Vitafamiliae

So the predicted chicken fiasco went pretty well considering it was, well, ME at the helm of a big sharp knife.  I handed the camera to the twins and let them document it.  I am sad to report, they inherited my disappointing photography genes.  Most of their pictures were blurry.  The rest of them were random.  Like in this picture where I flashed the chicken a Poultry Gang Sign to let him know I’m his new boss.  Gulf Coast Holla!

A chicken and his neck are soon parted.

And here’s one where Adam flashed the camera.

I watched the video to figure out how to cut a chicken up, and then I went to hacking.  I didn’t really follow the instructions.  Once I knew the pieces I needed, I just went for it.  I handled it okay, although I may have squealed a little when that wily bird reached his little chicken wing up and grabbed me by the wrist.  I knifed him back into submission.  But I was understandably a little queasy by the time I was done.

I dissected the bird and marinated him in buttermilk, garlic, thyme, and salt and pepper. Once he was grilled, that feared fowl was delicious.

Which means, heaven help us all, I may have to do this again sometime.

Remember how a few weeks ago I mentioned that I was trying to be better about building “fellowship” with my kids?  I realized I’d gotten so distracted by the training I’d forgotten to have a relationship with my kids.  We’ve quit school for the most part so we can focus on taking a break and just being together.  And it’s been working.

But some days, it’s Just Plain Work.

Today was one of those.  I took to putting Mentor Annie’s words up all over the house around mid-morning, just to help keep my cool.  We had moments of pleasant, moments of happy cuddles and kind words.  But then somebody would pee in front of the washing machine and I’d feel my eyes bulging and my palms sweating.  Or the boys would plug up the shower drain so they could “swim in it” and I’d feel lots of little implosions going off in my head.  I may have screeched a time or two.  I prayed for patience and God delivered, but when Andrew cut me loose sometime around 5:30, I grabbed my sweater and hit the door.

I had to get out.

I walked through the neighborhood in the direction of a small pond at the front of our subdivision.  Just as the pond came into view, I was greeted by a friendly duck.  Our neighbors raised a few ducks that now live at the pond and enjoy a life of ease.  I said hello to the duck (I live with Little People, where talking to animals is a normal everyday occurrence) and we began walking together.  At first, he followed me.  Soon, he pulled up beside me and we walked/waddled along in companionable silence.

I’m sure he was expecting crackers or bread, but he seemed fairly content to keep me company.  I thought it would make a cute picture for twitter, so I grabbed my phone and tried to get the camera working.  I noticed his beak was getting closer to my feet, so I picked up my pace a bit.

He sped up, too.

And he started craning his neck toward my toes.  I broke into a run.  So did the duck.  (Aside: Do ducks run?  What’s the verb for Ran/Waddled?)

Gripping my phone tightly, I tried to shoo him away while backpeddling quickly.  My instinct was to throw my phone at him, but my Love of iPhone trumped my need for survival.  There was more running, more waddling, and some screeching.  (No, the duck didn’t screech, although that would have been cool and made me seem less ridiculous.)  Eventually, I got close enough to some trees and managed to wrap my fingers around a small branch.  As soon as That Bird saw me bend over, he reversed course.

I waved my stick around and shouted at him a bit more, just to show him who’s boss.  But he had turned away and refused to look me in the eye.  I’m hoping he was properly ashamed.

Still wielding my stick, I wandered over to the dock and pondered how my feet could have seemed so tasty to him.

I was struck by how quickly the duck retreated as soon as he saw me reach for my “weapon.”  We’d been such pals only moments before.  At first, it seemed like an apt analogy for all the Needs in my life, nipping at my heels every second.  But I was more struck by how friendly we’d felt before and how abruptly it had ended.

A handful of moments flashed through my mind of the last few hours.  Moments where I’d screeched.  Moments where I might as well have stood in the middle of the room, wielding my switch like a samurai warrior, daring my children to cross me.  And the sweet fellowship had been broken.

The duck continued to ignore me for the rest of my stay.  Later, as I wandered home, I realized that it would have only taken a few bread crumbs to heal the breach.  In the same way, whether my children had broken fellowship with me, or I had blown my top and hurt our relationship, I knew I was the grown-up.  It was up to me to make amends.

Our children aren’t really at the age where they know how to take that first step.  They’re still learning how to initiate apologies.  But I’m the Parent.  No matter how they have wronged me, no matter how foolish they’ve been, I am responsible for my own reactions.  I am responsible for my relationship with my children.  I can be the one to start the apologies.

And I’d like to give them more than bread crumbs.

I’m thinking chocolate will be my Wild Duck Tamer of choice.

Oh. My. Word. The BUSY.  It’s a good busy that we’re doing around here, but it’s not our normal mode of operation.  It requires us Leaving The House to go on Adventures.  And I’m not one for actually leaving my cozy little domicile.  I like to keep everybody contained on our turf.  But family, friends, and HopeSuds have sent us on several escapades this week.

