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Every now and then, I find myself thinking about our trip to Hawaii in September 2011. I had never been, and it was an amazing vacation. On our first full day there, we drove literally the entire way around the island and along the Road to Hana. We made stops in towns and I picked up a bag of candied coconut and a mini loaf of coconut pineapple bread at a spot with a couple of stores and a restaurant that served fried fish and fresh guava. I cut small slices of that loaf every morning for an after-breakfast treat, so the bread lasted us more than half our stay. I was really sad when the last piece was gone.

In my search for a recipe to try out my new Corningware Spice of Life loaf pan, I stumbled upon this Phyllis Coconut Bread recipe and was intrigued that the writer seemed to be referring to the same bread that we had in Maui. I went with the traditional way and did not brown the butter or toast the coconut, but I'm sure I will be making it again, so I'll try it other ways as well. In fact, I will pretty likely try to adjust the recipe for white whole wheat flour, though I haven't had much success with other recipes.

I bought a 14oz bag of sweetened (per the comments on the site) flaked coconut and did not use the entire bag, even though it is less than what is called for in the recipe. A full cup went into the batter, but I didn't add a ton on the top because I didn't remember my loaf being totally covered in coconut when we had it in Hawaii. Also, I didn't know how many pounds my loaf pan is, so I just filled it to the brim. That was probably a bad idea because it took forever (1 hour 30 minutes) to finish baking. Next time I might grease the pan with oil so the crust doesn't get so brown.

This recipe turned out great. Not exactly how I remember, but that's ok. It's still a really tasty piece of Hawaii when I start to miss it again.

Next up will probably be this Chocolate Marble Bread, which looks pretty challenging. Or Fresh Mango Bread, sans the raisins. Or this Better Than Starbucks Lemon Loaf.

My mom bought me this Blueberry Hill Casseroles & One Dish Meals cookbook for Christmas. I actually stopped buying cookbooks because I usually only use one or two recipes out of them, but this cookbook has a ton of recipes that I want to try. Today I made the Firehouse Chili Con Carne recipe (p114), which is excellent. I added a little salt, jalapeños, and omitted the chipotle because I didn't have any.

As an added bonus, I got to use my sort of vintage 3 quart Corningware Spice of Life casserole, which fit the recipe perfectly. I got lucky finding this piece at a local thrift store. This was my first time cooking with any Corningware, and it is amazing. I would have normally used my non-stick Calphalon casserole, but I'm trying to get away from the non-stick stuff and wanted to try out my Corningware; I'm glad I did. I've ordered a couple other cooking pieces and also found the Corningware Grab-Its, which I decided to hunt down.

My brother is staying with us for the holidays, and he suggested that we use the grill as much as possible while he is here. Genius! I marinated some fish last night, DH slapped it on the grill and I made some quick and cheesy mashed potatoes. I used this Grilled Fish Steaks recipe that was simple but tasty despite my not having basil. Next time I will use more lemon juice though.

After several trips to Mrs. Fields cookies in several different malls, I finally asked why no one had butter toffee cookies anymore. Turns out they discontinued my favorite Mrs. Fields cookie. So I went on a search to find a good copycat. This recipe on Food.com is the one I thought looked best of the few that I found.

I chilled the dough for about an hour as the recipe suggested. The recipe calls for salted but I only have unsalted, so I followed this advice and added 1/4 teaspoon of salt to my dry ingredients. I also conducted a little experiment with my cookie sheets and greasing options. I tried a half sheet pan with parchment paper, a half sheet pan with butter, and one of those Wilton air cookie sheets. I didn't notice a difference in flavor or texture between the different pans, but toffee is sticky stuff, so for these cookies, I'll use the parchment paper.

They turned out amazing! Even better than Mrs. Fields.

The strawberries are coming in. A spider has taken up residence on them, which I left alone. The jalapeño plant has flowers and fruit coming in. It's very exciting, and even more so since the weather has just been so-so. I was worried that my plants wouldn't do well in our new apartment, where the weather is much cooler than the house, but I'm glad to see the sun is coming out. I don't think the jalapeños will be that spicy, but that's okay.

I moved the strawberries to another pot because the one that they were originally in was a little to shallow for them. Hopefully the transfer won't have an adverse effect on the plants. I also moved the basil plant with the strawberries because it was in the shadow of the squash and tomatoes. I considered moving the jalapeño as well, but it seemed more settled in than the basil was.

I have always wanted a carnivorous plant, but I bought one when I was a teenager and it died. I decided to pick one up from my favorite nursery and try again. I have done a little research (and found this site) on how to care for the venus fly trap, but am still a bit nervous. I'll do more research so I can do whatever I can to make sure it does well. One of the reasons I want one is because we have the cat litter garbage can on the balcony, which attracts flies. I'm hoping this little baby will keep the flies under control. The lady at the nursery said they also feed the traps spiders, so maybe I can catch one and feed my plant.

