule is that I can now eat anything that I spend six hours barbecuing ;)

Everyone brought such lovely dishes to the pot luck. I was planning on trying many of them but in the end I stuck with my diet except for a small side of sauerkraut .... mmmm sauerkraut.

Thanks again to everyone that came to the pig roast and to those that we missed ..... we hope to see you next year.

The story behind the name Peskychicken

Some of you may be wondering why I chose the name Peskychicken. Well, I'll tell you. When we got our first 3 laying hens back in 2005 they had the run of our entire property which included around the house. Those hens got into everything. They would dig up our flower gardens, roost in our garage, hang out on our back deck and run to pester any car that pulled in the driveway. They were truly pesky chickens.

I would carry Daniel, our youngest son, out to the barn to gather eggs. On the way I would say "Let's go see those pesky chickens." Well Daniel loved it when I said pesky chickens - it absolutely cracked him up! You know that full belly laugh that really little kids do - that's how he laughed. So it became part of our routine where every day I would ask him if he wanted to go see the pesky chickens.

As I fell further and further in to my chicken obsession I discovered the website www.backyardchickens.com and if I wanted to post online I needed a name. That's when the name Peskychicken was hatched. As a side note ... there is also a site called www.backyardherds.com where I go to research and ask my goat related questions. On that site I'm known as Peskygoat :)

Even now when I think back and remember how Daniel would laugh at "pesky chickens" it makes me smile. To me Peskychicken is all about smiles and laughter ... I hope some of that spirit comes through in this blog.

Morning commute pondering ...

One thing I have noticed since starting my diet is that I am no longer tired when I first wake up. In the past I liked my morning coffee (or two) to help get me moving. Now, when I wake up, I feel fully rested and ready to go. Do I want to start drinking coffee again when my 100 meter diet ends? Which leads to the even bigger question of what aspects of the diet do I wish to continue and what aspects of my prior diet do I want to reintroduce?

I have a long time to think about these questions considering that I have 11 more months to go. But on my commute this morning I'm leaning towards staying away from coffee for good. I really like coffee and I still miss it very much but I have to admit that I feel so much better not having it in my diet. We all have things in our diet that we really like and that we consider a necessity but when you give up all of those things and start living from a new baseline you realize that you might be happier without them. That's how I feel about coffee.

It's something worth pondering .....

Cheese and chicks ...

Move over feta because I have a new favourite cheese .... mozzarella. Mozzarella turned out to be extremely easy to make. You simply need some whole milk, citric acid, rennet and some time. I made two bars of cheese that were about 4 inches long and 1 inch thick. We ate one bar with toasted pitas ... the cheese was a little soft but it still tasted like mozzarella. I wish I had some ripe tomatoes because I would love to make some pizza.

Our egg production has dropped off significantly in the last few weeks. That's because most of our Americana's have gone broody and are hatching out chicks. Yesterday we had 5 chicks hatch and our hen, Luke, has claimed them as her own. She was such a good mom to Anakin in the spring that I'm sure she'll do a great job this time as well. We should see another 7 or 8 chicks hatch over the next week or so.

You may find this amusing ... the hen that hatched the 5 new chicks is a pure black hen named Darth Vader. We think that Luke took the chicks under her wing to keep them safe from the dark side. A couple of the chicks will likely be named after Sith's anyways ... like Darth Maul and Darth Sidious come to mind. We have to keep the Star Wars theme going ... plus visiting kids seem to get a kick out of chickens named after Star Wars.