gratitude for a chicken life well-lived

It’s only been since participating in our CSA plan that I’ve cooked whole chickens. We signed up for the chicken option since we do eat chicken, and I liked knowing that the birds would either come from the farm (laying hens) or from local Mennonites with whom our farmer has an arrangement (roasters). I wasn’t prepared, though, for how emotional I got the first time I had the little naked bird carcass in my house. I cooked it, but it was hard; we ate it, and had a long moment of gratitude for the chicken’s life. It was delicious; we appreciated each bite.

It’s less difficult for me to cook a chicken now, mostly because I know what I’m getting into. I reevaluate each year whether I want to continue to receive chickens, and two more times now I’ve chosen yes. While the roasters are delicious, it’s the stewing hens that I feel an affinity for. I, along with nearly 100 other families, have eaten the eggs they’ve lain over the past three years. I have eaten the vegetables grown with the potent addition of their waste and kept free of many insect pests by their daring predation. I accept that their lifetime is limited, and that they won’t be able to lay eggs forever. I also accept that our farmer has chosen not to be driven by a chicken’s schedule, and won’t be replacing this flock. So I choose to accept the last gift of not one but many meals, in the form of the chicken stock I make and the meat full of all the flavors of what passes for wild living for a chicken.

Today I picked up the first of this winter’s chickens, and I feel a bit sad for it. I appreciate it and am looking forward to the meals it will provide, but I’m grieving a little bit as well. In a moment of the kind of timing that was completely absent last week, my replacement stockpot arrived yesterday, so the hen is already stewing. I have ambivalence about eating her, but that ambivalence is only one part of the multifaceted evaluation I make each time I choose my food. On balance, I would choose the same way again. Still, she deserves her moments of recognition, and today I will take time to make sure that this one chicken’s life has not passed unnoticed.

Thank you for the eggs, and the predation, and the poop. Thank you for your years of avian service. Thank you, in advance, for the delicious soups we will enjoy this year, flavored with your years of chicken experiences. Never let it be said that I forgot my food was once a living being.

gratitude for a chicken life well-lived

garden log : let it snow!


The impressively happy lavender plant by the front step.


Snow-topped garlic chives and ice plant, with aster in the background.

It doesn’t snow that frequently here; last year it only snowed once, at about this point in winter. Last year’s winter was hardly cold enough to be called winter, and I fretted that the bacteria and fungus pests weren’t getting enough nights of killing cold. This year, though, winter’s been satisfyingly cold (more satisfying for the garden plants than the inauguration spectators, I’d venture). Today’s snow is the first of the year, and will likely be gone in a few days, washed away by the rains that are coming tomorrow. Before that happens, I seized my chance to document the winter structure of the yard, something gardeners tell me is just as important as the summer blooms. Taking a closer look at the stalks I’ve left to do their own thing over the winter, for plant health as much as for aesthetics, I can appreciate the beauty of the beiges, browns, and reds, holding up the snow and staking out their places. The lavender is not even properly ‘stalks’; it’s thrived in its new spot and appears to be weathering the cold without any negative effects. Last year I cut back the aster, chives, and ice plants by now, as well as pruning the roses. I’m glad I let them be this year; the stalks are perky and heartening to see, and the roses are looking healthier than I’ve seen them since we moved in.

Just this weekend I noticed the first shoots of daffodils, star plant, crocuses, and hyacinths poking their way up through the earth and cleared the leaf cover away. I’m hoping the coming cold rain is just what they need water-wise and the snow doesn’t stunt their growth. There’s not much else to do this time of year except cut back the winter stalks and deadwood on the shrubs, both of which I’ll do just as soon as the snow melts and the buds become more visible.


Ice plant along the south fence, with the pink rose in the background.

garden log : let it snow!

food : all things quince


Quinces from our backyard.

One of the best surprises we’ve had as we’ve gotten to know our house and yard was the discovery of quince trees in the rear corner of our neighbor’s yard, along the border between our two properties. Because we are the neighbor to the south, and there are other trees to the north in our neighbor’s yard, the trees grow toward the sun, overhanging our rear sidewalk and garage. During the first year we were here, we saw one or two yellow things on the ground by the back fence, and commented to each other that an animal must have dragged an apple or something into the yard and left it there. That was the sum total of the interest we paid in the situation and the energy we expended in addressing it: very little. We were busy with other parts of the yard, and a bit overwhelmed by the sheer amount of work it would take to clean up the property; the last thing we wanted to do was investigate mysterious happenings out by the garage.

