Figuring out first-hand food
I can never understand other people’s happiness unless it’s derived exactly the way mine is. If it makes you happy to fish, to talk to people smarter than you, and to watch episodes of The Good Life back to back, I get it. But if opera, kayaking, and adventure travel float your boat, your psyche [...]
I believe in editors. I’ve had the good fortune to be edited by some of the best in the business. My books were read, amended, and read again by Tracy Bernstein at Penguin and, before that, by Maria Guarnaschelli (then) at Scribner. My magazine and newspaper work has almost always been made better by the smart, [...]
Oblivion is a double-edged sword. Not the kind of oblivion one’s work is consigned to when nobody pays it any mind. That kind of oblivion is a single-edged sword, and a very sharp, very threatening sword it is too. I’m talking about the state of oblivion. Being oblivious. Not noticing. I have almost fifty years’ [...]
For the entire week before Turkey Doomsday, their imminent death was all I could think of whenever I checked on the turkeys. “Dead bird walking,” Kevin would say. And then, “Eat, eat!” The day before their appointment with the Cone of Silence, we took their feed away. As a consequence, they were abnormally vocal and [...]
Today I cut the throat of a turkey Kevin and I had raised from a poult, and it was hard. The throat-cutting itself wasn’t difficult; it was one decisive stroke with a knife I sharpened to within an inch of its life. It was summoning the willingness to make that stroke that was hard. The [...]
It was two weeks ago that we weighed the turkeys and put them on acorn supplements to fatten them up for the big day. Only a few days after that, our acorn diet plan hit a snag. Squirrels. We have a bazillion oak trees, and each oak tree produces a bazillion acorns. That means our [...]
I want acorns to be food. I really, really do. And there’s no reason they shouldn’t be. They’re nuts, from trees. Like almonds! Or pecans! Besides, luminaries like Euell “Try Anything “ Gibbons of Stalking the Wild Asparagus and Hank Shaw of Hunter Angler Gardener Cook say you can make delicious things out of acorns. [...]
Our turkeys don’t know that they’re due to be slaughtered one month from today, and that’s probably a good thing. If I were going to die in exactly 31 days, I don’t think I’d want to know about it. If, by some unhappy mischance, I did know about it, I would do my level best [...]
My turkeys and my husband have something in common: they’re all middle-aged. The birds are exactly three months old, putting them squarely at the three-fifths mark of their lifespan. Because Kevin’s execution isn’t scheduled, we can’t predict his demise with the same precision, but supposing he’s three-fifths of the way through an 83-year lifespan would [...]
I’ve only plucked poultry once. It’s a long story involving a wild turkey and car accident, so I won’t go into it just now, but it taught me that removing feathers from birds is a tedious, time-consuming job. Since we have four turkeys and seven chickens that will eventually need plucking, Kevin has been looking [...]
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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