Try It! You'll Like It!

Growing up in the rural mountains of North Carolina, we ate Southern-style meals and had rules for eating. No, we didn’t have ‘possum, chittlins or pickled pig feet, so you can get those negative stereotypes out of your head right now. We did have vegetables that were overcooked, seasoned with fatback and lots of salt. Because my grandfather and my mother were into gardening, most of our one acre of downhill backyard was tilled, planted, weeded and harvested. Fresh veggies like kale, collard greens, tomatoes and rhubarb were featured on the dinner table, no matter how disgusting they appeared to the finicky eyes of my younger sister and me.

When my grandparents ate Sunday dinner with us, we heard a lot of comments like, "Eat your vegetables. They’re home grown, fresh from the garden," "Much better than store-bought" and my personal favorite, "Sharon, eat the stewed tomatoes or you will hurt Granddaddy’s feelings.” Stewed tomatoes was one of our grandfather’s specialty dishes. "It looks like vomit," I whined, wishing the dog was allowed in the house so I could slip him my food under the table.

My mother required that we at least try everything on the table, no matter how repulsive we found it. I would take a small bite of collards or some such green thing, make a face and swallow. Sometimes I’d hide the food in my napkin or under my plate. My sister and I were skinny little kids. Our older brother was what you’d call a “good little eater” and not so little.

I remember one week it seemed like Mom served cauliflower every night. Regular broccoli was gross enough, but WHITE broccoli had to be a mutation of some sort. Still, I tried it with chocolate pudding being the reward for my compliance. Oh, the inhumanity of my pain and suffering just to earn dessert!

The next evening, there it was again. Was there any wonder why there was cauliflower left over? I dutifully took a bite and went on to my applesauce chaser.

Third night, I realized I was actually eating cauliflower and it wasn’t so bad. I looked at Mom suspiciously. Did she do this on purpose? Serving a vile vegetable so often that my taste buds were numb to the intrusion? Or maybe she was right; some foods just need to be given a chance without consideration of how they appear.

Now that I cook for a finicky child of my own, as well as my husband’s grandchildren when they visit, I find myself quoting my mother. “Kelsey, if you don’t eat your food, you’ll hurt my feelings.” Like a typical teenager, hurting her mother’s feelings is a constant game. Score one for the kid.

The same teenager was also diagnosed last summer with Celiac Disease, an auto-immune disorder of the small intestine that reacts to gluten, a product naturally found in wheat, barley, rye and many prepared foods. The challenge of creating meals that will not only be gluten free, but also appealing to Kelsey, is daunting. Kelsey, like her mother, already wouldn’t eat red meat even before being diagnosed with Celiac. She also doesn’t like any seafood. That leaves us with chicken. Ironic that we have a flock of 15 backyard chickens as pets.

Although it’s gotten easier for me to “de-gluten” any recipe, I will typically spend an hour-and-a-half preparing our dinner from scratch to ensure that it’s not contaminated with gluten from prepared products. My husband Jay and I usually love the food (we are no longer skinny kids) and Kelsey often turns her overly critical little nose up, claiming to be full. That’s when I pull out the “You’ll hurt my feelings” and “Take a least one bite” quotes.

The other night we had Jay’s grandchildren, Amanda and Ben, stay over. Amanda is ten, polite, and a good little eater. Ben is seven, outspoken, and picky about his food. I planned to use the only meat I had left in the fridge, two packages of ground turkey, to make naturally gluten free Shephard’s pie for supper. I had already used up the russet potatoes earlier in the week, but decided that I should try it with the sweet potatoes I had sitting around. Why not make a sweet Shephard’s Pie?

I served the Shephard’s Pie with the orange-colored mashed potatoes on top. Kelsey and Ben were pretty vocal with their disapproval when they saw it. Kelsey claims she hates sweet potatoes even though I’ve seen her eat them many times. The only reason she likes Shephard’s Pie is the mashed potatoes on top, she whined. She was no longer hungry. Ben loudly claimed that it looked gross. Actually, since Ben has a hard time pronouncing his R’s, it was “gwoss.” He was twice denied his demands for a hotdog substitute. Amanda stared and said nothing.

Jay chastised Ben for being so rude and I lamented about how long I’d been cooking only to have people complain. In the end, they were all hungry and had to give it a try as I’d made nothing else for supper. Jay and I smiled at each other as each disbeliever was converted with the first bite and cleaned their plates.

The kids prefer Shephard’s Pie with sweet potatoes now. Ben must have eaten five helpings by himself. Kelsey decided she was hungry enough to take thirds. Amanda complimented me on the meal. Like I said, Amanda is the polite one of the group. The orange Shephard’s Pie was a huge hit.

