Death… it’s always lurking right around the corner. More so on a farm.
A baby goat was lost to pneumonia over the weekend. Poor sweet little Finn. And then one of my quail as well. The quail was one of the two males, fortunately, and I suspect it died as a result of some sort of death match battle between the two males, determined to lay claim over the lady birds. Males are so stupid in that respect, but its in their DNA, and I suppose they can’t help it. I wish I’d found him in time, I could’ve at least had a nice quail breast salad for lunch…
Anyway, I decided that death should be followed by a rebirth of some sort, and with this in mind I decide to load up the incubator with 26 fresh quail eggs. Maybe the dead bird’s legacy will get a chance to live-on, so to speak. Hatch day should fall between the 12th and 13th of July, but could take as long as the 16th depending on weather conditions inside the incubator and out. My area had two power outages, lasting for hours, in the past few days and if there are anymore it could cause problems with the hatch.
Speaking of power-outages and just plain annoying shit-problems that occur in life, when the power went out Sunday around 5pm, I realized I needed dinner. But I had no electric. And nothing in the fridge, because the fridge “died” the previous Tuesday and the new one wouldn’t be arriving until Monday. A lot of dying going on around here…
But I did have many quarts of amazing chicken broth frozen away from the two chickens I killed the week before. So I got out the grill and thawed the broth and then made some homemade noodles to cook in my “golden chicken tonic.” I also had a carrot, the top of an onion from the garden and a leftover ham steak.
My little propane grill heated up the broth to boiling and once the noodles went in, dinner was ready in no time at all. So very little work, but what a great dinner!
Homemade noodles are easy. The act of making them is thereputic and it almost seems like i’m getting away with something I shouldn’t be. Like cheating the food system or something. Because who makes their own noodles?
Aside from being easy to make, pasta is so damn versatile as well. Basically you can add just about whatever you have on hand to it and you have a meal. And if you have cheese or cream or both – you’re home free! You can make it with spinach, ham & peas, beef, hell even so-called “weeds” from the backyard. Yes, I said weeds. The possibilities are endless.
It was getting dark by the time I got the broth on the grill, I apologize for the less than stellar photos. And I ran out of wine (horrors!) and tried a beer with my noodles in lieu of it. Not bad, but you know I prefer the wine any day… ~A
