What's for Sale?

There's always something cooking at mothercluck. We use the freshest seasonal produce to make our award-winning jams and preserves. They make great gifts and will be most appreciated by the food lovers you know -- that is, everyone.


Here's what we have in stock:

• Meyer Lemon & Myers Rum Marmalade (3M). The peel is almost candied. A beautiful marm with a hint of vanilla. $10
• Sweet Pickled Oranges. A perfect side dish for Christmas morning. $12
• Pomegranate & Cranberry Marmalade. Yes, we hand-selected and juiced the pomegranates ourselves. This one is my favorite. $10
• Traditional Cranberry & Orange Marmalade. Delicious and seasonal. $10
• Pickled Shallots. For the onion lover. This is really good stuff. 'Nuf said. $12
• Chestnut & Vanilla Jam.  For breakfast, dessert or right now! $6

Interested? please contact me through my etsy site at http://www.etsy.com/shop/mothercluck. Local delivery for a minimal charge is available for Los Angeles residents. 

And don't forget to try some Smoked Cheese Crack. It's addicting, but in a good way.

Why Mothercluck?

I haven't posted for a while because I've been busy getting my crew ready for the Artisanal LA Holiday Pop-Up Shop. Mothercluck is one of 30-plus vendors that were fortunate to be selected to participate in this winter event. I'll be sharing my pop-up space with the fabulous kitchen soap artisan PLU (People Like Us). They have marvelous soaps (I particularly love their clean-smelling tobacco and vanilla scent).

Because it's December, mothercluck has prepared a number of small-batch jams, jellies and preserves using wholesome ingredients that are perfect for the season: pomegranates, apples, cranberries, quinces, Meyer lemons (you've got to try our variation of 3M -- Myer and Meyer Marmalade -- it's to die for), and glorious oranges. With mothercluck products, we use the simplest and purest of ingredients, often grown within miles of home. Our philosophy is simple: honor the true taste of a fresh fruit or vegetable and you'll be rewarded with the best in flavor and texture. We never use juices from concentrate (yup, the juice for our pomegranate products were all seeded and juiced by hand), and, if we can help it, pectin.

For those who are visiting the mothercluck site for the first time, welcome. We hope you enjoy the stories published here, which tell the tales of my humble homestead. In addition to being an award-winning canner and preserver (I won best of division and several ribbons for my jams at the 2010 L.A. County Fair), I do give a cluck about food safety. I have taken a number of Los Angeles-area courses on the safety of food preservation and canning. All of these courses were taught by certified Master Preservers of Los Angeles County. When in doubt, I also follow the guidelines set by Ball’s Complete Book of Home Preserving and the National Center for Home Food Preservation.

Mothercluck's jams are heat processed in sealed containers that can be kept in your pantry for up to one year. Once opened, the jams should be refrigerated.

I want to give a special shout-out to Christine Moore, owner of Little Flower Candy Company, for the use of her facilities (you really need to try her caramels), and my terrific network of friends, Rebecca, Heide (friends for 35-plus years!), Maureen, Karen, Sherri, Lisa, Kate, Angela, Meghan, Rose, my friends and co-workers from that extraordinary independent day school I used to work for, and my two Pams for all their support. And to my son Joe and my husband who reluctantly does farm chores: my heart warms whenever I think of you two.

I think that's enough. 


So if you are in the 'hood this weekend, stop by and give me a cluck at Artisanal LA!

Today's Work

Our day began like this -- cookbooks stacked on top of cookbooks. And then there was a recipe pulled from someone's blog.

The day ended with a full stomach.

Best wishes for a wonderful Thanksgiving. Ours was filled with love, beautiful people, and much gratitude. What a perfect day.

The Diet of a Chicken

• Cantaloupe seeds
• Lettuce
• Weeds
• Worms
• Whole wheat bread
• Goldfish crackers (my son is happy to share)
• Maggots
• Scratch
• Leftover pasta, preferably spaghetti -- (chickens aren't bright. They think they're worms)
• Honeydew seeds
• Scum from my jams
• Saltines (my chickens love these)
• Grubs
• Bananas
• Tomatoes
• Yogurt
• Crumble
• Chicken feed
• Apple cores
• Leaves off my pomegranate tree
• Leaves off my parsley
• Just about anything in my garden except pepper plants. Damn chickens.
• Pita bread
• Ears of corn (because I'm nice)
• White rice
• Brown rice
• Spiders
• Earwigs
• Snails
• And of course, plenty of love. Ahhhh. Corny, I know.

Chicken owners, how about you? What do you feed your chickens?

