In My Kitchen- December 2013

This month I had visions of going all Christmas- fruitcake

and cookies and the like.  But it just hasn’t happened yet.

This coming week I will probably be in full Christmas mode-

but really- we just finished Thanksgiving. 

And my husband and my 38th anniversary and his

birthday, yesterday.  So I’m not quite in a holiday

frenzy.

In my kitchen…

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there is bread.  I make bread even when I am sick.  I have to- no one will make it for me-

and I hate most store bought bread.

In my kitchen…

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there is chicken pot pie.

I love chicken.  Most days there is chicken in my kitchen. 

In my kitchen…

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is this aluminum tray.  I have an extensive collection of aluminum ware.  I started

collecting it 20 some years ago when it was really inexpensive and you could pick up a

piece for a couple of dollars.  I think I will do a post on just the aluminum-

this tray is rather large.

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It is larger than either of these pieces of oven and freezer proof covers of silpat

lids.

In my kitchen…

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is bat poop.  I got some from my son for Christmas gifts for a couple of my gardening friends.

Luke went up into the belfry of his church in Long Island and harvested the bat guano which

is very rich in nitrates and sold it at a fund raiser for his ministry for the hungry.

It says- “Fertilizer Created by God, Processed by Bats, and Blessed by a Priest to help your

garden grow.”   I just opened the package at my kitchen table and grabbed the camera to take

a picture.  This is NOT staying in my kitchen. 

In my kitchen…

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is turkey/chicken lasagna with spinach.  I needed to use up the turkey left overs and this is one

of my favorite dishes.

In my kitchen…

 

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is a big pot of turkey chicken stock.  I cooked up the carcass of the turkey with veggies-

then used the stock to bring a chicken to boil and turned off the heat and let it sit in

the broth for an hour.  The chicken was perfectly cooked and wonderfully moist.

And I have double broth to use in a soup later this week. I used 5 cups of the broth to

make the sauce for the lasagna and it was rich and delicious. 

In my kitchen…

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is birthday cake for my husband’s 64th birthday!

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White and chocolate with raspberry filling and chocolate rum icing.  YUM!

And outside my kitchen…

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is winter and cold and snow coming down.

“Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat….”

What’s happening in your kitchen?

Look here at Fig jam and Lime Cordial , Celia’s blog for other IMK posts.

41 thoughts on “In My Kitchen- December 2013

  1. Hi Heidi, Your kitchen always holds a lot of interesting things, but bat guano is the most interesting. That chicken pot pie looks delicious and I loved the cake.

    • Hey Lisa- Bat guano is very high in nitrates- in fact they used it for making gun powder in the Colonial days. I thought my son was so cute in his goggles, breathing mask and gloves shoveling it into garbage bags. I think it will make a great Christmas gift to the right gardener.

  2. Heidi, congratulations on your anniversary and hubby’s birthday! The cake looks delish and the flavor combo sounds wonderful. I’d love to see more of your aluminum collection, too. Also, thanks for the tip on cooking a chicken in turkey stock — I’ll have to try that!

    • Kim- thank you- we always have a lot to celebrate at the end of November!
      I save all my peelings for the week to make the stock- the onion skins and celery stalks and leaves and the carrot peels add to the flavor of the broth and I don’t feel so badly about not composting.

  3. Happy anniversary and happy birthday Frank! I want chicken pot pie now! And you made me laugh out loud, that’s definitely the first time we’ve had bat poop in an IMK post! 😀 May it make everyone’s gardens grow! xx

    • I had just unpacked it, Celia, and it was sitting there when I grabbed the camera to take some pictures. It doesn’t smell- and since bats here eat mainly insects (mosquitoes) it is lightweight and dry- so not really offensive but very high in nitrates so you can’t use too much or it will burn your plants.
      I do like the sticker he came up with to put on the canister. I think the bat is kind of cute. 🙂

    • Thanks for all the greetings- November ends with a lot going on here.
      AND yes, real bat poo- or holy bat s__t as my son, t he priest, originally told me! I couldn’t help posting it- LOL- it just makes me happy- using everything available and supporting a hunger initiative.

    • Thanks, Jas. I couldn’t get the Christmas thing going yet- but I figured the bat guano would fill in for holly and the ivy- kind of?!
      My son also dried and packaged herbs from the garden to sell,but I have plenty of herbs and no bat poo so I just ordered the bat poo.

    • Thanks, Misky!
      You know- I get older every year and get wished so many blessings on my birthday- but all I have to do is to stay alive to celebrate that.
      But marriage is hard work if you want to have a good life. And I work at our marriage every day- I think anniversaries are the real reason to celebrate!!!
      We do tend to admire each others bread- lol!

    • Thanks Mandy-
      I have a lot of gadgets, but I’ve shown so many of them and I don’t have space for many more- and my kitchen is not a showplace= it is a busy, messy, working kitchen that puts out a lot of food. We don’t go out to eat very often so I make a three meals a day- and several desserts each week to keep up with my husband’s sweet tooth. Add to that my bread obsession and there is a whole lot of baking going on! So that is what I have to show!
      ( And, of course, the occasional bat poo!)

    • Anne, thank you, so glad you stopped by and left a comment!
      It’s early in the season, so snow is still kind of welcome. This was our fourth snowfall- next comes the numbing cold.

  4. Thanks for commenting and visiting! I love the silpat lids- they work very well and wash up so easily.
    Any yes- poop with a story- I like that description.
    Merry Christmas!

  5. Oh! I love that photo you have taken with the snowflakes. No snowflakes in my neck of the woods and even in winter there is none. The Bat Guano is nothing if not a novel fundraiser! I’d love to see a post on your aluminium ware – I’m a ‘collector’ (not of aluminium though) so I like to take a look at other people’s collections. Thanks for the tour!

    • Hi Fionna- we get a lot of snow over the winter- but it melts and warms up a bit inbetween.
      I am a collector, of a sort, but not of popular stuff. I collect wooden items, aluminum, cookie cutters, tea pots, and other odds and ends. I will do an aluminum post- it would be a good way to catalog my collection.

    • And there is magic in the making of bread. My spirits lift, my nerve settle and my shoulders relax- and as the aroma of the baking bread spreads around my kitchen and into the family rooms there is a lightening of the atmosphere and anticipation in every heart. Yes- baking your own bread is a definite advantage!

  6. Love that bat poop! We visited pandas at the zoo and when one relieved itself I exclaimed ‘I wish I could take that home!’ much to my husband’s disgust. It wasn’t until I explained that the manure of such a precious, endangered species would be perfect for fertilizing my Saffron plants that grow under my very precious truffle oak, that should produce our first truffle crop this year, that he laughed! 🙂

    • I get it. I mean really, poop is not JUST poop- and the guano doesn’t even smell funky! Not sure what panda poop is like, but there is the very idea of endangered species….
      And you have saffron? Oh I am so jealous. really, really envious.

  7. Your kitchen looks both homely and celebratory – just right for christmas – hope you are recovered from the thanksgiving and birthday festivities and feeling more ready for christmas – love the bread and the cake and know a little girl who would be fascinated by the bat poo 🙂

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