This one is for you, Mom.



Me with my sister, mother and brother in 1979



Size Does Matter - If You're a Chicken

This past weekend, the family (husband Jay, daughter Kelsey and myself) went on our planned excursion to the poultry show being held at the Big E, an hour away. Our plan was to purchase a couple of the large breed hens we’d admired so much at the last poultry show we attended in November where we bought another Silkie and a bantam Cochin, both very small girls.

Millie, the bantam Cochin hen

The Mallory Complex Building at the Big E was divided into two areas, birds for sale and show birds. Only one person was selling chickens in the large fowl category, the rest were bantam (miniature) chickens or breeds that didn’t interest us. So we zeroed in on Steve who had a few cages of very large Cochins. Unfortunately, his hens were already marked as sold and we didn’t want a rooster….or did we? We could wait a couple of hours for Steve’s friend to come back from the farm where he’d gone to get more hens to sell, try to talk one of the exhibitors into selling their show chickens (after judging) or consider one of the three colorful cockerals (male chickens under the age of one year) Steve still had available. Jay admired the cape of feathers on the males for fly-tying purposes (a fly-tier will pay as much as $90 for a scalped rooster cape of outstanding quality), Kelsey wanted to get the rooster and go; I was the hold out. As we stood there and debated, two other buyers came up and offered to buy Steve’s chickens. I was being pressured.

I did not want to take a chance on another aggressive rooster, like our previous one who had to be sold. The downside to not having a rooster though is that they truly become the leader of a flock and will protect their hens from predators, often to the death. These boys were the size of a hawk, but a lot heftier. A rooster has no influence on a hen’s egg-laying ability, just whether or not the eggs are fertile (something we don’t care about). The Cochin breed is known for being big, friendly and fluffy; the gentle giant of chickens. Interestingly enough, our bantam hen Millie is a Cochin too. Same breed, just two extreme sizes.

You guessed it; I gave in and we got ourselves a roo. He barely fit in the large cat carrier I had, but we placed him in the back seat and happily left, me still in disbelief that we’d just bought a rooster. His clucking is a low, resonant sound, a deep James Earl Jones-type of voice. “How about naming him Mufasa?” I suggested to Kelsey. “He’ll be like the King of the Jungle, a protector of his flock.” Kelsey came up with a better name, Aslan, the lion character from The Chronicles of Narnia series by C.S. Lewis.

Since we had to go through Hartford on our way home, we made a detour to Whole Foods to pick up gluten free foods for Kelsey. Kelsey has Celiac Disease so we are constantly looking for food that will work for her. We filled our grocery cart and finished by picking up lunch while were there. As we sat in our car in the Whole Foods parking lot eating lunch, I thought about what a wonderful family day it’d been. A brilliant cockeral in the back seat, a happy daughter because she’d found the gluten free mega-load, and a delicious meal for three hungry people. Aslan even got to share in our Whole Foods bounty.

Normally, there is a proper way to introduce a new chicken to the existing flock, just as there are best practices for bringing a new kitten home. Chickens, however, can be evil toward new-comers and tend to attack those perceived as intruders or weak. I hoped that with Aslan’s size and gender, he wouldn’t get hen-pecked, but he’s very young. My hens may not be impressed with a teenage boy. With previous new clucks, I put them in a cage near the coop so everyone could get used to seeing each other for a few days. In this case, the temperature was expected to be about 9 degrees overnight so leaving a chicken in an exposed cage was out of the question. I ignored Kelsey’s suggestion of keeping a rooster in her bedroom. Aslan squeezed through the door of my bigger cage and stayed there until dark when I placed him on an empty perch in the chicken coop. Chickens are blind and helpless in the dark so the hens had no choice but to allow the stranger with the deep voice to nest with them.

In the morning I opened the coop doors and calm, cool Aslan strutted out of the coop with his new harem and began to eat the scratch off the ground. This was the first time the hens got a good look at Aslan out in the yard with them. The first challenger was Pilgrim, our Plymouth Barred Rock, then Lucy, the Rhode Island Red. Both tried to spar with him. A couple of fluttering chest-bumps from the big guy and the hens quickly figured out the new boy was no push over and backed off.

Aslan is doing great so far. I constantly marvel at how truly magnificent he is with his multiple colors and his feathered legs. I took my scale out and weighed him; he’s 9 pounds. He should weigh about 11 pounds when he’s fully grown. He hasn’t picked on any of the girls and has started crowing, albeit an adolescent crow. The hens respect him and no further aggression was observed from anybody. When I let them out in the afternoon to range in our yard, Aslan stayed right with his new flock, returning to the coop to roost when it got dark. It’s been such an easy integration with a large rooster into a flock of hens. Normally it can take weeks for a flock to completely accept new pullets and even then the smaller ones will always be at the bottom of the chicken hierarchy.



