Salt Block Cooking

I never knew there was such a thing until one recent Saturday while listening to The Splendid Table on NRP radio. Lynne Rossetto Kasper is the host and has the most interesting people on her show. They aren't always chefs but people involved with food and for instance, may be experts in spices or as in this show, salt. Mark Bitterman, who has a store in Oregon and New York City called The Meadow which features salt - chocolate - wine & bitters - flowers -, was a guest who first introduced me to Salt Block Cooking. It was the most intriguing interview and I had to learn more so I checked the store out online and decided to buy some exotic salt and a salt block for cooking. Why not?
check out the store here:  http://www.atthemeadow.com/shop/

Mark Bitterman's newest book is Salt Block Cooking...

So, I received my block of salt and followed the directions to make steak. It worked and was delicious...

It is important to cut the steak into thin strips for more even cooking. The salt block provides a light salt seasoning which is delicious. It takes about 45 minutes to heat up the Himalayan salt block starting at low and every 10 to 15 minutes increasing the heat.

As you can see the salt block is set directly on the gas burner. Here it is on low for 15 minutes.

Then it is on medium for 10 minutes. The Himalayan salt block eventually is on high heat and heats all the way through which allows it to act as a cooking utensil. There is no oil or preparation put onto the block before adding the protein which could also be seafood, eggs, etc. or even vegetables or fruit.

You can see the steak that has already cooked and also the final pieces cooking. It takes only a few minutes to cook these slim slices.

To clean the Himalyan salt block, you allow the salt block to cool completely and then just scrub the top with water, no soap; a light layer of salt will be removed and it will be ready for next time.

This is not something you would do regularly or especially if you are in a hurry, but it is a fun alternative. These are the types of experiments that make cooking so much fun for me. I like to be adventurous with cooking methods as well as food and spices.

Mark Bitterman's first book was Salted. "Mark Bitterman captures the nuance and beauty of salt in this stunning field guide featuring hundreds of artisan varieties with photos. From the elegant fleur de sel and flake salts to 500 million year old Himalayan salt slabs that resemble pink quartz, Bitterman explains the history and science of salt production. The book profiles over 150 salts, and includes 50 recipes that showcase this versatile and marvelous ingredient. Whether he’s detailing the glistening staccato crunch of fleur de sel harvested from millennia-old Celtic salt making settlements in France or the brooding sizzle of forgotten rock salts transported by the Tauregs across the Sahara, Bitterman’s mission in SALTED is to encourage us to explore the dazzling world of salt beyond the iodized curtain.

James Beard Award Winner! 2-times finalist for the IACP Cookbook Awards, including the IACP Julia Child Award for best first cookbook!" I learned from his interview on NPR that even though people oftentimes need to reduce salt from their diet for various reasons, some salt as we all know, is critical to the human body's functioning. He suggests that a small amount of really excellent salt with its natural minerals rather than processed salt like Kosher or iodized table salt, totally satisfies the human palate. I ordered two trial size jars of the exotic salts and he is absolutely correct. I LOVED them. I will continue to explore through his store. This weekends show on The Splendid Table included a fascinating interview of Lior Lev Sercarz who knows the power of a good spice blend: It can tell the story of a different culture. Plus, it makes cooking fun. The author of The Art of Blending creates custom spice blends, which he sells from his store, La Boîte á Epice. I'm on the spice journey too!   This kind of open mind for adventure in the kitchen is what makes cooking fun.Have you tried something fun in your kitchen recently?

Baby Horse Colt Born This Morning

Early this morning, Mark went out to do chores and called me to come outside because a colt was being born.  I grabbed the camera and witnessed a miracle, what a great life event. I took lots of pictures so for those who don't have this opportunity, here is something special.

When I got to the pasture, the baby was on the ground, still covered in the placenta.

Mom is licking baby who is still pretty quiet.

Baby is shivering and starting to move it's legs.

He's beginning to move around and kick his legs. We had a big rain last night following a huge rain the day before, so the pasture spot she chose to give birth was pretty muddy. It was slippery for a new baby colt trying to get on it's legs for the first time.

Thinking about getting up.

Stretching out the legs.

First try.

Come on, you can do it.

Mom can't do much to help but stand nearby and occasionally give a lick. He's trying a different angle with his legs.

UP. For a second.

Buddy is encouraging too. He is always in the middle of everything.

Oops, landed on his bottom, back legs gave out.

Come on baby, you can do it. Give it another try.

Up at last.

Falling...over...again...

Uh oh,

I think he's got it this time...

