“Dogs are miracles with paws”

Appropriate to what are known as the “dog days of summer”, we invited some of our favorite canines to lunch yesterday, and told them it would be fine to bring their people along if they’d like. Isn’t it just like a dog to do the gracious thing? They all let their people come along!

We began, of course, with a tour of the chicken coop.

Katherine and Pamela

Karma, Dan and Katherine

Kirk and Pamela

Pamela brought treats for the chickens

After the chickens were duly admired, we had lunch outside. For once, I was not complaining about the weather – it was a gorgeous summer day! Victoria volunteered to cook for the group and after consulting with her mother (a splendid French cook!)  turned the menu I had suggested into an epic meal. We started with various Cheese Toasts, then Chicken Pasta Salad (our favorite family stand-by), Chilled Pea Soup with Mint  (I’m going to ask Victoria for the recipe), and then the most amazing Coconut Flan, and Chocolate Mousse served in “spoon bowls”.  Here is the www.epicurious.com recipe for the Bleu Cheese toasts we all loved:

Parmesan-Blue Cheese Toasts with Green Onions

Gourmet | November 2003

by Tina Thompson, Orlando, FL

1 cup mayonnaise

2 large garlic cloves, minced

1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1 1/2 cups freshly grated Parmesan cheese (about 5 ounces)

3/4 cup finely crumbled blue cheese (about 3 ounces)

28 1/3-inch-thick diagonal bread slices cut from 2 sourdough baguettes

Olive oil

3/4 cup finely chopped green onions

Combine mayonnaise, garlic, ground pepper, and cayenne pepper in medium bowl and whisk to blend.

Mix in cheeses; season with salt. (Can be made 2 days ahead. Cover and refrigerate.)

Preheat oven to 400°F.

Brush 1 side of each bread slice with oil. Place oiled side down on large rimmed baking sheet. Bake bread slices until almost golden, about 5 minutes. Spread 1 generous tablespoon cheese mixture on each bread slice on sheet. Bake until cheese topping starts to bubble and toasts are golden at edges, about 10 minutes.

Transfer toasts to large platter.

Sprinkle with chopped green onions and serve warm. 

Thank you, Victoria!

Soho and Bernadette

Dan and Katherine thoughtfully brought a box of “Frosty Paws” for the dogs to enjoy.

Katherine shows Tahoe how to enjoy Frosty Paws

Karma in Nirvana

I think Soho is actually smiling in this picture!

It was a good day to be a dog and a good occasion for this quote by Roger Caras:

“Dogs have given us their absolute all.

We are the center of their universe.

We are the focus of their love and faith and trust.

They serve us in return for scraps.

It is without a doubt the best deal man has ever made.”

More angels.

I wrote yesterday about the various angels Dante encounters in Purgatory. It was apparently a snoozer, judging on the lack of comments and emails. As it turns out, the Divine Comedy is not exactly Comedy Central.

We, however, were visited by angels bearing gifts yesterday afternoon. Amber, her father and sister stopped by for a visit and brought us the most beautiful abalone-inlaid jewelry box from Korea. Such a treasure! And look at these angel faces:

Alix and Amber

The boys were then visited by the Angel of Humiliation, as we contrived a “photo shoot”, sort of a Still Life With Chickens. Since Daniel leaves to go back to school next week, we don’t know when the two will be in the same frame, or state, again, so we snapped a few photos as possible Christmas card howlers. The funniest part was watching them try to capture their chickens. Chickens are fast!!!

Chicken wranglers

Then one of our favorite angels, Our Lady of Perpetual Sweet Rolls, stopped by. Granny has been feeling a bit under the weather for the past week , so it was nice to see her back in top form. We sipped wine in the chicken yard while all the girls free-ranged a bit.

Granny and friends

And I received a visit from the Angel of Construction, who would be the Chicken Emperor himself. He built me a little ledge outside the coop entrance where I can set my coffee in the morning during the coop clean-up. What a guy!

Hope your day is filled with angels…

In Purgatory.

I cannot seem to get through Dante’s Purgatorio. Seven more Cantos loom, not to mention the queue of books I had planned to read by end of summer. Time does not simply fly, it whooshes past. What’s the hurry, I wonder?

