Glamour Goes Green: Vegan Dinner Los Angeles

Here's a link to a post I wrote about a fab Vegan "Pop Up" dinner we recently attend in Hollywood:

Glamour Goes Green: Vegan Dinner Los Angeles

Bel Air Chickens

Just seen on TMZ!

Jennifer Aniston is keeping chickens! Never thought I'd see something on TMZ that would be appropriate for my chicken blog, haha. :)

Happy Cow

I recently discovered the Happy Cow website, which is an excellent resource for vegan and vegetarian recipes and restaurants. They posted a great vegan laksa recipe on their Facebook page, which I made tonight for dinner. I tried to stay as faithful to the recipe as possible, but did substitute broccoli for green beans since they are out of season and I already had broccoli in the fridge. I also couldn't find curry leaves at Whole Foods. They may have them, but I was in a hurry and didn't feel like hunting them down. I also used Fresno peppers as my "red" chili pepper.

The broth was really good - sort of a spicy curry that really complemented the tofu and rice noodles quite well. I think green beans are definitely the better choice for a vegetable, because they will give a little bit of crunch to dish, which felt a little mushy with the predominance of rice noodles and tofu. I loved the flavor of the broth and I think next time I will buy some pre-made garlic naan to go with it. 

Overall this is one of the better vegan recipes I've come across recently, and will definitely be making it again. To save time you could make the chili paste beforehand, but it really didn't take up too much extra time as you just throw all the ingredients into the blender. It is pretty spicy, so I recommend trying it out on yourself before subjecting dinner guests to it! The photo below is from the recipe page - my version wasn't quite so artfully arranged!

Composted Horse Manure

Composted Horse Manure Pile on Side of House

Of all the things I imagined myself learning as a child, the nuances of horse manure wasn't on the list. While I LOVED horses and never minded their manure, I didn't picture myself taking it home with me one day. Life is funny like that....I actually wrote an article about the subject for eHow a few years ago.

This whole horse manure expertise began when we decided to start our garden. My husband did a ton of research and realized there was FINALLY something useful my horse could provide - manure. In exchange for the thousands of hours of time and countless dollars spent on said horse, I agreed to transport horse manure IN MY CAR from the barn in plastic tubs to our house to use for the garden.  (See a picture of said bounty in my previous post on this topic, Easter Poop.)

Well, it is now 2013 and I have a different car and a different horse boarding situation, making the acquisition of poop much more difficult than it was a few years ago. Enter Rototiller Guy. We used him to rip out our sod prior to turning our backyard into Chicken Paradise and he also provides manure delivery by the truckload to your house.

So we now have a lovely pile of composted horse manure on the side of our house. My husband is working to fill all of our beds with it, but it is a HUGE project. It took him several days to dig our trash barrels out. :) He is getting a great workout, though. Hopefully our garden will be extra verdant due to all his hard work!

Glamour Goes Green - Vegan Fine Dining: Shojin

Just posted a review of a fab Vegan dining spot on my Glamour Goes Green blog -

Vegan Fine Dining: Shojin

Homestead Revival: Urban Chicks

I thought my Eglu was something special, but I've discovered people out there who are much more creative and industrious than myself when it comes to the dwelling they provide their feathered friends!

Exhibit A is this Pinterest Board showcasing the many amazing coops Austin, Texas. At left is one of the unbelievably luxurious coops I discovered perusing this board.

A friend also forwarded me the link to an excellent blog called "Homestead Revival," which had an entry on urban chickens. Read on for more some amazing urban coops - Homestead Revival: Urban Chicks.

Mother Cluckers

It has been a busy few weeks here at the urban farm. Luckily with more daylight hours the chickens have finally ramped up the egg production. Up until the end of this week we've only been getting one egg a day from our Leghorn chicken Marge. Imagine my surprise when I went to put the chickens away at the end of the day and discovered 4 eggs in the laying box! I guess Spring has officially arrived.

The better weather unfortunately ignited a wanderlust in the chickens, as they have been escaping their pen on a daily basis this week. Since wing clipping is a two person job, we had to wait until today to give everyone a little snip. The photo at top left is of our decimated kale plant! (Mother cluckers!)

The hardest part about wing clipping is the catching of the chickens. Luckily Mr. Mills volunteered to crawl in the cage and face off with the ladies, who started screeching and flapping their wings at the sight of him invading their home. Fortunately for us, once they are caught and turned upside down they are putty in our hands! 