What's that Smell?

There's that smell again.

For the past week, whenever I've walked into our living room, I've smelled something rancid.

Was it rotting fruit? Nope. Everything looked fresh.

Was it the fridge or the garbage? All clear.

Did something die in the other room and I haven't found it, amongst some old bills and papers? Doubt it.

But then, all of a sudden, it dawned on me.

My Kombucha.

The smell was coming from the fermentation of Kombucha, a centuries-old fermented tea that some people drink for its purported medicinal benefits.

A few weeks ago I took a local class that showed me how to nurture what my instructor called the  Kombucha "mother" -- basically its starter -- by concocting a warm environment of bacteria and yeast using black tea. After the class, I brought home a beautiful mother in a jar, and brewed some tea to make my own Kombucha. I placed the mixture in a warm window and simply forgot.

Until today.

My Kombucha has another week or so of fermentation, and, for now, the smell is a little off-putting. Until it's ready, I just might have to open a window.

I'll let you know if it's worth the stink.

Slovak Chop Suey

My mother's simple, Eastern-European recipe of Kolačky (pronounced Ko-lach-kee) is tucked away in her relic edition of "Anniversary Slovak-American Cook Book" published by the First Catholic Slovak Ladies Union in 1952.

In this well-preserved book you'll find some amazing recipes, among other things.  There are recipes for pirohy (dumplings), pickles (10+ pages!), crackling biscuits, homemade pork sausage and, my personal favorite, Slovak chop suey.

Why Eastern-European cooks would want to tackle chop suey is beyond me. It must have been all the rage back in 1952.

My mother wasn't much of a cook or a baker. The Kolačky recipe is actually my grandmother's. My mother would make these occasionally, but my grandmother's were legendary -- as was her Poppyseed Cake. Unfortunately the Poppyseed Cake recipe went with her when she died in 1963.

My brother, who lives in Chicago, continues to bake these cookies every Christmas, and as homage to my mother, I have too. Appropriately, the Anniversary Slovak-American Cook Book is dedicated to "our mothers and grandmothers, in grateful remembrance."

I cannot think of a better way to do just that.

Ann Straka's Kolačky

1/2 pound of cream cheese
1/2 pound of butter
Two cups of flour

Prune, apricot, and/or poppyseed filling

Combine the cream cheese, butter and flour until creamy and the batter is fluffy. Roll the dough in a ball and refrigerate it overnight.

The next day, cut the ball into four sections to make the dough a bit more manageable. Roll out each of the sections so they are about 1/4 inch thick. Cut the dough into strips, then squares and fill each one with your choice of prune, poppyseed or apricot filling. Fold the left corner of the square with the lower right one and pinch or twist the edges. Sometimes a little water is helpful in making sure the edges stick together.

Bake for 7 minutes in a 350 degree oven. Serve with sprinkled powdered sugar on top.

Please note: In honor of my mother, I have entered the above recipe in this year's Los Angeles Times Holiday Cookie Bake-off. Could you take a few minutes of your time to vote for me? Just follow this link.

They'll ask you for some not-too-invasive personal information (sorry about that) but if I win, I promise to post the recipe for Slovak chop suey. Now who can resist any offer like that?

Sleeping Broody

This morning, the spell was finally lifted.

Like Sleeping Beauty who came to life after a long sleep, our Black Silkie, also affectionately known as Black Broody, is done being all cooped up.

It’s awfully late in the season for chickens to be broody. Broodiness usually occurs in the spring when something goes haywire in a bird’s small brain and says, “I need to be a mother, damn it!” She stays in the coop basically all day, believing that she's going to hatch a chick any day now. It doesn't matter there's no rooster around. That hen believes she's going to have a chick.

And that will be the hen's commitment for the next five weeks or more until she wakes up one morning and thinks, “Well, that’s stupid. Screw motherhood. I need a maggot!”

In the meantime, everyone suffers. The other hens can’t get into the coop because Black Broody is crazy, and she’s totally egg-less during her false motherhood.

This is the second time that Black Broody has gone, well, broody. The first time happened a few months back when the only time I saw her out of the coop was when I shooed her out and told her to stop making a honest hen of herself.When I suspected she had gone broody, I consulted my Keeping Chickens book where it said that the Black Silkie will produce an average of “105 eggs before going broody.”

Oh, that’s what happened.

But now I know and, more importantly, know what to expect. Broodiness is no fun for the, um, brood and certainly no fun for the hen who cannot hatch chicks. It seems awfully cruel.

But that’s all behind us know. Black Broody is back. And in a good way.

Now lay me some eggs!