Aslan with his new flock


In the cat world, the males rarely dominate the females. Boy cats will “Yes Dear” the girls, staying out the way if she’s in a bad mood and savoring the times she is affectionate. With dogs, we’ve all heard of the little dog bossing the large dog. For them, and for people, an assertive personality is all that’s needed to be in charge. In the chicken yard, however, size does matter. It doesn’t hurt to be the only boy either.



Aslan the Magnificent



Good Enough

I’m one of those people who know how to spell. I’m from the old school, before spell-check started creating a generation who has no clue how to spell correctly. Since spelling is one of my few talents, I was disappointed years ago to learn that my natural ability has nothing to do with intelligence. If I’ve spent hours creating a new page for my website only to find out later that I have a typo (there is no spell-check built into web design), I will go back in and correct it, no matter how tired I am of sitting at the computer.

My kids cringe when I find a misspelling because I usually declare out loud, “Ah ha! They can’t even spell ‘necessary’! I should send this back marked up in red pen.” “Mom, please don’t say anything to my teacher. Just let it go," they beg. I especially get irked when I see a business has paid a third party for professional signage or documents, only to have typos glaring out. I have found typos in clothing labels “Machine Wash Seperately” and government forms “The Special Administerator shall file a vertification of assets...” My spelling gift is both a blessing and a curse because I find mistakes very difficult to over look, giving me a Miss Know-It-All edge.

All that being stated, I am much less of a perfectionist with just about every other aspect of my life, where I often choose to take the “it’s good enough” approach. For this reason, you don’t want me in an accounting field where numbers and balancing are important. I can spell ledger, but don’t ask me to keep one and have it make sense.

For instance, I like to do pottery. If my pot isn’t centered on the wheel, that’s okay, it’s good enough.

If my husband is doing carpentry work and the corners are not square, he’ll start over. My answer to most home repairs is duct tape.

If I’m following a new recipe and find I’m missing a couple of ingredients, that’s okay.

If I clean the floor and find a tumble weed of pet hair later, I may let it lie.

Painting a wall; why do I need to prime it first if I'm just going to paint over it?

If a cat has a “hanger-on” after using the litter box and the dog gets to it first… well, that just makes my job easier.

Maybe I’m just lazy, but then again, I have to save my energy for the important things in life; like finding typos.

New Year’s Resolutions…for the Cats

As we get ready to start writing the year 2012 instead of 2011, I, like many people, ponder what changes I’d like to make in my life with the New Year. Losing weight is my usual resolve. But life is not all about me; it’s really about the cats. But I realize that if we cat lovers were to ask our cats to promise to do a few things differently, we should probably compromise and give them something in return.

• If you’ll promise to aim your hairballs where I don’t walk, I’ll promise to comb you more often and take care of any mats before they become uncomfortable for your skin.

• I will feed you food without cornmeal listed in the ingredients so you will vomit less to being with.

• You will all try to get along with each other. If you can’t stand the other cat, just leave the area. Don’t have a hissy fit just because Bubba looked at you “that way he does”.

• When using the bathroom, please think INSIDE the box. Knowing how you don’t like to use dirty toilets, in return I’ll try harder to keep your litter box clean on a regular basis.

• I promise to spend more quality time with you, playing with cat toys or laser pointers so you can have fun and exercise too. In return, stop pretending that human feet under covers are critters that need to be tamed at 3 a.m.

• If you will cooperate better with claw clipping, I will try to trim your nails every 3-4 weeks so they don’t get hung up on furniture and bedding. If the process makes you nervous, I’ll give you treats to nibble on while I do it so the clippers don’t seem so scary. Read my blog on claw clipping for more advice.

• Stop teasing the dog for your own amusement. We all know you have superior intellect (and smell better too). There’s no need to make her look like a fool all the time.

• As I care about your health, I will monitor your diet carefully to make sure you don’t become too heavy, feeding you a quality, high protein dry food and canned food twice daily. Being a Maine Coon doesn’t automatically mean you are supposed to weigh 25 pounds if the weight doesn’t fit your stature.

• Speaking of diet, I don’t put food out on the counter just for you. Kindly refrain from licking the butter or stealing food as if I won’t notice. I don’t eat your food so don’t eat mine.

Wishing my readers and their feline companions a healthy, happy New Year!


