Self-medicating

The same friend from whom we received our last asshole rooster for eating informed me last week that their remaining rooster had started threatening her kids with his spurs, so we were welcome to take him if we wanted him.

We were at their house the next day with a dog crate in the back of the minivan. We are nothing if not prompt.*

The timing ended up being extremely fortuitous, because A. butchered the rooster yesterday so I could cook it today, and this morning I woke up with the nasty cold that had felled Cubby and A. last week. I did the stock-making this morning, straining and pulling the meat off the bones around lunchtime. Then I did all the chopping and sauteeing and all for soup.

So by the time I could no longer breathe through my nose and wanted to do nothing more than slump in a chair in the living room while the children rampaged, the Asshole Rooster Soup was done.

I can't really convey to you how vastly superior a homemade soup made from a home-raised chicken tastes as compared to one made from a grocery-store chicken. It just tastes . . . clean. 

You can just see the healthfulness radiating from this bowl, can't you?

And guess who else is also sadly sick but happily loves soup?

Eat up, snotty baby. That rooster will cure what ails you.

Charlie is also sick, though he does not love soup. Luckily, I prefer soup really thick, so I can scoop out the solids into a bowl for him. He may not love soup, but he does enjoy chicken and rice.

I'm sure we'll all wake up completely cured in the morning. But if we don't, there's more rooster soup.

* Incidentally, I asked my friend if she tells her kids that we take the roosters or if she just lets them believe a fox or something gets them. She told me she had first said something about a predator to her daughter--a classmate of Cubby's--but her daughter was worried they might find the rooster's dead body. So then my friend mentioned our name to her daughter, and that seemed to be more acceptable to her. I found this hilarious. We may be woodchucks who collect unwanted roosters for eating, but hey, at least we're better than a fox!