The Reality of Farming

He came in the night
masked, like a thief
and his grasping black hands
pulled her out of her sister's warm embrace
We heard her cry, once
and with flashlights we came to find her door wide open
and I caught him in the light, by the cellar door
frozen for one moment, before he disappeared
and then I saw her
in a heap of crumpled feathers
still gasping, but not moving
and I had to finish her myself
with the hedge clippers

and this morning, we heard her sister call to her, over and over
and masses of rust and black feathers swirled over the dead grass and under the trees

and today, I will bury her
under the apple tree
and it would probably make real farmers laugh
to know that I've been crying over a chicken

About Labor and Delivery... Kind of

So, I realize I have neglected posting about the chickens. We added a third to the flock. We started off with D'Brickashaw and Tony Romo. They did not get along with the new girl, and Romo was especially mean, so eventually we named her Jessica Simpson. And for a while, all was well in the back yard. My regular computer's fan has died, so there will be no pictures of the following, I'll try to do what I can.

At first, I just thought they couldn't share the nest box. Jessica was clucking around the porch, looking in little spaces, so I figured she needed a place to lay. I noticed her foot was bleeding, and it's because she kept trying to get in the nest with Tony Romo, who was making crazy noises and pecking her every time she tried it.

The next day, I saw her happily snuggling with Romo in the box, and thought, "Oh, how nice, they're getting along!" When Romo was through laying, he popped out and Jessica started cooing and stretched herself out over the eggs. I went inside to have some breakfast. And when I came out, I busted her in the nest box with egg on her face and everything. What I thought were maternal noises was actually a nom nom song. I had to clean out the whole coop so it won't smell like rotten egg.

So today I've been reading a lot about what you can do when this happens, and a lot of people seem to think it's incurable. They say it's time for a chicken dinner, but I can't do that with something I've given first aid to. When the other chickens pecked the crap out of her feet, I caught her and washed them and sprayed her toes with Neosporin.

Anyway, what you can do is get golf balls and put them in the nest, so when the offender tries to peck them, she gets nothing. We tried that this morning, and D'Brickashaw wouldn't go in the nest... just kept making this noise that sounded like the aliens from Sesame Street (nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope).

So I captured Simpson and stuck her back in the run and pulled the golf balls back out, and then Romo would lay, but D'Brickashaw just kept trying to make a nest on the bag of pine shavings we keep on the porch. And I'm thinking I really didn't want to clean up a broken egg on the porch, so I just dumped the shavings out for her. She was wailing and making all this noise, but she calmed down right away once she had a nest. I wound up with two eggs, put the golf balls back in the nest and let Jessica back out, who went directly into the nest box for snacks. And she pecked all the golf balls (yes, they are really that dumb). The moral of the story is, Tony Romo was right.

In closing, I feel fortunate that this is one thing I don't have to worry about. I'm pretty sure no one is going to sneak into labor and delivery to try to eat my baby. But I might bring a doll just in case.

A Pregnant Pause

Hello blog. It's been a while, hasn't it? But this time I have a really good excuse. Mr. Strangely and I are expecting a little Strangelet this fall. It's our first. And this experience has already been exciting and wonderful and totally weird. I had kind of planned on writing an expose or something, but, for one thing, I already read an awesome post about "What Pregnant Women Won't Tell You", and I really don't think I can top it. And for another thing, I'm really not far enough along yet to have anything really exciting to share. I was fortunate not to get very much morning sickness (please don't hit me if you did!)... and really I just feel like I'm fighting off the flu all the time.

So, hopefully I'll be more productive in the second trimester. That's apparently when you become manic. I can't wait.

