Figuring out first-hand food
It was six or seven years ago that I read Complications, Atul Gawande’s collection of essays. Gawande is a practicing surgeon who writes about medicine and public health, and one of the collection’s essays, “Education of a Knife,” is about the problem of teaching surgical procedures to newly minted doctors. Every would-be surgeon has to [...]
Today our broody hen, Queenie, successfully hatched a turkey poult. She’s got four more eggs to go (one broke), and we have yet to see whether she can teach them life’s basics, like eating, drinking, and avoiding being crushed by a well-meaning but clumsy mother surrogate. But we have a poult. We have a poult.
It’s spring, and the beginning of the John Edwards trial. All in all, a good time to think about the lengths all creatures on earth are willing to go in the name of procreation. We have, as we speak, a hen sitting on six turkey eggs. She’s been there a week and, with any luck, [...]
What is it with cross-species amity? I’m a sucker for all those pictures of two different kinds of animals playing together, or napping together, or otherwise cohabiting peacefully. I love it when horses make friends with goats, when a gorilla takes care of a human, even when dogs and cats live happily in the same [...]
First, get a Fry Baby. A Fry Baby is the world’s smallest deep fryer, and we got ours at a Yankee swap hosted by our friends Tommy and Ali, for which all the guests were instructed to bring something that’s been lying around the house for ages but never used. We brought a platter we’d [...]
Our new flock of chickens is laying on all cylinders, and we’re collecting up to ten eggs a day. I’m giving a lot of them to friends, but I don’t have all that many friends, so I still have quite a few left. There’s nothing for it but to eat them. Which raises a very [...]
If you didn’t get chickens last year, or the year before, chances are good that you’re thinking about it now. You’re investigating local livestock ordinances. You’re deciding where to build your coop. You’re checking prices and availability at Murray McMurray. And you’re studying Henderson’s Handy-Dandy Chicken Chart to figure out how to pick your breeds. Henderson’s [...]
It was several weeks back that Kevin and I noticed that one of the battens on the outside of the chicken coop had gotten a pretty thorough gnawing. A good swath of wood was missing, up to almost three feet off the ground, and there were unmistakable teeth marks. Until now, we’ve had a pretty [...]
It’s been nigh-on two weeks of near-death experiences around here. First we had our sick chicken, Flopsy, who couldn’t seem to stand on her own two feet. Then we had my father, hospitalized with an EKG that looked like one of those seismic meters during an earthquake. Then the cat, who’s become decidedly indoorsy in [...]
Tamar Haspel has been writing about food and health for over a decade. She recently moved from Manhattan to Cape Cod. She’s adjusting well. [Read More …]
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