Chick(en) Flicks and Other Animal Tales
Terry Blonder Golson, who lives in a small town west of Boston, loves chickens. For ten years, she has kept a small flock in her backyard. The hens, of different breeds, are very individual and quite beautiful.
Terry calls them “my girls” and they have such names as Buffy, Ginger, Edwina, Eleanor and Aunt Petunia. You can take a peek at them strutting and scratching via Terry’s hen cam, but only during the day — the hen cam shuts down at night when the hens go to bed.
I saw Terry at a recent Les Dames d’Escoffier International conference in Kansas City. She had been telling me about her cookbook project at the Miami conference the year before, and now she proudly displayed the finished work. The charming “The Farmstead Egg Cookbook,” has been a labor of love for Terry. She developed the recipes and did the luscious food styling. All the beautiful photos were shot in her home.
Terry says the eggs from her farmstead chickens are richer in flavor and have a better texture than supermarket eggs. She developed recipes specifically for these eggs, but many types of organic eggs or “pasture-raised” eggs can be substituted.
Have a look at Terry’s book. It would make a lovely hostess gift for a food lover during the holidays, along with a basket of organic eggs.
A Moo-ing Tale
Reuters reports that cows may have regional accents. This is the finding of a group of British farmers, who insist cows will take on the accent of the region in which they’re raised. John Wells, Profession of Phonetics at University College London, said it could be true, since a similar phenomenon has been observed in birds. The farmers surmise that the cows, who are in earshot of farmers, start to pick up their accents when they moo.
INSIGHT: Whether it’s the hens tht give us our eggs or the cows that provide our milk, knowing more about the source of our food is a good thing. Sometimes, it’s just plain fun!