I made these chocolate-dipped strawberries following this recipe on King Arthur Flour. The recipe is super easy, and they turned out looking great! I did get a little excited and tried to drizzle dark chocolate on the white chocolate, but it didn't turn out quite like I imagined. Oh well, I put those on the bottom layer of the gift basket. I also learned that white chocolate burns in the microwave, so I had to start a new batch because I couldn't get the burnt bits out of the first batch.

I hope the recipients like them! ...If they don't, I'll eat them.

Pictured above is the same seedling shown in this post. That pic was taken a week ago, and look how great it looks now! I'm so glad this one made it. Many of the eggplant seedlings and one tomato seedling seem to be doing well also. According to my book, a seedling is ready to be transplanted once it has 3 true leaves, so I'm probably going to plant this one outside this weekend. The weather has been warm and wonderful, but I think this week has just been a teaser, and we'll be getting more rain yet. I'll think about it some more because I don't want to push this seedling outside too soon.

In the background you can see the second batch of seeds I started in the egg carton. Shortly after I planted these, I realized that greenhouse gases don't exactly work in a container that will absorb moisture. Nevertheless, the seeds have sprouted and are growing nicely. If they take as long as the Floridor did to grow its true leaves, these will be ready to go outside just in time for the warmer weather.

My Meyer had some brown spots on the newer leaves, but despite heavy googling, I haven't yet figured out what it is. According to my searches, the brown spots could be caused by 1) a fungus on damp soil, 2) a pest that I can't seem to find, or 3) a lack of some essential element as stated on this page. In addition to the brown spots on the leaves, some of the younger leaves look a bit like this. I'll get a better picture when I have more light. The lighter spots on my Meyer's leaves are smaller though. Also, I just fertilized when I pulled it up to look at the roots, so it seems odd that it would be lacking in nutrients. Unless my fertilizer sucks =(

I'll try a couple more things before replacing the fertilizer. I bought a 5lb box, so I still have quite a bit left!

I knew I saw them doin' it! Red Worm Composting has an article about cocoons and a good pic. I looked on this site for confirmation that these are worm cocoons and not some other insect's eggs. Very exciting!

My first thought for impromptu seedling stakes was wooden chopsticks, but we don't really keep utensils from take-out places. Finally I ran through a mental list of plastic or wood things with the proper shape and came up with paint brushes and knitting needles, in that order. I originally was going to tie them with yarn, but I couldn't remember where that was, so I ended up using embroidery floss. So now I have some DIY plant stakes that will hopefully last until the plants are ready to move. The squash babies are getting so big that I'm afraid I'll have to move them to another container before their real transplant. I should not have waited so long to stake them, but it took me a while to figure out what to use. In the meantime, I had flipped around the container around trying to even them out since they kept leaning over for the sun.

These plants are growing at a crazy rate. On the left is a picture from 2 days ago, which was 2 days from the previous post. I guess the bigger the seed, the faster the growth rate, since the eggplant and tomatoes are still tiny things. My friend said she hopes I get a good crop this year since I've put in so much effort with these, but it's not so bad. The kit made things really easy, but I would still really like a good crop! I've actually been putting more work into the worms since I'm still working on getting the moisture and food balance right.

Thursday and Friday I saw two of the worms mating, or at least that's what it looked like they were doing based on the picture I saw on the Wikipedia Earthworms article. I wanted to take a picture but I didn't want to disturb them with the light. I read that baby worms take 3 months to mature, so if I see any babies in 3 months, I'll know that those babies were born in my bin as opposed to babies that were included in my order. It's really exciting to think that they are already comfortable enough to mate.

I celebrated National Deviled Egg Day with this traditional southern recipe from Paula Dean. I also used this method for making hardboiled eggs, and they turned out wonderful.

I didn't alter the recipe much, except that I used dill relish instead of sweet relish since that's what we had and I prefer it. But DH and I decided that deviled eggs were a little too rich for us as a main course. He ended up eating most of them since I just couldn't take much more, despite the good flavor. So instead of focusing on the deviled eggs, I'll also include a picture of our breakfast on Sunday. One of my favorite weekend activities is a leisurely breakfast, including but not limited to an egg fried in bacon fat. I know. I'm so healthy.

I thought it would be fun to chronicle their growth. The best pictures I have are of Persephone because she was never afraid of the camera. So here is the growth chart so far, updated today. I'll be continually updating my breed page on Backyard Chickens.

	2 days
	6 days
	14 days
	23 days
	31 days
	57 days
	73 days, today

My lovely risen dough. I have been cooking and cleaning all morning. I'm making siopao, which will hopefully last us a few weeks. I decided to add hard boiled eggs to them since I had to buy eggs for the dough, so I used this method after a quick google search. The method worked fairly well, though I think the water was boiling longer than it should I have; I was multitasking and didn't catch it right away. The eggs turned out much better than eggs I have made in the past though, so I will continue with this method.