What I can say so far, is that I don't think there is any other time in your life when everything you do is so wrong. I don't mean objectively wrong, I mean met with criticism. There are lists of foods I'm not supposed to eat or drink, and there are a hundred women online who are waiting to treat you like an idiot for believing those guidelines. There are a wealth of medical treatments that we can enjoy in the 21st century and a thousand more women who will make you feel like a weakling for not giving birth the natural way. Mr. Strangely's mom gave us a book about pregnancy, and it says that DHA supplements are "ZOMG THE MOST IMPORTANT THING A MOTHER CAN DO FOR HER BABY!!!1!" and my ob told me to quit taking the ones I'd bought because of mercury concerns. She didn't tell me to get another brand or DHA from another source, she just told me to quit taking them and asked me if I was getting enough calcium. One can only come to the conclusion that we just still don't know all that much about prenatal health. We don't know what causes morning sickness or what purpose it serves. Looking over the last century you can see that women who smoked and drank gave birth to totally healthy children. So, I'll try my darnedest not to be judgmental about anybody else's choices during their pregnancy. Especially not while my junk is all swollen and I'm being kicked in the cervix.

It's Been a Tough Couple of Weeks

We've got an ill relative. A seriously ill one. Keep us in your thoughts and in the meantime, I hope you'll enjoy this new toy I found. I've used photobucket for years for random things when I first needed an image hoster. I wandered back and found they'd added some bells and whistles. It's just what I needed to cheer myself up a little bit and I thought I'd share some highlights...

Black... Saturday and Sunday Brunch!

Surely you didn't think I was out of leftovers?


Sunny Side Up Crabwiches for Two

Slice one purple onion and toss it into a frying pan with melted butter. Let them caramelize a little bit, then add about a cup of crab meat to the pan. Saute a minute longer, then remove from pan and reserve. Take 2 pull apart rolls and slice them lengthwise. Turn on broiler. Wipe out frying pan and fry eggs sunny side up. Toast the roll halves under the broiler. To assemble, place two roll halves on plate, mound a quarter of the onion/crab mixture on each and top with fried egg. I liked this with salsa, and Mr. Strangely thoroughly liked his before I even got the salsa out of the refrigerator.

Sweet Potato Bread Pudding with Sauce

Take that extra package of rolls you had laying around, and pull them all apart into pieces. Lay these pieces in a buttered casserole (I had enough for a pie pan) and leave them out overnight. In the morning, take the last little bits of your leftover sweet potatoes, which by now are all soft from being reheated so much and the maple syrup and brown sugar crust have evolved into toffee... and tuck them all around inside this pile of bread. Press down on top so the potatoes and bread get all smashed together. It should look a little something like this:


Now, beat three eggs (if you're using jumbo eggs from the store, you'll probably only need 2) and combine them with a cup and a half of milk. Add a capful of vanilla and about a half cup of brown sugar. There are many recipes for sweet potato bread pudding, the ones that call for naked sweet potatoes use about a cup of sugar. Be sure to adjust for the sweetness of the leftovers you are using. Take this mixture and pour it slowly and carefully into your dish of bread and sweet potatoes. Let it soak in a bit as you pour so you get the whole thing nice and saturated. When you've poured all your liquid in, press again gently on the bread to help the custard penetrate. If you can't see the custard creeping up the edges of the pan, add a little milk. Let this sit for about 30 minutes while you preheat your oven and enjoy a nice cup of coffee. When you're both ready, plop it in the oven at 350 for about 45 minutes, turning once so it gets evenly browned.

Meanwhile, start your brown butter. Take about 6 tablespoons of butter and let it melt in a saucepan at medium low heat. Watch it carefully, stirring every now and then. Over time, it should get nice and dark, the color of an old penny.


Now carefully add up to a half cup of brown sugar, she guessed. I am still working out this sauce, and I used a quarter cup with a lot of butter leftover at the end. Let us know if you wind up using more and how it works out! Turn the heat up a little bit and stir the brown sugar until it melts/dissolves. Be careful not to burn the butter at this point... smell it from time to time and make sure it never goes from "nutty" to "ugh". It will still be all clumpy and nasty looking as it mixes with the butter solids. Now, turn off the heat. Pour in about 3 tablespoons of milk. Beat it quickly though it's hissing at you. Something magic happened at this point... the weird chunky sugar mixture at the bottom of the pan became a beautiful brown sauce with melted butter floating on top.

I poured this into the stock separator we got as a wedding gift. This let me pour the sauce out from under the butter and drizzle it artfully over my beautiful bread pudding...