As Dante enters Purgatory, his forehead is emblazoned with seven”P’s” (penance? punishment?), one for each of the roots of sinfulness. I’m sorry to say that the chickens have proved themselves almost wholly human in this regard:

Love Defective: they only love me for the treats I bring. If I don’t come bearing mealworms, they have been known to  ignore me altogether.

The good, the Mad and the ugly.

Ah, it was a beautiful morning. My new Keurig frother arrived, and in celebration, I made a cup of coffee topped with perfectly frothed foam in the gorgeous Raynaud cup Victoria’s mother brought me from Paris. Life is good!

Polla Amiga and I got a cluckle out of “Mad City Chickens” last night. We were among the lucky ones who arrived early. Even so, we had to stand in a short line to get in and ten minutes later, it was SRO. The screening was postponed until they could bring in more chairs to handle the overflow crowd. A show of hands revealed that about 2/3 of those present are current chicken keepers. Presumably the other third will catch up after seeing the film.

Can all these people be crazy?

As the plot summary from www.imdb.com says “Mad City Chickens weaves multiple stories and contextual issues on city chickens and their keepers in a non-linear fashion that one rarely sees in a documentary”. Most definitely non-linear! Amidst the educational and informative was a giant chicken peering King-Kong-style through skyscrapers in pursuit of a man who presumably was holding out on the wheat grass. Not a problem for us, as Polla Amiga thoughtfully bestowed some upon our girls last night.

What heaven looks like to chickens

One of the things I learned from the film was that the amount of greens a chicken eats will determine the color of the yolk of the egg it lays. A healthy diet of greens = orange yolk; greens-deprived = the more commonly seen yellow yolk. A portion of the film was also dedicated to squelching the squeamishness of those who fear backyard chickens make them vulnerable to avian flu. A university expert attested that it is virtually impossible for the bug to be transmitted this way, and theorized that the real source of the disease is the heavily concentrated, confined factory chicken and egg producers. He noted that in addition to the problems inherent in high density factory farming, the lack of exposure to sunlight and the attendant vitamin D deprivation makes birds more vulnerable to disease. My chickens don’t care about any of that. They just want the wheat grass.

In case your interest in the film is not yet piqued, here is a link to a trailer on YouTube:

http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&source=hp&q=mad+city+chickens&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=WIiVSvy0EoeQMdDxufoH&sa=X&oi=video_result_group&ct=title&resnum=5# and here is a photo of one of the main characters:

Consuelo, the rescue chicken

Consuelo was rescued from a landfill, where she was found de-beaked, mostly de-feathered and left for dead. Her rescuers discovered that she was one of the occasional survivors of routine gassing of second-year hens by an adjacent factory farming operation. As you will remember from the recent “Hard to Swallow” post, hens are discarded when their egg production falls off after the second laying season. Consuelo has regained her feathers and now lives with a family who feeds her a daily “bouquet of greens”. She has resumed laying eggs, perhaps as her way of thanking her rescuers.

As for ugly, Soho the Pop Tart, wins this week’s prize. I sincerely hope her groomer, Cathy, does not see this photo.

Chloe made me do it

More back to school, and small computer miracles.

Cousin Nick has matriculated at the United States Naval Academy. Nick hails from Sarasota, FL, where he distinguished himself as a tennis player and cellist. From what we’ve heard, he had a multitude of college choices, but chose the Naval Academy out of a desire to get a great education AND serve his country. We are so proud of him! Here he is with his sister, Laura, and mom, Jean.

"Honor...courage...commitment"

I’ve been trying to post that photo for more than a week, but have had problems due to the fact that it was in .bmp format, which is not supported by WordPress.com What to do? A very brief Google search gave the answer. Here is how to convert .bmp files to .jpg on a PC:

1. Click Start, then All Programs, then Accessories. Locate the Paint program.

2. Open the photo in Paint

3. Click File, then Save. You have the option to save it in either .bmp or .jpg, so just click .jpg

4. Voila! You have converted the file from .bmp to .jpg

Yes, I know this is something any 9-year-old – or chicken - probably already knows, but I didn’t, and I’ll bet some of you didn’t either.

