I'm cooking a chicken?

Tonight, my daughter's Hebrew school class is coming to dinner. We will celebrate Havdalah (the closing of Shabbat) and share a meal together. It is also the first day of my son's cross country ski club. So Andrew and he are off to the mountain and I am left behind to ready the house and cook the chicken. Now let's note that I have been vegetarian for the past 26 years (at least!). My mother might say that I have, for all practical purposes, been vegetarian since that grade school tour of the hot dog factory. I seem to have blocked it from my memory, but she swears by it. And I certainly remember not being overly thrilled with meat in my youth.

It was not until going away to college that I could really declare myself. At my school, an entire meal plan line was devoted to vegetarian fare. Coming from a meat and potatoes family, it was quite a revelation.

But now the Jews are coming to dinner and I am cooking chicken. I have known this day was coming. The rest of my family has reverted to meat eating (at least poultry and fish), shattering my lifelong dreams of my peace-eating kingdom. But I'm not bitter...

I have gradually come to an acceptance with this seemingly incontrovertible family fact. After all, I don't begrudge others their meat. We have struggled through how to make that work in a way that is agreeable to all. We got a BBQ and we have meat dishes. I am waiting (though not praying) for the dishwasher to die so I can get those dishwasher drawers. I'll devote one to meat. Hey - THEN we'll be kosher!

As a small farmer, I am ready to butcher our own chickens when they pass their productivity. Which would you rather have your loved ones eat? Your own free-range chickens fed only on organic feeds and chemical-free pasture or chicken from the local restaurant? Who knows where that chicken comes from or what it has been through?! It's really a no-brainer. I'm even working up to raising meat chickens. In for a penny, in for a pound. The truth is, that a working farm can't afford to be a chicken rest home. And, if your family is determined to eat meat, better for them to know where it comes from and help to care for its life. Right?! As the primary farmer, I'll even be the one to deliver them to the butcher (I am holding the line at butchering them myself - that will have to be an Andrew job if we're going that far).

But I've been a hold out on the cooking front. That all changes today. With a heart full of thankfulness for the life that has been led and the nourishment that will be offered, I am off to channel Julia.... or at least Julie.