If I see Opie and Sheriff Taylor, at least I have an excuse for the hallucinations.

Story #1: 

One night last week, I woke up at about 2am to the sound of 135 pounds of St. Bernard going all Cujo at the front door. I stumbled out of our room, tugging on a t-shirt and trying to figure out what set her off as I went. I hadn't quite managed to wake up yet & staggered-fell sideways down the stairs trying to see what the hell was bothering her at such an hour. I landed sideways and not very gracefully onto my foot at the bottom of the stairs, and saw flashlights strobing across my driveway. 

Then a big, shaven-headed face appeared in the window of my front door. 

Go ahead and bark, dog. 

A few seconds later, my brain registered that the face was perched on top of a uniform. And that shiny thing he was waving through the window was a badge. Oh. I should probably keep my dog from eating the nice policeman.  I grabbed her collar and opened the door. 

"Hello sir, we were driving by and noticed your truck's door was ajar. We just wanted to check and make sure everything is ok. And um... did I just hear you fall down the stairs?"  

Hell, there's nothing in my truck to steal. I don't even have a radio. I had probably not made sure it was latched when I got home that night, and the wind caught it and swung it open. But here are my local police officers, just checking to make sure.  

My foot hurt like hell for three days afterwards, but you can't beat that kind of neighborly watching out for you.

Forget Stars Hollow. I live in Yankee Mayberry.  

Story #2:

A few days later, I was having a rare Sunday morning lie-in when the dog started her "Stranger-danger!" routine again. I brushed the hair out of my eyes, wiped the crusty sleep-drool off my chin and managed to walk down the stairs more or less upright. (Stop looking at me like that. Like everyone doesn't dribble occasionally in your sleep. Because we're all basically half-literate chimpanzees when no one is looking.) 

There was a kind looking older lady on my doorstep this time, without a badge or a flashlight. She introduced herself as Bonnie from just a few miles down the road - I recognized her from the farmer's market. Actually, I recognized the bumper stickers on her car. She has most of our town's "Obama: Rhymes with Hosanna", and "G-O-P spells EVIL" bumper stickers plastered all over her hybrid, and that kind of stuff sticks in my head. I had a momentary thought that she was here to ask about my truck (with its rifle rack and NRA sticker) as well, in a whole different way.

"Did you know you have hen-of-the-woods growing in your yard?"

Huh? I must need more caffiene.

She pointed at a large oak in our front yard - "I was driving by, and couldn't help but notice the lovely specimens of mushroom growing at the base of that tree," she practically bubbled. "It was too fantastic not to stop and tell whoever lived here."

Bonnie, it turns out, is an avid semi-amatuer mycologist. She is a member of the the mycology club at Harvard university, and was so genuinely excited to show me the beautiful samples of Grifola frondosa growing right there along the roadside in our yard that I couldn't help but start to be a little excited too. 

I assured the dog that this particular Democrat wasn't there to lecture us on the evils of fiscal conservatism, and was therefore off the lunch menu, and asked Bonnie to show me which specimens she had spotted. 

Hen-of-the-woods (in Japan, it's called Maitake) are apparently highly sought after mushrooms, that normally grow at the base of old oaks. They can be feet across in diameter, and show up in well stocked Asian grocers regularly. This pretty, folded looking fungus grows densely in big ball shapes that look like a cross between a saggy brain and a feathered fringe. Or something. I don't know how to describe it exactly, but Bonnie assured me that not only were they safely edible, they were delicious.

She hopped in her car, humming with the excitement of having shared her knowledge of the fungal world, and I have to admit that her enthusiasm was contagious. I was very nearly certain that she hadn't been leading me on in an attempt to rid our town of one of the few registered Republicans, but I did go back in the house and do an hour or so of intenese internet research on this particular mushroom, just to see if there was anything else that resembled it that was slightly less edible, or had other side effects. Like hallucinations, or painful death.

Nope. Looked safe. I mean, the internet wouldn't lie, right?

