Providing Cover for Birds
Roosting boxes or natural plant covers can also aid birds seeking protection from cold weather.
Shelter is also needed for protection against natural predators, such as birds of prey.
Cats are unnatural predators and birds also need shelter to escape from them.
Be sure to clean out old nests from houses to help reduce the possibility of parasitic bugs surviving the winter.
It also allows birds the opportunity to roost in a clean house.

  Birds only nest during spring and summer—their breeding
 season. But during the rest of the year, cavity-nesting birds
 often use these same boxes for shelter at night, particularly
 in winter.
 You can help your backyard birds keep warm overnight with
 a specially designed roost box.
 Any backyard favorites that typically nest in boxes—
 bluebirds, chickadees, titmice, nuthatches, and small
 woodpeckers—may seek refuge in it.
 
 Roosting boxes differ from nest boxes in several ways.
 A good roost box is designed to prevent the birds' body
 heat from escaping, so, unlike a nest box, it has fewer
 ventilation holes. Also, its entrance hole is near the bottom
 of the box so the rising warmth doesn't escape.

 There is lots of information to be found on the web on how
 to make a winter roosting box.

Birds do need a source for water in the winter.

You can help birds find water by providing an open source of water for the birds. Bird baths can provide a water source and should be heated to help prevent the whole bath from freezing.
In areas where the weather can turn cold and possibly freeze the water in bird baths, a heater or heated birdbath can keep an area open in your bird bath.

  It is always a good idea to cover ceramic bird baths to keep the water out in
  the winter.
  You can put out a plastic dish with an added heater or a bird bath with a
  built-in heater.
  Some products can be kept out all winter, if the proper bird bath de-icers
  are used.

 Oil sunflower seeds
 A great overall seed to offer in the winter. It has a high calorie/ounce ratio
 due to its high fat and protein content and its relatively thin shell.
 Oil sunflower has twice the calories per pound than striped sunflower and its
 smaller shells make less mess when discarded by the birds.

 Safflower seeds
 A white seed, slightly smaller than black sunflower seed. Chickadees, titmice,
 chickadees, and downy woodpeckers eat it. The great thing about safflower
 seeds is that squirrels don't like them. Neither do grackles, blue jays, or
 starlings.

 

 

 

Nyger seeds
Nyger has replaced thistle as the most popular seeds to feed goldfinches. Goldfinches adore nyger. You may have dozens of goldfinches visiting your nyger feeder at once, which is quite a cheering sight on a winter day.
Niger is a black seed, so tiny and light you can blow away a handful with a gentle breath.

Cracked corn
Sparrows, blackbirds, jays, doves, quail, and squirrels are just a few of the creatures you can expect at your feeders if you feed cracked corn. Depending on where you live you may also get turkeys, deer, elk, moose, and caribou.
Fed in moderation, cracked corn will attract almost any feeder species. Some feeder operators only use this food to lure the squirrels away from the bird feeders. Squirrels love corn--cracked or otherwise--best of all. Whole corn that is still on the cob is not a good bird food because the kernels are too big and hard for most small birds to digest. Cracked corn is broken up into smaller, more manageable bits.

Suet
A great food to offer many of the birds that will visit backyards in the winter. Suet is a high energy, pure fat substance which is invaluable in winter when insects are harder to find and birds need many more calories to keep their bodies warm.
Suet can be fed in a variety of feeders ranging from a suet cage to a wood and cage feeder offering protection from the weather elements and designed to require the birds to hang upside down.

 Fruit
 Fruit is also an important dietary element for birds, but it can
 be hard to find in many areas in midwinter. Set out grapes,
 slices of citrus fruits, apple or banana slices, and even melon
 rinds, and watch your birds chow down. If you want to feed
 raisins, chop them up and soak them in warm water first to
 soften them up a bit.
 Offering fruit to tanagers and orioles is a traditional spring and
 summer feeding strategy, but many winter feeder birds will eat
 fruit, too.

 

 

 

 Peanuts
 Another great food to offer birds in the wintertime.
 Peanuts have high protein and fat levels and are often an
 ingredient  in suet products. Offering peanuts in a peanut
 feeder can provide a good source of protein for birds.

