Tuesday, October 6, 2009 by Hodding.

It makes sense, of course, that a person writing about being frugal in these hard times would lose his platform for financial reasons, but it doesn’t make it any easier–especially since said loss was the result of the unnecessary demise of an excellent publication.  Gourmet of 2009 had changed and adapted itself to the times so well that pulling the plug on it only highlights the desperate decision-making currently running amok in the publishing world.  I’m sure Bon Appetit, Conde Nast’s remaining culinary magazine, is a decent publication, but I know Gourmet and Bon Appetit is no Gourmet magazine.   I’m sad to see the old lady go.

Under Ruth Reichl’s leadership Gourmet maintained an enviable level of dignity and integrity while carefully shedding its stodgy, upper-class past, publishing articles that those who were aware of its reboot actually wanted to read.  Again and again, it both whetted and sated our appetite for culinary knowledge and delicious food.  Perhaps the general public may not have realized this because the covers didn’t catch up with the new content and Gourmet subscribers who focused only on the recipes may have remained oblivious, but for the last ten years, Gourmet magazine published some damn fine writing (except the few articles by me, of course).  I particularly enjoyed the food-politics stories brought in by editor Jane Daniels Lear that other culinary magazines wouldn’t have touched with triple-insulated Teflon oven mitts.  I will miss both reading and writing for it.

[Warning: shameless segue] I did want to take this opportunity, however, to announce the rebirth of my old column/blog, Extreme Frugality, that I was doing for www.gourmet.com. I’ve changed the name to The Frugal Guy for now but am definitely open to suggestions.  I’d like to come up with something fun and enticing that both includes my whole family and helps attract more miser-wannabes to our site.  I’ll send a bottle of Hod’s Mead Batch #2 (the first batch was a failure–remember?) to the person who comes up with the winning name.  Lisa and the kids will be the judges.  On second thought, I might also toss in a live rooster. They’ve been driving me crazy.

As some of you may know, we birthed a dozen or so chicks last May in Angus’s kindergarten class.  A fox (a real one) got 3 or so and we ended up with 8 chickens by the end of this past summer.  Five of these turned out to be roosters.  While I’ve become a huge fan of these creatures and find them adorable even, our neighbors aren’t too amused by all the crowing.  A full grown rooster’s cock-a-doodle-do is difficult to take on account of its volume, repetition and timing (they DO NOT wait until daylight to crow; in fact they seem to crow 24/7; very interesting, huh?) but a rooster-in-training, on the other hand, is intolerable.  It’s a waffling, warbling irritating cacophony that will drive you batty–and I’m not exaggerating.

Since our 6-year-old Angus has grown rather attached to the birds, the “fox”, not me, got three of them last weekend.  The unamusing irony hidden within these timely deaths, though, is that only two young roosters had started to practice crowing.  One would think it would be the bigger, bolder birds doing such practicing and one would really think that the “fox” would have killed at least one of the crowers-in-training, if not both, when he carefully selected his prey late last Tuesday after all the kids were asleep.  But no, come Wednesday morning, there were still two cackling roosters, firing up earlier than usual at 3:30 am.  What are the odds (really–what are the odds.  somebody write in. please.)?  Somehow, we recovered the birds from the “fox” and I hung the headless silenced ones in the basement knowing the kids wouldn’t happen upon them because they’re all a little afraid of that dank, dark, moldy dungeon.  I was only planning on hanging them for a day–two at the most since they were so young and relatively skinny.  I say relatively–sorry about all the asides and parentheticals but I no longer have an editor, hee-hee–because about 2 weeks ago my friend Adam gave us a 10-pound rooster he’d recently raised.  It was Costello to our bird’s Abbott and had been so genetically programed to stuff itself silly that it couldn’t even walk to the food bowl, let alone out in the yard, its last few weeks because it was so fat.  In comparison, our birds were winged Don Knotts, they were so skinny.

Back to their being hanged in the basement: I couldn’t get to them the second day and then on the third I scratched my eye so badly while clearing brush to triple the size of our vegetable plot that I couldn’t dress them then either.  Now, I hate relating this, but I believe in full disclosure, epecially when it comes to my own failings. Wish I didn’t, in fact, but be that as it is, the morning of the fourth day I was planning on throwing them away without Lisa knowing it–but with a guilty heart. However, we’ve been together 17 years.  She was on to me.  Fast–like Snowflake (our rooster for all you new readers) on his lovely henfolk.

