2009-09-15

Food Lover's Substitution Guide to ... but I can't Eat that

New Cookbook.
Food Lover's Substitution Guide to ... but I can't Eat that

A great cookbook idea.
The cookbook has a few sections.
One lists all the ingredients that people have allergies to (or won't eat, veg, vegan, etc) and gives possible substitution ingredients.

The rest of the book gives recipes of old favorites and new ones with various ingredient substitutions.

Chicken Parmesan might become eggplant or veal. The beef broth in French Onion soup might be replaced with vegetable broth and the bread replaced with gluten free matzo. The ice cream with coconut milk or goats milk instead of cows milk.

Chickens: Stop the Rooster Crowing and Still Get Eggs

Urban Chicken Farming dilemma .
2 issues: rooster crowing, chickens not laying

We have a rooster which keeps the other chickens quite and happy. The problem is the rooster likes to wake up the neighbors at day break. Solution was found. Make sure the chicken coupe does not let in the morning daylight that causes the rooster to crow. This was achieved in our case by using some old flannel bed sheets attached to the coupe so light would not get in through the various cracks. This solution allows for airflow while blocking the daylight from entering and has the added bonus of dampening the sound if the chickens or rooster make noise at night.

The rooster problem has been solved and the neighbors are okay with the rooster crowing at 8AM when the chickens and rooster are let out of the coupe. The next problem resulting from the first, the chickens are not producing eggs. It might be that they are simply late bloomers or after various research the answer I liked best was --- most chicken breeds need a minimum of 15 hours of daylight to produced eggs. Lack of daylight, not temperature is the reason chickens don't lay in winter. It could be argued that this requirement is rather suspect unless egg laying chickens and therefore chickens cannot exist near the equator where light stays at 12 hours a day. Maybe they need those special winter laying breeds. Anyway, returning from tangent land. I have inserted a full spectrum 75w bulb in the coupe and will turn it on at sunset and leave it on until midnight. Could leave it all night but why waste energy.

The theory is the rooster will still not crow leaving that problem solved and having 16 hours of light should allow all the chickens to lay eggs. Two week later ... have 12 eggs from 14 chickens. The rooster does crow when the light comes on but the sound muffled by being inside has satisfied all but the lightest of sleepers.