Yum.

Black Friday Brunch

If you're like I am, you watch all the ads for Black Friday sales and wonder what is wrong with the people they're aimed at. And after you've thoroughly stuffed yourself on Thursday, you go to bed and blissfully sleep through all those alarms you were supposed to set, and you're not even camped out in front of Macy's or Best Buy. You arise at the stroke of 11:30 and liberate your chickens. And when food finally sounds good again, you conduct experiments on your spouse with leftovers.

Thanksgiving will probably always be a little poignant for me. I grew up in the house that hosted everyone, and so I remember having leftovers and abandoned side-dishes and desserts for about a week afterward. And now, we leave a dish of sweet potatoes for Mr. Strangely's grandmother and take the rest, and nothing else. No turkey or mashed potatoes, no stuffing. Not even any rolls. So this year, I made a pre-emptive strike. I haven't got a turkey yet, but I've got plenty of sweet potatoes, two packages of rolls I accidentally bought because last year we were supposed to, and something much more lavish and brunchy than turkey: fresh crab.

My husband's family traditionally has crab on Thanksgiving Eve and Christmas Eve, so it really is a holiday food, I promise. Crab season starts after Halloween. And the store I ran in to on Wednesday to stock up had set them out on sale, already cracked and waiting. Who could resist that?

Baked Eggs Over Crab

Stellaa was the one who turned me on to baked eggs (thanks, Stellaa!!), so I feel like this barely counts as a recipe for me at all. And I could twitter it, it's so easy. "Ramekins butter crab egg cream water bath 350 30 minutes" (only 56 characters!). Serve with leftover rolls to adhere to criteria for Salon's recipe contest~



Sweet Potato Breakfast Blinis

I got my sweet potato recipe from my mother. Then it somehow mutated under my care. Now I make a combination recipe... it starts off like my mother's, boiling the sweet potatoes until soft, and slipping them out of their skins to rest in a buttered casserole. Then it incorporates shades of this recipe, though I've never used the nuts. The result is a lovely sweet but not too sweet dish of potatoes, with a crispy, buttery topping. And this is what I started with to make my blinis. You could probably use most any sweet potato recipe to do this, adding flour or milk to achieve the right kind of consistency. Take a few of these leftover potatoes, and mash them in a bowl with one egg. The dough should be like a squishy cookie dough.



Drop tablespoons of this into a sea of melted butter in a skillet over medium/low heat. Then smash with the back of your spoon into a pancake shape.


Allow this to cook for a few minutes, and watch it carefully, turning the heat down if it seems to be burning. You want these to cook slowly. They're a little fragile in the beginning. You want to flip them when they start to firm up a bit. Then press again with the spatula. It doesn't hurt to turn these a few times, pressing to get a nice dense cake. Remove these from the pan and drain on paper towels. Dress them in pretty proscuitto slices... tiny mozzarella cheeses you bought for appetizers and forgot and crispy little apple slices... Imagine the poor suckers going shopping in the nasty rain... Enjoy by computer, to obtain perfect stream of conscious dialogue...

Duck Season!

I saw this story on Digg today:

"A mother whose daughter was murdered is suing American Life Assurance of Columbus (AFLAC) because it has refused to pay the death benefit on life insurance the daughter applied for shortly before her death."
http://digg.com/d31AEoR

I don't know how often AFLAC refuses to pay claims for unsolved murders. The longer I am involved in the health care battle, the less I trust these large entities. There are no requirements for them to file reports on how they maintain their profits, no surveys on how long it takes to pay claims... it can make a person profoundly depressed about their chances to be treated fairly.

But, today at least, there is a fun way to try to fight back. There aren't any bills to reform the life insurance industry in Congress, so put down those picket signs. Instead, purchase one of these little guys:

http://aflacholidayduck.com/purchase.html

Then murder him spectacularly, and upload the video to Youtube or Google video or whatever your preferred host is. Be sure to disguise your identity. Remember, 100% of the money goes to children's hospitals, even if they cannot solve the case! Here's some inspiring footage to get you started...