“Hodding, you have to do something about those roosters.  Today!  It would be plain wrong if you just let them rot.  You can’t do it.”

I wanted to be mean and respond, “Why don’t you do it, smarty pants?” but I knew she’d do it if she had the time.  I kept my mouth shut and got to work.

I butchered a fair number of birds while I was in the Peace Corps in Kenya in the mid-1980s but I still can’t claim it ever became a pleasant business–and especially after they’ve been hanging around for 4 days.   To be clear: they smelled.  For the life of me, as I carefully removed the bloated intestines, I couldn’t see why upper-crust Brits extol the virtues of multiple-day hung birds.  Ok, hanging may soften the meat but was it worth putrification, and more importantly, wouldn’t we get sick? (Apparently not.  We’ve eaten them for 3 days now.  I guess it’s just the feces you have to stay clear of.)  We love the 1/2 cow we bought last summer and it was hung for 4 days by the butcher but that was in a refrigerated room.  Our basement was probably 55 degrees–nowhere near cold enough to ward off bacteria. Anyway, after abusing the first bird so badly while plucking his feathers that I had to remove all his skin to cover my mistakes, I decided that although Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall didn’t suggest dipping the birds in boiling water for a second or two, I was going to give it a try.  I had a faint memory of doing such a thing while plucking in Africa and it certainly couldn’t make things worse.  In fact, it didn’t.  The 10-second immersion in boiling water made the feathers almost fall off on their own.  (Hugh, it is my humble opinion that you definitely need to include this step in any future reprints of MEAT.  Ok–if you ever see this, that is?)

About an hour later, three slightly smelly, naked birds waited patiently on our kitchen counter for some sort of culinary rescue.

Well, thank God for the French.  It turns out Coq au Vin was developed explicitly for dealing with the unwanted, male offspring of laying hens.   For thousands of years farmers had no idea what to do with these miserable creatures, shunned on account of their skinniness and toughness, let alone their inability to lay an egg.  What to do.  What to do. What to do?”

“Mon dieu!” Pierre of the crooked nose and wart-infested face exclaimed one lazy afternoon.  ”What makes me more appealing to Mademoiselle Amiee?  Lots of brandy and red wine, of course.   They make anything appealing.  Bring me those coqs!”

And that, roughly speaking, is how the French saved civilization… or at least the unwanted rooster.  In MEAT, Hugh bemoans the falling-out-of-favor of this once indispensable dish much as we’re now saddened by the death of Gourmet (like how I’m tying it all back to the Evil Empire’s decision to murder the rebellious Gourmet?), but I’m guessing we’ll soon see a return-to-favor for this hearty meal considering how many people started raising laying hens this year, especially if they follow Hugh’s recipe.  It was divine.  Our three girls, in the know as to the chickens’ true provenance, have had many helpings and Angus likes it too.  The meat was moist, tender and since those birds were the free’est ranging things imaginable, quite healthy too.  Best of all, the booze, onions and garlic vanquished the unpleasant odor and so even I was able to enjoy them.

Since this is the first time on my own, I’m not positive I can include his recipe here,  but I’ll check out the legality and if possible, post tomorrow.

I hope you’ve enjoyed your time here today and I will do a much better job of reigning myself in in the future.  Promise.

Farewell, Gourmet!

By the way, Lisa found the cheapest host possible for this site which explains the picture of the stranger at the top of this page.  She came with this “literary” template provided by the hosting company.  I’m looking into replacing her with something frugal soon–although I have nothing against her.  I just don’t know if she’s a penny-pincher.

Posted in Uncategorized | 35 Comments »

Monday, October 5, 2009 by Hodding.

I’m writing this after I’ve written my second post so I can practice using the writing program for my website.  There seems to be problems with creating paragraphs when I use Safari as my browser so now I’m trying FireFox.

I’m hoping this sentence shows up as an entirely new paragraph.

Just so this isn’t a complete waste of time for you, I’ll announce this: I will attempt to post a video later today.  It’s a short “instructional” piece (I hope it will be clear why I’ve placed instructional in parentheses) on autumnal tilling, composting and farming.

Hope it works.  And thanks for checking us out.  Still feeling very weird about Gourmet.

Posted in Outwitting Children, Frugal Meals, Hens, Roosters, Butchering, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »