Optics: FAIL
I know what y’all are thinking — you did this P’shop last week, Stoaty. Yeah, well, hey — HE DID IT AGAIN. His current political advisers flat out suck.
Anyway, shut up, I have some important news: Mapp laid her first egg today. She’s the little ginger chicken. You never heard so much clucking and be-GAK-ing. I told you she’d be a drama queen if she ever got around to laying an egg.
Actually, poor thing, it took her all morning and she shed a little blood over it, so I shouldn’t make fun. I wouldn’t care to blow large hard objects out my vent after breakfast. Especially if it took me by surprise.
In honor of Ovum Prime, I broke out the Oscar Mayer bacon I’d been saving and fried up a proper breakfast-lunch. Oh, don’t get me wrong — English bacon is lovely stuff. But it’s thick and chewy. Like Canadian bacon. But not round.
Oscar Mayer (made in Spain) is the only American-style bacon I can get — and I can’t always get it. I suspect English people think there’s something terribly, terribly wrong with it.
“Oh, I say, Clive, there’s something terribly, terribly wrong with this bacon — it shriveled away to nothing and left the most extraordinary pool of grease behind.”
Anyhow, if I picked up a dose of salmonella, I’m going to drop kick that silly ginger bird into the next county.
Posted: March 21st, 2011 under artwork, birds, personal, politics.
Comments: 31
Comments
Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: March 21, 2011, 9:31 pm
It seems to be a really distressing process for chickens. I sat out on the grass this morning, in the early Spring sunshine, feeding a slice of bread to the two girls. Every now and then one or the other would let out a really distressed squuuuawk! and look sorry for herself.
My mother suggested a supply of gas and air to the coop. Sadly, I know Mapp. She’d get a habit.
Comment from Nina from GCP
Time: March 21, 2011, 10:02 pm
Hey, those first ones are always the hardest. ๐
But congrats to Mapp for her magnificent achievement!
Comment from Scubafreak
Time: March 21, 2011, 11:07 pm
Meh.. Mash up a little Percocet into their food, and they’ll never suffer again….. ๐
Comment from Hari Swollensak
Time: March 21, 2011, 11:26 pm
Its the way of the chicken….none can understand but the chicken. Hail the glory that is Chicken! I weep…. for the path of the chicken is one of sorrow and joy……but mostly sorrow.
Comment from Rich Rostrom
Time: March 22, 2011, 12:40 am
The fish it never brags about
Its million eggs or so.
The hen is quite a different sort;
One egg, and hear her crow.
We spurn the fish, yet praise the hen,
Which leads me to surmise:
Don’t hide your light, but blow your horn –
It pays to advertise.
Congratulations, Mapp.
Comment from Oh Hell
Time: March 22, 2011, 12:51 am
Congratulations, Mapp. You have become an adult. It’s all downhill from here…
Comment from Scubafreak
Time: March 22, 2011, 1:19 am
Just an aside, Stoatie. Your link to weasel manor needs to be redirected to http://www.benweasel.com
Comment from Deborah
Time: March 22, 2011, 3:31 am
Hooray for Mapp. I’d much rather read about the chickens than Obama.
Comment from Sven in Colorado
Time: March 22, 2011, 3:37 am
Back in the dark ages, there was a young feller next door who raised Polish Crested as “pets” (to keep the frikken nanny’s bureaucrats outa his shit.) They were quiet and efficient layers. Purty eggs too.
Been working away on the wife unit to get a brace or two of laying hens….once again, as “pets” to help with insect control in the garden and to provide a few fresh eggs.
Given the price of food stuffs, “maybe next year, dear” just ain’t cuttin’ it. I already have plans and the lumber to construct a dove cote for pigeons…..HEH!
The neighbors are gonna love THAT one!
Comment from Truman North
Time: March 22, 2011, 3:46 am
Dave in Texas from ace.mu.nu posted somethign with the photoshop. And he credited you and linked ya here.
Comment from Elphaba
Time: March 22, 2011, 5:18 am
Congratulations to Ms. Mapp! She just ought to be happy that you aren’t going to make her raise her progeny. ๐
Comment from Oceania
Time: March 22, 2011, 7:47 am
Just flicked a nest of young ferets a couple of shot rabbits.
They seam to like them …
A comparison to Obama and KFC could be made.
Comment from Mike C.