Balance...

He did it, standing at last...

Still standing, although a bit wobbly...

Pretty steady now and a new friend came by to say hello...

Well, the excitement is over and Buddy is heading out to scare up something else to do. Baby and Mom are doing fine, baby has been feeding and playing around. A great day!

Baby Chick - Guber - Growing in a Shoebox

As I've mentioned earlier, we not only purchased baby chicks from a hatchery but we are also raising chicks from special breeds who are being hatched under setting hens.

Early this week, on a bitter cold day, an egg cracked under the hen and the chick worked hard to get out but couldn't. I brought the egg into the house and had to clip open the membrane inside the shell so the chick could hatch. It was rolled up onto itself, wet, messy, bloody, and peeping like crazy! I got a shoebox, lined it with paper towels and a folded blue towel that it could hide under, like a hen, and turned on the under counter kitchen light and put it there to warm up, dry off, and start being a chick. Note of interest: A baby chick will live for 3 days without food or water which is why chicks can be mailed through the Post Office and ,of course, they can only be shipped within a three day delivery range.

A little handful of fluff, all dried and still peeping

 

Look closely and you will see the little chick looking

directly at you! Guber is in the shoebox nursery all

warm including a heated rice bag and light above.

So back to the baby chick, it flourished and on day three, I dunked it's beak into water and it began drinking. I put baby chick feed on the floor of the shoebox and it began to eat. And it never stopped peeping until I covered the box at night so it would sleep and we could sleep!

Mark would come into the house during the day and ask how Guber was doing! I guess this chick got a name during the shoebox stage!

The chick is eating and drinking on it's own;notice

Guber is now in a bigger box

After about four days Guber's peeping seemed louder and more stressed so I went to town and bought a feather duster. Guber calmed down, cuddled into the feather duster, slept under the feather duster and overall accepted it as company. Who knew?

Here is the chick with the feather duster friend

Guber finally grew big enough to move to the nursery in the barn with the 20 other chicks who will be giving us eggs.

Pretty big in one week, time to move to the big

nursery in the barn

Guber fit right in and now we can't really identify her in the flock. As it should be. No names for hens outside of the house. You don't want to mourn them if nature takes them away one day.

Optimism

We had a few fabulous warm spring days early this week. On one of those days we got the early morning call from the Post Office that our baby chicks had arrived from the hatchery. That is always exciting around here and a definite harbinger of spring. We got them home, dipped their beaks into the water so they would swallow and continue to drink, and then put them into their nursery. They are doing so well. We got mostly Araucana/Americana chicks that lay the blue and green eggs but also got a few golden Wyandotte's and cuckoo Marans. We'll continue to have cartons of colorful eggs to share!

The picture looks red because the chicks are under

a red colored heat lamp. The red color helps keep

the chicks from picking on one another. They are

cozy and warm here.

Mark kept two colorful roosters of more rare breeds from last years flock and has made individual pens for each along with their matching hens. One rooster is a Black Copper Marans and the other is a Blue Andalusian. We have two broody hens that are setting right now which means they sit on the eggs and don't get off unless to eat or drink. They are true blue mothers and are trying to hatch the eggs. So Mark removes the fertilized eggs from the nests each day and puts them under the setting hens. So far three black copper Marans chicks have hatched. We've had about another three that didn't live. There are still several eggs under the broody hens so we'll see how many more are hatched.

We also got some 'fryer' chicks to raise for food. They are delicious and unlike anything you can find in a store. We keep the laying stock from the fryer stock because the Cornish X Rock chicks grow so quickly that they are ready in 6-8 weeks! The layers take much longer to mature.

Cornish X Rock chicks

During the lovely warm spring weather early in the week, we worked in the garden on a number of projects. The big one was repairing the asparagus bed.  Asparagus lives for many years and thus it is important to have them situated in the most ideal place. The location was excellent but I hadn't planted them deep enough as I learned after spending time with a local asparagus farmer who shared with me that tip. He said he had to rework an entire field when he first started due to the shallow planting. Mark and I found bricks and blocks on the property in a gully so we brought them to the garden and formed a brick bed around the asparagus so we can add the additional dirt without disturbing the asparagus roots. I'm so excited because this will be the year we can begin harvesting the asparagus. It takes three years of establishment before you should begin eating it so that it has a strong root system to support it for its lifetime.

Here is the bed almost finished. We will lay the red

bricks on top of the cement blocks and then will fill the

bed with great soil and compost.