Sharon

Trying to Get Crafty for Christmas

Christmas is coming, the kids are getting restless....let's make Christmas ornaments!  I went online to research what opportunities there were for a teenager and two grandkids, ages 6 and 9.  I found a few possibilities I liked and printed out the instructions.  We spent about $75 at AC Moore and the next couple of days creating personal masterpieces.  Some worked out better than others.  I put links to the detailed instructions of the ones we liked which also shows you what they're supposed to look like compared to our reality.



Ben, Kelsey and Amanda


Peppermint Candy Ornaments - Not worth the aggravation - Will likely drop on the way to the tree

The individual candies are arranged onto a wax paper-covered cookie sheet and heated in the oven so the candies melt together to form a shape.  The candies often didn't hold together unless they were over-melted.  They tended to break, but Ben says they taste the same either way.

Amanda adds sprinkle decorations to the soft peppermints right after they come out of the oven

The candy cane on the right is a remelt after it broke the first time

Duck Tape Ornaments - Interesting
http://www.acmoore.com/forum/resource.ashx?a=2613

I didn't get any pictures of the finished product, but we bought clear ornament balls (I think we got the last of the plastic ones at the Waterford store) and Duck Tape with Christmas print.  We improvised on the instructions, but essentially cut the tape into narrow strips and covered the balls.  I found that a razor blade works infinitely better than scissors for cutting so that task fell to me.  Since Kelsey already had a collection of different colors and patterns of tape she'd done little with, she taught Amanda how to make a wallet and the girls got off on a wallet-making tangent.  Amanda made a wallet for me and one for her mother.  I found out more than I wanted to know about Duck Tape creations as AC Moore has an area with instructional books and sells paper-sized sheets of Duck Tape for the serious taper.  My phone book now has a protective cover of multi-colored Duck Tape.


Kelsey's shows off her Duck Tape Wallet


Marbeled ornaments - Pretty - Will actually hang on the tree
http://www.acmoore.com/forum/resource.ashx?a=2665

I chose three colors of small bottles of enamel paint; red, gold and green.  Taking a clear glass ornament ball, I squirted each color into the ball and let it run down the sides, four lines of each color.  Gold worked great, but the red and green globbed up and fell to the bottom.  I gave up on green and did the other three balls in just red and gold.  The balls are rotated every ten minutes so that the paint slowly merges and covers the entire inside of the ball, creating a marbeled look.  They take days to dry completely, but so far I like them.   This was my project as I thought it'd take too long for the kids to get their finished product.


Kelsey's ornament filled with glitter and snow, my marbeled ornaments


Filling Clear Balls with Stuff - Pretty - Will also hang on our tree
http://www.acmoore.com/forum/resource.ashx?a=2664

We didn't follow any of the instructions provided on the website for these, but borrowed the general idea and the kids came up with their own things.  They used glitter and fake snow.  This would have been less messy if I had a funnel that hadn't been mangled at the tip as it was hard to get material that sticks to everything to go down.  I ended up making a funnel out of paper so the snow would flow better.  Raised paint was used to put designs on the outside of the ornament.  I expect we'll be haunted by glitter and snow until summer.

I really liked all the things you could do with the clear ornament balls.  They're much more professional-looking than the reindeer made out of brown pipe cleaners from last year which ended up as cat toys.

Talking Chicken

A few weeks ago, we suffered a chicken casualty with our backyard flock; a hawk killed our best Americauna hen, Billie. I had driven home after spending the morning at the horse barn where I volunteer and spied the hawk perched about 30 feet up in the trees. It flew off when I got out of the car so I felt better. It wasn’t a large hawk as birds of prey go so I rationalized that if it isn’t big enough to carry its prey away in its talons, most of my chickens would be safe. The chickens were huddled up under our deck, as close to the house as they could get and making a nervous growling sound.

Later, I let the dogs out and noticed their interest in something on the ground. I knew it couldn’t be good. I found Billie, beheaded and partially eaten. Naïve perhaps, but I’d not considered that the hawk would kill its prey and eat it on the ground. The rest of the chickens had undoubtedly seen the whole thing and although chickens aren’t the brightest birds, they were badly shaken. It was days before the girls would venture out from cover without first looking skyward and then running to the next safe place. We buried Billie next to Frodo, the red Silkie we lost last year to a hawk on almost the exact same date. Although I miss Billie and the perfect pale green eggs she laid, I realize we’ve been lucky with predators. We have lost one chicken annually to a hawk. We live in a rural area surrounded by woods and populated by coyotes, foxes, raccoons and fisher cats. Unlike our cats, chickens must live outside. We have since added coverage with a tarp to their chicken yard and limit their free-ranging on our property to their enclosure surrounded by electrified net fencing. The girls seem to like the extra overhead and it will also help to maintain a larger snow-free scratching space for them in the winter.  The perfect set-up would be an 8-foot high fence with poultry netting over the top, but we’re still resisting the commitment of money and effort it would take to make that happen.

