The Problem with Raising Chickens

“What’s for dinner?”

“Chicken”

“What kind?”

“Cooked.”

Approximately two nights a week, that is the conversation in our house. And most of the time I’m not intentionally being vague, I just don’t know what I want to do for dinner.

I am a little hindered by the fact that I’m almost always cooking a whole bird. Very seldom do I cook a meal of chicken breasts, let alone boneless, skinless chicken breasts. After all, it’s a biological fact that there’s no chickens that are made up entirely of breast meat. And I found out the first year we raised birds that if I part out too many of them, we use the breast meat first and are left with a lot of dark meat as we near the end of our freezer storage.

A lot of dark meat.

So, dinner last night was, you guessed it, chicken. What kind? I didn’t know. One idea was shot down because it was too spicy. Another bit the dust because I didn’t want to fry. “What about…” …nope, don’t have the ingredients.

I googled “chicken for dinner” and eventually came to this recipe that hit the trifecta:

1) It sounded good

2) I had the ingredients, and

3) It would work for a whole chicken.

So last night’s dinner for this chicken-raising family was Orange Hoisin Chicken. It was a good, delicious choice.

Orange Hoisin Chicken

• 1 chicken, cut into parts
• 2 T olive oil
• 1/4 c orange juice concentrate (the frozen stuff in a can)
• 1/2 c honey
• 1/4 c soy sauce
• 1/4 c hoisin sauce
• 2 t dried ginger
• 4 cloves garlic, crushed
• 2 T sesame oil
• 2 T rice wine vinegar
  

Heat olive oil in frying pan. When hot, add chicken skin down a few pieces at a time. Cook on med-high heat until skin is dark golden brown on both sides. Place skin-side-up in 9″ x 13″ baking pan. Repeat until all the chicken has been browned.

Mix remaining ingredients except rice wine vinegar together and pour over chicken.

Bake at 375 degrees until chicken is cooked through. (Use a thermometer!)

Set chicken on serving platter. Pour sauce into small sauce pan; add rice wine vinegar. Boil to reduce until thickened. The sauce is delicious served over rice.

Enjoy!

Served our family of 7.

The Words I’ve Been Waiting to Hear

Paul and I have been together for a long time and over the years, we have built up a million zillion memories.

I remember our first date when he told me he was going to marry me. I remember when he did.

I remember the first words out of his mouth when we found out I was pregnant the first, second and third times. I remember his phone call when he told me that he wanted to start a home business, and the phone call three years later telling me he had found a warehouse for us to move the business into, and five years after that when he told me we had a buyer for the business and we were free to move to Washington.

I remember Paul’s words when he told me that Ryan had run into a metal shelf and had split his knee wide open and the only thing in the world that Ryan wanted was me. And when Paul called to tell me that a mailbox had tackled Nick and broken his front tooth and that Nick wasn’t upset until he heard how much it cost to fix a tooth.

And then this past Monday, I got a phone call that started with even more words I won’t forget for a very long time: “We Are a Feed Mill.”

It seems like such a little thing, but the road to this moment has been long and windy. Check out Paul’s blog for more information, and the farm website for information on buying feed.

And leave your own words of congratulations for Paul.