Category Archives: Canada

Splitting Wood

Let me begin with a brief thanks to whoever it was that created the electric wood splitter. This is a brilliant, if improbably heavy, machine. I love it!

Dave splitting wood at the farm.

“Coco Smash!”

With the first trip for wood, Dave started doing some log splitting to transform the log sections into actual fire wood. Using a maul (doesn’t sound promising…), he started muscling through the pile. I watched his technique and figured that it would take me only moments to lose a toe (we all know the luck I have with foot injuries… see “Family Dinner” post) and/or tweak my back beyond redemption. So when Farmer-Landlord said (only partially joking) that the Men get the wood and the Women do the splitting (more hunter-gatherer references here), I knew I was in trouble. Then Farmer-Landlord introduced me to Betsy… the name that I’ve given to his beloved electric wood splitter.

Me and Betsy posing.

Betsy is worth her considerable weight in gold. To help us out the first time, Farmer-Landlord backed his pickup to the wood pile, plunked Betsy down on to the open tail gate, and showed me how to use her. The splitter looks more or less like a narrow chute with an ax bit at one end. You plop the log onto the track, make sure one end of it is snuggly abutted to ax bit (aka the sharp end), and then in Betsy’s case you hold a button down while simultaneously pulling a lever (safety first) and a moving panel forces the log down onto the bit, splitting the wood. For larger logs you can do multiple splits. Easy Peasy.

Dendrochronology pop quiz…

In no time I had split my way, pink gloves and all, through about half of the pile of dumped wood. There was still the large trailer full and the person-sized logs that still needed portioning, but all in all not a bad start. At around the same time that my hands and arms started to complain loudly, Little Man woke from his nap complaining loudly too. His poor little face was swollen from the yellow jacket sting from earlier that day, and the copious calamine lotion didn’t help the look.

The next day I went out again to the pile to split wood; good little wood chuck that I am. The pickup was still parked next to it, the tailgate down at the perfect height for Betsy. I just needed to go get her from the work shed. Dave was off playing soccer, Little man was sleeping, and I was going to play Lumberjane.

I knew where Betsy was in the shed, gave her a quick spritz of oil along the track, tipped her up and started to wheel her out to the pile. Or I should say, uphill to the pile. I wheeled her over to the low rise that we had to clime together and dragged her like a dead body up the hill, finally getting to the pickup. I could hear the steady plunk, plunk, plunk of Farmer-Landlord “harvesting” rocks from the sheep pasture. Apparently they were messing with the idyllic scene, so one by one, plunk, plunk, plunk, then went into the maw of the tractor. Luckily the “rock garden” was around the corner from where I was attempting to work, so no one (I hope!) witnessed that pathetic struggle between myself, Betsy and gravity.

Now that I had gotten Betsy to the pickup, I needed to get her up onto the tail gate. Oy. I knelt down, grasped Betsy at both ends and made to lift her properly with knees bent, etc. Nothing moved. Betsy is a sturdy piece of work. So I tried again, and she just wiggled a bit. Now I was getting nervous that I would have to ask Farmer-Landlord for help, but I didn’t want to interrupt his chore to help with mine. So one last harrumph and I got Betsy most of the way to the tailgate. A lovely double-bruise on my upper thigh marked where I gave her a little extra boost up. I would forget about that bruise until I took Little Man to the pool a couple of days later. In my swim suit I looked battered, and got quickly into the water that miraculously hides a number of evils. Once I had Betsy on the tail gate, we were off to the races.

A winter’s worth of wood to be split.

Again I made pretty quick work of almost all of the loose pile of wood, making quite an impressive (if not properly stacked) wood pile. But I have to come back to that “almost all” from the previous sentence. About five or six of the larger, more recently harvested logs were a bit wetter than the others. A few of the dry logs sounded like a gun shot when the log finally split under the pressure. The more recently cut logs sometimes fought a bit and would split, but not completely. They hold themselves together in remembrance of what it was to be complete with fibrous fingers. I “split” these larger logs four or five times and for my troubles ended up with my own wooden rose sculptures. Do you know those pictures in Thai restaurants of the fancily carved fruit? The watermelons carved into intricate flower baskets, the mango carved into a swan, etc.? This is my own, much less appealing, version. These wooden roses have been set aside in a pile for the stubborn, to be resplit by Dave.

