Tag Archives: Maureen Lefebvre

Sweet Potato Pancake

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sweet-pancake

A sweet potato pancake is a favorite breakfast especially with fresh berries and whipped cream.

GUEST POST by Maureen Lefebvre

This recipe is NOT safe for someone on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet.

A sweet potato or yam pancake is a favorite breakfast of mine year round, but in fruit season it?s especially tasty. Topped with whatever fruit is in the fridge at the moment, it?s a great way to start your day. A very informative book to learn more about sweet potatoes is Sweet Potato Power by Ashley Tudor. Tudor goes into the history of the vegetable, the difference between yam and sweet potato, lots of nutritional information and many recipes. This was a very interesting read. You could also try the library for an inter-library loan.

baked-sweet-potato

Bake your sweet potato at 325F for 40 to 60 minutes or until soft. Remember to fork the sweet potato skin before cooking to avoid explosions.

sweet-potato-egg-spice

Mash the sweet potato with a fork and add all the ingredients.

whisk-ingredients

Whisk all the ingredients together.

case-iron-fry-pan

Pour batter onto a hot, greased cast iron fry pan. I like using coconut oil.

sweet-potato-pancake

When the pancake starts bubbling and browns, flip, and cook the other side.

?c mashed, well-cooked yam (I usually bake a large one and use it all week long.)
1 egg
3 pinches sea salt
?tsp pumpkin pie spice (or to taste)
1T flour
coconut oil
This recipe is for one serving. Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl with a wire whisk. Pour into a hot oiled pan, lower the heat to about medium and cook till bubbles appear on the surface. Flip and cook till browned on the other side. Serve with butter, maple syrup, fruit, and whipping cream.

Summer Salads for Hot Days

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summer-salad

Here is my summer salad filled with an assortment of veggies and leftover cut up meat. I top it all with homemade balsamic dressing. On the side is some strawberry flavored kombucha which is a refreshing drink for hot summer days.

GUEST POST by Maureen Lefebvre

My lunch of choice these days has been a large salad filled with an assortment of veggies and leftover cut up meat or hard-boiled egg. I top it with a dressing of olive oil, spices, salt and balsamic vinegar. With a refreshing glass of strawberry flavored kombucha on the side, this keeps me going until dinner time. I found a new vegetable at the farmer?s market this week – kohlrabi. Slightly smaller than a peach, it was good peeled, sliced and tossed onto my salad. To me the taste is similar to a radish, with a satisfying crunch. The folks at the Kamloops Farmer’s Market from Tranquille on the Lake were so informative about all their produce and I?m glad I took their suggestion to try the kohlrabi.

crunchy-kohlrabi

Kohlrabi is a new vegetable for me. I enjoyed its radish-like flavor and crunchy texture.

Tiny Market Garden

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tiny-market-garden

Here is my market garden of cucumbers, tomatoes, zucchini and sweet potatoes.

GUEST POST by Maureen Lefebvre

This year I planted a ?market garden?. Do I plan to have enough vegetables to sell at the market you wonder? No, this year my garden holds only specific plants that I want to be able to eat on the spur of the moment, harvested from my own plants. In the spring I purposed to make use of the Kamloops Farmer’s Market instead of planting a lot myself. So far I have made it downtown every week, either on Wednesday or Saturday, for fresh fruit, vegetables and meat. The atmosphere is friendly and the vendors are more than happy to chat about their products. I feel good supporting local farmers and producers while getting superior, nutrient-dense food on my table.

The vegetables that I have chosen to plant are cucumbers, tomatoes, zucchini and sweet potatoes. This is my first time to plant sweet potatoes, so I?m curious to see how they do. The slips came from Vesey?s Seeds, PEI. They are only one of a few suppliers of sweet potato slips in Canada. The slips arrived mid-June looking very dead. The 6-8 inch stems were topped by a few wilted or dead leaves. I wasn?t hopeful that they would survive, especially because our weather at that time was still so cold and wet. However, I put them in the ground and waited for the sun. The plants are mailed well into the growing season because they can?t tolerate any cold at all. Now that they have been in the ground about a month all but one out of the twelve are growing leaves and the plants with no shading at all even seem to be thriving.

sweet-potato-slips

Here are my little sweet potato plants.

Urban Chickens: Part III

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covered-run

This is the new covered run to keep the hens out of the neighbor's yard.