Which is how I found myself in a lonely industrial park in a shady neighborhood buying chemical supplies with a mini-van full of kids.  We made a memory.  And we took a buddy, no worries.  But still, it affirmed to me my decision to NEVER LEAVE MY HOUSE AGAIN.

Until that afternoon, when we went cruising down the highway to visit my Dad and The Fam.  They are right in the final throes of finishing a new house and moving out of the barn they’ve been living in for a year.  And yet my sister felt the need to have a birthday.

So we headed south to celebrate and try to be useful.  Pretty soon I found myself wearing knee-pads and wielding an Exact-o knife while we laid the laminate flooring in the sewing room.  Oh yea.  You heard me.  I was armed and dangerous, people.  Here’s what we did.

Peel and stick, peel and stick.  My home improvement genius knew no bounds.  Besides, I let my sister do all the hard work.

I left the work in the new house and went to the “old barn” to put together a veggie soup.  Now, all the other times I’ve visited, there’s always been someone to help me find stuff.  But this time, it was just me and the crickets.  No, literally, there were crickets.  And a few flies.  So I made do digging around in the “kitchen” my family has cheerfully lived out of for a year.  I’m not gonna lie.  I felt a little like Laura Ingalls in that pole barn, fixin’ dinner.  Mostly because I couldn’t find a pot big enough to feed our crew and there was a chicken eyeing me suspiciously from the doorway.  I think she was worried about what was for supper.

Back at The Big House (it all sounds so very Southern Plantation suddenly, doesn’t it?), there was no such thing as a high chair for Willa.  So she used my dad instead.

She took her sweet time stuffing her face with Aunt Grace’s cookie cake, not concerned at all that Grampaw had cabinets to hang or stairs to finish.

Once we’d done about all the damage helping we could do, we bathed the kids (my boys’ idea of “going to Grampaw’s house” is actually “rolling around in dirt until all that’s visible is the whites of our eyes”) and tossed them in the car.

As for today’s Busy?  I cannot speak of it yet or my eyes will roll back in my head.  Andrew’s taking the car for work tomorrow and I couldn’t be happier to see it go.  I have a new-found respect for you real Soccer Moms who cart your peeps around daily.  It’s possible I may need to sit in a corner with a bar of chocolate for a few hours tomorrow.  Do you think the kids will notice?

What about you?  Are you a go-getter, in the car every day?  Or do you like to stay home with the chocolate?

Aubrey and her gang decided to spend the day at our place.  She planned to arrive at lunch time, but called and said traffic was slowing her down.  We agreed that I would call Chik-fil-@ and tell them we wanted a platter of nuggets so she could pick them up quickly on her way to my house.

The kids were anxious for their friends to arrive and even more anxious for lunch, so there was a general mood of whiny-ness and low-blood sugar moaning around me when I placed the call.  Which may have impaired my judgment slightly.  I told the lady I needed a platter of nuggets.  She said, “Okay, we’ll have a large platter ready in twenty minutes.”

When Aubrey arrived some time later, she was somewhere between miffed and mildly amused.  The people at Chik-fil-@ had refused to give her the tray through the drive-thru, so she had to haul her four little people into the restaurant to pick up the tray.  Now let me tell you about this tray.  They weren’t kidding about the LARGE part.

Aubrey arrived with no less than 250 chicken nuggets.

So, it was the Day of The Chicken.  We put it on plates, added some Veggie Booty, slices of cheese, and oranges and called it lunch.  Meanwhile the adults (Andrew was working from home) wandered in and out of the kitchen, noshing on nuggets.  Andrew and I are both on low-carb diets for various reasons, so we ate chicken and ONLY chicken.  Throughout the afternoon, when someone complained of hunger, we threw a nugget in their direction and called it snack.  And the adults did more wandering and grazing on the platter as the day wore on.

We did manage to squeeze in some carbs for the kids in the form of Resurrection Rolls. Only all I had was Filo dough in the freezer, so they were very… flaky.  Here’s our very own preschool set-up in the kitchen.

There was too much chaos for me to offer you an action shot of the filling of the rolls, but we accomplished what we set out to do:  We fed the kids something besides chicken.

Until dinner, anyway.

Then we threw some more nuggets on plates, added carrots, grapes, and some dressing for dip.  The adults did more picking and chatting, in between cleaning up spilled milk and soothing the babies.  Here’s the Baby Caucus, forced to sit in another room while the rest of us stuffed our faces.  They’re the only ones who DIDN’T contribute to the nugget-fest.

And here’s the Gang with Mobility, eating… well, you know.

At the end of the day, this was all that was left of that blessed platter.

