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Post by mach12 on Jan 22, 2016 21:58:57 GMT -5
Our kitchen remodel is dragging out so I'm still 6 Chambers in the shop and an electric in the kitchen. That's really messed up! One of my favorites for dinner is to make a German pancake in a #10 CI pan which is cooked in a preheated pan at 450F for 20-25 minutes. I did a search and can't find anything on anyone doing them in a Chambers but it seems to me that if you preheated the pan while bringing the oven up to temperature that you could CWTGTO. Anyone have any experience doing German pancakes in a Chambers?
This is the one I just did tonight, ready for powdered sugar and lemon juice.
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Post by vaporvac on Jan 22, 2016 23:18:51 GMT -5
That's so pretty. Sometimes my Mom would have that ready for us as an after school snack. Those were the days. You need to hook at least one up to some propane so YOU can let us know how it does. I think it would work!
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Post by mach12 on Jan 23, 2016 0:11:50 GMT -5
That's so pretty. Sometimes my Mom would have that ready for us as an after school snack. Those were the days. You need to hook at least one up to some propane so YOU can let us know how it does. I think it would work! Got to get the Hoosier finished so I can get the 61C back in the garage and hooked back up!
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Post by nana on Jan 23, 2016 7:12:58 GMT -5
Oddly enough, my Mom was German, and she never made something like that! Is it like a souffle? It looks pretty tasty. When she made eggy-pancake things they were more like blintzes. I would like the recipe for yours, please!
She also made a great potato salad, nothing like what they call german potato salad, though. Maybe it has to do with the region of Germany she was from? (Bavaria)
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Post by vaporvac on Jan 23, 2016 13:07:41 GMT -5
Nana, they also call these Dutch pancakes, but I never saw anything like them there either! They actually do make something very similar in Austria, so maybe that's where it originated and since they speak German, we called it a German pancake. The main thing is to heat the pan (my mom just used a Pyrex one, but CI sounds better) and melt BUTTER in it! It's like a more eggy slighty sweetened Yorkshire pudding/popover. They eat it for dinner, not as dessert or a snack.
You're right Nana. From my experience living with many Germans over the years, their cooking is very regional.The folks who lived with me made some wonderful dishes, but only the Hanoverians (Northerly) made what we'd call German Potato salad. My friend always complained that our potatoes weren't waxy enough etc., but it tasted good to me....it had NO bacon either. The Bavarians had some very unusual, delicious dishes. Maybe if I'm motivated, I'll make and post them here. My favorite was battered apple rings.... divine.
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Post by cinnabar on Jan 23, 2016 13:45:43 GMT -5
I have made the crepe like German Pancakes, (from Great great Aunt Hedwig's) recipe, as well as the above German pancakes. Totally different dishes and both delish. Have not made them in the Chambers however. I'll let mach12 post his recipe for it since he has the photo here as proof. I can get the other up if anyone wishes.
cinnabar
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Post by mach12 on Jan 23, 2016 16:30:13 GMT -5
Oddly enough, my Mom was German, and she never made something like that! Is it like a souffle? It looks pretty tasty. When she made eggy-pancake things they were more like blintzes. I would like the recipe for yours, please! She also made a great potato salad, nothing like what they call german potato salad, though. Maybe it has to do with the region of Germany she was from? (Bavaria) There are several important steps that make all the difference. First is to have the eggs and milk at room temperature and the pan has to be preheated. The basic recipe is for 6 servings, though I'd say it's really 4 servings. My picture is a #10 Lodge with the 6 serving batch. It works just fine to cut it in half and then use a #8 pan.
Ingredients: (6 servings)
1 Cup Milk (room temperature) 6 Eggs (room temperature) 1 Cup Flour 1/4 tsp. cinnamon 1/4 tsp. vanilla 5 tablespoons butter
1. Preheat oven to 450F and preheat pan (I just put mine in to preheat with the oven). 2. Mix milk and eggs, blend in vanilla and cinnamon, and then the flour. After all ingredients are blended continue to mix for 5 minutes. The batter will be thin. 3. Remove preheated pan from oven and melt butter in it and coat the bottom and up onto the sides. Pour the batter into the pan and make sure it's evenly distributed, then place the pan back into the oven. 4. Cook 20-25 minutes.
Step 3 should be done fairly quickly so I slice the butter so that it will melt faster. In restaurants they normally come sprinkled with powdered sugar and you get lemon wedges to squeeze juice onto them but they're also great with things like jam or jelly.
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Post by nana on Jan 24, 2016 9:38:35 GMT -5
Thanks! But it hadda be something using the oven, huh? It'll have to get in the long line of things I will be making once my oven is finally fixed. I like that it uses a lot of eggs since my chickens apparently have noticed that the days are getting slightly longer and are laying like crazy. I had 7 dozen eggs in the fridge the other day, before I sold some at work. We can't keep up!
