A new one on me…

Today I had to go to town to do my weekly FFA coaching gig.  Nearly every Tuesday this school year I’ve been going in during the school’s lunch to educate the kids on the finer points of Equine Evaluation, aka Horse Judging.  It keeps me out of trouble, gives me a way to torture children and stay in touch with what’s happening.  Sort of.  I’m finding that the Ag kids aren’t always the hippest crew.  It’s alright, I fit in.

After that I stopped to do my grocery shopping before heading home.  The store that was on the way usually has the best prices on meat, so I look through their meat case pretty thoroughly.

Having a few par-broiled chicken breasts around works pretty well for quick meals.  I was looking at some of the smaller packages and they are labeled Chicken Breast Steaks.  What?  Huh?  When did we get Chicken Breast Steaks? Does anybody know when this happened?  I have always known them just as Chicken Breasts, maybe Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts, but never has the word steak been involved with my chicken.  OK, you’re right – Chicken Fried Steak?  Yes, but that is technically a beef steak.

So I bought a family size pack that was just labeled Chicken Breasts.

I realize they are probably all the same.  It’s just the principle of being told my chicken is steak.  They can’t lie to me like that.  I won’t let them.

Please, please correct me if you are into meat science and what I say here is misinformed.  Here’s how I always understood things.  Steaks are thinner cuts of larger muscles or groups of muscles.  A cut being an inch thick, give or take.  How can a chicken breast then, be a steak.   It’s one, maybe two muscles.  It’s not cut or sliced when I buy it.   I know, I was dissecting them before I put them in the pot.  It looks to me to just be one major pectoralis muscle.  Again, anyone more familiar with chicken anatomy, please correct me.  Wikipedia was not exactly as detailed as I hoped on this subject.

The dissecting my meat thing is an occupational hazard at this point.  All steaks, roast and other cuts of meat fascinate me.  I try to correlate the muscle from the cow, pig or chicken with the matching muscles in people and horses.  Sick, I know.  It’s my own private mystery to sleuth out.

While I’m on a rant about chicken meat… when did these chickens get so huge?  I have a couple of Big Bertha’s running around here.  Somehow I doubt they would dress out as large as these commercial chickens do.  (If I could ever have the heart to slaughter one of my chickens.  Some days I think it would be no problem, other days I like the nameless, faceless, personality-less meat I get from the grocery store just fine.)

Ok, I feel better now.  Thanks for letting me carry on.

My SuperBowl Sunday

Oh yeah was there a football game on today?  I haven’t had the TV on at all.  Don’t know who is playing, what time it started or what channel to watch it on.  I have watched and enjoyed football at other times in my life.  It seems I just have better stuff to do now.  Really, watching my chickens fight over scraps is more entertaining than actual football, and they basically do all the same stuff.  One chicken gets a piece of something good and starts running with it, meanwhile the other hens are trying to take the good stuff for themselves.  Same thing but with fewer commercials.  I figure if any of the ads were really worth seeing they will be on youtube soon.  Plus, the overwhelming commercialism just sets me on edge.

If I was going to follow a non-horse sport, it would be hockey.  In fact when I had cable in the past, one of the ways I justified it was that I would be able to watch some hockey games.  Ok, a lot of hockey games.  What’s not to love about a season that is six months long?  A sport that takes a great deal of skill to play.  Any idiot can run across a grass field.  Try tying on a pair of skates and chasing after a frozen chunk of tire.  That requires real athleticism, coordination and fitness.  And who doesn’t love a good fight?   Even saying all that, I haven’t kept up with how the teams are doing, let alone watched a game this season.

Better stuff to do… that would be watching the World’s Greatest Horseman Finals this morning.  It was webcast live from San Angelo, TX.  There were some great rides and amazing runs.  Ron Emmons won it on Olena Oak.   I got to watch that team win the Magnificent 7 in Sacramento this past June.  Looks like the horse is just getting better and better.  Considering he marked a 228 in the cow work today, I don’t know if he can get any better now.   To me it looks like a grueling morning of competition.  Starting out in the herd work, then run a reining pattern, next is steer stopping finishing up with cow work.  The horses have to be fit and the riders have to stay focused to get through four events without leaving anything on the table.

Once that finished up I worked a couple of horses.  Jr got some time to hang out away from his pen.  Sierra is getting more fit and doing better with lateral work.  I messed around with the yearlings, mostly watching the colts play tug of war with what looks to be a scrap of T-Shirt that has blown into their pasture.

I made a Quiche.  Crust recipe from The Coconut Mama, here.  I’ll probably use this recipe again.  The coconut flavor does come through, but not obnoxiously so.  Somehow the almond flour recipe didn’t seem right for a Quiche.  Maybe that’s just me.  Although I did love the almond flour crust recipe for pecan pie.  The Coconut Mama also had a Quiche recipe I sort of followed… my modifications: added chopped red bell peppers and mushrooms (left over from pizza last night) and I used prosciutto instead of bacon, then I only had about a cup of milk and no cream – so I used up the milk and added coconut milk instead of the cream.  It all tasted pretty good.  The only coconut flavor that came through was in the crust, the coconut milk didn’t come through in the filling at all.