Now that wing clipping is complete we have to start thinking about seedlings. We had good luck with squash, cucumbers, kale and chard last year, but completely failed at growing heirloom tomatoes. Hopefully we can fix that this year, and add to our kale bed since that is a popular juice and dinner vegetable.

Truly Evil Rooster - Craigslist Gem

Someone posted the link to this Craigslist ad on the Chronicle of the Horse and I thought it was hilarious! Love the closing line, "...Love does not always triumph over evil." (Please note...spelling is in context of the ad, not my errors.)

Urban Chickens and Hawks

Just because your chickens live in a metropolis doesn't mean they are safe from predators! I knew we had possums and raccoons on our street, but I had no idea hawks would be swooping in, too.

I was reminded of this by my friends who live a few miles away from me, who recently had a hawk go INTO their chicken coop and attack and kill two of their chickens. (Photo at left is of this killer hawk sitting on their roof.)

I had a close call a few months back, when a hawk came down and tried to grab Marge, our White Leghorn. Luckily my husband was in the backyard and able to scare the hawk away, but Marge was still left was some horrible scratches on her neck from the hawk's talons.

I feel terrible for my friends, but I still am letting my chickens out to roam during the day. I think they would be way too unhappy confined in their coop, so I'm willing to take the risk.

The Engine 2 Diet

Happy New Year!

I've been going back and forth about this whole blogging thing. (Obviously I decided to stop for a while since I haven't posted anything since last April!)

On the one hand, I enjoy sharing my interests and passions and writing about them in an entertaining (I hope!) fashion. On the other hand, sometimes it seems weird to put out so much "personal" information on the internet. However, I think I may give it a go again. :)

You might remember last year my husband and I attempted to go vegetarian -  Simply Starving Everyday. I'm glad to report this has been moderately successful. Throughout the year we only cooked vegan/vegetarian at home during the week, but did occasionally get meaty on weekends. Since I'm the one that does all the cooking during the week, I actually appreciated the simplicity of cooking mainly vegan meals. I ditched the "Super Natural Every Day" recipes as they weren't all the great, and instead branched out on my own via finding recipes online.


My biggest revelation has been Quorn. As someone who actually likes the taste of meat, but doesn't want the fat and calories, these products have been a lifesaver. I'm particularly fond of their meatless meatballs. I swear I could serve these to dinner guests and they'd never know they weren't eating real meat! I just tried the "chicken" product they make and it is also delicious.

Another great tool is the Engine 2 Diet Cookbook. (More info on the website.)The recipes are easy, healthy and delicious. So far my two favorites have been Shepherd's Pie and Sloppy Joes, both of which I used Quorn "meat" crumbles in.

My husband has been extremely disciplined about this whole diet. We do still eat sushi once a week, but haven't had any meat since New Year's Eve. I'm a little bit more lax. I actually don't miss the meat, but I can't resist a little cheese, sour cream, chocolate or ice cream once in a while. :)

Evil Chickens

The evil chickens as I find them every night. Why they insist on having me personally escort them into their coop I have no idea. They certainly don't enjoy me grabbing them or prodding them with a stick, and I could do without their piercing shrieks of terror. I'm afraid to think what the neighbors believe goes on in our yard every night!

Seedling Time!

Due to social commitments and some lousy weather the past few weekends, we just got to planting seedlings this weekend.

To the left is my husband posing in his AWESOME post-yoga gardening outfit. I'm just glad nobody saw what I was wearing - my riding breeches, floral blouse and crazy blue sun hat!

It is a little late, but hopefully our mild Southern California weather will trick these guys into blossoming.

Here's what we've got:

San Marzano & Heirloom Tomatoes
Carrots
Green Beans
Pumpkins (2 kinds, can't remember what they are)
Cucumbers
Watermelon
Kale
...and a few other items!

Most of the seeds are from Seeds of Change, which sells 100% organic seeds.

Now that the chickens are securely caged and their wings have been clipped we should be able to keep the garden going year round. We are going to have to move a some of the existing herbs that are now inhabiting the raised beds (rosemary, mint, sage) to make room for the larger items. The pumpkins will go in the in-ground bed next to the garage.

I pulled out this crazy Brussels sprout plant and gave it to the chickens, who devoured it with much enthusiasm!