Thanks to Mark we finished the asparagus bed so then I worked on the flower beds around the house, planting pansy's and checking all the bulbs that were beginning to poke through the ground. I walked the yard looking at all the trees, bushes and saplings to see who made it through the winter and which were ready to break bud. Buddy was with me the entire time, carrying his rope in hope of having a game of tug-of-war. We had many as it turned out.

Bringing me the rope with great hope for play!

And then there are times you just have to play

on your own, or be the watchdog and pause to

listen...

Then the skies darkened and the rain came. We were so happy to finally have rain...and a good one, a real soaker... 2.5 inches!

A beautiful sight when you are in a drought

In a brief break in the storm, we saw the rainbow

The rain then turned into hail, then sleet and finally snow and it kept falling...for hours.

See the hail on the deck boards

By the end of the storm, we had between 4-5" of 'ice' and snow on the ground. It is treacherous to walk on but when melted it will add to the overall moisture and that is a blessing.

A picture early in the storm while sleeting

We are so happy about this week's storms. It will make a huge difference to everyone in our area - farmers and gardeners alike.

Today we have blue sky and sunshine. If you look closely in the center left of the above picture, you will see a spot of red. That is a male cardinal. I saw him when I was opening the drapes this morning and he made me smile. He is some distance from the house in the wild plum thicket where the cardinals live all year but the red streak of his color caught my eye this morning and I knew immediately what it was.  With all the white, grey and brown of winter, the color of spring is beginning to slowly show itself as the wild birds take on their spring mating colors. The goldfinches are turning bright yellow, the house finches are brilliant rose, the bluebirds are turning up the color volume and the cardinals are brighter red than usual. The tulips, alliums, and daffodils are up and getting ready to blossom. The lilacs are getting ready to break bud.

Everything is changing because... spring has arrived...at last!

Sandhills Cranes Up Close and Personal

The Sandhills Crane Migration is one of the most exciting and remarkable wonders of nature and this year we saw them up close and personal. Sandra and Connor visited us from Denver with the specific intent to experience the cranes annual migration.

Sandra and Connor at the visitors center

We spent some time one afternoon chasing the cranes in the fields trying to find the biggest congregations. The weather had been fierce for two days before so we were blessed with a day without wind and lots of sunshine even though it was still cold.

If you click on the picture to enlarge you'll get more of an idea how many crane are feeding in this field but it is difficult to capture on film. When in their presence, hearing their noisy call, it is something special.

They fill the fields and the sky. In the fields we watched their various dances which is entertaining. This migration is like a big family reunion where all the various flocks get together from Texas, New Mexico etc, heading back North through the Central Flyway where they stay three weeks to refresh before their final journey home. During these several weeks each year, around 500,000 Sandhills Cranes will be passing through Nebraska.

At 6PM, we returned to the Audubon nature preserve called Rowe Sanctuary to sit in a blind on the Platte River while the Sandhills Cranes came in to roost at night. You've not experienced nature until you witness over 100,000 birds landing on the river from the surrounding fields for 2 1/2 hours! Yes, it took that long for all the birds to come in for the night. The sounds were incredible and the constant overhead flight of the birds was almost overwhelming. I recommend this natural event to any of you readers who are into natural phenomena and/or birds. These birds are magnificent!

It's 6PM and the birds begin to come in for the night

Me with Connor and Sandra bundled up with many

layers of clothes to stay warm in an unheated hut for

two and a half hours...on the river. What are we doing?

 

We viewed through the windows where we could use

our cameras or binoculars to watch the scene unfold.

Above is Sandra on the right and Connor is two over

to the left of her.  We were warned to dress warmly

because it got very chilly in the blind. They were right!

The view from the blind. Pretty sunset.

 

If you enlarge this picture you will see multiple V formations

in the sky heading to the river.

As it gets later, more birds fill the sky

 

 

As the birds land on the river, they form a somewhat single line from shore to shore and fill the river row after row seemingly solid for the night.

 

It's getting darker and they are still coming in to land on the river

 

This is a powerful video by the University of Nebraska and is just as we experienced it. Take a look and listen. Think about coming one spring to see this. I consider it one of the natural highlights of my life. It gave me the same feeling of wonderment and awe that I get when I look at the black night sky full of stars. Since I've retired I look for more of these natural moments, some huge like this and others small and sweet like the bluebirds in the birdbath. We just need to pay attention and be aware.

 

Our busy lives deaden us from nature so it's important to take time every day to notice something in nature that helps us feel connected to the natural world.

 

As the saying goes, "We are living on this planet as though we have another one to go to".