My wood pile.

In the meantime, Little Man managed to sleep through the wood splitting for a second day in a row, and was just waking up when I was finishing the pile and Dave was just getting home from soccer. All three of us were a bit dazed afterwards, and while Betsy had done all the hard work for the splitting, I started to feel the exhaustion of lifting and hurling all the wood. Now it was time to make dinner. We wanted something hearty befitting our efforts, but not enough to induce a food coma. And it needed to be quick. As luck would have it, I had recently stumbled across (literally, one was on the floor of the grocery store aisle) prepared polenta in a local store. Angels were singing when I found this tube and quickly plunked a couple down in my cart. Little Man used one as a microphone for a bit. This would be the basis for a super quick oven roasted polenta with marinara and oozy cheese.

This recipe is about as no-fuss as it gets. The polenta is already prepared and in handy tubular form for slicing. You slice, bake and crisp. Then top with a heated from-the-jar good quality marinara sauce, top with some freshly grated cheese, broil, and done. At least it is normally easy… I didn’t fully realize how tired my upper body was until I was putting a full tray of food into the oven and my hands simply gave out. The tray tipped forward and as I tried to compensate so as to not lose our dinner to the floor, I tagged my hand on the preheated oven rack. Then I tagged the same hand again on the other side while I tried to compensate again. So now I had two spectacular burns on my hands to compliment my lower body bruising. Let’s just say that I was a vision of loveliness at the pool a few days later, bandages and bruises, and runny mascara (I’d forgotten to leave that off that morning on the way to the pool). The glamour continues…

Oven Baked Polenta

Serves two with leftovers. Easily up the quantity by just doubling (or more) the ingredients. The method stays the same.

Ingredients

1 tube of prepared polenta

1 jar of good quality marinara sauce

1 cup grated mozzarella

½ cup grated parmesan cheese

Olive oil, to drizzle

Salt and Pepper

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 425º Fahrenheit. Prepare a baking sheet by drizzling about one table spoon olive oil over its base. Too much oil and the polenta will be greasy, too little and it sticks.

2. Slice the polenta into ½ inch thick coins. Sprinkle salt and pepper over both sides. Place the polenta coins on the baking sheet, and drizzle the tops with a little olive oil.

Sliced polenta coins.

3. Bake the polenta coins for about 25 minutes, or until crispy and golden on both sides. Meanwhile heat the sauce, either in a pan on the stove or a bowl in the microwave.

4. Once the polenta is golden, pull the pan out of the oven and sprinkle the grated mozzarella and parmesan evenly over the polenta coins. Crank the oven up to broil, put the pan back into the oven, and watch it like a hawk. Don’t answer the phone, don’t refill any juice cups, just monitor the melting cheese. You want golden, not volcanic ash.

Golden brown polenta coins topped with chesse and ready for the broiler.

5. Resist the temptation to simply top the polenta with the sauce in a nice large casserole. You went to a lot of trouble to crisp up that polenta. If you top the crisp food with the wet sauce, you will get soggy polenta. Instead, be a little bit fussy (you can afford to be fussy here since the dinner took next to no prep) and pour a bit of sauce onto each plate. Top the sauce with a couple cheesy polenta coins, and enjoy! We served this with a great, simple fresh lettuce salad from the garden.

Click here for a printable version of theOven Roasted Polenta recipe.

Pink gloves and all.

Foggy Bottom

Lumberjack and Lumberjane

25th Post and Counting…

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This is my 25^th post on The Sheep Are Out…, a blog about our lives on Vancouver Island. We’ve lived on the island for about 3 ½ months, and are starting to get a feel for the area. We’ve wrangled sheep (and our toddler), explored the ocean coastline, played in what feels like a myriad of parks and playgrounds, and begun a quest for the best fish and chips in the greater Nanaimo area. We feel closer to family (at least our north-of-the-border family) and farther from friends; though that equation is starting to shift as we are making friends here now too.

