Chilly today and hot tamales.

The cold continued into the week. Thursday morning was a little below zero, but it was just beautiful. Every twig, every pine needle was so perfectly flocked with frost that the trees looked white instead of black. Two horizonal lines of clouds in the east were pink as I started my drive to work. The sun came up as a huge orange ball catching a world of sparkles. It was breathtaking.

Friday morning was colder and not as pretty. It was not supposed to snow that day, but by the time I ran a few errands after work, it had snowed enough to cover the roads and slow traffic. It was only 2°F. I would have thought it was too cold to snow.

Saturday morning, the weather station was unhappy.

The weather station was unhappy. It got to -21 shortly after I took this photo

Upstairs, Hilda had an outdoor reading of -25°F. I did not let the chickens out. They would not have gone out if I had opened the door anyway. I found the soda bottle with the holes in it and filled it with scratch grains. I was pleasantly surprised that the string to attach it to the ceiling was still attached. In theory, giving them these little diversions is supposed to keep them from getting bored and pecking at each other.

Cooped up-the soda bottle with the scratch grains is behind the feeder. Look for the red cap and white string.

Bianca doesn’t look good. This is how Layla looked before she died. Not sure what to do about it. I’d like to think she is just hunkering down because of the cold, but I think I’m kidding myself.

Bianca is hunching

I have been filling my bird feeder these cold days. There seems to be a two-step process. First, the no-longer-goldfinches throw all the seeds on the ground.

First, the goldfinches throw all the seed on the ground

Then the other birds eat it from there. We get juncos, house finches, mourning doves, and the occasional cardinal.

Then an assortment of birds eats the seed on the ground

Yesterday, I saw an American tree sparrow. I don’t recall seeing them in winter before. They have rusty stripes on their head that make them look like they are wearing bike helmets.

A tree sparrow behind a house finch

A signature feature that distinguishes them from chipping sparrows is a dark spot on their breast.

The dark spot on the tree sparrow's breast

It was edging toward 0° after lunch. I needed to get groceries and water Jane’s plants. A major snow event courtesy of Winter Storm Jayden was forecast for Monday, and I knew I didn’t want to be going out then. As it turned out, the rest of the world thought that shopping on Saturday ahead of the storm was a good idea. I spent a great deal of time standing in lines. I had to go to four different stores for one thing and another. Hilda and I wanted to try a new recipe for tamales that we saw on America’s Test Kitchen, and that required things that I didn’t have in stock, such as two kinds of dried chilis and masa harina.

One thing that bothers me about raising my own meat chickens is that whenever I want to cook with chicken, I’ve got the whole bird. The tamale recipe called for 1.25 lbs of boneless, skinless chicken thighs. So I bought some. The only ones I could find at Meijer were organic and selling for—gasp--$6.19 a pound. I was running out of patience looking for unfamiliar things. I took a deep breath, reminded myself that we should support organic farmers, and bought the thighs. It made me feel better about how much money we spent on our own chickens. They are a bargain, comparatively.

Here’s something I never, ever thought I’d buy.

Nope, never thought I'd buy this

I had no idea where to even look for it and was pleased to stumble on it right next to the masa. That’s right, folks, on the shelf at room temperature. A fat that requires no refrigeration. Horrifying. And zero trans fat doesn't make it good for you.

It wasn’t supposed to snow on Saturday either, but I ended up driving home on bad roads again. I was feeling persecuted by the weather. Once home, though, I vowed to stay put until Tuesday.

We were going to start making tamales at 2:00 Sunday afternoon. I did some mis en place in the morning. The recipe called for six tablespoons each of unsalted butter and lard. There was a note that you could use all butter, but that made the tamales taste buttery. Like that was a bad thing. Anyway, I had the lard. I didn’t know what form the lard would be in. Would it be sticks, like butter? No. It was one big ol’ block o’ lard.

Big ol' block o' lard

I was damned if I was going to measure six tablespoons of lard with a measuring spoon. I would use weight. A pint’s a pound the world around, as the saying goes, but would that apply to the density of lard? Assuming the density of lard would be about the same as butter, I cut 6 T of butter using the handy marks on the wrapper and weight that. 3 ounces. Indeed, a pint is a pound the world around, fat included. I weight out 3 oz. of lard and was good to go.

We ripped up New Mexican and Ancho peppers, sautéed onions, garlic, cumin, and oregano, and simmered everything in chicken stock.

Chilis simmering in chicken stock

That all went in a blender until smooth. I then nestled the precious chicken thighs in the sauce to cook.

Chicken thighs simmering in sauce

When that was done, we took the chicken out to shred it.

Shredding the chicken

And added vinegar to the sauce and tasted it. It did not taste like vinegar. It was bitter. The recipe said that sugar would take the bitterness out. I only added a little because I didn’t want the sauce to be sweet. One teaspoon removed the bitterness and did not add sweetness. I was amazed.

On to the tamale dough. We put the presoaked grits and masa in a food processor with the butter, lard, and a few other things. Soon it looked like this.

Tamale dough

We spread the dough in more or less 4 x 4” squares and carefully put a little of the chicken filling in the middle.

Assembly

Then we rolled them up.

Ready for steaming

And steamed them for an hour. They were delicious! Much better than our last attempt. This recipe was a keeper.

Let's plate this dish!

We did get more snow--probably 5 or 6". It was warm, though, up in the 20's. We had a little victory in that the wind was from the south and nearly blew the solar panels clear of snow. Since I didn't wear myself out brushing them off, I wore myself out shoveling 2 feet of snow off the deck. Why bother, you might be wondering. Because that much snow gets heavy. I know. I lifted a lot of it. 

And now it's going to get really, really cold. Thirty below cold. North Dakota cold. We fear for our peach trees.