In the past I used only chicken, rather than following the recipe and using both chicken and pork. But since I don't really eat chicken anymore, I used all pork. I'm not sure how well it will turn out, unfortunately; after about 3 hours on high in the slow cooker, the pork butt I bought hadn't softened up at all. I would usually have let it cook overnight, but I didn't think of cooking siopao until this morning. I hope my filling doesn't turn out tough. That would make me very sad after laboring all day to cook. I'm letting it cook another hour on the stove before i start filling. My dough is getting a little unruly.

Managed to get a picture of a few of them sleeping together. I put a branch in there for them to roost on, but I've only seen one of them sit on it so far, and that was for a brief period. Maybe they need some time, or maybe the branch is too slick since some of the bark came off. I'll look around for a different one tomorrow.

DH and I both took the day off work today, and the environmentally friendly wood treatment that I mentioned arrived on Monday as scheduled, so we completed the sanding and wood treatment. We wasted so much time trying to sand the frame by hand because I was resistant to renting an electric sander. For DH, if a mechanical solution can make the job more efficient, that's the way he goes. I tend to shy away from power tools, and I especially don't like spending money to buy or rent them. But I will be more open to power tools in the future since the electric sander saved us a ton of time and effort -- the lumber had stamped markings that needed to be sanded off so they weren't visible on the finished coop.

In any case, having the girls home with us means that our deadline is much more tangible, though I prefer spending time with them over most other tasks. The building process should be faster and more enjoyable now that the tedious sanding and treating step is finished... Then again, we have a lot of digging to do, so we have more tedious, backbreaking work ahead of us. Plus, we still need to figure out how to cut the rafters.

In any case, I'm looking forward to sunny weather and a productive weekend. =)

I was excited to get this picture of most of them eating together. Usually they fight over the same opening in the feeder, and I can't even get a decent picture of that.

Though I am a little concerned about the girl who was pasted up and another whose wing doesn't look quite right, I'm trying not to let my worry-wart nature take over. At first I thought that those two were getting picked on more than the others, but everyone seems to peck at everyone everywhere right now. The pasted up chick, however, took the liberty of pooping on DH's hand, so I think she'll be alright. Plus, everyone is eating and drinking, and they all seem to have a good amount of energy, all of which are a good signs.

Last night, I had nightmares about awful things happening to the chicks. I won't go into detail, but I will say that I hope I don't have any more.

Oh, and I'm no closer to making a decision on their names. I really like the idea of themed names for the flock, and I have some good ideas stewing, but I'm having trouble deciding. Right now the two top choices are the Royal Flush Gang names and the constellations names. I've given myself till next week to decide, but names are kind of a big deal to me. I've been thinking about their names since before I even ordered them, and naming just a video game character takes me a long time, so... yeah, we'll see about that.

Also, in my newfound chicken fanaticism, I quickly searched for vintage and handmade chicken-related things on Etsy and stumbled upon a copy of Betty MacDonald's The Egg and I from the Dark Horse Primitives shop. Upon reading the first page, I found that it was relevant in more than one way, so I bought it. I'm not supposed to buy new books until at least one of the bookshelves is up, but I'm happy to report that we have plans to set it up this weekend. We will finally be able to unpack our last boxes, and I will be able to buy some cookbooks, chicken books and gardening/composting books I've had my eye on. Exciting!

The chicks arrived this morning! I got the call from the post office as DH and I were driving to work, so I left a voicemail for my boss, shot off an email and rushed off to the PO. I was second in line, but the guys in front of me wanted passport services, which didn't open for another hour, so I was pushed to the front.

Tiny chirping emitted from the box the whole time I was being helped. When I got them to the car, I blasted the heater, and they quieted a little. I set up their living space after frantically searching for an extension cord (I thought I knew where it was) for the heat lamp.

Finally, they were settled. I dipped their beaks in water and set them down. Our only yellow chick was the first to drink. One of my Easter Eggers was pasted up, so I spent some time with her to get that cleared away. She complained the whole time, but I was determined because My Pet Chicken's Chicken Care eBook, which I have found to be a great guide, said pasting up can be fatal.

They are a little camera shy, but I managed to get a few shots; the color in the pictures is off because they are under a red light and the pics had to be corrected. Three of my chicks have tufts on their faces, and since I ordered 3 EEs, I think these are them. You can see a chick with the tufts in this pic.

I find it quite hilarious that I had the chick waterer before I even ordered my chicks. I really like jars, and when I saw this vintage waterer at MidwestFinds on Etsy, I for whatever reason had to have it. Now I'm glad it's being put to good use.

I still haven't decided on names, but DH's newest idea is to call them the Royal Flush Gang, and name them Ace, King, Queen, Jack and Ten. I really like the idea, but the DC Universe is already represented by our cat, Selina Kyle. And we can't continue the theme if we get more hens. My most recent idea was to name them after constellations, which would allow us to expand our flock. Then again, the name Ace seems to fit our yellow girl so far. She was the first to eat and drink, and the girls (I hope they are all girls!) follow her and crowd around her when frightened.