Series Part III: What Are the Stones Growing this Winter in the Clarktic Circle?

"The mistress" is growing!

In case you have not been to our house, my loving nickname for Tim's salt water reef aquarium is "the mistress."  She acquired this name because she takes up so much of Tim's time and attention and our money.  But she is a beautiful addition to our house, and she satisfies Tim's ever present need to grow things during the winter months in our Clarktic Circle abode.  So I'm not complaining.

Our indoor winter garden.

The mistress recently grew from being a 112 gallon acrylic aquarium to a 200 gallon glass aquarium.  These upgrades came after a very drastic and painful tank crash that happened when we were diving in Indonesia this spring.  We lost about 80% of the live corral and 95% of the fish.  It was pretty heartbreaking but after hours of dedication and work by Tim the tank is well on her way to a beautiful recovery.

A behind the scenes look at the mechanical room and all the mayhem that is involved in controlling the complicated systems of a salt water reef tank.

The aqua controller is a computer that helps Tim monitor multiple water parameters and even sends him emails when the parameters are off.

Tim has made some on line reef keeping friends who have sent fragments of coral to begin growing again, and he has purchased some larger coral and fish to repopulate the new aquarium.  Tim took all the of these photos yesterday.

The Lawnmower blenny likes to taco himself in the folds of the Giant Tridacna Clam.
Trigger fish in the background

Duncanosamnia  (whisker coral) survived the crash

A valuable colony of acanthastrea lordowensis that has been in the system from the beginning

Some random purple sponge that got started.

purple goniopora

red ORA goniopora

dendrophylia

Again, some random LPS coral that came in on some live rock but Tim likes it and has been giving it  meaty treats.. He thinks it is not photosynthetic like the rest of the coral.

A new frag of poccilopora damicornis

purple montipora capricornis

purple stylophora

montipora spongodes

A new frag of seriatopora (birdsnest)

A new frag of green fuzzy staghorn acropora  This stuff does very well in Tim's system.

yellow palythoa

ricordia florida

ricordia florida

green branching psamocora  (cat's paw) also survived the crash and its color has returned

Bubble coral

This is a close up of new sell margin on the monster tridacnid clam.  You can see in in the left corner of the tank in the first photo of this post.

Fungia (plate coral) who also survived the crash and whose color has also returned.

capnella

Naso tang

Squamosa clam and some encrusting gorgonian to the right

Lyretail Anthias (These guys are EVERYWHERE on the reefs on Fiji.  The females are orange and the males are purple.  They are hemaphroditic and the the dominant female in the tank will turn into a male...  this is happening now.)

Blue throat trigger fish (one of the only triggers that won't pick at the clams)

Pajama cardinal fish (one of two fish to survive the crash)

Juvenile Unicorn Tang.  When he grows up he will have horn on his forehead

Bengai cardinal fish and the big clam whose color is returning

Lawnmower blenny and a new frag of green stylophora to his left.  He was one of only two surviving fish from the massive tank crash.   The other was the pajama cardinal.

A new blonde Naso Tang

Schooling  Green Chromis fish

Schooling chromis fish

Bubble  coral

The Jackson Five, Lucille and Elvis have hatched!

Tim's redneck (or is it techneck?) incubator was a success!  

On Tuesday November 29th I heard chirping coming from the incubator, but no chicks had emerged from their eggs just yet.  Over the next two days we had 7 new chicks hatch out of the 24 fertilized eggs we had purchased.

One of the first to emerge.  (Yes she is alive!  She just looks a little worse for the wear.)

She was exhausted from the hatching process.  

Over the following 12 hours they dried off and became the cute little fluffy chicks they are now.

Here they are huddled in the corner of the incubator trying to stay away from the prying camera. 

The egg in the middle of the image is in mid-hatch.

Lucille (Ball) in the in middle, Elvis is in the corner (stole the name from one of my Aunt Linda's beloved chickens) and four of the Jackson Five surround them.  Michael still wasn't finished hatching yet when this image was taken.

The rest of the original 24 eggs never started an embryo or spontaneously aborted the process at some point along the way.  Sadly one of the chicks tried to make it out of her shell, but died in the process.

We have no idea if these chicks will become hens or roosters, but we are hoping for mostly hens.  On that note, our older hens have FINALLY started laying eggs.

The first egg had twin yolks!

The first egg was frozen solid when we found it.  Although we have a heater in the coop, the  GFI tripped while we were in Denver for Thanksgiving.  Luckily the Ladies we just fine.   Tim actually had to take the incubator to Denver with us because the eggs had to be turned 3-5 times daily.  Good thing his new truck has a plug in the back!

I taste tested this egg against an Organic Free Range egg from the grocery store.  There was a very distinct difference in both the color of the yolks as well as the richness of flavor.

Part II: What are the Stones growing this winter in the Clartic Circle?

Hopefully we will be growing more chickens!