Little Cowboy touring his new acreage.

As inevitably happens with any move, it starts to feel impossible to have lived anywhere else. We know where things are in the house… mostly (please don’t ask for anything in any box in the basement). We know where to go in town for great sushi or for Little Man’s favorite fried rice. We know which grocery stores carry the foods we want, which gas stations are the fastest to get in and out of, and where we most want to go when we have the rare chance for a baby sitter. In short, we are starting to find our feet.

We all know who’s the boss here, right?

In honor of this 25^th post, the recipe I am sharing with you is for what I’ve named the Manic Monday cocktail. Right after the semester started for Dave, there was a Monday that left us both a bit frazzled around the edges. It was one of those days when it feels like the wheels are just about to leave the track, but you might be able to hold on for just a moment more. To celebrate that crazy day being over, I made these Manic Monday cocktails and we toasted the survival of our own little tornado of crazy.

End of a long day.

In the spirit of joyful survival; to all of our friends and family that we’ve found here; and to our friends and family who we would love to come and visit… Cheers! May your home feel like home. May your days be filled with family and friends. And may you come visit us soon!

Manic Monday Cocktail

Makes one cocktail

Ingredients

1 ounce dark rum

1/2 ounce orange liquor

1/2 ounce lemon juice

1 ounce mango juice

Ice cubes

Optional: lightly sweetened citrus soda

Directions

Put all of the ingredients into a cocktail shaker and secure the lid.
Shake vigorously until the metal shaker gets nice and frosty.
Strain the ingredients into a rocks glass with new ice. This is a great opportunity for ice spheres if you have the forms.
Optional: Top the cocktail with about an ounce of a lightly sweetened citrus soda if you want something a bit brighter. I love the extra sparkle on a hot evening, but if I want to taste more of the mango then I just keep it simple.

P.S. For those of you who would prefer an alcohol free cocktail, and let’s face it sometimes it’s nice to serve a fancy drink without the booze, try mixing equal parts of mango juice, orange juice and the sparkling lemon soda. Delicious, refreshing and a special treat for those who can’t have or don’t want the alcohol.

Click here for a printable version of the Manic Monday Cocktail.

Here Pig, Pig, Pig…

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While the sheep are pretty, and the chickens are my favorite, the pigs are the animals that keep the farm running. We will hopefully be getting our own 1/2 hog within the next month or so. In the meantime, the BIG pigs from our pen have been… harvested… and a new group has been dropped off.

Here on the island we have variable trash pickups, with one week being for recycling and the next for trash. We actually have very little organic waste to get rid of, since most of that goes to the pigs. Pretty much everything that isn’t bone or pig-based (no cannibal piggies, please) goes to the pigs, and we empty their slop/snack bucket over our back fence. Supposedly pigs don’t poop where they eat, so the theory is that we drop the food in the pen closest to our house, and there should be less piggie scent. So far so good.

The new batch of pigs.

Night Skies

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Night skies are one of the best reasons to live in the country. A riot of stars. While I’ve loved living in large metropolises the light pollution hides the sky and everything remains a dark, dull grey. Not here.

The long, slender crescent moon was low in the sky when I left home last night. Just over an hour later, I was back from yoga, the moon had sunk behind the tree line and was gone. The night was inky black, swallowing any light from cars or the occasional street lamp. The velvety blackness completely enveloped my car as I drove. Any animals ready to dart into my path would be completely invisible until the last second. Their eyes lighting up like torches in the oncoming lights.

I got home without meeting any of these creatures up close and personal, something that I’m grateful for. I’ve been surprised by a few deer and raccoon, Dave saw an elk lazily cross the road last week, and there have been a couple of cougar sightings in the local area. A reminder that we aren’t the only ones living in our wilderness; but that is what makes it “wild.”

I stepped out of the car into the Milky Way. Stars eddied across the sky and through the trees. I tipped my face up to their light like I’ve done to the sun on a first warm day in spring. While the sun warms from the outside in, stars do the reverse. They fill me with joy that soaks from the inside out. I want to simply lie down in my driveway and stare. If I knew where our sleeping bags were I’d grab them, Dave and a bottle of wine to watch at the stars all night long.