I harvested all of it and brought it in the house to weigh. A bit more than 5 lbs of surprisingly dense, firm-fleshed, lovely mushroom. I was impressed. Turns out, ours is just a small sample. These things can easily get into the tens of pounds, and people have maitake parties to chop and store all that fungal fun. 

I asked my Bride and the Critter if they were up for trying some with me. They both got pretty dubious looks. I showed them all of my internet research, but they still seemed pretty skeptical. I diced it up, and showed them the lovely white flesh, and suggested I make a beef stir fry. Or rather two: one with, and one without the mushrooms.

My Bride at first suggested that only one of us eat it, to ensure the kids would have at least one surviving parent.  But curiosity overcame her reluctance, and she scooped a healthy portion onto her rice. 

The Critter, in a rare moment of self-preservation overcoming her culinary adventure, said "Ok. But you try it first, Dad."  

So I did.

It was delicious. 

Mushrooms aren't something you really want to experiment with unless you absolutely know what you're about to put in your mouth. And I'm glad to know that my kids already knew or somehow intuited that. 

But here in our little town, we have neighbors that will stop by and point out what is good to eat and what's not. I'm not sure that I'll do much foraging for these things on my own, but with a good neighbor like Bonnie, who didn't even really know who it was she was stopping to tell the good news to, I was introduced me to something growing on our property that I would have otherwise skipped right over.

I sure am glad I didn't let the dog eat her.

You've cockled your last doo, little friend

We have added several chickens to the flock this year, to replace our natural losses. One batch of 10 or so I got back in spring, splitting a large order with a local friend and chicken guru. The kids and I love getting the baby chicks each spring, and watching them quickly turn from balls of yellow-ish fluff to gangly young pterodactyl-chickens (teenagers of all species seem to max out on The Awkward) to pretty young birds, strutting about. My Bride, on the other hand, would just as soon skip the several months of non-productive growing up it takes before they start laying eggs (usually about 20 weeks or so), and is always after me just to buy pre-grown hens (which I did as well this year, adding 4 or 5 auracanas, who lay pretty pastel green and blue eggs. How very Martha of me.) 

We always order 'hens only'. Our birds are there for the eggs, and I am just as happy to get my young ones from the internet mail order (just like the Settlers used to do) rather than hatching them from scratch ourselves. Because the Critter is the one doing the majority of the bird-caring, I'd also just as soon not have an aggressive male bird in amongst the girls, protecting his feathered harem. And I KNOW our neighbors are happy to do without the noise.

So, no boys. That's the rule. 

Except that it's really damned hard to tell those little baby balls of cheep-cheep fluff apart sometimes. And every once in a while, one slips through unnoticed. A few weeks ago while I was down visiting the run, one of my pretty little hens stretched out its neck and gave a somewhat timid 'cock-a-doodle-doo.'  I did a double take. It was one of the young ones, and slightly bigger than the others of that lot, with a somewhat glossier tail, but no tell-tale spurs developing (cocks have great big sharp toenails sticking out of the side of their foot), and really, maybe this hen was just a little butch? We always get a lot of different breeds, so it's a bit hard to tell what it's "supposed" to look like by comparison. I pulled it aside, and explained the "no-boys" rule, and suggested that if it wanted to thrive at our place it had better try to lay an egg real quick, or at least get better at making like Tom Hanks in Bosom Buddies.  

A couple of weeks later, though, and there was no mistaking it. Our little 'girl' had hit a growth spurt and now towered over the hens around him. He was shooting out all the long, glossy male plumage, and crowing regularly throughout the day. I knew it had to go. 

One of our local friends told me she 'knows a guy who takes care of these things'. He's an immigrant who finds our American grocery store chicken to be bland and puny, and is always glad to help take a rooster off your hands. I had my Bride drop her a line, and let him know that we had a problem that he could help us take care of. He's like the Cleaner. But for chickens. 

