One Pan Chicken and Rice - In Your Cast Iron

Good, beautiful week everyone!

Because it drives me insane to have to slog through someone’s entire life story when all I want is the recipe, I’m going to cut to the chase and give you just that. So let’s jump into it.

If you're a more visible learner, you can watch my Reel where I made this recipe.

Ingredients

• 6 chicken drumsticks – thawed
• 1 1/2 cups white rice
• 3 cups chicken broth – can be substituted for 3 cups water and seasonings of choice
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, finely chopped – optional
• 3 Tbsp cooking oil

 

Seasoning Mix

• 4 Tbsp Kinder’s Buttery Steakhouse Rub
• 1/4Tsp Salt
• 1/4Tsp Black Pepper
• 1 Tbsp Italian Seasoning
• 3 Tbsp parmesan cheese

 

 

Mix seasonings and generously coat each drumstick.

In a pre-heated 12-inch cast iron pan set at medium low, add your cooking oil and sear the drumsticks until you have a golden color on each side.

Don’t worry about cooking the chicken fully because we’ll be finishing everything off in the oven.

Remove the drumsticks and set aside, add additional cooking oil if the pan is dry, and then the chopped onion. Cook roughly 3 minutes before adding the garlic, then for an additional 2 minutes. You don’t want to add your garlic in too soon, because onion takes a little longer to cook and you run the chance of burning the garlic if you put them in together.

Add your rice and mix into the garlic and onion.

We’re going to toast the rice for 5 to 7 minutes, stirring frequently, before adding the broth (or seasoned water).

Bring the rice mixture to a low simmer and cook for 8 to 10 minutes or until most of the moisture has been absorbed, then remove from the heat. While the rice is simmering, pre-heat your oven to 400F.

Lay the drumsticks on top, carefully cover the pan with aluminum foil and move the pan to the oven.

Cook covered for 30 minutes, then for another 5 minutes uncovered.

Voila, dinner is served!

 

That’s all for today! Hope you have a freaking awesome rest of your week, and I will see you all next time!

 

-Alyx

Homesteading in the Winter

Hello everyone!

Goodness, it’s been a hot minute since I hopped on here.

With the insanity surrounding the holiday season, and the chores and projects and everything else piling up, it was a necessary break.

Even so, I didn’t slow down with making any videos, so if you’re interested in checking out what I was up to the last few weeks, you can check it out here 

Just because it’s winter doesn’t mean that the life of a homesteader slows down! There are several things you can do during this time to prepare for Spring.

 

My go-to winter projects fall under three categories:

 

Preparing for Spring

Starting seeds isn’t quite necessary right at the moment, since we are still in January. It’s normally safe to move plants outside in May in the zone we live in, so I generally wait until late February or mid-March to start most of my seeds inside. But if you have an excessively short growing season, now might be a good time to plant longer growing plants, like tomatoes and many types of squash and melon. I’m actually tempted to start a couple watermelon plants now, since our growing period is just long enough to tease me every year into thinking my plants will produce, and then a cold snap will kill the plants just short of the fruit becoming ripe enough to eat.

Since I still have time before starting seeds, I take the time to go through what I have and order seeds that are running low or have run out. You could also use this time to start shopping for fruit and nut trees and for poultry. Right now is the perfect time for this, because you’re beating the rush of orders once the weather starts to turn nice.

Since a lot of us are more confined to inside the house and are cooking more, it’s also a great time to start a compost heap. This time of year also offers a lot of moisture for us, so I don’t have to worry about consistently wetting the compost. The biggest problem I face is whether or not I can actually get to the heap, since mine is situated in a spot where winds push through and create huge snow drifts and berms during heavy precipitation.

 

Maintenance and repairs

If you have a chicken coop, rabbit hutch, or fencing, now is a good time to do some mending of any damage. It’s also a good idea to winterize your coop or hutches to protect your animals from harsh weather. This can be anything from stacking hay bales on top of or around the coop and hutches, or adding plastic sheets as wind and moisture barriers. I added a heat lamp to my chicken coop to encourage the birds to roost in a particular area that was more protected from the weather.

This is also a good time to check out your pots and raised beds, if you have any. Check them for cracks, weak points, and areas that need to be repaired so they’re ready for Spring planting.