But it isn’t the weekend. Dave waits inside, hopefully having had an easy time helping our toddler son to fall asleep, likely trying to finalize his lecture for tomorrow. Fingers crossed that bed time was successful. Chocolate cake (an unfortunately healthy version) waits inside too. Life is good.

Early evening moon to the left of the tall pines.

A Flower Out of Time

A Changing of Seasons

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We have officially entered Fall and this week particularly I am seeing the changing of the seasons. We’ve had more rain, but that’s to be expected. This is a rainforest after all. And the maples are starting to turn colors as well. It also means that the garden is changing as well, and I’m not sure how much longer we’ll be able to enjoy it’s bounty… sigh… This is probably the last of the sunflowers, but they are still a beautiful sight. On a high note, I think that the pears are just about ripe. I might have to go out for a taste test, I mean walk, soon.

Poking at a Wood Fire

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To poke a wood fire is more solid enjoyment than almost anything else in the world.
~Charles Dudley Warner

This week I lighted my first fire by myself. For many this may be a mundane occurrence, something mastered years ago and now done as handily as tying your shoes. I, however, am a city girl who grew up in a semi-arid desert where fires were not needed, and in fact can be looked at with great suspicion since half the state tends to burn down each year. I’ve been camping and gone to cookouts where fires were lit, I’ve gathered wood and cooked/flamed marshmallows on fires, and I’ve done my share of poking at a wood fire with a good, solid stick. Up until this week, however, I have never started a fire by myself. But now the weather is changing and we need a fire in our basement wood stove.

Since we passed the first official day of fall I’ve noticed our neighbors stocking up on firewood to last through the winter. The piles of neatly stacked logs are quite impressive, and I want to build up our plentiful supply as well. I’ve been teased by the gentle smoke perfuming the chill Fall air, curling out of other chimneys. Our chimney, on the other hand, had no smoke since we had not yet lit a fire in our stove and I wasn’t sure how to fix that situation. Up until now I’ve never had use or need of a wood burning stove and had no idea how to light one.

I also have to admit that I don’t like feeling incompetent. I don’t like having to ask people for help, but I’ve trained myself to do so when I must. And I certainly don’t like being reliant on other people for the basic necessities of life… like fire. So when the weather got colder and all my neighbors started taunting me with their curlicues of smoke, I broke down and asked both Dave and my landlord how to use the wood burning stove. The Farmer gave me a bemused look and said that you light a fire in it, as if this is something that anyone can do, like tying your own shoes. And for many it is that simple, but for me whose most recent experience with lighting a fire literally involved flipping the switch in our room at the resort… Let’s just say that it wasn’t such a simple idea. Dave’s response was not much better. He shrugged his shoulders, said he wasn’t exactly sure (he’s a city kid too) but that we’d need kindling, and then he went on to do something else leaving me without answers and without fire. In Dave’s defense, I think he was acting out of self-preservation. The man is always hot, and has never been able to wear sweaters even in the coldest of Januaries. So anyone with ideas of Christmas presents for Dave that consist of sweaters, save your money. He’ll love them, try one on even, and then break into a dripping sweat and tear the thing off. I think in our current predicament Dave is concerned that the stove might heat up the house too well. I, on the other hand, am more of a lizard. Give me a hot rock and some sunshine (with the appropriate… or excessive… sun protection required) and I’m happy. I wanted that stove lit, and I wanted it lit yesterday.

First, however, we needed to get wood. Out here you can order wood to be delivered to your door or you can do what most people do, which is to cut and split your own. For an insanely reasonable amount of money you can get a permit to harvest lumber from the tops of trees cut down last year by the lumber companies. Then you fill up your truck, cart the logs back home, and get to work. For us, that means a chain saw to cut the logs into serviceable size, and then an ax to split them apart. Our landlord has already made one trip to get timber, and Dave will be joining him on another trip this weekend. Last night Dave went outside to make sure his chainsaw was in functional condition, and ended up portioning all of the logs with our landlord, making short work of the task. Little Man and I went outside to visit the lumberjacks, and I was curious to see where the log splitting would be done since I fully intend on being a part of that. When I asked our landlord about the splitting he eyed my foot gear worriedly. Apparently pink Uggs are not appropriate wood splitting shoes. I’ll have to work on that.