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Post by mach12 on Jan 24, 2016 12:30:11 GMT -5
We're the same way with our chickens! It's not uncommon when I'm cooking something that calls for an egg for me to say "I think they meant two".
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Post by nana on Jan 24, 2016 20:42:48 GMT -5
I find myself judging recipes by how many eggs it will take off my hands. The funny thing is, they were poky all summer. I kept talking to them about soup and how much I like soup, to no avail. Now in the middle of winter all of a sudden I've got more eggs than I can shake a stick at. Go figure.
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Post by Chuckie on Jan 24, 2016 22:22:56 GMT -5
I find myself judging recipes by how many eggs it will take off my hands. The funny thing is, they were poky all summer. I kept talking to them about soup and how much I like soup, to no avail. Now in the middle of winter all of a sudden I've got more eggs than I can shake a stick at. Go figure. ... CUSTARD and EGG NOODLES come to mind, and a R-A-R-E Angel Food cake... That's what me own Sainted Mother used to make outta her "excess" eggs---God bless her memory * sigh*... Chuckie
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Post by chipperhiker on Jan 25, 2016 11:11:20 GMT -5
Maybe your chicks could give mine some lessons, nana! Mine are young (just coming up on 8 months old now), and some never really started laying much before the shorter days came upon us, but lately I've only been getting a couple eggs per day from my 13 hens. In December I was getting 4-5 per day. Sometimes as many as 7. Part of it is probably cold weather stress, but it's just strange that their production is so low now that the days are actually starting to get a little longer.
Still, I'm not really complaining. Until the last couple weeks, I'd been giving away more than I could eat.
Chuck, I've made pancakes like the ones you posted any number of times, though not in the last few years. I found the recipe in the King Arthur Flour 200th Anniversary Cookbook where they are called "the Newcastle Inn Baked Pancakes." It's the exact same recipe, minus the cinnamon and vanilla. They're delicious, but I'd kind of forgotten about them. Thanks for the reminder, Chuckie!!!
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Post by nana on Jan 25, 2016 19:46:43 GMT -5
Eggs are made of a lot of water, so making sure your chickens always have clean, unfrozen water in winter is important, Chipperhiker. Young chickens like yours shouldn't be taking too much of a break in winter, because they didn't go through a molt in the fall. Do you have a light on in the coop? I have one set on a timer to come on in the morning and adjust accordingly with the changing seasons, so that they never have less than 12 hours of light. Of course in summer it's not needed at all, and in winter it comes on at around 4:00 in the morning. But I'm no expert really. Like I said, my happy, healthy chickens who get non-GMO feed and plenty of weeds and bugs and exercise were giving me 1-3 eggs a day from 18 chickens during the height of the summer. That's why I kept talking about chicken soup. They picked up a little at the end of the fall as they all got over their molt, but since about the new year, they're on fire. Last winter they were doing good, then I had a sudden drastic drop in production. It took me a couple of weeks to figure out that the bird bath heater in their water was malfunctioning and was making the water too warm for them to drink comfortably. I got a new one and production improved in days. Some breeds are just better winter layers than others, too. What kind are yours?
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Post by chipperhiker on Jan 26, 2016 13:33:33 GMT -5
My girls: 4 Buff Orpingtons, 4 Black Australorps, and 5 Speckled Sussex. The speckles are the ones that have been slow to start laying - they're an older breed that takes a month longer to mature, and they reached that milestone when the days were at their shortest.
They've got plenty of clean water. Bucket with poultry nipples and a deicer/bucket heater keeps the water lukewarm (it's thermostatically regulated). They're always playing in it, so I know it's not too hot for them. I had about 3 days where I struggled with frozen water in the mornings before I got the current system up and running, so there were a few hours here and there without adequate water, but that was at least 3 weeks ago now. Any production loss due to that issue should be resolved by now.
I don't have any lights on my birdies. I know that's part of the reason they're not doing as much as typical young hens. I read about the pros and cons of artificial light and decided that I'd rather have them lay fewer eggs in the winter and instead have a longer laying lifespan. As I said, I'm not complaining, juts a bit surprised at the production drop when they should be ramping up. Ah well. I like them so much that I get a lot more from them than just eggs.
I can see how you'd have been threatening your ladies with the soup pot with only 1-3 eggs out of 18 hens in midsummer!!! Slackers.
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Post by nana on Jan 26, 2016 16:58:43 GMT -5
They saved their necks by producing massive amounts of the OTHER stuff that comes out of a chicken's butt, and shredding all the weeds, scraps, garden waste, etc that we can give them into delightfully rich compost that makes my garden grow so nicely. They have a fairly big run, and we toss everything in there. I really mean everything. It takes them about 3-4 years to make a Christmas tree disappear, but they manage eventually. I thought maybe they had found a place outside to lay, and I looked high and low, but no pile of hidden eggs. They're making up for it now.