 

 

 

Homemade bird treats
You can come up with your own recipes for winter bird treats. Smear peanut butter on a tree trunk,
and poke some peanut bits into it. Melt suet, and pour it into an ice-cube tray to harden.
Before it solidifies, add peanut bits, raisins, apple bits, or other bird foods. Put the tray in your freezer to harden.
Once it does, you've got cubed bird treats--easy to make and easy to use!

One caution!
Don't buy bags of mixed birdseed. They contain a lot of filler, such as red millet. Most birds won't eat it. It gets kicked onto the ground, where stays until it rots. Mixed birdseed is not a bargain. Buy the seeds you know your birds want.

When starting up a feeding program, be patient. It may take as long as several weeks before the birds discover your feeders.
While you wait, be sure to keep the feeders filled. Eventually, the birds will come.

Providing high calorie and high fat foods can be important to the birds.
The birds visiting winter feeders may be arriving in flocks or may come to the feeders as individuals, so you will need to provide different options for the birds.

Position of feeders

Feeders should be located out of the wind. The east or southeast side of a house or near a row of trees is ideal. It is best to have a perching spot such as a bush or tree for the birds to use to survey the feeding area and provide sufficient cover for safe refuge from predators and shelter from the wind and weather. The feeders should be positioned near cover but in the open to allow birds to watch for danger.
For ground feeding, an area near cover with a clear view of the surroundings is desirable.

 

Ground feeders

Placing seed in a ground feeder entices birds such as sparrows, juncos, Mourning Doves, quail, pheasants, towhees and Brown Thrashers.
Even the Red-bellied Woodpecker, which is thought of as a tree dweller, does some foraging on the ground.

 

 

 

High feeders

Platform and  hopper feeders are especially good for attracting cardinals, wrens, chickadees, titmice, jays, and grosbeaks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hanging feeders, because they blow in the wind, are generally used by those species that are able to hang on while feeding such as chickadees, titmice, nuthatches and finches.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More bird feeding information can be found on: ornithology.com

Hello dear people,

Do you have a garden or balcony? Please give some thought to the lovely tender birds in winter time.

Days are short, and nights are cold and long. The natural food supply has been consumed or is hidden by snow. Most insects are dead or dormant. Water can be hard to find. Finding shelter may not be easy. If there are limited natural evergreens or shelter, birds may seek manmade houses or habitats that can provide refuge from the winds, rains, ice or snow of winter.

Birds are warm-blooded. In general, this means that they maintain their body temperature within a certain range even when the temperature around them changes.

On cold, wintry days, most birds fluff up their feathers, creating air pockets, which help keep the birds warm. The more air spaces, the better the insulation. Some birds perch on one leg, drawing the other leg to the breast for warmth.

To keep up their high metabolic rate, most backyard birds eat rich, energy foods such as seeds, insects and suet.

There are some times, however, when birds are not prepared to deal with sudden drops in temperature or sudden winter storms. At times like these, it is especially helpful to have feeders full so that birds can find food easily.

 

It seems there's a German cultural spirit in the air. The Oktoberfest and Zeppelin stories reminded me of my visit to Sissi's Castle in Unterwittelsbach/Aichach.

 A typicle Bavarian country castle  

 from the Middle Ages. From 1838 it

 belonged to Herzog Maximilian of

 Bavaria, father of the later Empress

 Elisabeth of Austria, we all know so

 well from the Sissi movies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unfortunately Schloss Possenhofen at Starnberger See, 27 Km south of München, were Sisi grew up, is not open to the public.

Germany has a lot of castles and country homes with beautiful gardens. I have only been to Bavaria.
It is well worth a visit in my honest opinion. I was also very impressed by the Imperial Castle at Nuremberg.

The Bavarian Administration of State-owned Palaces, Gardens and Lakes, otherwise known as the Palace Department,  is one of the most traditional administrative departments in the Free State of Bavaria. The pictures on their homepage alone make you want to plan a trip immediately.

schloesser.bayern.de

Charles Ranhofer, the son of a restrauteur and the grandson of a chef, goes down in the annals of great chefs as the first French chef to bring the grandeur of his country's cuisine to America.
Noted primarily as the head chef of New York City's famed Delmonico's restaurant, Ranhofer ran its kitchens for nearly 34 years. Serving such luminaries as President Andrew Johnson, President U.S. Grant, Charles Dickens, and a host of foreign dignitaries, Ranhofer created such culinary distinctions as Lobster Newburg and Baked Alaska, among many others. He also wrote "one of the most complete treatises of its kind," according to the New York Times in praise of his book, The Epicurean, published in 1894.