Just like fencing, tools also need to be repaired occasionally. Sharpening, cleaning, and repairing your tools will help them last longer and replacing old or broken ones with new right now is also ideal, since there should be some in stock. Again, by doing this now, you’re missing the early spring rush.

 

Learning new skills

Even with all the things listed above, you’ll still probably still have plenty of down-time. I use mine to learn new skills.

Winter is generally the only time of the year when I break out the sewing and knitting projects, since I’m too busy or it’s too warm to work on them the rest of the year. You’ll also see me with a stack of homesteading guidebooks and my notebook, working on garden planning and strategizing for upcoming projects.

Since winter is a cooler season in most place, a couple other skills to test out would be cheesemaking, canning, and soapmaking. You need cooler temperatures for cheese and soapmaking during the aging period, and canning is always a hot job to take on in the kitchen.

If you have any animals, they'll all still need to be fed and watered during the winter! Potentially even more than before, so be sure to keep that in mind when planning where to keep your animals. Because of where I built my chicken coop, I have to trudge through a snowdrift almost every day during the winter to feed and water them and collect their eggs.

 

I hope this gave you a good idea of some things you can expect to do if you plan on making any changes toward becoming a homesteader. It’s a lot of work and dedication, but so far it’s been incredibly rewarding.

Thank you all so much for checking out my blog, I hope you have a freaking awesome rest of your week, and I’ll catch you next time!

-Alyx

Let There Be Heat(lamp)

Hello again everyone!

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend and are looking forward to a happy and safe Christmas for those of you that celebrate, and for those of you that don't, I hope it's a happy and safe weekend!

This past week I dove - yet again - into work that needed to get completed in the chicken coop. If you're so inclined, you can go watch the whole process here.

I'd decided that I wanted to get in the coop for some festive fun, and while I was there, I might as well finish installing the heat lamp to encourage the birds to use their new roost spots.

Probably the hardest part of the whole job was getting up to the ceiling and installing a screw for the heat lamp to hang off. I eye-balled where I wanted it, had to do some climbing to get to the beam, and the rest was relatively easy to install and hang the light.

The second hardest part was getting the extension cord stretched between the barn and the chicken coop.

Thankfully, I'd overestimated how much cord I would need, so I had plenty of cord to work with. It was just a pain to try to snake the prong end through the tiny hole the previous owners of the property had cut out in the wall for a similar purpose. It's in an awkward spot, so you can't really see what you're doing without getting down on the ground, and there were spider webs all up in that space that I wasn't pleased about putting my face near.

I was able to get the old cord out of the way and the new one in its place within a few minutes, and spent the rest of the time running in a big circle to get the other end of the cord to the heat lamp.

I made sure that all the materials I used were fire retardant and water resistant, so hopefully no one gets burned or shocked, though there is always the low chance of that.

I also keep the heat lamp plugged in on an interval. During the day, when it's warmer, it is unplugged, then at night it gets plugged back in. I figure it'll help the bulb not overheat and lessen the chance of causing a fire and put less stress on the bulb in general so it'll - fingers crossed - last longer.

The total install took less than an hour and left me plenty of time to get into the fun stuff that I was most excited for!

Because I am ridiculous, I decided I wanted to decorate the chicken run with Christmas ornaments!

I don't often get to decorate the house and there are a couple reasons for this:

• We have dogs. Five of them. And their curiosity knows no bounds. Erecting a tree and decorating it with all sorts of shiny toy-like balls and ornaments is asking for trouble.
• To compensate for the lack of tree, I generally hang lights outside. Problem is, there are no outside outlets on the house! Our home was built in 1910, and in the course of its life, none of the previous owners had ever thought to update it by installing exterior outlets. So no house lights.

I decided that I didn't want to go another year without some sort of decorations, so I bought one of those cheap packs of shiny round ornaments from Walmart (while I was picking up a new extension cord for the heat lamp) and set to making SOMETHING festive.

The chickens didn't care while I installed them, in fact, I'm certain they haven't even noticed the ornaments, and it only took me a few minutes to hang them all.

Now I feel better. Not only did I get a productive project checked off the list, I also got to play around a bit.

That's all for today. Thank you all so much for reading this far, I hope you have a freaking awesome rest of your week, Christmas, weekend, and so on! I will see you next week!

-Alyx

Leaving the Farm - For the Weekend

Hello and happy December everyone! How did we already get here?!