The second year we were here, we spent more time in the yard during the autumn clearing the ivy, pruning the trees, and covering the weed-laden garden beds with a thick leaf mulch. During all that time in close proximity to the rear yard, we noticed that the yellow fruits were actually growing on the trees, and were littering our rear sidewalk by early November. This piqued our curiosity, and we consulted one of my partner’s colleagues who grows quite a lot of his own fruits and vegetables on a lovely piece of land that used to be part of a dairy farm. He told us we had quinces, a fruit of which I had only heard vague and mysterious references to before that point. Nonetheless, I gathered them up and set them on the back steps to cure while I figured out what to do with them.


Quince jelly.


Quince paste.

There are, it appears, two things to do with quinces. You can make jelly or you can make membrillo, a thick paste that is a favorite dessert in Spain that’s served with manchego cheese. You can also bake and poach them, mixing them in with apple desserts for additional flavor, which we tried as well. With two dozen enormous yellow fruits having literally dropped from the sky into our yard and folks all over the internet raving about the glory of the flavor of the quince, I decided there was nothing for it but to make jelly…and membrillo, since it would be a shame to have all the pulp just go to waste. This was my first foray into canning, and I had to improvise somewhat. I used a stockpot for the boiling water bath (which, by the way, I don’t recommend) and set to work chopping and boiling and draining and boiling and skimming and stirring and pouring, ending up with about a dozen half-pints of jelly and about 20 pieces of membrillo. Happily, everybody I know seems to love membrillo, a delicacy I had never heard of before embarking on this new culinary path. We were able to give away the membrillo, in addition to serving it to guests at every opportunity, and enjoyed the jelly for much of the year. I also learned that canning is actually not that hard — although quince jelly is arguably the easiest product to start with, containing just the right amount of natural pectin to gel on its own and turning a lovely deep rose color to let you know when it’s done.

Following this roaring success, we made a concerted effort to help the trees this year. We cut back the ivy that surrounds them and pruned all the not-inconsiderable deadwood. Once we knew what to look for, the trees became incredibly easy to identify, and we were pleased to discover two small saplings at the sides of the main grove, no doubt sprung up from fruits left to lie under the thick ivy ground cover. Later in the spring we were rewarded first by flowers and then by little green fruits. Little green fruits which soon littered the ground when the gale-force winds of the early summer storms blew through. This autumn, there was not a single yellow fruit on any of the trees, much to our disappointment. We are hopeful that quinces are like some varieties of pears, with large and small production years, and that next year will be a banner year. In the meantime, I have been combing the internet for a mail-order source of quince fruits, to no avail, having learned the hard way that their floral flavor is truly as addictive as quince fans claimed!


Tarte tatin, with a layer of quince slices — magnifique!

food : all things quince

happy new year!

Happy New Year, all! Welcome to 2009! 2008 was certainly a full and busy year, and I can’t say I’m sorry to see the backside of it. I’m looking forward to a more steady 12 months; getting married was great, but I wouldn’t want to do it again. Ditto with all the traveling we did; we were glad to see family, but not always happy about the reasons for the trips.

Looking ahead to this year, I am excited about the next round of work we’ll be doing on the house. Installing some kind of trench-and-pump system in the basement to deal with the water inflow is the highest priority, and we plan to get that taken care of over the next few months. Once that’s done we have two small projects on deck—installing an exhaust fan in the upstairs bathroom and in the kitchen—and then it’s (‘just’) gardening and painting. We’re pleased with the progress we’ve made this year, both by ourselves and via the folks we’ve hired, and are starting to be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s true that the major renovations we started out discussing—central air and a redone addition, namely—are going to have to wait until the unforeseeable future. However, we’re coming to the end of the smaller scale repairs and back maintenance, so that feels good. After we complete these few projects the work we do on the house will be optional and voluntary and much less costly, a shift that we greatly look forward to.

I hope that the new year brings peace and harmony to your homes, and outward from your homes to the world. Namaste, friends.

happy new year!