Flash Flood

Thunderstorms were predicted for Northern parts of Auckland on Friday night. So at about 6:30pm, it all started. Except that, it literally downpoured for almost an hour with thousands of lightning strikes. I've NEVER seen such heavy rain in my life. It was very scary. Here's a short video of the torrential rain in my backyard. Notice the waves of water running down the nice footpaths that lead down to the chicken run. YIKES!

During this flash flood, the kitchen windows were leaking, water was coming in from under the dishwasher AND we also had a leak in the storage room downstairs!!! I had every towel that we own soaking up all the water from around the house.

My husband was out swimming at Piha beach with his mate (as one does at the end of Summer) while all this chaos was happening. When I text him the video clip from above, he sent me this photo of the beach he was at.



When he returned, he was shocked the to see that a) the power was out and I was sitting in a candle lit house (thanks to my mom for bring me a bag of 100 tealights) and b) all the towels on the floor and widows around the house. He's always away when things like this happen. Grrrr.....

Bolognese Sauce

I’ve had a special request to share my Bolognese recipe. I hope this will be made by you all.

Ingredients

2 tbsp olive oil

1 onion, finely chopped

5 cloves garlic, minced

5 strips streaky bacon, finely chopped

1 ½ pound (700 grams) ground beef

2/3 cup red wine

2 14oz (2- 400mL) cans crushed tomatoes

1 cup chicken or beef stock

2 tbsp tomato paste

1 tbsp basil, chopped

1 tbsp thyme, chopped

Salt and pepper to taste

Parmesan cheese, grated (for serving)

Preparation

Heat olive oil in a large pot. Add onions and garlic. Saute for 3-4 minutes. Add bacon. Once bacon is just cooked, add the ground beef; sauté, breaking up with back of spoon, until browned, about 10 to 15 minutes. (The beef doesn’t have to be completely cooked.) Add wine; boil 1 minute. Add crushed tomatoes, stock, tomato paste, and herbs; stir to blend. Reduce heat to a low simmer until thickened, 1- ½ hours. Season with salt and pepper.

Maybe a nice Valentine's Day dinner?

Egg Count

As you know, I have kept a small flock of chickens (up to 7 now!) in my backyard for the last year and a half. Since I’m no longer a beginner at chicken keeping, I thought this year I would get more organised at keeping track of my egg count (my chickens’, that is). I created a spreadsheet that I can fill in whenever one of my girls lays an egg. This way I can tell who is laying and who isn’t.

As you can see by my spreadsheet I have some good and bad laying going on with my flock. I didn’t need a spreadsheet to tell me that Chica, my 9 month old Araucana ISN’T LAYING ANY EGGS! She’s the one that is supposed to lay the blue or green shelled eggs. Sadly, we are keeping her because she’s just become part of the family.

On the positive side, you can see that Wilma is a “rock star”. She was unstoppable last month. This breed usually lays 3 eggs a week. I guess she’s special.

What I didn’t put on the spreadsheet is that on the 31^st, she laid a shell-less egg. This happens when they are running low on calcium. And as you can see after laying 30 eggs in a row, she was flat out of calcium.

Lastly, I can’t believe I had 95 eggs last month! I mean, what does one household do with 95 eggs!?!?? Fortunately, my mom was here to help consume some of those eggs and, I also gave about 2 dozen away.

I also think I’m becoming a bit of an egg hoarder…. But that’s another blog post, perhaps another time or never!

Sewing again

Having the little one with us has forced me to pick up a bit of sewing. I was a bit reluctant (or lazy) to dust the old sewing machine off and put thread to fabric but, I did it.

Every little girl needs a cell phone cover…. Especially a purple and pink one!



Next, she needed a cute bag to carry her cellphone, daily planner and supplies. Out came the cutting mat and rotary cutter. I did have a helper at hand….. eating oreo cookies!



It’s a purple-ish flowery fabric for the outside and beige fabric that has music notes for the inside.

Here’s me sewing it together.



Here’s the inside (with a pocket).



And outside



The happy owner of the goods!
In the end, I’m quite happy that I was inspired to sew again. I have a quilt I’ve been meaning to make ever since I got back from my last trip home. It’s all cut out and ready to sew. Let’s see if I really do it.

Hello again....

It’s been about 3 months since my last post. A lot has happened to keep me from posting but, I’m looking forward to getting back into the rhythm of normal life at the Lee house.

Just to pick up from where I left off from my last post, tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum had gone broody one too many times for my style. They were re-homed at the end of November to a nice couple that live on an acre of land. Happy ending….goodbye!!

Since then, I’ve been here and there, collecting different breeds, to up my egg count (from my girls….). I now have quite the collection of hens- 7 of them. Except that one doesn’t lay… don’t think she ever will. She goes in the nest everyday as if to lay an egg but forgets to leave her deposit. Never mind about her shortcomings…. I have 6 other hens to compensate for her lack of!

Now that I have 7 hens, things get a little noisy as feeding time. Here’s a video showing what feeding time sounds like. Notice the grey hen sounds like a sheep…. Figures as we are in New Zealand.


In case you didn’t hear my growling hen, Gingernut, here is a short clip of her growl. She does that only when she sees me… It’s funny.

(my videos are now linked on you tube as some of my readers have been unable to access the videos that were directly loaded into my blog. For the inexperienced, once video is finished, hit the back arrow twice to return you to the blog.)

Hen update

Egg production has slowed to a snail's pace in my backyard. I've had to buy eggs (free-range, of course) the last couple of months, which is ridiculous being that I have 6 hens. Why the low production?

The original two girls, Roxy and Suki, are in their second season of laying so, they won't lay as often.

Then there are Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum (aka Snowballs and ChaCha) who have gone broody again. When a hen is clucky, they don't produce eggs, and with these two "besties", they do everything together. As you can see from the video below, they cluck...cluck..cluck trying to get in to the nest.



Next, as of yesterday, I have a new egg layer. It's a very tiny first egg from a very big hen but, this was just a practice run. Now that she has figured out what her purpose in life is, she should be a lean mean laying machine.... I hope!

This is Lulu. The only white egg layer of my flock.

And finally, we are still trying to figure out if Chica is a Chico. For one, she is 6 months old and hasn't started to lay and two, she tried to crow over the weekend.... not good!

Season First’s

As you know, we are in the early stages of Spring here in NZ. The garden has been planted, the pathway has been built and now the weather is getting warmer. We decided to start our weekend off with our first BBQ of the season!!!



We had a seafood BBQ which included squid, lemon fish (and to my friends and family at home, no it doesn’t taste like lemon), and green-lipped mussels. Veggies were corn, asparagus, zucchini and tomatoes (not home grown yet…), and a cute chef to stare at. Teeheehee

With most of our big home projects done and out of the way, we have a bit more time to enjoy our hobbies and our home. Since the weather was predicted to be calm and warm, we went for our first kayak of the season!!!!


It was such a calm morning, the water looked like a mirror.


I loaded my boys (dog and hubby) in their kayak and off we went.



Once hubby let my dog fall in the water, I took over. Thank goodness for the handle on the lifejacket.




All in all, it was a great weekend! Had a great BBQ at home, also had a great night out with friends, then ended our weekend with a relaxing and scenic kayak.


Lots more of this to come....