We were told over and over by almost everyone how amazing our chicken tastes. This contrasts dramatically with comments I get from others who can’t imagine that there could possibly be a reason to purchase chicken anywhere but the grocery store. I’ve tried to describe it to non-believers a number of ways. The best I could ever come up with is that our birds taste just like chicken, only chicken-ier. I wish I could explain it better, but there’s no way to describe the taste difference between our birds and the ones in the store.

It’s like the difference between a grocery store tomato in the middle of winter and one picked fresh from your garden on a beautiful summer day.

A bag of frozen strawberries or a basket fresh from the farmer’s market sold to you by the little 12-year-old girl that helped to pick them that morning.

Canned corn versus U-Pick corn rushed straight into a pot of boiling water.

Think about it in these terms. Of course there’s a difference. Now, think about poultry. You can have chicken that’s been raised indoors – even if it was raised humanely – or you can eat chicken that as soon as it was old enough to leave the brooder, had fresh green grass, juicy tasty bugs, fresh air and sunshine.

How could it not taste better?

and baby geese…

baby radishes…

And only a couple weeks ago these teenage chicks were these little babies…

And really, I don’t think this picture was taken more than a month ago…

So how did this happen?

Nick’s culinary arts school burned down Tuesday.

Gone.

Demolished.

Nothing left.

His teacher, Chef Becky, lost her knives, her notes and her cookbooks. I’m going to donate the three America’s Test Kitchen cookbooks to her. I’ll miss them, but they’re going to a good cause.

Apparently the other cookbooks she really likes are Jacques Pepin’s. I just can’t give mine up, though, they were a Mother’s Day present years ago.

Also in the same building was the Nursing Assistant, Medical Assistant, Dental Assistant and Computer classes. And everything is just gone. All the kids’ work that they’ve done over the year. It’s just so sad.

The culinary class will share the school district’s kitchen through the end of the year, and they’re hoping to have the facility rebuilt by next fall.

My heart hurts for Chef Becky.

Yesterday I braved the elements and went into the office, but was smart enough to bring my work laptop home with me so I didn’t have to worry about it today…I’m up against a Friday deadline, so a non-working snowday was NOT an option.

It snowed almost all day long. The boys went out and pelted each other with snowballs for a while, and Paul got a hankering for some ice cream. Really – ice cream! It’s snowing big, fluffy white flakes. I think hot chocolate and Paul thinks ice cream. He apparently has always been fascinated with the idea of snow ice cream and today was the day!

We carefully filled a bowl with clean snow, made the base and folded in the snow.

Wanna know something funny? It tasted JUST LIKE REAL ICE CREAM!

Who knew? (Besides Laura Ingalls, of course)

Snow Ice Cream Recipe #1
source: http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art38570.asp
Ingredients:

1/2 c. sugar
1 c. cream
2 eggs
2 tsps vanilla
Pinch of salt

Place the above ingredients in a large bowl.
Mix with an electric mixer. Add fresh snow..approx 5 – 6 cups and mix in to blended mixture.
Eat immediately.

NOTE: Always make sure you’ve had snow falling a while before you collect snow for ice cream so you know it will be clean and free from contaminates.

In preparation of one of the courses, I spent today making beef stock with bones that have resided in our freezer for a couple of months now. I thought of taking a photo of the stock, but there’s nothing photogenic about it. It’s just brown.

In an effort to get me out of my funk, Paul and I took a drive last Sunday. Not having a particular place we wanted to go, we just drove north along a couple of smaller highways.

We passed through many small towns, passed a lot of vehicles that had Christmas trees tied to the roofs, and thoroughly enjoyed the scenery. At one point, we pulled into a little parking lot and watched the North Cascade Elk Herd for a while. I wish they were closer, but the scenery was beautiful.

Here’s the same photo, zoomed in so the elk are visible:

We also saw probably 10 bald eagles, but none of them cooperated for a photo shoot. But the river where we spotted 5 of them at the same time was amazing with the fog hovering over the water.

When we got home, the boys had gotten the Christmas decorations out, put the lights on the house and set the tree up. So we spent the rest of the evening decorating the tree and my funk was gone.

Then a couple of days later I looked out my back window and sighed deeply with contentment. After all, THIS is my backyard.

I am blessed.