Upcycled Dress and Jacket from Feed Bags

Feed for my goats and ducks comes in woven polypropylene bags with a cute photo label. During the summer, I sew them into tote bags to sell at the farmers' market. During the winter though they stack up a bit and I can try new things with the extras.

The first project was a party dress made from the Layena chicken chow bags. It took two bags for the full skirt and another bag for the top. Though we did line the top with soft cotton fabric, the seams were still a bit scratchy and the dress is so stiff it stands up by itself!

The next project was a simple zipper jacket made from Purina goat chow bags. It took three bags, though I think an adult jacket would take four. Those goaties better eat up, because I think my mom wants one! I wore this to a downtown art gallery walk and got lots of complements, especially from artists who like to use recycled materials.

It's kind of tricky sewing with these feed bags because once you sew a seam it makes holes in the cute photo label and so the piece is ruined if you make a mistake. Luckily my mom helped a lot, and the patterns were very simple. Another thing is when wearing these feed bag clothes I rattle when I move which attracts all my pets who think I have food for them.

Pumpkin Custard

It's definitely Fall when the pumpkins begin arriving at the grocery store. I love to get a big pumpkin and wedge it in the branches of the huckleberry bush for my goats to pick at and carve. They will nibble holes in the shell and reach in for the seeds. In past years, they would pick at the pumpkin until it fell out of the branches, and that would be the end, as goats don't usually eat things on the ground. Now that the ducks are sharing their pasture, once the pumpkins fall, the ducks are all over it. The ducks love it more, because once they're done with the pumpkin and the bugs come along, they come back for the second course of bugs.

Fall is also when the goats give the richest milk and we have the most butter and cream. The younger ducks that hatched in March are now producing eggs, and they are up to 10 per day. That's more than we can use, so I donate some to the food bank now the farmers market has closed for the year.
I've been making lots of this quick pumpkin custard with pecans to enjoy the eggs and cream.

For The Custard:
2 fresh duck eggs
1 cup goat's milk cream
1 15oz can pumpkin
2/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon

For The Topping:
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 cup finely chopped pecans
1/4 cup melted goat's milk butter

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl mix together all the custard ingredients until smooth. Pour into a 2-quart baking dish and bake for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, mix together the topping ingredients. After the custard has baked for the 30 minutes carefully place the topping on top of the custard, dropping it by little bits as the surface of the custard will still be runny. Let the custard bake for another 30 minutes or until a knife inserted comes out clean. Let cool for 30 minutes before serving. Make 8 to 10 servings.

Duck Egg Mayonnaise

Duck eggs are not chicken eggs! Well, yeah. I had been substituting duck eggs for chicken eggs in recipes, which worked out great except for mayonnaise. It always seamed to break before I was done adding all the oil. Of course you know this means research!
I found a chart that compares lots of bird eggs. I found that duck eggs have more protein but also more fat that chicken eggs, because ducks are all about oil for life in water. Mayonnaise is the egg protein holding the added oil in what is called an emulsion. The duck eggs have more fat to start, so they can take in less oil. Mystery solved! 
So here is my recipe of mayonnaise adjusted for duck eggs. Mayonnaise usually calls for mustard, but since I am allergic to mustard and duck eggs are so flavorful, I left it out.

Duck Egg Mayonnaise

4 duck egg yolks
2 tablespoons lemon juice or about the juice of half a lemon
2 teaspoons onion salt
3/4 cup light olive oil

Place egg yolks in a blender cup with lemon juice and onion salt. Begin blending on medium speed for one minute to break up proteins. Remove the center of the blender cap if possible and dribble the olive oil drip by tiny drip until the mixture lightens and thickens. Increase adding olive oil to a very thin stream until it is completely added. The mixture will be thick and smooth. Adding more oil to thin or mayonnaise may cause the emulsion to break, becoming runny.
This mayonnaise is really great with sweet pickled peppers in duck egg salad!
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Pound Cake with Goat Butter and Duck Eggs

Now that the baby ducks I got back in March have begun producing eggs, there are finally enough to sell at market, have for breakfast, and try out recipes that need lots of eggs. The lady who sold me the adult layer ducks said that when she had too many eggs she made pound cake.  The other major ingredient for pound cake is of course the pound of butter. Luckily last winter when the goats were producing milk with lots of butterfat, we made lots of butter and stacked it away a pound at a time in the freezer. Now as Fall approaches and their butterfat levels rise again, it's good to find a recipe that will make good use of the last of my winter butter stockpile, so there is room for new. This recipe makes quite a few mini pound cakes. I guess I could freeze them - ha ha ha!

1 pound fresh goat butter, softened, but not melted
3 1/3 cups sugar
10 fresh duck eggs
4 cups brown rice flour
2 tsp xanthan gum
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp nutmeg

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Prepare two 9x5 inch loaf pans, or three 9-well mini-loaf pans with cooking spray and a good dusting of rice flour. Cream the butter and sugar and set aside. In a separate bowl, beat the duck eggs for four minutes until light in color. Add the beaten eggs to the butter and sugar and continue beating until smooth.  Add flour one cup at a time, xanthan gum, salt, vanilla and nutmeg, also beating until smooth. Spoon into the pans and bake for 30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Let it cool in the pans for 5 minutes before turning out on to a rack. Makes 24-27 mini-loaves.

Gluten Free Buttermilk Biscuits

I dropped my smartphone in the duckies' pond and so it's been a little harder to sit and write posts at the computer, instead of writing them on my phone. I will be trying to write updates on the projects I started earlier in the year.

The little ducks I got way back in March have finally started laying eggs! The eggs are smaller, chicken-sized eggs than the mature layers I got in January, but they still taste pretty yummy. I've been calling them mini-monster eggs, instead of the monster eggs I sell at the farmers market.

Since we have extra eggs for breakfast now, I can make fried eggs from the smaller eggs and have been putting eggs on top of things like tortillas, fry bread, and these biscuits. I added a country gravy style white sauce made from olive oil, rice flour, and goatie milk, then added bacon bits and fresh spinach.

Gluten Free Buttermilk Biscuits
Since this recipe uses butter and buttermilk, we've been joking we should just use cream and save a step!  The key to light biscuits is cool butter and working the dough as little as possible.

2 cups brown rice flour
1 teaspoon xanthan gum
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons goats butter, barely softened
1 cup goats buttermilk, chilled

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, xanthan gum, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Add butter and buttermilk, and stir until mixture just forms a sticky dough. Working quickly, turn the dough onto floured surface, and dust top with flour. Gently press into a 1-inch thick round and cut out biscuits with a 2-inch cutter. Place biscuits on baking sheet. Use as little extra flour as possible to reform scrap dough, working it as little as possible so the biscuits from the second pass will be as possible.

Bake until biscuits are light gold on top, 10 to 15 minutes.

The New Monsters

Everyone in my family is allergic to chicken eggs, but we found we can eat duck eggs. They taste just the same, maybe a bit richer in flavor, and are larger in size. A three egg omlette made with duck eggs feeds all three of us for breakfast!

Since we can't buy duck eggs in the grocery store, and we have some room on our property, we ordered some baby ducks from a hatchery. They pushed our order back several times and we worried that they would never arrive. Luckily, the lady who sold us duck eggs, agreed to sell us some of her layer ducks. The good part is they were already laying eggs!

Several weeks later the babies arrived. they are so cute and fuzzy! They are growing very fast and should begin laying eggs at about 6 months of age. The breeds I got were large white Pekin ducks, and a special Hybrid Golden 300, which is supposed to lay up to 300 eggs per year.