The next day I had just put Little Man down to nap and was in the office typing away when I realized that I wasn’t just cold, but even my nose was freezing. Enough. I was tired of waiting, and yes, I was annoyed at the idea of having to wait on a man to rescue me. I was going to get a fire started in that stove, or burn up all our kindling in the process. There is an anthropologist (who does not deserve to be named here) whose main claim to fame is a theory that men (and I do mean “men,” not the English language’s poor attempt at using a masculine word to define a group of people made up of both men and women) developed bipedalism (the ability to walk on two legs) because of their need to hunt. His theory goes on to literally leave women at home near the empty cook fire, pregnant, hungry, cold and on all fours, waiting for their menfolk to walk home and feed them. Yeeeeesssssss… That is one lonely man… I digress, but the point here is that there was something about the simplicity of fire equalling heat that galled me since I could not produce it. I did not want to wait any longer to be granted the knowledge of how to create fire.

So I went downstairs armed with one of those long barbeque lighters (I wasn’t ready to go full Survivorman… and besides, I don’t think we own a flint striker) and approached the stove like one does a beast that you don’t think will hurt you, but you’re just not quite sure. I opened its maw, put in the log, and then looked at it, trying to remember any tricks about starting a fire from my childhood camping days. I knew that I needed kindling, so I took all of the splinters of wood that Dave had made and tossed them into the stove as well. Anyone who knows anything about starting a fire should be cringing right about now. Then I remembered something that Dave said about using newspaper. So I found a box of wadded up newspaper that had been used as packaging from our hundreds of moving boxes, and stuffed that into the stove as well. Then I sat back on my heels and puzzled at my mess. That couldn’t possibly work. Eventually I figured out that this should be more of a layer cake affair, with wadded up newspaper at the bottom, kindling laid out on top of that and then the log on top of my pyre. All the time I’m messing with this I keep asking myself how many PhDs it takes to light a fire.

The set up…

Then I lit the newspaper at the base of my pyre, sat back on my heels again and smiled at my accomplishment. That is until the newspaper smoked up, and the smoke started pouring into the room. A quick flail at the damper to open it, and soon the smoke was coursing through the chimney, joining the scented offerings of my neighbors. I sat there for quite some time, enjoying the crackle of the wood and the scent of its burning. Then I heard Little Man stirring upstairs through the monitor and I closed the stove’s door. The effect was instant. I went from having a live, crackling, aromatic fire, to something that looked a lot like the Christmas channel with burning logs but the sound was turned off. All evidence of “fire” disappeared with the sound and scent dampening of the door. However, the heat continued to radiate, and while I missed the sound and the scent it was good to know that the fire was safe inside its home while we were safe inside ours.

I had achieved fire and for one night at least had heated our home. I would later learn that to start my prized fire I had used a king’s ransom of kindling, as I told Dave of my accomplishment and he stared morosely at the pile where all of his lovely kindling had been. The upcoming forecast shows a couple days of higher temperatures, and then we will drop down again. That should give us a chance to restock our supply of combustibles, and I will definitely be more frugal with our supplies.

Our own Christmas Burning Log channel.

It never fails that the scent of a wood burning fire makes me yearn for cocoa and flaming marshmallows. One of our neighbors has not only a wood burning stove to heat their home, but also an entire cast iron affair complete with four burners (now I see where that name came from) and an oven all fueled by wood alone. Their stove is gorgeous and I’m fascinated by it. It has me looking at our own modest, but eco-friendly stove, wondering what kind of treats I could whip up using its top as a heat source. A friend recently shared with me that in one of the bad snows a couple of years ago the power had gone out and since she had an electric stove with no electricity she ended up cooking a simple dinner of rice on the top of her wood heating stove. I don’t need to resort to rice cooking on the fireplace yet, but maybe some popcorn… or hot cocoa… or perhaps a gooey cheese dip for a crusty, toasty loaf of bread… I’m going to have to give this some thought. And I would love to hear from any of you, if you have an idea of things to cook on top of a wood burning stove or open flame.