I guess I’ll just jump straight into things.

It’s hard enough planning trips away from home, and when you start adding animals to the picture that need to be accommodated for, it just adds another layer of complexity to the puzzle. When you throw in a whole farm, this can make getting away, even for a short weekend trip, a bigger headache than it’s worth.

Thankfully for us, we just have dogs, cats, and chickens. We don’t have that full farm that we would need to hire a farm sitter for. We still sit in that boat where we can ask a friend to watch the animals and toss a $50 and it’s relatively simple for them to get things done.

I know the problem comes when you start adding those larger livestock animals, like pigs, sheep or goats, cows, and horses.

We had a small trip planned for this past weekend. One of my extended family members was hitting that birthday milestone of 50 years, and we wanted to celebrate that with them.

It was only going to be a short trip, so I’ll just quickly walk through what we did to set everything up to make our animal sitter’s life as easy as possible.

The biggest problem was the dogs.

We have 5. That’s right. FIVE. And they’re not small either.

Our smallest dog is a 50lb Boxer. She might be the smallest, but she’s got some power in that little body. She will drag you for miles and not even bat an eyelid.

The next in line are three of her puppies. They’re not puppies anymore, they’re almost 5yrs old now, and they range from 55lbs to almost 80lbs. They’re half Boxer, and the other parent was a German Shepherd/Husky mix, so they’ve got all the energy in the world and I can’t keep fat on them to save my life. All three have wonderful personalities, and are beautiful, loving dogs, but they’ve got their quirks that make them hard to deal with as a pet sitter.

• Sass, the smallest, takes out her stress out as aggression – specifically toward her sister.
• Koda, the sister in question, had an auto-immune disorder earlier this year that she’s still recovering from, and gets a pill every 24 hrs.

Koda still hasn't quite grown in all of the fur that was shaved earlier this year 

when the vets were trying to figure out what the heck was wrong with her.

• Deego, the final sibling, is super attached to the smallest sister and gets stressed out when they’re separated.

And finally, we’ve got an eight-month-old Great Pyrenees pushing 100lbs.

One of the only times this boy sits still is if you've got food in-hand.

To make it as easy as we can, we kennel the Pyrenees at a doggy daycare to help him use up all that puppy energy he’s got, and the little Boxer mix so she gets lots of one-on-one love and her stress is kept low.

The cats are easy. Food and water and some daily love and they’re happy as pie.

The final speed bump we have to work through to prep for any sort of vacation, is the chickens.

We were only gone for a couple days this time, so I knew I’d be able to fill up their food and water and they’d be great until we got back. One of the perks of it being winter, is my hens aren’t laying eggs right now, so the sitter doesn’t have to go in and collect any eggs.

After filling their food and water to the brim, I like to throw down some hay in their run for enrichment. It just adds something to peck and scratch and play with.

 

Once we get that horse, and that cow, and so on and on, we’ll have to train someone to handle the farm that we’ll have, but for now, this is all we have to do!

Thank you so much for tuning in, if you’re interested, you can check out my YouTube to watch the chicken prep I did for this little trip.

I hope you all have a freaking awesome rest of your week, and I’ll catch you next time!

-Alyx

Back With the Birds

It’s another beautiful Monday! 

I hope you all had a fantastic Thanksgiving, for those of you that celebrated, and otherwise I hope it was an amazing Thursday.

In my daily chores over the last few weeks I noticed some small issues in the coop since the last big projects I worked on. I should have known that I was jinxing myself when I said I was done working on projects in the chicken coop. Because I was faced with a not-so-small predicament.

My hens quit laying eggs about two weeks ago.

Now, normally, hens will continue laying eggs as long as they have ample food, water, warm shelter, and at least 12-14 hours of sunlight. When there’s less light, this triggers your birds to go into ‘rest’ mode, and they exert more energy to stay warm than in producing eggs.

While I understand it’s pretty normal for a hen’s lay rate to slow or even completely stop during the winter, it’s uncharacteristic for my hens to completely stop laying all together, so I knew there was another factor at play.

I take care to make sure they have food and clean water daily, so I know that the issue probably has something to do with either their shelter, or that they are using their energy to keep warm.

At this point, I had a couple theories I wanted to address, which you can watch here:

 

One

Something I saw for sure was a leak that dripped water straight into the nest boxes when it rains. This is likely one of the reasons my hens aren’t laying, so my highest priority became building a roof or cover over the nest boxes that would block the leak into the boxes.