Then I took some and put them in a bag for Aubrey’s husband, and ate a few more just for good measure.  After that, we had only about 80 nuggets left.  Which means, between our two families, we consumed around 170 nuggets in two meals.

I don’t know whether to feel proud or just sick.

Either way, there’s a herd of beef cattle somewhere that ought to be veeeeery grateful.

Edited to Add:  After his workout, Andrew drank a big glass of whole milk and had ten more nuggets, making our total consumption for the day 180.  Is there a prize for this?  Are we gonna die?

Edited Again to Add:  Andrew wants it to be known that somewhere in those last ten nuggets there was indeed a carrot, so he’s totally cool on the nutrition side of things.

Due to circumstances beyond my control, I had to take a small round of drugs tonight and am unfit for company. Instead, I’d like to introduce you to a new friend of mine, Tater Mama. Today she posted a story from her mama about a run-in with a chicken. And ya’ll know how much I love a good chicken story. Go fill up her inbox with comments and welcome her to the blogosphere. Oh, and read this one all the way to the end and have a good laugh. I know I did. And that was even BEFORE I took the happy pills.

Tomorrow, we are getting up at oh-dark-thirty to drive to Auburn with some church friends to watch the chicken processing at my folks’ house. My brother, Noah, raises broilers and tomorrow is a big chicken killin’ day. My boys have seen this before and were completely un-phased. They even carried two dead chickens by their feet and didn’t really bat an eye. They understand what goes on, but I guess because everyone is so blase about it, and the chickens really are going to a better place (remember how I keep telling you chickens are stupid?), the boys don’t seem to mind. And they don’t mind eating the chickens later, either. I like to think we’re teaching them the circle of life. But then…

Every Sunday, our church has a potluck lunch together after our service. It’s noisy and chaotic, but it’s usually a time of good fellowship and fun as well. Each family brings a dish or two and we typically manage a well-rounded meal. Except for the Sundays when we have five salads and a pot of corn. But we can always rely on Mr. Ken to bring us several buckets of Kentucky Fried Bird. They’re given a special place of honor in the buffet line and are especially handy to give out to the children.

My children always look forward to their portion of trans fats and hydrogenated oils, otherwise known as the skin off the chicken leg, which is really all they eat. They know the rules: you must eat the food on your plate or no dessert. (Well, unless a certain little girl is around who is quite adept at snitching cookies and handing them out to the kids she likes. I can’t be everywhere. A mama has to eat, too. Little kids know this and use it to get cookies.) In order to prove they’ve eaten their food, the twins will eat one or two items they like, push the rest around, and then pull the skin off a chicken leg, nibble at it, toss it to the other side of the plate, and come find me to announce they are ready for dessert. It’s a ritual that we’re all accustomed to.

Last Sunday, as the fellas were eating breakfast with Andrew around the table, he reminded them that they had to get ready to go to church. Ian got excited and said, “Oh, I go to church and eat bezzert?”

Andrew responded that he could only have his dessert if he ate his lunch.

Ian nodded with gusto, “Okay, Daddy. I eat my chicken weg all gone and then that chicken not be able to walk any more.”

Yea, he gets the circle of life, alright. And I’d say that chicken is definitely not walking around any more. But maybe I had better point out some of those steps in between, like, the cooking, when we go to the farm tomorrow…

I know, we’ve beat this chicken thing to death, literally. But I have just one more tidbit to add…

When my brother Noah, who-knows-all-things-chicken, heard that I finally cooked one of his birds, he was still unimpressed. “But you didn’t add the foot, Lora Lynn.”

I was well aware that the best gelatin and good stuff that makes a healthy stock could be gotten from just one chicken foot in the pot. And Noah had very kindly sent me home with several feet for free. Because he’s a generous guy. And he likes to make his sister squirm. But I had to work up to the foot thing.

Last night, while making broth, I went to the freezer and I pulled out the bag o’ feet. I grabbed a claw and ran to the stove with it dangling gingerly from my fingers. I almost threw it in the pot with a girly squeal, when I realized that this was blog fodder in the making. So I held off getting grossed out until after Aunt Anita snapped my picture.

Then I pitched those chicken toes into the pot and went and hosed off.

And to all of you who ate my potato soup at church today, I assure you, it will cure what ails you. And all toes, bones, and other chicken parts were carefully removed before serving.

Happy eating, ya’ll. Cluck cluck!

For a refresher on my aversion to chickens, check out Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

That’s right, all my vegetarian friends, avert your eyes. I’m about to discuss chicken in the form of FOOD.

Back in the summer, I rehashed my hate/hate relationship with chickens when I helped my brother take care of his layers. Well, this fall, he raised some broiler chickens. I mercifully had nothing to do with the raising of the bird we ate tonight, but I was there when Noah “put him out of his chicken misery.” Which is another story entirely. One that I will spare you.