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Post by chipperhiker on Jan 27, 2016 18:37:58 GMT -5
Good girls!!!
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Post by mach12 on Jan 27, 2016 20:37:04 GMT -5
One thing that really makes my chickens mad is if I don't keep their nest boxes clean. I have to put fresh hay in them every two weeks or they won't use them. Sometimes I squeak by with three weeks but only in the summer. It's not like the hay is dirty or anything and I can't tell that there's anything wrong with the hay but they sure seem to know. We've had chickens for years and never had chickens that would do that.
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Post by chipperhiker on Jan 28, 2016 13:30:05 GMT -5
That's interesting, mach12. Maybe they just like the fluffiness of new hay?
I got really lucky. A friend of mine who bought an old chicken ranch from the 80s gave me this awesome front roll-out nest box. It's way to big for my little flock (15 boxes), so I only allow them access to 6 of the boxes. They seem to like it (most of them took to it immediately) and the eggs are almost always nice and clean.
I was having an issue with a couple of my Speckles laying on the floor, so I had to put a layer of astro-turf-type stuff into one of their 6 rollouts, and I keep a ceramic egg in there. It's been working well - no eggs on the floor in a few weeks. The funny thing they've been doing now, though, is literally kicking out the fake egg! I find it chucked most days. And they seem to go out of their way to make it filthy!!! Gotta take it out and scrub it.
Chickens are funny little creatures.
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Post by mach12 on Jan 28, 2016 14:16:05 GMT -5
They really are funny creatures. Our eggs are generally pretty clean but this time of the year when they're not out free ranging as much their run can get a bit messy. I turn the ground in their run with a shovel every couple of weeks and that does really well though. The University of Kansas had a really good article on washing eggs. It said the eggs should be washed under running water and the water needs to be warmer than the egg so that the eggs don't pull impurities in through the pores in the shells. Said to always use a soft brush, never a washcloth, and that they should air dry (no towels) before refrigeration. They said that even after being washed they were okay unrefrigerated for 24 hours or so but should be refrigerated or coated with sodium silicate (water glass) after that.
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Post by nana on Jan 28, 2016 21:31:23 GMT -5
They sure are interesting creatures. My first flock were crazy for pumpkins. After Halloween I would get a whole bunch of pumpkins cheap (or free) and store them as long as I could and smash them a pumpkin a week or so. They would just keep at them until it was a hollow, paper thin shell. This batch can take them or leave them. They peck at it a little, but it rots before they even really make a dent in it. I guess they have their own reasons!
I use wood shavings in the nests, and they seem to like it well enough, and they stay pretty clean. I had one that was a new girl this fall who always wanted to sleep in a nest overnight, with the resulting mess. I had to go in there each night just as it was getting dark, but before they were actually asleep, and put her on the roost. It took about 2 weeks to convince her my way was better.
I don't wash eggs at all until I use them, if they're dirty. Did you know that in Europe it is actually illegal to wash eggs for sale? They are supposed to keep better and safer with the "bloom" on them. If I get one that's really gunky that's too gross to put in the carton with the others, I wash it and use it right away. I do wash the ones I sell, though. Not everyone is as cavalier about a little smudge or two.
One of my favorite things is to turn them out onto a fresh plot of grass and watch them "get their chicken on", as my husband calls it. After I started raising chickens and saw how little it takes to make a chicken happy, it really turned me off to factory farmed eggs and meat. I have no moral problem eating meat, but I can't bring myself to eat something that lived in misery. I read somewhere that cruelty is knowing you are causing suffering, and doing it anyway. Responsibly and humanely raised and slaughtered meat is more expensive, but I think it's better for me, body and soul. So we eat vegetarian a lot, and when we do eat meat, I know the farm it came from and how the animal it came from was treated. I know I'm lucky in that I live in a place where there are a lot of farms and stuff like that is not too hard to get.
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Post by chipperhiker on Jan 29, 2016 22:38:12 GMT -5
I really like that definition of cruelty, nana.
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Post by nana on Jan 30, 2016 7:39:04 GMT -5
I can't take credit for it, but once I read it, I couldn't ignore it. I made the decision then and there that I would never again knowingly support the factory farm/CAFO system with my money. We pay for cheap meat with the misery of helpless animals, and someday I fear it will come back to haunt us. I try not to rant about it, because it only makes people defensive.
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Post by karitx on Feb 1, 2016 20:43:14 GMT -5
Our kitchen remodel is dragging out so I'm still 6 Chambers in the shop and an electric in the kitchen. That's really messed up! One of my favorites for dinner is to make a German pancake in a #10 CI pan which is cooked in a preheated pan at 450F for 20-25 minutes. I did a search and can't find anything on anyone doing them in a Chambers but it seems to me that if you preheated the pan while bringing the oven up to temperature that you could CWTGTO. Anyone have any experience doing German pancakes in a Chambers?