I’m quite pleased with myself for holding onto the wood from the old coop, since this is where I was able to get the materials to build the cover over the nest boxes.

There was an intact piece of roofing I was easily able to repurpose to act as a block between the leaky section and the nest boxes, along with several spare bits of wood I fashioned into supports.

I actually attempted this mini roof twice.

The first time I’d designed it so it sat too flat. This would potentially encourage the chickens to try to roost on top of it, which would put them in the way of the water, and would definitely break the roof. This design has very little strength to hold up against weight on top of it, so I knew I’d have to change the design to discourage them from trying to sit on top of it.

I was able to redesign it so it sat at a steeper angle, and this is the final product I decided to go with.

Two

It could be that the hens don’t know where to lay their eggs.

I didn’t slowly transition where I wanted them to lay eggs, and took away the old coop, which for many of my hens was the only place they’d ever known to lay.

There’s a relatively simple fix for this that could train my hens to use the nest boxes.

A lot of times you can trick your hens into laying in a particular place by planting fake eggs in that spot. There are plastic eggs you can purchase, you can use golf balls, or you can do what I did – I looked for rocks that looked roughly like the eggs my hens lay in both color and size.

It might take a few days for this trick to work, so don’t get too discouraged if they don’t lay eggs in the desired nests right away.

 

Three

The birds don’t know where to roost.

This could be causing them to sleep in small groups or on their own, which means they’re not conserving energy by sharing body heat at night.

Again, this is an issue because I didn’t slowly transition them from the old coop to the new one.

Ideally, what I probably should have done was move the old coop so it sat inside the new coop building until the birds were accustomed to laying and roosting in the building. Then I could have slowly torn apart the old coop and the birds would still know that they were supposed to stay in the new building.

I didn’t think of that though when I first started the transition, so I have a couple other tricks I can try to finish the transition.

The easiest route I could take to encourage the birds to roost on the new beams I installed for them is to install a temporary heat lamp above them. Since it’s cold out right now, they’ll be drawn to the warmth, and they’ll start roosting together on the new beams.

Once they’re used to roosting there, I should – theoretically – be able to remove the heat lamp, and they’ll all be able to stay warm by sharing body heat.

The other option I have would be to build a wall extension and closable door in the wide opening in the coop. Then I could physically put the birds inside the coop at night, when they’re more docile and easier to catch, and a few days of closing them in the building at night would train them to go there on their own.

They would have warmth inside the coop either way, which could help them start laying eggs again.

 

 

I only had time to try to solve the first two problems, and I discovered that the extension cord I meant to use to reach from the barn to the chicken coop was both too short and unusable.

Which means I’ll need to go back into the coop another time to finish this project.

 

 

Thank you all so much for joining me again for another struggle in starting a homestead, I hope you all have a freaking awesome rest of your week, and I’ll catch you all next time!

 

-Alyx

Cooking With Cast Iron

Hello and happy Monday again everyone! This week I’m going to rave about cast iron pans. 

You can watch me cooking with them here.

I love cast iron, I would suggest them to anyone and everyone, and there’s a couple reasons why.

First off. They’re super durable. There’s a reason you see old cast iron pans at estate sales, garage sales, yard sales, you name it. It is so hard to ruin one of these things, and even if you think you have, most likely there’s a relatively easy way to restore it to a usable condition. If you take care of your pans, they should outlive you, that’s how sturdy they are.

Secondly. Compared to how infrequently you have to replace these guys, it is incredibly cost effective to switch your cookware to cast iron. I’m not saying that it’s not expensive if you choose to switch ALL your pots and pans at once, but if you replace a dying non-stick pan here and there, it’s not so bad, and the lifespan of the cast iron pan will basically pay for itself.

Third. It’s no wonder cast iron is popular because they are so versatile. You can use them for sauces. Steaks. Fish. Baking. Casseroles. They can transfer seamlessly from stovetop to oven. You can use them on an open flame. On a grill. Glass cooktop. Electric cooktop. Gas stove. They. Are. So. Versatile.

With all of this said, there are still several widespread misconceptions about cast iron pans that turn a lot of new users away from them.