Anyway, at the end of the chicken processing, I came home with a cooler full of naked chicken bodies. I put them in my freezer and tried to pretend they weren’t there. Because, I’m not fond of chickens when they’re moving, but I’m also not really fond of them dead. I’m one of those people who prefer my chicken already breaded, fried and boneless, preferably with a special sauce on the side. I get the heebie-jeebies just handling boneless, skinless chicken tenders from the grocery store. So the ten headless little bodies in my freezer weren’t exactly something I was thrilled about. Well, I was thrilled in the sense that I knew how they’d been raised, I knew they ate good stuff, I knew they were so much better for us, etc. But I wasn’t thrilled that I had to, you know, actually touch them.

Consequently, I put off cooking the first chicken until last weekend. Everyone had a case of the sniffles and I knew chicken broth could cure what ails ‘em. So, I took all my jewelry off, cleared the sink area, and pulled out my defrosted “friend.” I gave him a good coating of garlic salt, seasoning salt, and lemon pepper. Then I crammed him into a round dish and tried to jam the lid on. His little featherless tail was jutting out and the lid wouldn’t fit snug. (I chose this particular size dish because I read that roasting chickens in tight quarters results in moister meat.) I wrestled with him some more, called him a few choice names, threatened to just cut the stupid tail off, and finally crammed his little chicken butt down in the bowl. Then, I put a rubber band on the lid just to be sure, threw him in the refrigerator to sit overnight, and went and took a shower. Well, okay, not a shower. But I did scrub my arms past my elbows like doctors do, over and over again. Blech. Then I sprayed my sink down with disinfecting spray and walked away in a huff.

Well, the next day, we cooked his chicken tail up good. Andrew loved it and kept wandering back into the kitchen to pick at the meat. That was fine with me. While I thought all the seasoning was nice and the meat was crazy moist, it all tasted just a bit too much like… chicken to me. Maybe if I had dipped it in ketchup or deep fat fried it.

Anyway, tonight, I took what was left of the sad little chicken body and dumped it in a stock pot. I threw some whole, unpeeled carrots in, some celery, parsley, and some rough cut shallots. I doused it with water and stewed that bird. When I felt I had simmered him enough, I fished out most of his remains and left those for Andrew to pick more meat off of. (Yea, I know, I’m a wimp. I just couldn’t bring myself to actually pick the meat off the bird. Because, well, ewwwww. Besides, baby steps, here, guys. Baby steps.) So, I threw in the dumplings, Andrew added in some of the chicken pieces (mostly white meat, so he had a chance of getting me to eat it), and we sat down to a mighty fine meal of chicken ‘n dumplings with home made biscuits.

And it weren’t half bad.

Here we all are, claiming our victory over chickens.

Everybody Say Chicken!

Ian has his mouth full and is trying to say “cheese” My apologies.

Despite her face, she loved the meal and ate an entire bowl. Much more than Adam. He’s like me. Not a big fan of meat.

Andrew slurped down two bowls, and my husband doesn’t like chicken soup. Or dumplings. Score one for me!

So. The conclusion of Me Vs. the Chickens is this: an eaten chicken, is a beaten chicken. And that’s the way I like ‘em. Well, okay, sort of like ‘em.

There were no incidents involving chickens today. Somehow, though, they still had the upper hand. Because in the five minutes it took me to feed them, I gained two chigger bites in uncomfortable places. I cry, “Fowl!”

Oh, stop.

You know it had to be said.

Here I am, reunited with my Mac and a high-speed internet connection. I opened my blog-writer and suddenly my brain goes completely numb. Thus, I’m going to implement The List of Random Items for your perusal:

1. Me. Vs. the Chickens Part 2 - Today they were out of water, which involves a lot of running up and down hills and putting my hand in creepy spider holes to turn on the hose. Then the dumb birds had the nerve to peck at me when I reached for their water bowl. I turned the hose on them and yelled. Lots.

2. Still no luck with selling our house. The price just keeps getting lower and lower! Bargain! Don’t miss it!

3. Ellen demanded some solid foods this week, so we started rice cereal. She thinks it’s pretty cool and slurps down whatever I give her. Usually my babies reject their first bites. Not her. She works on it a bit, swallows, and always seems interested in more. She has thighs to maintain, people.

4. The amount of comments on my giveaway post is INSANE. I’m slowly but surely working my way through them, trying to make sure I visit everyone’s blog. This is hard work using dial-up. Show a little mercy if I don’t have the patience to take an extra ten minutes to comment. Just know that I’m enjoying “meeting” all these people and wandering the blogosphere, even if it is at a snail’s pace.

5. I miss my high-speed internet and using my very own laptop. The separation is painful. We may need therapy.

6. I’ve even run out of random items for the list now. Time to go rest my brain for tomorrow. ‘Nite.