Baked Alaska: Cake and ice cream dessert topped with meringue (resembling an iceberg)

Chef Ranhofer created his version of baked ice cream to commemorate the United States' purchase of Alaska from  Russia, and he eventually named it Baked Alaska.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ingredients
* 85 g sponge flan (cake) case
* 2 tbsp or a few drops of cognac or a liqueur (like almond or orange)
* fruit compote
* 500 ml vanilla ice cream
* 3 medium egg whites
* 125 g golden caster sugar

1. One day in advance: Let the icecream turn soft a little an turn it over in a round bowl and make a hole in the middle. Put it back in the freezer.

2. Next day: fill the hole with the fruitcompote.

3. Sprinkle the sponge flan with the cognac or liqueur. Put the sponge flan on top of the ice, sliced
into the shape of the bowl (like a roof). Turn it slowly onto an overproof pie plate. Put it back in the freezer while you work on the next step.

4. Seperate the egg whites from the yolk.

5. Whisk the egg whites until they turn white and thick. Make sure absolutely no yolk gets in there
(the meringue won't work if there is, so remove any with a teaspoon). Lift up the bowl and tip it slightly from side to side: if the egg whites look slightly peaky and slide around they need to be whisked a little more; if they sit in stiff peaks and don't move, they are ready. Gradually add the sugar whisking it in, just 1 tablespoon at a time until the meringue is smooth, glossy and stiffly peaking.

6. Get the prepared base out of the freezer. Spread the meringue over the ice cream with a palette knife, making sure it's covered and the meringue seals the sponge case edge. Return to the freezer for at least 1 hour (although it will happily sit there for up to a day).

7. To serve, preheat the oven to 220°C/ fan200°C/gas 7. Pop the Alaska straight from the freezer into the oven for 3-4 minutes until the meringue is just starting to be tinged brown.

Serve immediately.

George Auguste Escoffier, genius in culinary writing and the make of todays world famous recipes. It is belived that Escoffier managed to make over 10.000 new recipes.
He was born in 1846, in Villeneuve Loubet. His father was a blacksmith and he also grew tobacco plants. At age 13 his father took him to Nice, where he was to work in his uncle's restaurant Le Restaurant Francais. At 19, the owner of the Le Petit Moulin Rouge, the most fashionable restaurant in Paris, noticed him during a stay in Nice and invited him to join his team were he soon became Head Chef. Than he opened his own restaurant in Cannes, and worked managing (Directeur de Cuisine) the kitchens of Maison Chevet, at the Palais Royal, La Maison Maire, the Grand Hotel in Monte Carlo and hotel National in Lucerne. His meeting with Cesar Ritz, led to the succes of the Ritz and Carlton hotels for which he lent his talent.

He bridged the 19th and 20th centuries with a modernization of Marie-Antoine Careme's elaborate cuisine by ingenious simplification of it.
At that time Grande Cuisine was composed of very complicated recipes, the dishes being adorned with rich sauces and garnishes which somewhat obscured the main ingredients. However, Escoffier's idea was to simplify these extravagant dishes - a trend which was taken up my the culinary world. He also changed the practice of serving all  the dishes at the same time ( à la française) to serving each dish in the order printed on the menu (service à la russe).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

His general philosophy on food had more far-reaching effects, in particular with regards to hygiene and work standards, which he found to be very poor in general. At the time, chefs were not highly regarded and it was Escoffier who made the profession more respectable by instilling a sense of pride in his subordinates.
A stickler for cleanliness, he demanded the same from his workers and forbade swearing or any type of violence, which at the time, was common as apprentices and other help were routinely beaten by older staff. He also started the brigade system in his kitchens which is the practice of each section in the kitchen being run by a chef de partie (section head chef).

Famous recipes he created:
Chaud-Froid Jeannette:
In 1881 the Jeannette, a ship equipped for an expedition to the North Pole, became icebound.
The whole crew died except two sailors who after repeated efforts managed to reach the Siberian coast. lt was in memory of this expedition that Escoffier wanted to give the name of this ship to one of his greatest culinary successes 'Les Supremes de Volailles Jeannette'.

Cuisses de Nymphe Aurore: (a dish of frogs legs) for the Prince of Wales. ‘cuisses’ literally means thighs.

