Chalga Time

If you didn't know, I am a major chalga fan, used to be, anyway. And this here is my favorite video/song. I love how unsubtle it is. I think I might get a pair of boots like that.

Snow Again

It's snowing on top of the ice. Great! Another lovely late-winter blizzard! Thank God for four-wheel drive.

Voted for Clinton so McCain Wins

My favorite cousin Peter voted for Hillary with the sole purpose that McCain has a lesser opponent to run against in November. I thought this was very ingenious - such a thing wouldn't have occurred to me (not that I can vote, but anyway).

Greeting AUBG-ers!

I started this in the summer and quickly lost interest, but now I think I have a new incentive for writing it, with AUBG classmates in mind - in case you guys want to catch up on what Jacob, Josie, and I are up to. I must warn you though, you won't find much in the way of political correctness here... :) If there's a place to let my natural sass run loose, this is it!

The Joy of Giving

Giving is truly addictive - even more so than investing (well, come to think of it, giving is, after all, investing into your celestial/karmic bank account). And it doesn't (couldn't possibly) have to be giving on the same scale as George Soros - our common benefactor. $10 a months given to NPR (National Public Radio), or simply a box of steaks, hamburger, eggs, jam, and a bottle of wine given as a thank-you gift to a friend who helped us a lot this winter - including impromptu hay hauling and pulling our truck out of the snowbank in the dark in the dead of winter. I am selfish that way - I really like the feeling it gives me.

Killing Cones Dilemma

Since I've lived in the US, my husband's family, and later ourselves, have always butchered chickens by chopping off their head with a machete. I have to say that I hardly could complain about the quality of the meat, although all the flapping would sometimes produce a broken wing or two. But this year we've done it differently - we had too many chickens to process by ourselves since we were also amidst a remodeling project this past summer, so we sent our 80+ chickens to our Amish neighbors to be processed. I have to say that the way they processed them was comparable to ours - the end result anyway. Each individual butcher has his or her own work ethics, and so some chickens, both when we we processed them with our friends and when the Amish processed them with their five daughters, were gutted flawlessly, while some weren't. Overall, I am not sure if I was super happy about they way the did it, but then again, only a buck a chicken. Anyhow, what I am getting at is that the Amish used killing cones which they themselves have made out of, as Jacob described it, cutting off the tops of plastic bottles of a certain size. He even suggested that maybe this is what we should start doing.

In the meantime, I've recently purchased Grassfed Gourmet, a book which provides lots of recipes and general philosophy behind raising pastured meat and poultry. Anyhow, the author in that book claimed that when the chickens are killed with an ax, they can't be bled properly (although I think ours are), and that they experience much more stress this way and that affects the meat. I wonder if that is really the case - since our chickens have always been absolutely wonderful, and they are not better when the Amish did them by using the cones. So now I wonder.

EDIT: The Amishes, as well call them, did a pretty crappy job, though.

The Benefits of Organic Valley Membership

This is incredible! If you are a member or an employee of Organic Valley, you can get a major pile of dairy products at the Organic Valley store down at their headquarters in La Farge, WI, consisting of four pounds of cheese, half a gallon of milk, an a two pounds of butter, all organic, and you are only paying... drum roll... $15.55. I mean, can you believe what difference this makes to someone on a budget but with a strong preference for organic dairy? Holy cow!