New Plants & Double Yolks

All of our chickens are finally laying and our yard is coming together. Yay for Spring!
Developments this week - almost all of our plants are finally in the ground in the front yard (photo at left) AND we found that a giant white egg from Marge, our Leghorn, had two yolks! (photo below, right) I read online (you know, the source of all unverified rumor and superstition) that two yolks equals 1000 years of good luck in Chinese culture, or that a wedding is coming up. Either way, good omens!

This weekend we need to start some seedlings and get ready to replant our raised beds and our new in-ground area off the garage, where we are planning to put pumpkins. We missed out on pumpkins last year due to our construction project, so I'm excited to get them going again for this year. We aren't going to make the mistake of letting them grow wild again, as that resulted in them taking over half of our yard. I mistakenly thought that each seedling equaled one pumpkin - boy, was I wrong!

In addition to pumpkins I'd love to get some tomatoes, garlic and potatoes going as we eat these every week.

Mystery Egg

I believe we have a new egg-layer in our midst, but I have no idea who it is or why their eggs are such a dark color! (See photo - mystery egg is at the bottom.) This might also be just a "weird" egg. Hmmmm....let's see what we get tomorrow!

Part Time Vegetarian aka Super Starving Everyday

In our quest for greater health, we've become part-time vegetarians. The rules are simple - we don't eat meat during the week, but can eat anything we want Friday - Sunday. It isn't always easy. You have to eat a LOT more when you have a vegetarian dinner, and you feel like downing a pint of ice cream for dessert immediately after finishing your low-fat meal. However, we do feel better, even if we haven't lost any weight. (See note above about ice cream!) My hat is off to real vegans and vegetarians - it isn't easy!

One of our tools for eating vegetarian is the book "Super Natural Every Day," which my sister and brother in law gave to us for Christmas. After making several recipes featured in the book, we have renamed it "Super Starving Everyday." Okay, it isn't that bad, but it has taken some getting used to. The good news is that the meals are very simple and easy to prepare, so they are perfect for a quick weeknight dinner.

The only really good "repeat" meal I've made is something the author called "gribiche," pictured above. I get to use our gorgeous eggs and the potatoes in the dish help make it more filling. I prepare my own dressing (the author has you mix a cooked egg yolk into her recipe for the dressing, which was kind of gross - I tried making it this way the first time) and it is actually a pretty satisfying meal.

Plants!

I'm embarrassed to admit how long our front yard has been without landscaping. We have had versions of weeds, black plastic tarps and plain old dirt for a very long time. It all started when we ripped out the grass in the back yard and thought, hey, we've got a dumpster, let's do the front yard!

Bad move. While we had a vision for the backyard, we drew a blank on the front yard. All we knew is that we didn't want grass anymore. This, coupled with a construction project, left us with somewhat of a disaster zone. We did hire some landscape designers that drew up some very fancy plans that were way out of our budget, so needless to say the dirt design stayed put.

Enter Eugenio. He was a subcontractor on our construction project, and he said he could help us with the landscaping. We pared down the original plans, which included scrapping the design for the backyard, since that really has turned into a farm. (Photos at a later date.) He's been doing a lot of prep work the past couple of months, and finally, voila - the plants showed up!

I'm so excited! Even plants sitting in pots are such an improvement over the dirt! Below are some photos. We have an olive tree, strawberry guava bushes, mexican sage, lavender, rosemary and a couple other drought-tolerant items that I'm blanking on the names right now. Yippee!

Design Blogger Conference

As part of my post at Grace Home Furnishings, I was lucky enough to attend the Design Bloggers Conference this week at the gorgeous Biltmore Hotel downtown. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but it was a lot of fun and inspiring. (look! I'm blogging again!)

On Tuesday night I helped coordinate at party at the Grace Home showroom with Currey & Company, a fabulous lighting company based in Atlanta. (Sidenote - I have one of their chandeliers in my bedroom - see photo below.)



I had a great time meeting all the bloggers and other design industry peeps, but the one topic that kept coming up time and again was my chickens! When I mentioned I used to keep a blog about them, everyone said that they would be interested in reading more about them, so here it goes again!

I think Now and Hen will be a little more broad in it's scope (chickens are fun, but not THAT interesting, especially on a daily basis) but I really am inspired after this conference to give it a go again!

The Chickens are Coming!

I got the call this morning that our chicks from My Pet Chicken are on the way! We should be receiving them sometime tomorrow.

They did have to substitute a Welsummer (photo below) for the Wyandotte, but that's okay.

I am so excited about these cute new additions!