As it happens, my in-laws are in town, staying with us. My mother-in-law, smiling, suggested that we "should take care of it ourselves."

This tiny, adorable, loving, devoutly-Catholic grandmother to my children got an almost bouncy gleam in her eye, and started sharpening our biggest knives, humming to herself. Knives so large we that don't ever pull them out of the boxes they came in, because we are saving them for when we have to butcher a mastadon. 

In a fit of "let's make like the Settlers," I nodded, and agreed that I would do this together with my mother-in-law. We would kill the rooster ourselves, clean him and cook him, and take our home-chicken-raising experience over that next hump.  

Seriously. You wouldn't know that this woman had it in her, would you? 

I researched the best ways to kill a chicken on the internet in preparation. (NOTE: Unless you really need to know how to kill a chicken, I recommend you do NOT google 'how to kill a chicken'. YouTube. Really? Yikes.)

The old "whack off its head and let it flop around" is apparently one of the least desirable ways (despite the stories).  The most efficient is to quickly nick the jugular and let it bleed out peacefully, but this takes a level of surgical knowledge of chicken anatomy that I feared was beyond my skills. The most common way for people that do this a lot apparently involves dangling the chicken upside down through an open tipped cone. I'm fresh out of open tipped cones. For the really advanced, I found something called "The English Method," just popping the head right off the neck with your bare hands. I got a little queasy even contemplating this. I certainly wasn't brave enough to attempt it. 

So back to the "Big knife. Whack off the head" for me. I figured I could at least keep it quick, if I couldn't be elegant. 

This morning, we threw a big pot of water on to boil (to scald the chicken and make the feathers easier to pluck), while my brain tried to tell my stomach to man up and quit whinging about what we were about to try and do. 

"You have to pray before you kill the bird," my mother-in-law said. 

Dear Jesus. Please don't let me chop off my own fingers.

Amen.

I went into the pen and caught our young rooster. He squawked a bit, but most of my birds settle down pretty quick once you're holding them. I had tossed in some cracked corn and freshly pulled weeds for the hens to peck at just before I pulled the roo out, to give them some kind of distraction. Chickens really don't care that much - they'll peck at their own dead if they have the chance, without qualm, but I felt better for trying to give them something to keep them busy. I would totally suck as a Settler. 

Between us, we stretched the roo out, and my mother-in-law plucked a few feathers away from its neck. He didn't mind this a bit. For the record, I did actually help. I just was also taking pictures, so you don't see my participation so much in the photographic evidence.

My mother-in-law had the trick of nicking the jugular without the whole head-whackery, and before you knew it and with very little fuss, it was all over. 

My Bride (who had disappeared with the Boy down to the Fire Station for the duration) suggested that we cook a normal grocery-store chicken along with our bird, and do a side-by-side taste test comparison. Sure, lady... not so keen on the messy killing part, but when it comes to the cooking & eating part, you're just FULL of suggestions, aren't you??

So I popped off to the store to pick up an average whole chicken. (Strategically, I did this while the plucking & icky inside cleaning was going on. My mother didn't raise no fool.) 

Voila. One typical store-bought chicken. 

I love how it says it's ALL NATURAL. Good thing I didn't slip up and get one of those PARTIALLY ARTIFICIAL chickens. I hate when that happens. 

I don't know how young a bird is to qualify as a "Young Chicken." And whether this would also qualify as a "spring chicken." But I know ours was 5 months old, and born in the spring. So it was as close of a comparison as I was going to find. 

We decided to roast both the birds with very little seasoning. Salt & pepper only. A bit of chopped celery and roughly diced onion stuffed inside the cavity to give it just a touch of aroma. Roast equally and lay out side by side, served with rice and creamed corn fresh from the market again today. 

We all gathered around eagerly to render judgement. 

First observation: our bird was a little on the scrawny side. 

That's our roo on the left, there. The critter announced at the table that she had named him "Joey." No, I don't know where that came from. But she said it around a mouth full of crispy skin, so I guess it was ok. 