You might be a redneck if you take a cooler and convert it to an egg incubator.   Or maybe it's just that your name is Tim Stone!

After loosing another couple of our chickens to neighbor dogs two things happened.  The first is that we have officially decided that we can not free range chickens at our house unless we are horribly cruel individuals.  The second is Tim began to figure out how we could increase our flock beyond the four remaining chickens without spending too much money.  By the way, the four ladies have not started laying just yet.  Should be any day...

Tim came across this informative video on YouTube about how to build a redneck incubator out of items laying around the shop.  The required items included our cooler, a fan, a light bulb,a piece of acrylic, some hardware cloth,  and a spare aquastat Tim had laying around from his reef.  He took the temp/hygrometer transmitter out of the green house for a few days so we can see the temp on the wall inside the incubator.  Once the incubator was built, we received 24 fertilized eggs in the mail and Tim has taken on yet another role, mama hen.

Series: What Are the Stones Growing this Winter in the Clarktic Circle? Part I

Starting today I'll begin a new series.  What Are The Stones Growing this Winter in the Clarktic Circle?

Piles of snow....  ok, so WE aren't growing the snow, but the depths of snow are certainly already growing.  

The chicken coop covered in snow.  This is why it is insulated!

The snow has already reached the tops of the raised beds and collapsed the plastic on the north bed.  Another one of today's projects will be to remove the covers.

We woke up this morning to about 18 inches of snow covering everything.  After about 2 hours of snow removal (blowing the driveway, clearing the deck and shoveling off cars), the snow plow came by a second time.  I always love it when that happens!  Wish me luck and safety on my drive down to Denver this afternoon.

The Last Haul!

Winter comes early in the Clarktic Circle!  On Thursday night October 6th we got our first snow of the season.

So tonight, we were forced to harvest the remaining veggies.  Here is the haul in it's entirety.  

In the green bucket is the remaining produce from the green house.  Tomatoes, green peppers, jalapenos, and sage.  

The blue bucket in the sink is full of scallions, fennel and carrots. Next on the counter are the remaining yellow beets.  We actually planted these half way through the summer when we realized how well the yellow beets were growing.  They are pretty small, but a great yield for how late we planted them from seed.

  Finally a pile of red and yellow onions (and some green peppers and jalapenos from the green house).  The onions are also small, but a better yield than we expected.

Now, what to do with all of it??????

To start with, I'm roasting some of the fennel to make a Roasted Fennel Soup.  But this is what is left over after roasting.  

Do you have any awesome fennel recipes you can share with me?

Golden Beet Ice Cream: Inspired by Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream

Last night I made another batch of ice cream inspired by my new favorite "cookbook" Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home.





If you are a Steamboat resident, Bud Werner Memorial Library has a copy of this book, but be forewarned, you will regret ever checking it out if you are trying to watch your waistline!

My favorite new cookbook, Jeni has a recipe for red beet ice cream.  Since we are growing golden beets, and in an effort to keep my cooking projects local, I decided to try the recipe substituting golden beets and see how it turns out.  I also used raw whole milk from Moon Hill Dairy again.

This is the photo in the cookbook and on her website of the red beet ice cream.


Looks yummy, huh!

The basic ingredients are the same as the last recipe I posted about Jen's goat cheese ice cream with mascarpone instead of cream cheese.  However, I couldn't find any mascarpone in Steamboat (not to mention at the Clark Store!) so I substituted her usual ingredient of cream cheese and added a little extra heavy cream.

To process the medium sized beets, I roasted them in a dutch oven at 450degrees for one hour.  The skins peeled right off of the hot beets.

The next step with the beets is to put them in a blender to puree them and the press the puree through a sieve to remove some of the cellulose.  I'm guessing you could probably skip this step, but you might end up with less creamy ice cream.  I didn't take any pictures of this process.

After boiling the milk, cream, sugar, zest of one orange and cornstarch for 5 minutes, I combined the beet puree with the cream cheese/heavy cream mixture and then put the whole recipe back through the sieve.  Turns out the orange zest was supposed to be in large strips obtained with a vegetable peeler, but I used a micro plane and had to get the little bits out again.

Jeni's technique is to place the prepared mixture into a plastic bag and then cool it in an ice water bath for 30 min.  While this method is very convenient, I'm not so keen on placing a hot liquid that I will later be consuming into a plastic bag where it might be leaching chemicals into my food.  So I placed the liquid into a stainless steel bowl with a tight fitting lid and chilled it overnight.

This morning I poured the cool mixture into the electric ice cream maker.

After about 30 minutes of spinning in the ice cream maker we had a soft texture ice cream.  The jury is still out on this flavor.  It is certainly earthy.  I'm taking some to a dinner party tonight and we will see what everyone else thinks.

I packed the ice cream into pint containers to freeze them into a harder consistency.

I want Tim to design some labels for my ice creams.  I was thinking about calling it A. Stone Cold Creamy Creation.  Do you have any creative ideas for naming my homemade brand of ice creams?