GUEST POST by Maureen Lefebvre

When living on a homestead, however small, the story never really ends. The new chicken coop was wonderful. The old chicken tractor became the home of the new chickens until they were large enough to hold their own with the older girls. We had to deal with an outbreak of lice at one point. After trying all the natural remedies I could find, I resorted to one application of a garden pesticide. The lice were gone instantly. Unfortunately the health of one chicken had deteriorated too far to recover and she had to be put down. You?d think chickens with lots of room to roam could get along with each other, but no. At one point two of them took to pecking on their sister. This is apparently a chicken trait and as quickly as it started, it was over.

One of my greatest joys is to look out my kitchen window at the chickens pecking at the grass, chasing after bugs and creating dust baths. I do this many times in a day ? a mini relaxation break. One day last summer I looked out and to my horror the hens were in our neighbor?s yard! Immediately my youngest son was sent out to retrieve them while I hastened over to explain what this young child was doing in his backyard. It was with complete surprise that I learned from him that the chickens had routinely been into his garden over the summer. His disapproval was apparent and understandable, although I did wonder why he hadn?t mentioned it. I offered a carton of fresh eggs as apology, but was rebuffed. Oh, well. So, obviously, the girls had to be contained. My teenage son was again recruited and the next building project became an enclosed, covered outside pen. This was perfect for the winter months it turned out, as the chickens could be outside every day, but didn?t have to contend with the snow. I spread a shredded bale of straw over the ground and they were content. Now that the weather has improved and the grass is greening up I?ve extended their grazing space by propping up a woven wire fencing in a half-circle outside the door to the coop. From the house the fence is almost invisible and it looks like they instinctively know not to range more than ten feet from home.

What is in store now on our urban homestead? More projects, of course. The coop still needs to have siding on it. I want to change over the nest boxes to something easier to clean (with the nice weather a good spring cleaning is on the agenda). We?re thinking of milk goats and research on that topic is a hot item in the house. For that we?ll need a small structure and really, really secure fencing. My teenage son is in the process of redoing my raised-bed garden as the railroad ties are completely rotten. I?d like to put the birds in there for several days before I plant. It?s all a process and is never completed, but enjoying the journey is as important as the end result. Keeping in touch with your creative side in whatever form that takes is one vital component of the total health spectrum.

covered-run-house-tracter

Here is the new covered run attached to the winter house. On the far right side is the chicken tracker for moving the flock around the yard.

Urban Chickens: Part II

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GUEST POST by Maureen Lefebvre

chicken-house

This is the winter chicken house.

In Urban Chickens: Part I we had a bottomless box inching itself across the lawn, leaving behind decimated grass. Don?t be fooled ? chickens will do a lot of damage to your lawn. However, a pristine carpet of green was not what our goal was. Nutritious eggs and the stress-relieving joy of watching chickens scratch and peck was what we were after.

However, there was still the problem of the encroaching bad weather. The small coop wasn?t insulated and there wasn?t any way to get a heat source to it. My first thought was to plant it in one place and stack bales of hay all around it. This may have worked just fine. In the meantime, my teenage son (you remember the one who prefers pounding nails to writing essays?) really needed MORE. More time outside; more constructive/productive activity. So began phase two ? building an actual chicken coop.

Again much research went on online and on graph paper. Ultimately, in spite of my linear-thinking need to ?have a tried and true plan?, we went with his need to ?plan it all myself?. With the occasional help of his dad, teenage son went to work. We had a 5 foot by 5 foot ?floor? left over from another project, so that is the size we went with as a base. The thought was that 25 square feet was enough for three birds. In retrospect, I would have made it a little bigger to allow for flock expansion.

In order to make this experience as instructive as possible, the coop was built as if it was a mini house. My electrician son wired in for a thermostat, a light and a heat lamp. A heavy duty extension cord snakes across the lawn from the house to the coop. My son made a double nest box and roost. We have hatches out two opposite sides so that we can switch off the pen area each year to let one side lie fallow every other year. This cuts down on parasites (so I?m told). All the walls, floor and ceiling are insulated with recycled pink insulation. The plywood sheets and 2x4s were bought new but the window and the door came from the dump. The stripped down chicken tractor was added to the side to make an outside pen. For most of the time until the snow came, though, the hens had the run of the yard and spent many happy hours pecking at grass and having dust baths beside the rhubarb.

So we entered winter number one with three contented chickens in a cozy home having no cause to worry about snow or cold. However, as is customary with life, the following year threw in some surprises and things changed yet again.

chicken-perch-nesting-box

Here are the nesting boxes and perch. Chickens like to roost for the night.

chicken-water-feed

This is the inside of the winter house. There is a water pail to the left and dry feed to the right. The chicken door in the center can be opened during the day and closed at night.