Peeling Chicken Feet: The Grossest Experience of 2011

According to Julia Child, French chefs, and traditional foodies, the absolute best chicken stock that can be made includes chicken feet. It, supposedly, adds a depth of flavor and a huge amount of gelatin (for superior stocks) that footless stocks just can't match.

You can't exactly waltz down to the grocery store and come back with chicken feet, though.

So I'll admit it... the awful truth... ever since I saw Julia Child make her stock with chicken feet I've been waiting for one of my laying hens to die.

Rather than one of the cannibal biddies, though, unfortunately the first one to bite the dust was Howard. You may remember our Polish Crested rooster from this post. He was a cocky little crower, but he crowed his last earlier this week when he was run over by the moving coop. RIP Howard.

My husband did the thankless task of plucking and gutting, and brought Howard home for me to stew... feet included.

Let me tell you... nothing I read about the delights of French cooking prepared me for the NIGHTMARISH experience of actually skinning chicken feet!!!

The how-to is easy enough. You boil the feet for about 1 or 2 minutes and then plunge them into cold water. Supposedly the skin slips off just like on a tomato. BUT THEY FAILED TO MENTION THAT IT GETS CAUGHT ON THE TOENAILS! EEEEEEWW!!!!!

I called my father for moral support. I was so grateful that he didn't laugh at me when I told him I was skinning chicken feet. He held my hand over the phone and without him I don't think I could have done it.

Think I'm exaggerating the grossness? Feast your eyes on this:

Those, dear ladies, are Howard's skinned feet (stewed for 24 hours).

I don't think any soup on earth could be worth the horror of peeling a chicken foot and having the claw come back to clench your finger as you drop its snake-like shedded skin.

This soup had darned better be worth it.

Farm life initiation lesson 436: complete.

Ofelia's Fate Revealed

Well....

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No real surprise, actually. Poor Ofelia isn't pregnant.

HOWEVER, I really can't bear to eat my first milk cow. No, we never got a drop of milk out of her, but she was awfully cute, she gave me hope for being a milk maid, and she was a mascot of sorts for the farm.

So we cancelled her date with the butcher and are sending an infertile beef heifer in her place. No, Ofelia's not going to retire and live out the end of her days with us. We are going to sell her at the cow sale, where, most likely, she will ultimately meet her maker... but she won't be buried in our freezer.

Who knows? Maybe somebody will buy her as a dairy cow and give her another go! Good luck, Ofelia.

A Countrified Business Trip

I'm on an overnight business trip right now.

No presentations, no Power Point slides, no high-powered meetings, no executive dinners, no convention centers, no training, no networking, no conferences...

...we're checking on the state of our cattle.

As such, I'm riding on a four-wheeler with my husband in ranch land country, looking for our little herd and noting observations of cow and calf health in the herd book.

Our luxury suite for this business trip? A trailer on the ranch man's land with no electricity.

Does life get any neater?

Country Bumpkin Stereotype

My husband came home with two new Wrangler work shirts.

The purchase came with a pair of tickets to the county fair.

And so, clad in our matching denim Wranglers, I've got a date to the rodeo tonight!

Today's Tomato Tally

7 hours (counting neither my sister-in-law's tomato picking time, nor cleanup, which was substantial)

7 pints of whole canned tomatoes
11 pints of lacto-fermented salsa
14 pints of tomato sauce
1 completely tomato juice covered t-shirt

That's 4 gallons of tomatoes, in case you didn't do the math.

Goodnight.

The Farmy Sense of Time

When living in the big city, I used to think and plan in days, weeks, and occasionally in seasons.

"I'll come over tomorrow."

"How does Tuesday sound?"

"Let's get together next week."

"Why don't we plan that for the Fall?"


Now, I plan and think in terms of crops.

"After the hay is down sounds good."

"Let's wait until after baling."

"We'd better not start that until after cherry harvest."

"No, that's tomato canning season."

"During Huckleberry picking?? I don't think so!"

"Let's do that around applesauce time."

It's weird, granted, but I kind of like it.

Mrs. Tractor Operator

On Saturday I had tractor lessons!

My husband needed to rake and bale hay while his brother set up irrigation in another field. Well, you can't rake and bale at the same time (different machines) and it had to be done, so he set me up on a tractor, gave me a few directions, rode around several passes with me until I started getting a little cocky in my new-found tractor skills, and then he left me!

My mock confidence plummeted. Oh, I was a nervous wreck. The tractor was huge and there must've been 30 buttons, levers, switches, clutches, brakes, throttles, gauges, pulleys, knobs, warnings, and ejector seats on that thing. No airbags or seatbelts.

My husband believed I could do it or he wouldn't have left me. Well, I prayed Hail Mary's from the top of the row to the end and then I had to do the hard part -- turn around and go up the next row. Turning is hard!

"Padre Pio, help! Get down here and turn this thing for me! NOW!!"

What do you know? It wasn't actually that bad. I was burning up fuel and moving at approximately .025 miles per hour (I saw a few snails go around me), but I was doing it! Thanks, Padre.

I had a great routine going when reality set in: my face and arms were getting sunburned, the glare was really bright, and it was all really loud.

Just when I started getting grumpy, my husband reappeared with a hat, sunglasses, long sleeve shirt and a noise reduction headphone radio, so I could be a "proper farmer."

What a darling, and what a difference!

The part that really opened my eyes, though, was that when I got home, all I wanted was someone to smile at me and have a clean house and hot meal ready. Wow.

Excuse me... I've got to go rake the back 40.

Country Living Initiation Success!

1. Without knowing what yesterday's (September 15th) daily marriage tip from the USCCB was, I did it anyway.

2. I had another initiation into country life! I (literally) separated wheat from chaff! It was invigorating.

My mother-in-law generously gave us a gallon of wheat berries, but since they're straight from the farm (not the store), they still have a little chaff in them. After sitting there for almost an hour picking out the little chaff pieces from the wheat, I called my father-in-law to get some tips. "Do you do this every time?? It takes forever!" He said you have to turn on a fan and slowly pour the wheat from one container to another in front of the fan; the wheat drops into the bowl and the chaff is blown out... do it a few times and you're done.

It worked!! My husband ground the wheat and I made lovely honey whole grain bread. Yum!

3. Using Food Tidings, I brought orange chicken to my sister-in-law who just had a baby. If you haven't heard about Food Tidings, it's a great site that allows you to set up schedules for many different people to bring food to new mothers, or grieving families, or anyone who needs a break from cooking for a while. If you have a supportive community (not strangers; a homeschool group or parish families or even your own local extended family and friends), it's a great way to organize everyone and make sure the new mother is covered!

Be encouraged. Read others' small successes and share your own at Faith & Family Live.