For now, I’m going to content myself with some hot cocoa, and this time at least will make it on our upstairs stove. The wood burning stove in the basement is so efficient that it heats the area quickly, and I think that Dave would boycott. The night of “my fire” I made Dave and I a couple of mugs of this awesome cocoa taught to me by my sister-in-law Erin. Auntie Erin’s cocoa is dairy free, but you will not miss the lack of milk. It tastes like gorgeous dark chocolate, without being overly sweet or thick like some dairy-based cocoas can be. Don’t get me wrong, I love just about all food-products that come from a cow, including milk. This recipe simply doesn’t need it. If, however, you are dead set on a dairy-based cocoa, I have a suggestion for you below. You won’t want to miss it.

Auntie Erin’s Cocoa in two of the mugs I threw myself.

Auntie Erin’s Cocoa

(Serves 2)

The resulting cocoa is rich with dark chocolate, but is not cloyingly sweet like some of the premade mixes can be. You can use regular measuring cups for this recipe, or do what Erin and I do, which is to measure with the mugs that you will be drinking the cocoa from. That means that everyone gets a nice full mug of this deliciously dark, hot cocoa. And please note that this recipe calls for real cocoa powder, not hot cocoa mix. You can use whatever brand of cocoa powder you have on hand, but the better the quality of your cocoa powder the better this drink will be. The main point is to taste your final cocoa before you pour it back into the mugs. If you want it sweeter, add more agave. If you want more chocolate, add more cocoa powder. The first time you make it, try to be sparing in the amount of cocoa and agave you use. It’s easy to add more to the drink, but it cannot be taken back out again. Another trick that I use is after I pour the milks from the mugs into the saucepan, I partially fill the mugs with hot water to keep them warm until the cocoa is done. I want my cocoa hot, not cooled down by a cold mug.s

I like to measure the milks in the same mugs that the cocoa will be served in.

Ingredients

1 mug of almond milk, unsweetened

1 mug of vanilla rice milk, sweetened is fine

2-3 heaping tbsp. cocoa powder

1-2 tbsp. dark agave syrup

Directions

Combine all of the ingredients in a small saucepan over medium heat. Whisk the mixture constantly so that it does not scorch and all the cocoa powder is slowly incorporated into the milks. Once the cocoa starts to steam, dip in a spoon and taste for sweetness and amount of chocolate. If you want more chocolate, add a bit more of the cocoa powder. If you want more sweetness, add a bit more of the agave. Pour into mugs and enjoy.

All the ingredients in the pan.

It’s important to whisk constantly so that the cocoa does not scorch.

Now the best part, taste testing to make sure there is the perfect amount of cocoa and sweetness.

Click here for a printable recipe for Auntie Erins Cocoa.

Now for hot cocoa that uses milk…

Nigella’s Feast Hot Chocolate

For those of you who would like more of a cow-based hit to your drink, the best hot chocolate I’ve had comes from Nigella Lawson’s Feast: Food to Celebrate Life cookbook. This is my favorite cookbook, and if you haven’t checked it out before I highly recommend it. Just about every celebratory meal I’ve had a part in over the last five years has come from this book; from an invitation signing party before the wedding (aka how to get your friends to help you with an impossible task by plying them with food), to a welcome home dinner for my fiancé with a Georgian feast as he came back from the Republic of Georgia, to our housewarming party in Indiana, the list goes on and on.

So let me stop here with the gentle nudge to check out the hot chocolate recipe in Feast for one of those nights when you just want to feel pampered. Nigella’s hot chocolate is flavored with real dark chocolate (save some to nibble on while the milk heats), sweetened with honey and brown sugar, and spiced with a cinnamon stick and vanilla. Cuddle up with a mug of this and a favorite book and you’re good to go. Oh, and did I mention that it is laced with a little dark rum? Silly me for forgetting to mention that… It’s titled Alcoholic Hot Chocolate and is found on page 420. Feel free to leave out the rum if you’d rather, but it’s delicious as is.