Next, instead of typing away at this computer, I need to be cleaning the house.

Chickens

Chickens!

Let me start by saying that I never used to like chickens.  Good to eat and the eggs are great – but the actual live bird, um no thank you?!  I think it started when I was young and a friend of mine had some hens.  I tried to help her collect eggs one day.  There was one broody hen that pecked at me when I tried to get to the egg.  Freaked me out!  Chicken attack!  After that when someone mentioned keeping chickens I just told them good luck.  I usually added something along of the lines of “I don’t do birds.”

Fast forward to now.  I am not entirely certain just how many chickens there are here.

It started when I picked up a dozen last winter (just pre-spring) at the feed store.  Most of those got killed by a neighbor’s dog.  So I put in an order with McMurray Hatchery for their Rainbow Layer collection (25 pullets).  Many of those chicks also got killed off by dogs.  There still are four of those hens around.  A White Laced Red Cornish, a Partridge Rock, an Americauna and a Red Leghorn.  The Cornish hen lays a lovely brown egg for me every day, since she was 16 weeks old.

Then some friends had a few hens they were getting rid of.  I inherited about six White Leghorns and a few Bantys.  The rooster that is running things now is a White Leghorn that came with that bunch.  The most eggs I’ve gotten on any one day was five (right now I only get one or two).  That doesn’t seem like enough when the bread recipe I use calls for five eggs per loaf.  Don’t try to argue with me.  I want to be able to share the eggs too.

I decided to order more chicks.  This November I received the Feather Footed Fancies assortment, again 25 chicks.  I lost nine of them due to shipping stress.  Still I have 16 happy, clucking active chicks – who got turned loose in the yard for the first time yesterday.  There are a couple that I’m still trying to decide what breed they are.  I’m also not quite sure who is a rooster and who is going to be laying eggs.  So far, I know there are Blue Cochins, Black Cochins, Buff Brahmas, one Light Brahma, Black Langshams.  One appears to be a Salmon Faverolle and I think is a rooster.  There are also several reds – not sure if they are Brahmas or Cochins or?

Blue Cochin

I love the Cochins, they are very heavy feathered down the leg and look like they are wearing wooly chaps.  I almost here the jingle-bobs of spurs when I watch them walk.

Black Cochin, Light Brahma in the back ground. Kind of giving an Angry Bird look.

You might of gathered that I am liking my chickens.  That is accurate.  One of the White Leghorn hens runs up to me, then shadows me until I do what she wants.  Usually, it’s when she thinks there could be food and she needs to be sure I put it in the right place.  I talk to all of them.  Maybe I’ll end up being the crazy chicken lady.

Red Brahma (?) with Light Brahma behind.

Why did I want chickens in the first place?  Eggs.  Bug control.  Actually, the order should be reversed there.  Chickens are excellent at keeping bug numbers low.  It is why there are so many of them on this place now.   I want to get other birds like guinea fowl and peacocks too.  Guineas are supposed to be awesome at eating bugs and they are reported to be virtually unsinkable, so I don’t have to worry about them being coyote or dog food.  Same thing with the Peafowl, plus they eat snakes too.  For that matter they may all eat snakes.  Pretty sure the chickens chow on lizards, didn’t see any around this summer.  Anyhow the Guineas and Peafowl will roost in the trees, so I don’t have to worry about having a house for them.  They are also excellent watchdogs of sorts.  Anything out of place and they will call out.

Have you ever heard/seen/done the Chicken Dance?  Until this year I never understood it.  I thought it was just dumb.  After watching the rooster I realize that all the movements in the dance are exactly what the roosters do.  And the song!  The song is just perfect for the clucking.  Most likely, next time I see someone doing the Chicken Dance, I’m going to join in.

Sorry to get a little weird there.

Speaking of weird and eggs, when I was visiting Portland a few months ago I saw vegetarian fed eggs at the store.  Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!?  Why exclude meat and bugs from their diet?  Or are worms and bugs and lizards vegetables now?  No bird I can think of is vegetarian.  Yes they eat vegetables and scraps.  But.  Give ‘em a hunk of meat and watch them devour it!  Carnivorous little beasties.

Scraps are one more reason to keep these guys around.  Chickens are better than compost bins.  They are individual mobile converters of kitchen scraps to fertilizer.  And, they do the job of spreading the fertilizer for you.  Maybe not exactly where you want it, picky, picky.  They certainly save time on having to deal with building a bin, putting the stuff in there, turning it, keeping it at the right moisture content, not letting it get too hot or cold.  You get the picture.

For people with livestock, they do great at breaking up manure as they pick through it.  Plus, they are eating the worms before they can (re)infect your stock.  How slick is that.

So, make your plans to get some chicks this spring.  It is true that home raised eggs taste better.  The yolks are so much darker and firmer.  And tastier.  Much, much tastier.  Did I mention that the eggs are better tasting?