Nature's Best

My brother (77) still keeps chickens for eggs and still hunts. He no longer processes his deer but there are two excellent meat processors in our area for that function.  A few days ago he stopped in and brought us a dozen eggs, venison bacon, and sweet Italian sausage, plus some home-grown potatoes, spicy meat sticks and homemade oatmeal cookies.

Do you know which end of the egg should be up when storing them? Here are two pictures. Which is correct? 

If you said the second one with the bottoms up you are correct. The blunt end of the egg has an air pocket between the inner and outer shell membranes. This gradually enlarges as the egg looses moisture during storage. Keeping the air pocket at the top helps to keep the yolk centered within the eggs and prevents the air pocket from rupturing. We don't keep a dozen eggs here very long, anyway but it is good to know this.

I will sauté the sausage into crumbles, bag and freeze them, and be able to use them in sauces and as toppings later. The bacon has to be thawed to be sliced into thin wafers and fried. It has much less fat than pork bacon and, to our taste is even better.

click on image to view larger

Come on over. We have good stuff here.

Link to Stepniak

Link to Dotti-Lou-Meats-Facebook Page

Exploration Riding

The winds were high yesterday and the sand really burns your face and legs and any other part that is exposed so.........I didn't venture on to it at all. First, I don't want to get sand in my camera OR in my eyes. Secondly, I'm very afraid of sunburn and wasn't wearing my beach cap and didn't cover myself with ooey-gooey sunscreen. I have yet to find a sunscreen that repels sand OR sun. They just don't - for me. I just took pictures in the less "dangerous" settings. More flowers will come to you later. They all are very beautiful and full this season.

I found some leftover hay bales that were abandoned when the beach ride was finished in November. This is the only campground that lets horses and all other equines camp here during that time. It is an annual event and fundraiser for the heart association. It is wonderful!
http://horsebackbeachride.kintera.org/faf/home/default.asp?ievent=1051504

Then I went up on the sand-covered ramp to become a "beach-head" while bucking wind and trying to get good shots.