Taking Things a Bit Too Far…

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OK, so I might have taken things a wee bit too far the other morning. Just a smidge.

We were struggling, as usual, to get the momentum moving in our ever-so-halting quest to start our day. The plan was to leave the house in about a half hour so that Little Man and I could drop Dave off at work and then we would head to a friend’s house for a play date. That’s when it happened… I remembered that I hadn’t made muffins or scones to bring for a snack. Now, in hindsight my response could have been “ah well, next time I’ll do it.” Then I would have simply grabbed a couple of extra handfuls of the healthy portable snacks we have around so that there would be extra to share with his buddies. That would have been reasonable. That would have been a good use of time. That also would have been a wise choice leading to marital accord and to not freak out your spouse who is chronically stressed about being late to work (or maybe he’s just stressed about my ability to find things that “must” be done before we leave the house, like unpacking one box just to say that I’d done my quota for the day, or transplanting a seedling of kale to Little Man’s garden spot, or moving the pillows before they get destroyed by cats, the list goes on…). As you might have guessed, my response to this situation was not the rational one.

Instead, I grabbed my Ipad and started to flip desperately through recipes to see what ingredients we had on hand so that I could whip something up. I couldn’t do the Blackberry Oatmeal Muffins the batter has to rest for 20 minutes before baking and we didn’t have that kind of time. No, not the Cheddar Chive Scones; I wanted sweet not savory. And not the Banana Chocolate Muffins; I wanted their appearance to be a bit more wholesome since I was taking them to someone else’s house… and there would be fewer chocolatey hand prints to clean up this way also. So I decided to wing a new batch of scones that I hadn’t tried yet: Blueberry Cinnamon Scones. Now set on this path, nothing could sway me, much to my spouse’s dismay. Little Man, however, was in complete support of my harebrained plan and was singing his scone song in the background.

I start tossing ingredients into the food processor, whirring up oats into oat flour, adding the other flours, brown sugar, etc. Then when I got to the part of the recipe where I needed to cube up the butter, I glanced into the refrigerator and realized my fatal error. I was out of eggs. For my plan of world domination to succeed I needed one egg. I could have stopped at this point, dumped the flour mixture into a resealable bag, tossed it in the refrigerator and finished them at another time. No big deal. Instead, I grabbed my egg collecting basket and booked it out the front door. Oy… Isn’t that what the normal person would do in the morning? If you’re out of eggs, what other option but to run through your backyard like a crazed banshee, across the farm lot and to the hen house. The sun was up, but just, and it was peeking over the cedars behind the barn. I had a moment to admire the gilded edges of the sunflowers that ring the garden before I was at the hen house door.

I was already dressed to go to my friend’s house, so now I was carefully stepping around chicken poo in my low-top Converse to get to the laying boxes. The chickens were not happy to see me, primarily since an industrious farmer’s daughter had already been up to visit the birds in order to harvest their plenty. Having previously been disturbed and robbed, the chickens did not look kindly on me as I prepared to loot their nests again. Then their looks of dismay turned to scorn as we all realized that where there are normally dozens of eggs, now there were only two single eggs to be found. I grabbed my booty and headed for the door before their derision turned to outright chicken hostility.

Outside the sheep berated me for not filling their troughs, the pigs tried to get my attention asking why I hadn’t brought out the slop bucket, and as I dodged a particularly large dragon fly, it was all I could do to not break out in hysterical giggles. Who would have thought that my going back to graduate school (where I met Dave and started our crazy adventure) would have led to this.

