Recipe: Heavenly Jalapeño & Bacon Eggs

I added 11 females to my duck flock in May and now they are ALL laying eggs 6 days a week. I’m getting a total of seven dozen duck eggs per week. Oh. Em. Gee. What to do with all these duck eggs!

There is a feed store just up the road that buys from me to resell. But that’s only about four dozen gone. That leaves me with three dozen duck eggs on top of the constant supply of chicken eggs I already have. Everyone who comes into my home must leave with a dozen eggs. Well, that’s my hope, but it rarely actually happens. I’m getting into the habit of just randomly leaving a dozen eggs on some unsuspecting neighbor’s front step but those pesky Ring doorbell cameras are going to land me on YouTube or Inside Addition.

Get ready to see a lot of recipe development centered around duck eggs in the near future. Today’s submission is Jalapeño & Bacon Heavenly Eggs. When my family tried these, angels sang. I hope your family feels the same. Click the link for the printable version.

Heavenly Jalapeño & Bacon Eggs

Deviled eggs so good the angels sing.

Recipe Card

Heavenly Jalapeno & Bacon Eggs

INGREDIENTS:

12 duck eggs, hard boiled

4 slices bacon, cooked crisp and crumbled

1-2 jalapeno, minced fine

2T Red Onion, minced fine

2T chopped fresh cilantro

1/3cup Mayo

2T Yellow Mustard

Dash Coconut Aminos

Salt & Pepper to taste

INSTRUCTIONS:

To boil duck eggs:

Fill a saucepan large enough to hold all the eggs in a single layer with enough water to cover the eggs - 2-3 inches. Bring water to a roiling boil over high heat. Place room temperature eggs into the boiling water using a slotted spoon. Boil for 7 minutes for med-soft, 9 min for medium, and 11minutes for hard boiled. Drain eggs and place in an ice bath until cool enough to peel.

For the Heavenly filling:

Slice boiled and peeled eggs in half on the 'long' side. Remove the yolk and place it in a medium mixing bowl, using a fork to mash them fine. Add about half of the bacon, all the jalapeño, onion, cilantro, mayo, mustard, and coconut aminos to the yolks. Stir to combine. Taste for salt & pepper need, then season accordingly. Place yolk mix into a zip-top bag and cut a small corner off to make a piping bag. Pipe yolk mix into egg halves on a serving plate. Top eggs with remaining bacon crumbles. Refrigerate for at least four hours before serving.

A note about jalapeño - the more vein you leave, the hotter the pepper in the dish. The heat will increase as the eggs sit

Garnish options - additional thin-sliced jalapeño and chopped cilantro

Chia Butter Coffee

When the calendar reaches the Autumn equinox our tastebuds turn to the quintessential tastes of fall. Cinnamon, pumpkin, cocoa. But the reigning queen of fall flavors is Pumpkin Spice. She’s the Spice Girl no one knew existed until that green siren dropped the first #PSL on the scene. You either love it or hate it and advocate passionately for your preference. There seems to be no middle ground with Pumpkin Spice.

Enter Chai. Warming and cinnamon-centric, Chai is more humble than Pumpkin while at the same time sharper. Chai Spice is commonly tied to tea while Pumpkin Spice is deemed suitable for coffee. There are cross-overs but they are rare; a dirty chai tea latte adds a shot of espresso to the hot tea. In regards to tea and coffee, I am a purist and think the two shall never meet. Is that just me? I don’t think so.

I don’t recall exactly when or why I started adding Chai Spice to my butter coffee, but it is now a fall staple.

Pumpkin Spice or Pumpkin Pie Spice includes cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, and ginger. Chai Spice adds cardamom, allspice, black pepper, and sometimes star anise. The cardamom and black pepper give Chai its signature bite.

Chai Coffee can be made a couple of different ways.

You can add a chai spice blend to the basket in your drip coffee maker. This allows the spices to steep with the coffee and keeps them out of the finished product. Most of us don’t like dregs in our cup.

The spice blend can be added to a blended coffee or latte during the blending process. This is a less intense flavor and the spices do not dissolve. You’ll see them resting in the bottom of the cup as you drink.

My personal favorite is the French Press method. I admit to using a mortar and pestle to get the freshest spice possible. Right now I am loving Four Sigmatic coffee with mushrooms. Here is today’s recipe. I’ve included a link to a downloadable PDF for your convenience!

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Chai Butter Coffee

Chai Butter Coffee dusted with cinnamon

• 32 oz French Press

• High-powered blender or Immersion blender & jar

• 12 oz filtered water, just off boil

• 2T Four Sigmatic Mushroom Coffee with Chaga & Lion’s Mane

• 2t fresh ground spices or Chai Spice blend of choice.

