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Gnome on raft
Gnome on tree stump
Zora and Oisin at the nature table
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It's almost Tuesday morning. Downstairs the chatter of Newsnight goes in the background and the sweet heavy oily odour of onion bhajis from Peter's dinner lingers in the house. Ghin and Oisin sleep - and i'm trying to catch up with facebook, hotmail and this blog. I try and not let the weather get to me. Today, for instance, we spent the afternoon threading peanuts and making fat balls for the birds. Outside the wind shook the trees and whistled high, shrill. Oisin looked out and asked, what is that? It's the wind Oisin. He put his head back down, back to the threading, it sounds like a ghost, he said. Indeed it does, i thought to myself. Somewhere, halfway across the world, my family are throwing open windows and doors, turning on airconditioning, to escape the heat.
I spent the afternoon making a soup from the backbones of the two chicken i got off Alan. Oisin nearly had a fit when he saw the ribcages, the back. They were like the hulls of ships which had lain on reefs for years. What's that, he yelled, as he stared into the fridge. Oh, it's chicken backs, i siad, hurriedly, as if trying to sheild him from the scene of a crime. It looks like the chest of the chicken, he observes, shuddering. Yes, yes, i say. It's for soup. What?!! He shouts again. It's the best part of the chicken for soup, i try to explain. You make soup with that.... i remember when i was young id accompany my mother to the et markets and there we'd choose the chikcen, still clucking in the cage, and the chicken man would grab it, protesting by its legs as my mother nodded her approval. We'd come back after twenty minutes and the chicken would be in a plstic bag, plucked, pale and quite dead. I would carry the bag and feel it's still warm body. Back home, in the kitchen, my mother would dismember it and i'd watch as she pulled the wings from the breast, the thighs from the hips. She'd have to take put the giblets herself. It made very sweet and beautiful chicken soup.
Olive's chickens, which Alan sells, come from Strangford and have been dead for already a week. She hangs them to get a better flavour and i have to agree that she has the best chickens i recall tasting. For about £15, i know my chicken has had a happy life outdoors, been humanely put down and has travelled less than 15 miles from it's place of residence to me. I know the woman who raised them and the man who sells them to me and i trust them with my life, because let's face it, that's what you're doing when you buy something you're about to cook for the family. I do still shop at the supermarkets - like today, i got things like soya milk and some chldren's yoghurt, and stuffed vine leaves, cookies, etc, but i am no longer tempted to buy any meat from these places. i did a couple of weeks ago and it tasted awful. There was no texture, the taste of dreadful and you be pretty sure the animal who died had an awful life.
Our next project is baking a gingerbread house for Christmas. The last project, jewelled Christmas trees was a dismal failure. This was because i did not have baking parchment and the sweet ... i must go now. ...