Once back inside the house I quickly finished the dough and got the scones in the oven. Dave was still getting ready, trying to convince Little Man to change out of his pjs, and casting me rather bemused glances. Little Man was dancing around playing hockey, signing, and generally ignoring whatever his parents wanted him to do. And I had succeeded in destroying our kitchen before even making my own cereal. Let the games begin…

As it all ended up, the scones were great even though they needed a little extra baking time because of the frozen blueberries. I was able to get Dave to work almost on time, and Little Man and I had a wonderful time playing with friends. The only glitch was during the play date when Little Man came up beside me on the couch at our friends’ house with a mouth bulging with blueberry scone and a mischievous smile on his face. He had already finished his own scone, and seeing his friend leave the table to play with a truck, Little Man struck with viper-like speed. Then he came to me, not having an ounce of subterfuge in his heart (yet), smiled his blueberry grin, and proudly stated “took scone.” Little Man is definitely his father’s son. Just ask his Auntie Jen about the pilfered cherry tomato when we were in graduate school. She learned quickly to not leave spare tasty bits around like that. While Little Man managed to stuff quite a lot of the pilfered scone into his mouth, there was still a bit left and I don’t think his friend minded. I’ll just bring a few extra to leave behind next time. And perhaps I’ll plan a little bit in advance before I find myself wondering if I have time to go find a cow to milk for my tea.

Blueberry Cinnamon Scones

Blueberry Cinnamon Scones

Ingredients

½ cup oats

½ cup whole wheat flour

¾ cup white flour

2 ½ tsp. baking powder

1 tblsp. sugar

1 tsp. cinnamon

¼ tsp. salt

1 ½ cup blueberries, frozen

6 tblsp. butter, ½ in. cubes

1 large egg

1/4 cup yogurt, plain

3-4 tblsp. milk

1 tbsp. cinnamon sugar

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
2. In a food processor blitz the oats to a coarse meal. Add the other flours, baking powder, sugar, cinnamon and salt, and then process to combine. Add the butter and pulse to blend. The butter should be in roughly pea-sized bits.

Oats in the food processor with the blade attachment in place.

Coarsely ground oat flour after just a few pulses in the processor.

The dry ingredients.

The dry ingredients with the butter processed into the flour mixture.

3. Pour the flour mixture into a large bowl. Add the blueberries and toss to coat. Set aside.

Lovely frozen blueberries harvested from a local farm with a friend.

The blue berries get tossed in the flour mixture before adding the wet ingredients.

4. In a small bowl beat together the egg, yogurt and milk. Add the wet ingredients to the flour mixture and mix until the dough just comes together. If it is too dry and powdery to hold its shape, then add more milk a scant tablespoon at the time. It should look quite dry (see picture), and will not actually come together until dumped out and kneaded.

Yogurt is an unusual ingredient for scones, but I find it works great with the blueberries here.

The dough will look quite crumbly when it is all mixed together. This is your moment of faith. If there is unmixed flour at the bottom of your bowl, add a little more milk and mix again. If not, dump it onto the board and prepare to be amazed.

5. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and knead it 4-5 times. This is not like kneading bread dough, but is more of a gentle fold over. The goal is to not handle the dough too much, since that warms up the butter. The colder your butter, the flakier your scones. Once the dough is together and kneaded, pat it into a 8-inch round and cut it into eight wedges.

The dough before being kneaded looks quite dry.

After gentle kneading/folding the dough comes together and can be patted into a large disk.

Here the dough has been cut into 8 wedges and wrapped in one layer of plastic wrap. I recommend two layers of wrap to keep it safe in the freezer.

6. At this point you can bake your scones immediately, or you can freeze the dough to use in the near future. If you choose to freeze your scones, wrap them well in plastic wrap and put them in the freezer on some form of plate or sheet tray. Once they are completely frozen you can remove the plate and keep them frozen for 1-2 weeks.

7. When you are ready to bake your scones, preheat the oven to 425 degrees F, and space the scones evenly on the prepared baking sheet. Brush the scones with milk and sprinkle them with the cinnamon sugar.
8. Bake until golden brown, about 12-15 minutes if the dough was used immediately or closer to 25 minutes if the dough was frozen. To check if the dough is baked completely, just give a scone a little touch on top while still on the baking rack. If the scone seems gooey in the center you will feel it, and that means it needs more time. If the scone is mostly firm to the touch, then it is done and can be cooled. If they need more time, bake for an additional 3-5 minutes and check them again. Cool on a wire rack and serve.

I baked these scones from the frozen dough two days after mixing them together.

Click here for a printable version of the Blueberry Cinnamon Scones recipe.

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