Time: March 22, 2011, 7:58 am
In my admittedly limited experience ( a few weeks here and there), English bacon does not leave behind a large pool of grease for a very simple reason. They don’t actually cook it. Putting it under a 100 watt light bulb for a few minutes doesn’t count. Especially in these modern times when the damned bulb is probably one of those CFL abortions.
Nobody wants pork-based sushi, guys.
Comment from SCOTTtheBADGER
Time: March 22, 2011, 9:18 am
YAY MAPP!
The local Super Valu had Farmland ham filets on sale for a buck apiece. Ham wrapped in bacon. Life is good!
Comment from Peter Risdon
Time: March 22, 2011, 10:10 am
A bacon tip: Tesco sells smoked dry-cure British pancetta – seriously. And at 2 packs for ยฃ5 it’ll shrivel right down and get crispy just as you want it.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: March 22, 2011, 1:42 pm
Thanks for the tip, Peter.
And thanks, Dave in Texas, wherever ye might be.
Oh, right. Texas.
Comment from some vegetable
Time: March 22, 2011, 2:56 pm
?Does Obama’s Libyan attack make him a chicken hawk? (See what I did, uh, tried to do there. ) ๐
Comment from Deborah
Time: March 22, 2011, 3:41 pm
Bacon. I love to bake bacon. Makes the best BLTs ever. Which I think I’ll fix for supper tonight.
[I assumed (my bad, I know) that when the English refer to “streaky bacon” that they were talking about American-style bacon. But apparently I am wrong?]
Comment from mojo
Time: March 22, 2011, 4:52 pm
American-style bacon is made from pork bellies (hence the trade in futures), while English is from the sides, I believe. And Canadian, of course, is “back bacon”…
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: March 22, 2011, 4:57 pm
It’s American-ish, Deborah. It’s a little too thick and not quite as fatty, but it’ll do in a pinch.
We got a Hot Air link on this P’shop, ladies and gentlemen. My first. I don’t know who submitted it to them, but thanks (I never email links around. I did it when I was new to blogging a couple of times, but I felt like a prize chump).
And just as the link went up, BlueHost took my site down. I got a notice from them last night that they were going to migrate me to a new server within 24 hours.
Anyway, we’re up again and let’s hope the new server sucks less.
Comment from Sigivald
Time: March 22, 2011, 7:46 pm
It should be possible to find a butcher that will cut your streaky bacon *properly thin*.
(Well, for some values of ‘properly’. I prefer the thickest bacon I can find, and should really go to a butcher to get some 1/4″…)
Comment from Scubafreak
Time: March 22, 2011, 8:47 pm
Personally, I like thick cut smoked bacon. Of course, if you are going to do your eggs in the grease, the cheap thin cut bacon makes the better choice….
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: March 22, 2011, 9:00 pm
Eggs AND potato in the grease. In the South, every halfway decent cook keeps a little jar of bacon grease next to the stove.
By the way, bantam eggs are splendid. I cracked one into a cup with a large chicken egg, and the yolk was pretty much the same size. In other words, they lay eggs with lots of yolk and very little white. Scrambled bantam eggs are vivid orange.
Comment from Nina from GCP
Time: March 22, 2011, 9:47 pm
This had 4 comments when I last saw it yesterday…
Comment from Scubafreak
Time: March 22, 2011, 9:48 pm
Banti eggs are good (banti being the way my grandfather refered to his bantams), but I’ve always wanted to try cooking with Ostrich egg. I’m told that chefs swear by them for everything they can think of, and there are a couple of farms toward Canyon City that might sell some….
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: March 22, 2011, 10:14 pm
There were some for sale in a local shop — ยฃ20 each, if you please!
My mother pronounced it that way (I spelled it “banty” in my head). She called cocky little men “banty roosters.”
Of course, she was six feet tall and gorgeous, so she got harassed by more than her share of banty roosters.
Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: March 22, 2011, 10:17 pm
They sell them round here, too, Scubs – in fact there’s a field of Ostriches not far from us.
You should have seen Stoaty’s eyes when we first drove past it.
I wish I’d had the presence of mind to tell her they were Yorkshire chickens ๐
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: March 22, 2011, 10:27 pm
I want one SO BAD.
Comment from unkawill
Time: March 22, 2011, 10:50 pm
Got the Jar of Bacon grease on the counter right next to the stove, Couldn’t live or cook with out it. YUM!
Comment from Mark Matis
Time: March 23, 2011, 1:04 am
Hey, if you gets ya an ostrich pullet, I bet that neither Mapp nor Lucia will be able to do much hen pecking…
}:-]
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