Little Bundles of Pigginess

Three weeks ago we woke up to the site you see here on the left. Mama pig had six little piglets. Actually, when we woke up, she had only five piglets. Paul was lucky enough to witness the birth of the last little red piggy.

And since that moment, I have struggled.

You see … piglets are cute!

I’ve gotten used to the big pigs wandering around, and while they’re nice looking pigs, there’s not cute. Not really even attractive.

In fact, when I look at them, I find it very easy to thing of the ham and bacon that they will someday become.

But it’s weird to look at these little red and black and spotted pigs and see them running around, rooting their little snouts into the ground, playing with each other and acting like any other little baby animal … and then come back into the house and take a deposit for the butchered half-hogs that they will be in a very short amount of time.

This experience has definitely made me think even more than I had before about how critical it is that animals we eat are treated with respect and raised humanely.

And I am so thankful that my family is able to be a part of this process.

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.

We Call it Schnitzel

In my childhood home, we would have called this fried pork. In Paul’s house, it was pork cutlets. In our home now, its schnitzel.

Yesterday morning when I pulled out a bag of pork chops for dinner, I was just thinking of dinner. I didn’t realize what this simple dinner would do for my “Mom” rating. Each one of my kids, after they heard what was for dinner, began singing my praises.

One of them even went so far as to give me a hug.

Its amazing what simple ingredients can do when combined.

Pork Schnitzel

• Pork chops
• Panko
• Eggs
• Salt and Pepper
• Oil
• Lemon

Remove all the bones from the porkchops, cutting as close to the bone as possible. One at a time, cover each pork chop with plastic and pound it until its pretty thin…maybe 1/4″ or so. I usually have one of my kids do this. They like having permission to beat on things.

Lightly season porkchops with salt and pepper.

Mix Panko (For 6 chops, I used about 1 1/2 cups) in a pie plate with salt and pepper – I measure by taste here…once the panko tastes suitably seasoned, I stop.

With a fork, mix 2-3 eggs and a couple tablespoons of water in a 2nd pie plate.

Heat oil in a large flat-bottomed pan until its hot enough that a when you drop in a few pieces of panko they begin sizzling immediately.

When oil is hot, dip each pork chop in the egg mixture, then in panko and gently place in the hot oil.

Cook until golden brown on each side, maybe 3 minutes for each side.

Squeeze a bit of fresh lemon juice over each cutlet and serve. I usually make a quick mushroom gravy to go over the schnitzel.

And if you don’t know what to call them, just call them delicious.

The Golden Egg that was laid by the Goose

Last year we attempted to raise ducks and geese as meat birds. The raising of them went very well. The plucking of them…not so much. We decided to stick with chickens and turkeys.

So all winter we have had a gaggle of geese and a raft of ducks roaming the farm. Well, at least we did until a couple of weeks ago when we were visited by a band of coyotes and were left with one goose and three ducks.

Other than the fact that they poop everywhere, they’ve been kinda fun to have around.

But most fun of all is the pretty white gifts they leave for us every morning in the driveway. Every day we pick up two duck eggs and one goose egg. Yesterday, Ryan saw the eggs in the fridge and got a hankerin’ for deviled eggs. Why this child who has no concept of time thought that it would be a good idea for him to boil a bunch of eggs without any adult input, is beyond me. But he did. With no timer. Never looking at a clock.

When I got home, I asked how long they had been cooking. “About 10 minute” he said. So I set the timer for 5 more minutes and hoped for the best.

And got the worst. His 10 minutes appear to have equated to 2 real-time minutes. They were barely soft boiled. Fine for eating, bad for deviling.

Lucky for us, however, he had used the last few eggs from a carton of store eggs I got before the birds started leaving us white ovals of deliciousness. So not a huge loss there.

But the whole episode left Paul with a hankering for deviled eggs. So tonight, I made deviled eggs.

From goose eggs.

And they were golden.

Things to do…

Remind me to each my son (who shall remain nameless) how to hold a camera straight when I send him out to take a picture.