Author: Karen

I am an RN, Author, Coach, and Speaker. I write novels about relationships to help people find insight into their own. I guide people to create comfort, clarity, and connection in their lives. By combining metaphysical tools with over twenty-five years of nursing experience, I infuse the 'art of nursing' into my practice by providing partnership and resources help people compassionately honor their health.

Spring!

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, family, raising chickens

Gold Laced Wyandotte Bantam, 4 months old

So, there are still a few days left of spring, the time when a young man’s fancy lightly turns to… chicks! You know, the kind that come from hens (we’re talking flock expansion here).

We have been anxiously awaiting the call from Longhorn since last week’s false alarm, when the anticipated arrival date (June 11th) came and went with no new babies! The due date was revised; the new date set was June 16th.

The new date came, and this time the chicks have indeed arrived! We got the call at 9:04AM. My husband headed over with his wish list of preferred types of chicks to add to our flock.

Decisions have been made after much research online, in books, in conversation with other people (who either currently raise chickens or did at one time)…now he will try to match up our list with what they actually are offering. Room is always left to add an interesting surprise or two; following your gut instinct is important in chick-choosing.

Today the gut points to a Bantam chick that my husband describes as “interesting”. Bantams are roughly half (or less) the size of “regular” sized chickens, which can be a boon for you if you are raising chickens in a small space. Of course, their eggs are smaller (and cuter!) too, but hey, sometimes you only need a little egg for your cooking project (like when you are breading cutlets, or making an egg wash for a pie or stromboli). It can be a bigger risk  that you may end up with a boy instead of girl when you choose a bantam, but some of the Bantams are just so “interesting” that it’s a chance you willingly take. Well, we take the chance more often than not.

The new chicks are now happily ensconced in their own little coop, where they will stay until they are ready for assimilation into the main coop.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Strawberries!

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, family, gardening, health, shopping, tweens

Okay, the strawberries are here and Life Is Good! I have been lucky this year; I’ve been able to keep ahead of the varmints, birds, and creeping mold and get to most of my strawberries before the enemies did. We have 4 or more varieties, ranging from tiny, almost pin-head sized alpine strawberries to large, sweet…perfect strawberries.  

The first strawberries!

 

I managed to hold a few back for a picture before consuming them.  I even found a ripe blueberry in the strawberry patch. (Sorry, eaten!).  

My daughter wants to dip some in chocolate and I can’t blame her; the only thing with the potential to rival a fresh strawberry right from the garden is one that has been dipped in (preferably) dark chocolate.  

One problem though: how to keep from eating them long enough to dip in chocolate? Methinks that a trip to the farm stand for additional strawberries for dipping will be required. We’re in luck, because the Wells Rotary Strawberry Festival is this Saturday at Spiller Farm in Wells, ME.  

There will not only be strawberries there (and if memory serves, the homemade strawberry shortcake available for purchase was quite a hit with my daughter at last year’s festival) but also the grill will be fired up for the usual suspects (hot dogs, hamburgers). There will also be activities for your kids.  

The festival runs from 10am-4pm.  It’s a nice way to spend a Saturday. I’ll be there with my daughter buying (and eating!) strawberries.

Spelt Right Bagels at Hannaford

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, baking, family, health, italian, tweens
Spelt Right Sesame Seed Bagel

I was shopping at the new Hannaford’s in Kennebunk (at the site of the old Stop’n Shop). There were several of those tables set up throughout the store where a person is handing out samples of food items that are sold there, along with a coupon to further entice you to buy.

I am a fan of “try before you buy” and routinely stop to try what they are offering. On this day a woman at one of the tables looked familiar. Turns out, she was. I had seen her before, but in print and online; this was the first time in person. It was Beth George, the founder of the Spelt Right Baking, which is located nearby in Yarmouth, Maine.

Well, Beth was very generous with samples of her bagels. My 11 year old daughter and I were lucky enough to try the whole grain, the sesame seed, and the multigrain. She cut us a good-sized piece of each (read: 2-3 good-sized bites) and generously spread them with cream cheese. All three types were delicious, with or without the cream cheese. Beth was also very gracious to my daughter (don’t you just love it when people are nice to your kids?).

My daughter, who just that morning would not eat the Italian Bread I had baked because it had “seeds” on it, was enthusiastically munching down Beth’s sesame seed bagel, declaring it “delicious!” and asking for another piece!

Have any of you ever tried the Spelt Right Baking bagels? Please, if you have not, do! They are excellent. You’ll find them in the freezer aisle. Beth also has a pizza dough that you can find (along with the bagels) at Whole Foods, and she runs an online store as well, that includes breads in addition to the bagels and pizza dough.

You can read about Beth’s story on her website, www.speltrightbaking.com. You can follow her blog (where she posts daily!), The Lunchbox Chronicles.

Homemade egg rolls

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, family, gardening, recipes, shopping, tweens
Rolling up the egg rolls

 

Our friends, the Douangsovaths, came over to our house to teach us how to make egg rolls. 