Chicken Coop Addition

Meanwhile, we had been kinda-sorta looking for a couple of older chicks to add to the flock. Daughter Kelsey wanted another Silkie and I fell in love with the Mille Fleur colors some of the other breeds come in. Mille Fleur is French for “many flowers”; the coloration of mottled gold, black and white. I found out about the Boston Poultry Show in North Oxford, Massachusetts a couple of weeks ago so we planned a family outing to go chicken shopping. I contacted the person in charge of the show to make sure that there would be chickens available for purchase in addition to those being shown. One of the false assumptions people make who come to cat shows is that all the cats there are for sale (most are not), so I didn’t want to make the same assumption and go to a poultry show for nothing.


The show was being held in an open barn area on a cold Saturday, something a teenage girl doesn’t take preparing for seriously.  Kelsey’s Converse-covered frozen feet cut our visit short, but not before we had a chance to admire ginormous chickens who were there for the competition under the category of Large Fowl.  "Ginormous" is the only way to describe these birds.  We have a Jersey Giant hen who is supposed to reach 10 pounds, but she is a light weight compared to the large fowl breeds at the show who were the height of a hawk and much broader; probably four times as large as my standard breed chickens.  The first thought was that a gargantuous rooster like this would be incredible flock protection against the birds of prey.  Then again, if he sees people as a threat as many roosters do, that could be a major problem.  I don’t want to risk being flogged by a feathered pterodactyl roo. 


However, we came to look at bantam (miniature) breeds. We ended up buying a white Silkie for Kelsey and a Mille Fleur Cochin for me, both females, and named them Beaker and Millie respectively. Our backyard flock is now at 14 hens.


We really enjoyed talking chicken to others at the poultry show. They told us about the next show which will be held indoors at the Big E the weekend of January 14-15. For more information, check the website of the Northeastern Poultry Congress. I think a couple of big girls are in our chicken cards next.

Millie, my Millie Fleur Cochin

Beaker, Kelsey's white Silkie

Autumn Greetings from Sadie



Baby Duncan



Dear Reader,

Several years ago when I first started breeding Maine Coons, I was fortunate to sell a female brown patched & white kitten to a wonderful couple, Kristin and Russ.  They named her Sadie.  The following year, Kristin and Russ got a red & white male kitten from me whom they named Duncan.  Sadie and Duncan, like many pets, are loved like human children.  Kristin is a very creative cat-mom and occasionally touches base with me through Sadie's eyes.  The following is an email I recently received from Sadie that still has me smiling:



Baby Sadie



Hello, Sharon - and howdy to all of our friends at Dracoonfly,

Miss Sadie May here. It's that time of year again...the humidity's gone, Duncan and I have more spring in our step, we leave more hair on the floor and rug and furniture, and with the holidays approaching, we begin contemplating the many things our humans have to be grateful for (namely, us).

There's lots of activity in the yard during the day - squirrels, chipmunks, birds, falling leaves - to help keep our sentry skills sharp. Though we weren't much help to Mom when she came nearly nose to nose with a black bear in the driveway a few weeks back. He came walking across the driveway toward the front porch like he was about to ring the bell, just as Mom was about to head inside after getting something out of the car. Not sure who was more scared - but he didn't stick around long, and when Mom came back in, she said a prayer for all the felines whose owners don't keep them inside, followed by a few rather colorful words of judgement.

Health-wise, we're doing great. Mom wrote a while back about Duncan's back leg, which has been fine ever since the naturopathic vet treated it homeopathically. Oh, the miracles of ancient science and the natural world. I think he's even dropped a few pounds since he's become more active.

Mom thinks I'm oblivious to the fact that she's been fawning over pictures of Ophelia on your website, but I'm laying down the gauntlet. If she contacts you on the sly, the answer is unequivocally NO. My patience is tried daily by you-know-who; I certainly don't need the added strain of a spunky little upstart trying to take over the joint, no matter how cute she is. I do like her name a lot, but let's keep that 'tween us girls.

Anyway, sometimes at night, Mom will read your blogs to all of us like a bedtime story. You've got quite a knack for story telling, that's for sure.

Duncan asked me to pass along his best regards to you... we both wish you, Jay, Kelsey, Tyler and all the four-leggeds a great Fall season.

Sadie



 Miss Sadie May









Mister Duncan MacBeth