Sunday Dinner

I love the tradition of Sunday Dinner. It is something I want to do more often. In lieu of lunch and dinner a traditional comforting Sunday dinner at 2, 3 or 4pm. One my favorite menus for such as occasion is roast chicken. Such was the plan for this Sunday. After a crazy Friday and Saturday of graduation preparations and celebrations Jessica and I decided a nice roasted chicken and some roasted root veggies would be just the thing. There was just one little hitch...

In the true spirit of both adventure and economy we decided to buy some frying roosters from The Schack Family Farm. We love the Schack family. We buy our milk and eggs from the farm along with the Wilson's (our new housemates) and the James. Each family takes turns going out to pick up milk and eggs and deliver them, providing all of us with fresh raw milk. On a recent trip to the farm Jessica and I were chatting with Brian Schack as he milked and he told us he was selling rooster fryers for 5 dollars each. He would kill them and we just needed to pluck and clean them. However he said we could come to the farm and he would teach us how to do it and let us do it there. Jessica and I eagerly agreed and made plans to come the Sunday after graduation. Need I point out what a deal this is. Five dollars a piece for an organic free range chicken. Better yet a chicken which we know was raised humanely, cleanly, and safely.

So yesterday after church we all changed into work clothes and goulashes and headed to the farm. We had originally planned to only get 2 roosters, one for our Sunday dinner and one to freeze. However once we realized how much work was involved we decided to up our order to 6. Brian caught the first couple of roosters and killed them. Then Mr. James and Mr. P took over catching and killing roosters. Once the rooster was caught, hung, killed and bled. It was plunged into boiling water for 15 seconds. This made it easier to remove the feathers. Then the feathers were plucked and the rooster was cleaned. It was a lot of work but it got easier the more we did. Brian was so nice and patiently explained, showed and re-explained cleaning out the chickens. He spent his whole Sunday afternoon teaching us and helping us. After 4 hours we returned home with our milk, eggs, and 6 roosters, along with a pile of chicken feet, livers, giblets and hearts. After all that work we were determined to use every piece of those roosters we could.

And so Sunday night we sat around a hot fire eating roasted chicken while broth simmered away in the kitchen. It was a delicious albeit a very late Sunday dinner.

*we will use the feet for making broth. The livers will make pate and the giblets and hearts can be ground up into sausage along with some dark meat and spices in the food processor.