One of the biggest myths that people believe is that cast iron is hard to maintain. It’s an idea that the seasoning – the protective coat over the bare metal – can be easily damaged and the steps to protect it are difficult and take a lot of time or skill. If you hear someone tell you not to use metal utensils in cast iron, it’s because of this idea that cast iron is ‘delicate’.

This is just not true. Like I mentioned earlier, cast iron pans are crazy durable.

In a seasoning or a re-seasoning process, it’s not just a thin layer of oil on the bare metal. It’s a layer of polymerized oil that bonds to the metal. This means that the oil has broken down into a plastic-like substance, and this is how a well-seasoned cast iron pan can have non-stick properties.

Unless you’re gouging into the pan itself, your metal utensils aren’t doing anything to that seasoning. And any little black flakes that are coming off the pan into the food are more likely to be carbonized food from previous meals than any flaking or damage to the seasoning layer itself.

You can easily store you pans stacked inside each other without having to worry that they’ll damage each other.

 

Hey, I heard that…

Cast iron pans leach iron into the food you cook.

This is true. But the amount of iron leached into the food depends on a huge variety of factors. The older the pan is means it’ll generally leach less. The acidity of the food can also determine how much iron is leached into your food. Another factor is how well-seasoned the pan is.

If you generally run anemic, it might not hurt to switch to cooking in cast iron pans. On the flip side, if your body doesn’t process iron correctly, or tends to build up an overload of iron, this could be potentially dangerous. Always be sure to double check with your doctor if you know your body has issues with iron production or processing so you don’t accidentally hurt yourself.

If you are dead-set on switching to cast iron, an alternative is to instead switch to enamel-coated cast iron. They work just as well as their traditional counterparts, they just have an enamel coat to stop the leaching of iron from the pan. This coat also acts as the pans ‘seasoning’.

Another big common idea is that you can’t cook anything acidic in your cast iron.

While it’s generally a good idea to avoid making long-cooking acidic recipes – like tomato sauces – in your cast iron, ideally the seasoning on your pan would protect it so the acids would never touch the bare metal. This is never a guarantee though since we don’t live in a perfect world.

On the other hand, it’s perfectly safe to cook a small amount of acidic foods in your pans every now and then and it will cause zero damage.

 

Did you know??

The cast iron pans you can buy today are different than the pans made before production was streamlined. Cast iron pans used to be sanded down after casting, and you can see that in many old pans still floating around. When production was streamlined this step of sanding the pans was dropped. This means that vintage pans will have a silky-smooth finish compared to the pans we have now that have a slightly rough finish.

This also means that current day pans will never get as non-stick as the vintage pans.

 

I know, I know. I’ve been beating around the bush.

The most controversial topic of cast irons pans is how to clean them. A lot of people have been made to believe that you can’t wash them with soap and water. 

While it’s always a bad idea to run them through the dishwasher – not the end of the world, but not a great idea – it’s perfectly safe to clean your pans with soap and water. There are just a few steps you’ll want to follow up with to make sure you don’t damage the pan.

1. Wash your pan as quickly as possible. You don’t want to leave it soaking in the water for any length of time, since water is what will cause your pan to rust. Even a tiny amount of water can leave rust spots you’ll need to scrub off later.
2. After it’s been washed, dry it with a paper towel and place it on a stovetop burner set on high. 
3. When the water in the pan is almost completely dried, add a small amount of neutral oil – vegetable, canola, flaxseed, and shortening are great – and spread it around the entire inside of the pan with a paper towel. Be sure to wipe up any excess.
4. This entire process only takes a couple minutes, so be sure to stick close to your pan when you reach this step. When the pan starts to smoke, remove it from the heat, give it one final wipe, and let it cool completely before storing.
5. That’s it! Your pan is re-seasoned and good to go for the next meal.

 

That’s pretty much all I have to say about cast iron. I just have a few final tips before I let you all go that will help you get the best life out of your pans.

• Season them when you first get them. A lot of pans you can buy now will come pre-seasoned, but it never hurts to add a few extra layers. Just follow steps 3-5 from above a couple times with that new pan and you’re golden.
• Keep using your pan. The more often you use it, the better the season will get.

 

 

Thank you all so much for hanging out with me today, I appreciate every single one of you. I hope you have a freaking awesome rest of your week, a happy and safe Thanksgiving, and I’ll see you all next week!

-Alyx