First frost

 We had our first frost yesterday. It was 28°F when I got up. Ice crystals covered every blade of grass and the roofs, as can be seen in this picture of the coop.

Frost on the coop roof

The pullets had never seen frost before, but it didn’t seemto bother them. They were soon running around as usual.

Pullets with cold feed

And still Silvia is the only pullet laying. She’s a champion, though, giving us an egg every day or two. Today it seems like the others will never lay. I can tell when they are getting ready because they don’t dart away from me, but everyone but Silvia is as skittish as ever. Nothing to do but keep feeding them and hoping.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that only the Divino Brussels sprouts were developing. I harvested those three stalks. The jury is still out on the Long Island variety. As long as it doesn’t get into the low twenties for an extended period, they should continue to grow. Maybe we’ll have some eventually.

Meanwhile, I decided to make chicken stuffed with Brussels sprouts and salami. It’s based on a recipe from Marian Morash’s The Victory Garden Cookbook. It didn’t take me long to remember why I don’t make it very often. It’s a pain in the kiester. First, I have to clean all the Brussels sprouts and blanch them. Then I have to debone the chicken. Morash does one Cornish game hen for each person, which I have always done in the past. Now that we raise chickens, I am certainly not going to buy Cornish hens. Instead, I picked the smallest chicken in the freezer and boned that.

Morash suggests that once you get the hang of boning, you will never prepare small birds any other way. Good for her, I say. I’m never going to do it that often. Following her instructions, I slit the skin along the backbone and started cutting the muscle from the bones of the spine, ribs, and hips. I can cut up a whole chicken from the outside in five minutes, no problem. Finding the joints from the inside is an entirely different thing. I had to scrape all the meat and tendons from around the joint before I could see where the bones connected. God.

I had to make a few substitutions because I decided to do this on Sunday after I’d already done my shopping for the week. When you live in the country, you don’t just run to the grocery every time you’re missing something. I used cream cheese instead of ricotta, a blend of mozzarella and provolone for provolone, and summer sausage for salami. I stirred that with a pullet egg, since I was making half a recipe, and added the Brussels sprouts. I think I like the cream cheese better.

I stuffed it all into the boneless cavity of the chicken and—when was the last time I saw my trussing needle? A search of both kitchens ensued, to no avail. But wait! I can skewer it. I found my bamboo skewers and went at it.

Into the oven it went, and out it came looking like this.

Boned chicken stuffed with Brussels sprouts and summer sausage

The effort of boning paid off when I could neatly cut it in half to make two portions. Also, it was enough for two meals, cutting the prep time down to 45 min/meal.

Cut into portions and ready to serve

It tastes so good! That’s why I will make it again, but only once a year.