Would you like that in Pascal or DOS?

I made another interesting Google search discovery last night: TIME magazine’s 50 Best Web Sites of 2009. Everything you would expect is there, like Facebook, Flickr and Twitter, but there were a number of sites I’d never heard of before. One of TIME’s favorites is California Coastline http://www.californiacoastline.org/, a collection of 10,000 aerial shots of the 1,000-mile-long California coastline. I was unable to locate our home in any of the local shots, but there’s one of Hope Ranch Beach.

Hope Ranch Beach, from the California Coastal Records Project

Another that caught my attention is Supercook.com http://www.supercook.com/, which allows you to type in ingredients you have on hand and then rewards you with a matching recipe. Let’s see. Since our refrigerator is now chickenized, we have meal worms, yogurt, wheat grass and some Brie. Canapes, anyone?

For TIME’s whole list, go to http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/0,28757,1918031,00.html. But don’t forget to check back here, as tonight is the screening of Mad City Chickens, and Polla Amiga and I will be there. Watch this space for a full report!

Mother hen moment.

Summer is winding down – not that we’ve had much summer here. You should have seen the chickens’ faces when it actually started raining this morning! They are most definitely not ducks, that’s for sure. They stood stock still for a few minutes and then exited stage left for the coop in a big feathered hurry.

Yummy bugs after the rain

This is probably the last summer we’ll have both, or either of the boys at home: Daniel will leave to go back to college week after next, and Taylor is counting down the weeks or months before he heads off to a new job – he’s just wondering which one as a surprise new offer came in the other day.

It doesn’t take Freud to figure out that getting chickens was most likely a heart-jerk reflex to an empty nest. And hey, it’s not all bad- we learned to mostly enjoy having the house to ourselves when Daniel left last fall. It helps to have ninety pounds of Chloe underfoot all the time.

But there’s a niggling emptiness that surges up now and then. Now because I finally logged in to www.pandora.com to try it out and the third song on my playlist (I typed in Joni Mitchell) was James Taylor’s “You Can Close Your Eyes”. This was a major part of my “playlist” when the boys were small and I sang them to sleep every night. So just when I didn’t expect it, here’s that song out of the blue and I’ve got a big lump in my throat.

It’s not sadness, exactly. More of that “passage of time” thing that the Chicken Emperor and I prize certain authors (Willa Cather, especially) for their ability to weave into their stories. A sense that a door has closed to a room I can never re-enter. Was I a good enough mom? Did I leave anything undone? Will they ever talk to me again? Are they ready for the real world? Will they ever learn to make their beds and open the drapes?

My handsome guys

Just a moment, and it has passed now, because we’re on to Paul Simon and “Graceland”, which is most definitely nothing I would associate with Joni Mitchell.  I’ll never have to worry about preparing the chickens for their future, since I’ve already promised them immunity from the stew pot. No SAT prep. No waiting up late at night for missed curfew. And the only way I can really disappoint them is to walk in the coop without meal worms, a failure that is easily remedied. But there’s nothing like tucking in a three-year-old just after his bath, hair all slicked down and favorite blankie in hand. Can’t go back, but I guess I can still sing to my chickens.

Well the sun is slowly sinking down

But the moon is slowly rising

So this old world must still be spinning round

And I still love you

So close your eyes

You can close your eyes, it’s all right

I don’t know no love songs

And I can’t sing the blues anymore

But I can sing this song

And you can sing this song

When I’m gone.

Sweet Bookie way back when

What’s for dinner?

Anything but chicken, they say. Actually, I know they love hard-boiled eggs. I haven’t fed them any kind of cooked meat yet, but have read that chickens will eat chicken. Any port in a storm, right?

Jessica joined us for dinner last night and stopped by the coop with a handful of scratch for the girls.

Cash for Cluckers

It occurred to me that if people pay vast sums of money for purebred dogs and cats, does the same goes for chickens?  And, if so, would anyone actually admit it?! “Sorry, can’t afford to go out this weekend, since I shelled out $150 for a Bergische Schlotterkaemme”. I can’t imagine the pronunciation, let alone the transaction.