  (1 Star Anise pod, 2 whole cloves, 1” cinnamon stick, 1/4 whole nutmeg, 1 cardamom pod, 1 black peppercorn pounded in a mortal & pestle or ground in a spice grinder until course)

• 2T Grass-fed Unsalted butter

• 2 Scoops Vital Proteins Collagen Peptides

• 1t Erythritol (for Keto) or 1t Maple Syrup (for Paleo)*

• Ground cinnamon (for garnish)*

  Add coffee and spices to your French Press. Pour in water and stir. Allow to brew for 5 minutes and press. Pour into either a high-powered blender or jar for immersion blending. Add butter, collagen peptides and sweetener if desired. Blend until fully combined and frothy, 60-90 seconds. Pour into your coffee cup and sprinkle with cinnamon.

Spiced Banana Bundt Cake

Hanging in the sun has allowed these beauties to ripen nicely

My neighbor has banana trees that bore a bumper crop this year. One bunch fell off early and he gifted us the ultra-green bananas about two weeks ago. Being the rednecks we are, we used a tywrap and bungee cord to hang them from a porch rafter to see if they would ripen up.

They did!

So, as these bananas ripen, I’ll be using them to make some simple recipes. Today, I harvested four that had black spots and were perfect for a cake. These bananas are not super sweet but they are full of flavor. They are also smaller than most, only being about 4” long.

I used a tube pan for this cake, but you could use a bundt pan or make cupcakes, or even two loaves. Use what you have available. I like to serve it warm with butter or heavy cream.

Other upgrades you could make include adding dried fruit, nuts, or cinnamon chips. Play with it and make this recipe your own!

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Spiced Banana Bundt Cake.

Spiced Banana Cake

INGREDIENTS:

4 Small Ripe Bananas (about 1-1/2 cups)

4 Eggs

1/4 Cup Maple Syrup

1 t Vanilla

1 t Pumpkin Pie Spice or 1/2 t Ground Cinnamon + 1/4 t Ground Nutmeg + 1/8 t Ground Allspice + 1/8 t Ground Ginger

1/2 Cup Otto’s Cassava Flour

1-1/2 Cup Almond Flour

2 t Baking Powder

1/2 t Baking Soda

1/2 t Salt

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DIRECTIONS:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and coat your cake pan with ghee or line your muffin tin with parchment liners.

Add bananas, eggs, syrup, and vanilla to a high-speed blender and mix until frothy, about 1-2 minutes on medium-high.

In a medium mixing bowl, sift together all the dry ingredients.

Pour the banana mixture into the sifted dry ingredients and fold to combine. Pour batter into the prepared pan or cups and let set for 10 minutes.

Bake for 35-40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the thick portion of the cake comes out clean. For muffins, bake 20 minutes and test for doneness before removing.

Serves 12 / Cal 109 / Fat 3.5 g / Carb 17 (15g net) / Protein 3.5 g

Raising Chicks

Spring Chicks

hanging out in the guest bathtub to keep warm. Seven Buff Orpingtons and five Americaunas made themselves right at home and prepare to join the rest of the flock.

As a girl, I never dreamed of being a chicken lady. In fact, my family owned a commercial layer farm; raising the chickens that laid the eggs that became the chicken you bought at the grocery store. I grew up as a tiny cog in the wheel of a Poultry Giant. My folks contracted with a few different companies over the course of my growing-up years, but they were all big companies complete with their GMO feeds, mortality limits, and bean counters. I didn’t think much about it at that time. It was how we put groceries on the table and where I learned what hard work really was. Fast forward 25 years,

Now, I have backyard birds and they make me happy. I started with “sacrificial chickens” in August 2018. Don’t freak out. I had a lovely friend with a large flock who were past laying age. She gifted me 10 ladies to start with. See, I have bloodhounds and they needed to be exposed to the birds and taught, “Chickens are friends, not food.” We have six of those original 10 left and the dogs leave my ladies alone. Mission accomplished.

When I received these “spent hens” they were actually laying three to five eggs a day from 10 hens. Not bad for ladies that were supposed to be past their prime. Through this winter, my girls have gifted us with three to five eggs a week, and now we’re back up to three a day from my six hens.

Why have I invested so much time and effort into adding to my flock? Backyard eggs are the best. That is the bottom line. More details? Ok. Here goes.

“Backyard eggs have approximately 25 percent more vitamin E, 75 percent more beta carotene, and as much as 20 times the amount of omega-3 fatty acids as do factory farmed eggs. Backyard chickens, if given the option, will eat vast amounts of green vegetation (high in beta carotene and omega-3's and low in cholesterol), bugs and tons of grains. Their eggs are a byproduct of this nutrition.”  from Mother Earth News

In addition to the nutrition value listed above, I get to choose what my hens eat. It’s not cheap to do so, but I refuse to feed them anything genetically modified, no corn, no soy, no chicken by-products. They range freely on an acre, helping control the bug population. They’ve been spotted fighting over some baby snakes lately and I heartily support this behavior.

Today it’s 73 degrees outside and my new girls are being introduced to the old biddies. They will nest together tonight but remain separated during the days for a few weeks. Wish the new family members all the best!