Of Mice and Men and Chickens

It isn't a conspiracy if it's a business plan. Never forget that.

Two things have happened in the past couple of weeks.

1. Eggs have been declared really, really bad for you after years of being the PERFECT food.

2. People all over the net have been reporting their hens are going broody.

The first one you have probably read all the articles about and decided not to buy that dozen of eggs on your next trip to the grocery.

Where the second one is concerned, you are probably saying, "what the Hell is broody?"

Broody is when a hen gets 'depressed' and stops laying.

So, let me give you a possible scenario and see if it makes sense to you.

Before the advent of something called Laying Mash, hens only went broody when they were just starting to lay and didn't have the hang of things or when they got older and were winding down their reproductive cycle. My relatives ate at least two eggs a day not counting what they got in things like cookies, cakes and various dinner products. They lived well into their late 80's when 60's was considered old and then, they died of natural causes, not heart attacks.

Then came Laying Mash. Laying Mash is a commercially prepared chicken food fed to hens that contains hormones to cause the hen to lay one or more eggs per day unlike her natural cycle which can be an egg every two to three days. Hens which laid daily were highly prized and bred for more chickens.

Now, when you expose an animal or human to a hormone from the time it is an egg and its grandparents and generations before it are exposed to this hormone, the receptors in the brain become overloaded and shut down. They are no longer sensitive to the hormone and it takes more and more hormone to turn them on or off. My guess is we are now sliding down the other side of the bell curve and these chickens no longer have any sensitivity to the hormone that causes them to lay eggs.

What do you do when you have spent years building a huge audience for eggs and suddenly your hens are not laying eggs? Do you admit you have been feeding them toxic amounts of hormones that by-the-way might be affecting you, too? Or, do you pay a hospital or university to produce a study showing how bad eggs are so no one notices the reduction in stock because they aren't buying them anyway?

Well, I'll let you decide. Which option do you think Corporate America would take?

A New Dinner Idea

Tonight was left over night in the Druid home. I had left over brown rice couscous and maple chicken. So I took some sunflower seed oil and added a tablespoon of ginger, garlic and lemon grass to it. When hot, I added a little green pepper and onion. I cut the chicken into strips and added it and then the couscous. One more tablespoon of curry powder went in and the whole mess was heated and blended. It was beyond delicious. Not a drop is left. A little curry and your left overs have a brand new life.

Day 1.5 of Butter Experiment

When we tried the butter in the crock tonight, it was too soft and fell into the water when removing it from the reservoir. There are two things that may have happened. It may have been too soft when we put it in the reservoir and not packed well enough or the temperature in the house may just be too darned hot. My aunt's farm was in West Virginia in the mountains.

More tomorrow. We are chilling it down in the fridge and then bringing it out again.

Keeping Your Butter Soft

If you are health conscious, like me, you want to use butter rather than some strange cotton seed (toxic) oil product called margarine or whatever they are making the yellow colored goop out of today.

BUT, you hate the fact that it is the hardest substance on earth, beat by a diamond by very little, and unless you manage to warm it up every blasted time you will tear up whatever you try to spread it on and then, when warming you usually melt the bottom, get the middle the right consistency and have the ice hard top floating.

If you are as old as I am, you remember this wasn't a problem on the farm but just don't know why except that your aunt had a real ice box.

It turns out there is a thing called a butter keeper that you sit on the table filled with butter and water. It keeps the butter nice and soft and it doesn't spoil for at least 30 days. I know you don't believe a word of it, but I remember that little crock on my aunts table.

So I sought one out and guess what, they still make them. They keep about a half a stick of butter, which you have to soften to fit into the cavity, at the right spreadable consistency. You add about a 1/2 cup of cool water, insert the butter crock and you are good to go. You do need to change the water every three days.

It works by creating a vacuum that air doesn't enter and thus, the butter doesn't spoil.

I bought one and this is day one....stay tuned for the results but remember, I am in South Florida and it is the SUMMER!

The exact product I am using is featured on the right.