Our bird was young (5 months or so), and not fattened up for eating in any way. There are chickens you raise for meat, and chickens you raise for eggs. Rhode Island Reds are a kind of good all-rounder breed, but ours hadn't really matured quite enough to have a big breast. Plus, all our birds are free-ranging, so they tend to get a bit more excercise than most grocery store birds. 

Side by side, out roo was definitely a bit less tender than the grocery store chicken. But the flavor difference was surprisingly intense. Our freshly culled bird tasted much more like - well - chicken. It was simply delicious. As good as the bought chicken was, the flavor of our rooster was like we had distilled chicken essence into every scrap of the meat. 

I totally get what the Chicken Cleaner was talking about. 

Even the Boy got into it, although he was a little bit sad to learn that 'his' rooster wouldn't be crowing any more. He was a bit philisophical about how much he enjoyed the 'cock-a-doodle-doo' as he munched on a drumstick.  

Hopefully, this isn't something we'll have to do too often (our hens are all valued for their eggs, far more than the $7 it costs me to buy a chicken at the store). But I wasn't going to let a single scrap of this one go to waste. After we finished sitting around, patting our full bellies contentedly, I stuck the scraps and carcass in the pot along with a few vegetables.  

Come winter, we'll enjoy our roo again in the form of a delicious country chicken soup. 

Deliciousness - Late summer corn bisque

The last few months of the Carlisle Farmers Market have been bountiful, to say the least. Late summer harvest Massachusetts is colorful and varied - the zucchini gave way to tomatoes which is giving way to butternut and acorn squash, and growing piles of bright orange pumpkins and the last of the summer greens. 

Each week, I go down and help my Bride and the Critter set up their table. They always sell out of eggs (and our hens are slowing down a bit - the old ones are molting. The newer ones are just ramping up. And one of my hens gave a suspicious cock-a-doodle-doo the other day. I'm thinking I know why that one's been slow to lay.) 

I've developed a habit of trolling the best tidbits of the market while things are still getting set up. We've become friends with several of the farmers, and they'll help me put whatever's best into my basket. I take it home and entertain the Boy for a while, since his 4 year old attention span isn't quite up to several hours at the market. And I cook up whatever I brought home that morning to bring up to the market and give to our friends. 

This week saw the firstr of the real autumn chill set in. I've been turning to soup. I grabbed up a bunch of the corn picked that morning (probably about the last time I'll see it there), as well as a double handful of the prettiest 'baby bell' peppers and a few other ingredients.  This is a dead simple recipe that I put together with only a handful of ingredients that makes the most of the fresh flavors avaialble from really terrific produce.

Recipe: Late summer corn bisque

• Corn - a dozen fresh ears
• Onions - 2 small white or yellow
• Garlic - 1 clove
• Salt - about 2 tsp
• Chicken stock - 8 cups
• Milk - 1 cup
• Thyme - dried, about a tablespoon
• Butter - 3 tbsp 

Garnish: Red & yellow bell pepper and scallions - diced

Dice and toss the onions and garlic in a stock pot with a bit of olive oil, and let cook until transparent. While that's cooking, peel the corn husks, and slice the fresh kernels off the cob. (see the picture if you've never done this before. Also: why have you never done this before? It's seriously easy to get delicious kernel or creamed corn yourself).  

Add the corn to the pot, the tablespoon or so of thyme and around 8 cups of chicken stock, or enough to cover it with a half inch or so to spare and let simmer until you smell the corn. In batches (because it's a lot), ladle it into the blender or food processor. Have a towel ready if you're like me and over-fill the cuisinart, even though you know better. Add about a quarter cup of milk to each batch and puree.  

Move the puree back to the pot add the butter, and let come back to a simmer until heated through. 

Serve in bowls or cups with a spoon full or so of diced peppers and scallions, and if you're feeling up to it, some cracked black pepper and a dash of tabasco. Add a hunk of crusty bread, and you've just made a really good friend of whoever you're serving.