After they arrived, we took a quick shopping trip for necessary ingredients. Lettuce I had growing in  my garden, a tomato was on the counter that i picked up at the farmers market earlier that week…but bean threads? Not one of my pantry staples. 

Here’s the shopping list: 

  1. Green Cabbage (not Napa)
  2. The largest bag of carrots that I’ve ever seen
  3. Bean threads (in the asian food aisle)
  4. Egg Roll Wrappers (they brought these; I’m actually not sure where they came from)
  5. Whatever meat you want to use; we used ground chicken and ground pork (for convenience sake!). We also bought some small shrimp (and cut them up even smaller).
  6. Magic spice mix: mixed salt, pepper, garlic powder, and onion powder. I guessed for the proportions. You mix them all together until it “tastes right”. Ahem.
  7. Canola oil for frying. Get a big one.
  8. One beaten egg; this becomes the glue that keeps your egg roll closed.
  9. A LARGE jar of duck sauce.

For equipment, you need a food processor, a fry daddy (which they brought with them). Kitchen tongs. 

Then, you just mix all the ingredients together in roughly equal parts. Then you use about a tablespoon of the mixture and roll it up in the wrapper as tightly (and as thinly) as you can. 

Then fry for 6-7 minutes until golden brown, drain on a rack. We made about a hundred and fifty rolls. Here’s the thing: you will not remember how many you’ve eaten if you just start cutting them up and eating them as you are making them, as we did.  I’m warning you about the egg roll fugue state that will ensue if you do this! Decide how many you will eat, put them on a plate, and then stop! (okay, you have been warned). 

The lettuce was used (and full disclosure: they bought some not knowing we had it growing in the garden already!) to wrap up the egg roll after it was fried; that’s how one of our friends eats them (he also put  a pile of a shredded carrot recipe he had made on it too). I tried it this way and it was excellent. Sort of helps you forget you are eating deep fried food when you disguise it by placing vegetables all around it. 

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Lunch and learn

by Karen, posted in education, good grief, health

The first Thursday of the month, Amy Wood Psy.D. presents a workshop series entitled “Lifewise at Lunch”. It’s held at the Kennebunk Free Library downstairs in Hank’s Room.

It kicked off last week on June 3rd. The talks run from noon until 1:00pm She began and ended this first one on time, so if you work in the area and want to pop in on your lunch break, it might be doable. There were around 20 people attending, ranging in age from a toddler (with his mother) to a man who was 89  (I know this because he announced it to the presenter). She handed out an outline upon which she elaborated a bit but,  for the most part, stuck to closely.

Some of these people had clearly attended her talks in the past, and therefore knew each other, but there were some first timers like myself. Amy was gracious and welcoming to us all.

The subject of this first talk in the series was “Getting Unstuck”. Amy welcomed questions from the audience throughout, and treated them all (including, “How do you not get to be 89 years old?) with dignity and respect…and some humor.

Other talks coming up in the series include: Improving Your Intuition, Thriving in the Face of Change, Overcoming Overwhelm, Emotional Intelligence, Boosting Your Creativity, What’s the Use of Worrying, Living From a Strengths-Based Perspective, and Letting Go of Self-Limiting Beliefs.

For you indecisive people and you last-minute people out there, you don’t have to register in advance; just show up.
Have any of you attended any of these “Lifewise at Lunch” talks before? What did you think?

Spring thaw!

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, health, raising chickens

This is a great time for a “see what’s in  your freezer” week. Start now. It’s the kind of thing you may never get to if you don’t, or if you think about it too much.

  • Sunday: breads, english muffins, bagels….all those packages of  “there’s-only-one -or-two-left-but-it’s-close-to -the-expiration-date-so-i’ll-stick ’em-in-the-freezer-before-they-go-bad”‘s. Find them all. Be ruthless. Either make some french toast, bread pudding, or feed it to the chickens (or fill in the blank with your housepet/garbage disposal of choice). Here’s what I found: 3 half loaves of bread, 2 cranberry thomas’ english muffins, 2 whole wheat english muffins, half a loaf of pumpkin whole wheat bread…half of above were freezer burned (read: tastes gross).
  • Monday: frozen bagged vegetables. Mixed green and red bell pepper strips (became Chicken Stir Fry). Broccoli,  2 packages (one of which became Chicken, Broccoli, and Rotini). Peas. Corn. Also used package of frozen chicken leftover from a rotisserie chicken for the chicken, broccoli, and rotini recipe, and pasta from the pantry! nothing to buy.
  • Tuesday: chili
  • Wednesday: homemade Italian Sausage, Potato, and White Bean Soup.
  • Thursday: homemade chicken and rice soup. became my supper for work that night.
  • Friday: all sorts of frozen berries, frozen bananas, ice cream…made some smoothies
  • Saturday: Some small, unidentified chunks of frozen meat (maybe beef or port); will get thrown into the spaghetti sauce to make a big “sunday gravy”

This is just one week of discoveries. I have much more space in my freezer now, and am resisting the urge to fill it back up. Shopping at local farm stands for perishables rather than the supermarket is helping.