This is the one I just did tonight, ready for powdered sugar and lemon juice.
Mmmm - one of my favs! I have made these in my Chambers, but since they cook so fast, I never bothered trying to CWTGTO.
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Post by mach12 on Feb 2, 2016 0:35:15 GMT -5
That makes a lot of sense karitx. I may play with it just to see what happens. Since you have to preheat the pan I thought maybe when you pull the preheated pan out of the oven and pour the batter in and then put it back in the oven you could run the gas just long enough to bring the temperature back up and then shut it off. Might save a little gas.
On the other hand, that kind of reminds me of a guy I worked for when I was a kid. He had an 47 Chevy pickup (wasn't that old of a pickup back then, lol) and every time we'd go down a hill he'd shut the key off, then at the bottom of the hill he'd turn the key on and pop the clutch to start the engine back up. Said he was sure he had saved hundreds of gallons of gas (32 cent a gallon then). I don't know how many hours everyone spent arguing over whether he even saved a thing, spent more, or what. Probably how I'll end up with my Chambers.
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Post by Chuckie on Feb 2, 2016 10:01:42 GMT -5
On the other hand, that kind of reminds me of a guy I worked for when I was a kid. He had an 47 Chevy pickup (wasn't that old of a pickup back then, lol) and every time we'd go down a hill he'd shut the key off, then at the bottom of the hill he'd turn the key on and pop the clutch to start the engine back up. Said he was sure he had saved hundreds of gallons of gas (32 cent a gallon then). I don't know how many hours everyone spent arguing over whether he even saved a thing, spent more, or what. Probably how I'll end up with my Chambers. LOL, Monkey gets on me ALL THE TIME, as we drive a standard, and there are quite a few BIG hills on the highways around here. I always take it outta gear, and coast down the hills, telling her "look at how much gas we're saving!!" She rolls her eyes, BUT the engine is just basically sitting there idling, so you KNOW it's burning WAY LESS gas then when the tranny is engaged!! (or that is MY philosophy anyway!) CHEERS! Chuckie
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Post by mach12 on Feb 2, 2016 12:44:17 GMT -5
Heck Chuckie, you're being green, too! With all the talk these days about carbon emissions and other pollution that's another factor. I read (Popular Mechanics?) about a study that they used when designing hybrid cars and how they're programmed to coast both to save fuel and reduce emissions. I'd say that pretty much proves that the coasting part has some benefit. I wonder whether that can be claimed on taxes...
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Post by evangeline on Feb 3, 2016 9:17:59 GMT -5
ok, major thread hi-jack, but. . . having owned a Prius for a couple of years, I notice that it does coast like a bandit. I read somewhere, and I heartily agree, that a lot of the efficiency comes from the car's dashboard display training the driver to 1) not jackrabbit 2) get up to your speed goal then back off on the throttle whenever you hit a slight down-slope 3) coast like he$$ whenever possible and 4) understand momentum - this should be number 1 and all other points should be subs, because the first thing I learned is the car gets the same mileage whether I'm going 55 or 70, really, the point is get it going and then use momentum to the max. Anyway, the car has certainly trained me! I play its game every trip and I feel angry with myself when I get less than 45 mpg. There are about two billion websites for hybrid users to agonize and gloat about all this, but I don't want to get obsessed. Surely the same concepts apply to any vehicle? BTW I love the darn thing. Sidebar, Mach 12: my mom used to send me cautionary tales from the newspaper about folks who turned their key ignition off in order to coast and then discovered the steering wheel locked or the transmission didn't work anymore and they crashed (she worried about zebras while the horses were trampling us! ) Is that what happened to those poor GM victims when the key got jiggled & the faulty ignition shut the driving systems down? If so, somewhere, up there, mom is nodding her head because she told me so!
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Post by mach12 on Feb 3, 2016 12:09:30 GMT -5
I'm the world's worst about hi-jacks and diversions!
I remember when they said they were going to start installing steering wheel locks on cars and all of the hoopla it caused. I don't know how many discussions there were in my High School automotive mechanics class. Wasn't a problem with the car I had at the time. If you didn't follow the right sequence it wasn't gonna start for anyone (questionable even if you did follow the sequence).
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Post by mach12 on Dec 16, 2018 1:49:32 GMT -5
I can finally give an update and answer about how well the German Pancakes do in a Chambers. It only took me a year after hooking up our Chambers and in a few weeks it'll be three years since I first posted about the German Pancakes but I finally made one today and couldn't be more pleased. Here's a picture (and it was good!).
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Post by nana on Dec 17, 2018 7:17:59 GMT -5
Anything would look great with a backdrop like that! But it is a damn fine pancake! Any tips on technique?
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