Salad Réjane: in homage of actress Gabrielle Réjane which was the stage name for Gabrielle-Charlotte Reju (1856–1920),  a famous  French actress at the turn of the century. Escoffier named several dishes for her, including consommé, sole, and œufs à la neige.

Rachel Mignonettes of Quail: in homage to the actress Swiss-born Elisa-Rachel Félix (1821–1858) known as the greatest French tragedienne of her day. Her stage name Rachel is used for a number  of dishes—consommé, eggs, sweetbreads, et al.—many created by Escoffier.

RECIPE PECHE MELBA
In honour of the Australian Singer, Nellie Melba. During 1892 and 1893, Madame Melba lived at the Savoy Hotel. She was singing at Covent Garden Opera House, and Escoffier, who was passionately interested in the theatre, was an enthusiastic listener.

The Majestic Swan which appears on the scene, gave him the idea of preparing a surprise for the brilliant singer.  The following evening Melba had invited some friends to dinner. Taking advantage of this opportunity, Escoffier had peaches served on a bed of vanilla ice-cream in a metal dish, set between two wings of a magnificent swan, shaped out of a block of ice and covered with a layer of icing sugar.
lt was on the day of the opening of the Carlton Hotel in London that Escoffier decided on the flavour which was to give this dessert its real claim to distinction. Out of the whole range of fruit flavours, he chose  raspberry, thus 'Peche Melba' officially came into being.

Known as the "King of Chefs and the Chef of Kings," Marie-Antoine Careme went from being an abandoned child left at the door of a restrauteur in 18th century Paris, to become the father of "haute cuisine" the "high art of French cooking" in the early 19th century.

Chef to diplomat Talleyrand-Perigord, King George IV,  Czar Alexander I, and banker James Rothschild, Careme is noted for his voluminous writings on cooking, including the famed L'Art de la Cuisine Francaise (The Art of French Cooking), a five-volume masterpiece on menu planning, table settings, hundreds of recipes, and a history of French cooking.
He is credited with creating the modern standard chef's hat, the toque. A toque blanche (French for "white hat") is a tall, round, pleated, starched white hat worn by chefs.

Marie-Antoine Careme created a.o. mayonnaise which was beleived to be named for Mayon the main town on Minorca in honor of Cardinal Richelieu's victory there over the English in 1756.
If this history is correct, allioli (the Balearic version of aioli) could have been the inspiration.

RECIPE
Mayonnaise is made by slowly adding top-quality olive oil to an egg yolk, while whisking vigorously to disperse the oil. The oil and the water in yolks form a base of the emulsion, while the lecithin from the yolks acts as the emulsifier that stabilizes it. Additionally, a bit of a mustard and sometimes vinegar or lemon juice may also be added to further stabilize the  emulsion.
Small particles of the mustard serve as nucleation sites for the droplets forming the mayonnaise.

It is considered essential to constantly beat the mayonnaise using a whisk while adding the olive oil a drop  at a time, fully incorporating the oil before adding the next tablespoon.
One important thing to keep in mind when using olive oil is that overworking the oil can make it bitter.
Careme later made it lighter by blending vegetable oil and egg yolks into an emulsion; his recipe then became  famous throughout Europe. 
For the lighter version you can use safflower oil to create the initial emulsion, then add olive oil, working it in with a wooden spoon rather than a whisk.

Although I love to watch cooking shows and I love that they have increased over the last years I wonder how many people actually start making the recipes they have just saw being prepared. 
It is fun to watch but how many people actually go to the websites after watching the shows to print a recipe?

Some tv-cooks are fun to watch and make it seem very easy but for the average amateur cook at home the ingredients aren't always easy to come by and the preparation time is often way to long for an average day of the week to be realistic.

One of the shows I like is 'Ready steady cook'. A BBC program were two professional chefs battle it out against the clock, creating delicious dishes in 20 minutes with ingredients they have been given only 5 mintues before the timer is set. Two members of the public provide the celebrity chefs with some ingredients they have bought. The chefs are assisted by a guest who can help chopping and stirring and of course they have the best available kitchen utensils at hand and an oven already preheated but nevertheless I am full of admiration to see them prepare a three course meal in such a short time. 

Plenty of the dishes seemed absolutely delicious to me and yet I have never ever made one of them..........