Amelia Soup


I find myself having little patience with people who think something is gross or beneath them, when they are simply coming from a place of ignorance. Sure, it is easier for people to not think about where their food comes from. But it is absurd to believe they are somehow better because they refuse to think about these things.

I have even had people act disturbed by our eggs, because they did not like being brought to the realization that the eggs they eat were once inside an animal. Thanks to Disney movies and a consumerist lifestyle, we can have this distorted and glorified view of nature, without ever touching it. Not my family, we touch it, plant it, grow it, eat it, raise it, feed it, scoop its poop, butcher it, and eat it. From my high horse I like to pretend this does not phase me at all. We are connected with our food and the natural world around us, and I like to act like this is a higher plane of existence. But I have to confess, there are times that the city girl in me runs away retching.

Just yesterday, I went into the coop to get the eggs and found one of our chickens lying on the floor dead. My husband, great warrior, hunter, he-man, handles dead animals without even an inward shudder. Me... no, I circled around inside that coop whimpering for 10 minutes, working up the nerve to pick up the chicken's foot with my sleeve and remove it to just outside the door, where Alex could deal with it when he got home.

Last summer I was walking out to my car, when I was greeted by a longer than usual garter snake with its head raised more than a foot off the ground. Brave homesteader that I am, I turned around with a squeal and ran... and wore tall boots every time I exited the house for the next two weeks.

And my crown jewel of deglorified country living was this fall when we butchered our first chicken. Earlier, my husband butchered his mother's two roosters, and I stayed pretty distant from the whole affair. But then came Amelia...

Amelia Bedelia was one of my prized baby Ameraucanas. These are the chickens that lay blue/green eggs. She was a sweet bird, but after a bit it became clear she was not a pure bred. She had bright yellow legs (Ameraucanas have slate colored legs), iridescent feathers, and stood significantly taller than our other chickens. Being excessively tall and timid, she ran with her head down in such a way that made her look like a Tyrannosaurus Rex. In spite of her monstrous size and awkwardness, she really was the sweetest bird. Even though she was twice the size of our other chickens, she was dominated by all of them. We spent quite a bit of time out there watching her, scratching our heads, asking, "What kind of chicken is that?"

As she kept getting bigger, and bigger, and bigger... and her feathers kept getting longer, and more colorful, our suspicions grew that she was not a she. But she was still so docile. And if she was a rooster, why had she not started crowing a month ago? Well, early one fall morning, Alex was hunting in his tree stand at the back of our property and heard Aggie's familiar "Er-er-OO-oo-oo." Sort of sounds like a door swinging back and forth on a squeaky hinge. Then he heard a long, low, trilling, "ArOOOooooo," more like an ancient war horn. It was the oddest, most beautiful crow, but it was the death toll for Amelia.

While I could not kill Aggie, because he is small and harmless, Amelia was huge. When those male hormones kicked in, she (we kept referring to her as "her," because it seemed like a wasted effort to switch when she was about to be gone) would most likely kill Aggie and become dangerous to our children, and the crowing signified that she was changing. I was sad to see her go, but I was in a hurry. There was a day that next week when Alex had time, and we were low on groceries. So, I decided that I would immortalize Amelia in a new soup recipe I had dreamed up, and I would forever call the recipe "Amelia Soup."

Alex went out to the coop and brought out the sweet, innocent Amelia. We both felt a little nervous and wanting to be done with the whole affair.
The whole process of butchering, plucking, gutting and dressing this bird was awkward and gross. She was past the age where this is usually done, so her skin was extra thick and tough, and being in a hurry to be done with this unpleasant job, we made a series of mistakes in our haste.
Alex had trouble plucking her, and had heard that you can singe off remaining feathers with a propane torch. He did this, and found that the smell of burnt feathers is aggressively offensive. But worse, somehow the feather pins melted under the skin. So once I got her in the kitchen, rather than picking them out, I had to pop them like black, stinky, gooey pimples. Every time one popped, the smell of burnt feathers filled my kitchen and seemed to reach out and grab me by the throat.
We forgot that you are supposed to not feed the chicken for 24 hours before butchering. This is not necessary, but gutting an empty chicken is far less disgusting than a chicken full of food and poop. When Alex got to that part, he was so disgusted with the stuff squirting out of the carcass all over himself, he made the bigger mistake. He forgot to cut out the crop. The crop is a pouch at the base of the chicken's neck where they predigest food.

So, I dressed, seasoned and roasted this bird with the crop still in her chest. She didn't smell quite right coming out of the oven, but we made a feast of it. I had made all kinds of side dishes, we used our best pottery and came to the table with a reverential sort of anticipation. We were experiencing a closeness with our food like never before. I was glorifying the situation in my mind, thinking how we were really experiencing life, giving our kids an in-depth education, and learning to really value and respect our food... the life that is given, the work that is done... I had it worked up to a downright spiritual experience. Then I cut into the crop. Yellow goo squirted out all over the meat. Not knowing what it was, assuming it was fat, we brushed it aside and cut and served the meat. It smelled like clams, bad clams. We each ate a few bites and were done. We tried to eat the vegetables I had cooked in the broth, but they tasted like bad clams too.

When we cleaned up after dinner, I cut up the rest of the bird and started preparing to make my soup. I cleaned up the meat, and put it in the fridge, and put the carcass in my stock pot with all kinds of wonderful things to make a great broth. The next morning, I awoke to a new and disturbing stench permeating every corner of my house. I took my broth and made my extraordinary Amelia Soup. The soup was initially wonderful, but had an overpowering aftertaste of bad clams.

For two days our house reeked. And I went into that awful state that every woman does when her house stinks. I ended up having to scrub all the dishes and my skin with vinegar to get rid of the smell. And three months later, one of those dishes is still sitting on my back deck covered in snow, with what used to be the broccoli that was cooked in Amelia's broth still inside. I figure by spring it will have decomposed into dirt and I will wash the dish then.



Amelia Soup
(I have since made this recipe with other birds, and it really is a good recipe, though all my glittering ideals of immortalizing Amelia are shattered)

2 qts chicken broth
6-10 oz chicken meat cut up
1 large can of stewed tomatoes in juice
2 celery stalks chopped
2 cloves of garlic pressed
 - simmer 10 min
1 sweet onion chopped
2 large carrots peeled and chopped
1/4 cup dry orzo pasta
 - simmer 10 min
1 can wax beans drained and rinsed
2 cups chopped collard greens
 - simmer 10 min

garnish with pesto and serve, serves 6-8 people


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