How do you keep the clutter down in your freezer/fridge/pantry?

eggs!

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, raising chickens
our multicolored eggs

speaking of egg color driving our hen choices every year (see prior post ), here is a sampling of some of what our flock puts forth every day.  the blue and green eggs come from ameraucana chickens. marans, barnvelders,  and welsummers lay the chocolate brown eggs. . . and the white leghorn hens lay large, perfect, white, hard-shelled eggs.

when we collect the eggs, we never really know for sure what we will get from day-to-day. some hens lay quite frequently, some not so much. we also never know for sure where we will find them. although they have beautifully outfitted nest boxes, some hens just take a liking to a particular spot and will lay their eggs there, nest box or not. then it’s a challenge to avoid “walking on eggshells” when we go to throw them some treats or collect the days eggs.

one likes to lay her eggs on the ground to the right of the stairs that lead out to the run. another deposits hers out in the run.  if we find an egg in the same spot a few times, my husband will place a nest box there for that hen, although there is no guarantee that she will take advantage of it.

the eggs also vary in size; sometimes (when hens are first starting to lay) the egg is as small as a marble! sometimes they are as large as a tennis ball, and we have found eggs of every size in between.  shape varies from perfectly round to oval to oblong. sometimes they are asymmetrical. they are never boring.

It’s (probably) a girl!

by Karen, posted in family, raising chickens

Well, it’s been a little more than 3 weeks and it’s looking more and more like he is a she. Of course, all the data is not in, but very soon it will become unequivocal.

For now though, she is still a runt, much smaller then the other chickens. We attempted to take a picture of her next to a more normal sized hen, but she was running around (and at one  point actually became airborne) so much that we weren’t able to pull that off. We did manage to get one picture of her holding still, while she was held (compare to original picture).

So, the whole issue of naming is rearing its ugly head. Naming chickens carries inherent heartbreak. It seems that it’s always the chicken that you love the best that the hawk will get, or that will come down with the mysterious virus that sends them to “the corner”. When the chicken goes to “the corner”, it will usually be dead in three days.

Now is it because three days of standing in the corner will result in death? or is it that three days before the chicken knows it’s going to depart this world for the big henhouse in the sky, they seek out the comfort of  “the corner”?

It’s kind of reminiscent of the age-old “which came first…” question.

So, we are putting off naming her, but two contenders for the name of the chicken that we are trying not to name are both androgynous. Vote for the name you like the best.

Birthday Rules for Birthdays that Rule!

by Karen, posted in Uncategorized
Triple Berry Pie from Cherie's

Do you have any special things that you do to celebrate your birthday?

I usually make a detailed plan every year that also usually runs amok. Over the years I’ve come  up with a framework for myself that can create the potential for a nice day.

One thing about making a plan in advance: be prepared to abandon your plan at any point during the day. Do not let your plan get in the way of you taking advantage of anything that comes your way.

So…Here are my ten rules for a birthday that rules for 2010:

  1. Take the day off from work. I repeat, do not work on your birthday. This is your (first) gift to yourself.
  2. Go out for a nice (big) breakfast, or else have someone deliver your favorite small baked good and coffee to you in bed.
  3. Go to see the ocean! Even better, take a walk at the ocean.  If for some reason you just can’t pull that off, then see it online with the Wells Beach Webcam. It’s better than not seeing it at all.
  4. Go to the bookstore. Browse to your heart’s content. You will know you are finished when a book finds you that you can’t go home without.
  5. Nap!
  6. Have some birthday cake, but leave the “cake” part open to interpretation. Your cake this year might be a little pie from Cherie’s in Kennebunk.
  7. Check email selectively; only open well-wishes from friends, family, and colleagues. The rest can wait.
  8. Don’t be afraid to ask for what you want! No matter who you are, you are not surrounded by mind-readers.
  9. Buy all the newspapers that you can that have the “Born Today” section in the Horoscopes. It will give you your forecast for the year ahead. It’s fun to see how different (or similar) to each other they are, and fun to look back over the past year to see how accurate (:)) last year’s forecast was.
  10. Take a picture! or take lots of pictures! You will only be this age once.

Do you plan your birthday out or just let it happen?

The Cake Fairy

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food

I went to lunch today and when I got back to my cubicle desk there was a cake there! a cake that I am sure was not there before I went to lunch!  this is clear evidence that the Cake Fairy is alive and well and was in Portland, Maine at 12:30PM today!

Is the Fairy and amazing baker? Possibly, but a little research reveals that the cake fairy is actually affiliated with Hannaford Supermarket, as evidenced by the sticker on the bottom of the cake package.

It contained a Chocolate Truffle Bomb. . . and it was the bomb!  I must say that the picture does not do it justice.

What’s your favorite kind of cake?