I’ve actually heard quite a bit of clucking from longtime chicken keepers when they hear talk of baby chicks being sold for as much as $3 or $5 a piece. Our four girls – although they’re worth a king’s ransom to me – cost $2 a piece. Between you, me and the lamp post, I would happily spend $100 for a guaranteed Silkie or Mille Fleur D’Uccle hen. Since those are bantam breeds, you have no sex guarantee (who in this world has ever had a guarantee around sex?!) and you don’t know for weeks if you have a rooster. As much as I want one of those chickens, I also know how hard it would be to consign a bird I’ve raised to someone’s stew pot.

Only $3 each, but what if you get a rooster?

Aside from the hobbyist like myself, there are many serious poultry exhibitors who meticulously work to develop a chosen breed to its standard perfection. In fact, the 2009 American Poultry Association Annual Meet is coming right up September 12-13 at the Boone County Fairgrounds in Belvedere, Illinois. Road trip, anyone?

I just added a book to my Amazon.com basket entitled “The Fairest Fowl: Portraits of Championship Chickens”. According to authors Ira Glass and Tamara Staples, “Chickens this amazing don’t just happen”. Quite honestly, the photographs in this book make my girls look like mutts. I will have to read it somewhere other than in the chicken yard.

The first time we paid for a pet was ten years ago when we acquired the Souper himself, the alpha cat of alphas, the grand puddster, Dizzy. Best $200 we ever spent, but the Chicken Emperor, his regard for Dizzy aside, remains convinced that people should pay US to take a cat, not the other way around.

I'm worth more than you can imagine

I may finally have an illustration that the CE will find more suspect than outlaying cash for cats. According to my online bible of chicken wisdom, www.backyardchickens.com, someone paid as much as $4,501 for a pair of Coronation Sussex chickens this past spring. The breed was originally developed in 1940 to honor of the coronation of England’s King George  VI.  Pigeon blue markings , the blue center of each feather totally surrounded by a white margin, is apparently the key to perfection with this bird.

From www.rarechooks.com.au, this cockrel bears the prized pigeon blue markings of the Coronation Sussex breed

I don’t think a Coronation Sussex is in my future, but I have to admit that when I read about Lavender Orpingtons and Black Copper Marans, $200 a bird doesn’t seem out of line. Just don’t tell Dizzy.

Lavender Orpingtons from www.chirpychicks.com

Never, never, never, never give up.

Someone told Cody that the chickens would come home to roost, so he headed up a tree in front of the house yesterday morning to wait for them.

Counting his chickens

Outlaws.

Chicken headlines are popping up faster than you can say bawkbawkbawk. The CE circled an article in the Los Angeles Times for me yesterday, entitled “They’re laying eggs at an Oakland restaurant”. Chef-owner Charlie Hallowell of Pizzaiolo restaurant http://www.pizzaiolooakland.com/ has taken the concept of fresh food to a whole new level, building a chicken coop adjacent to his popular restaurant on Telegraph Avenue. In addition to providing fresh eggs for menu items, the chickens will be available for tete-a-tetes with diners who wish to amble over for visits in the coop.

Two of the resident chickens at restaurant Pizzaiolo in Oakland, CA

A less welcome visitor might be the Health Department, which is likely to shut down the operation if it chooses to enforce codes prohibiting (live) chickens in Oakland hotels, apartments or restaurants. Hallowell is cheerfully optimistic, pointing out that liberal Alameda county permits residents to grow up to 70 marijuana plants. “Why not chickens?” he asks.

In Lafayette, Indiana, Gay-Ellen Stulp and Stephany Miskunas are asking the same question. Yesterday’s Drudge Report www.drudgereport.com had a link to a story entitled “Chicken underground emerges in Indiana” from the Lafayette Journal & Courier that details the efforts of Stulp and Miskunas to convince the Lafayette city council to amend an ordinance prohibiting chickens in that city. Ordered by the animal control department to deport their four hens, the women have collected more than 200 signatures on a petition to permit the keeping of pet chickens. The article touches on the “stealth” chicken movement throughout the country, whereby people living in areas where chickens are not permitted maintain “outlaw” flocks.  Stulp points out that “there are even ‘stealth’ coops that look like trash cans.”

Gay-Ellen Stulp and one of her outlaw chickens