Thoughts around a chicken dinner

As I sit before the remains of my plate, I watch my 2-year-old run around the living room with her daddy, pulling out pans and spoons and bowls, mixing and "cooking." She announces to my husband that "it's hot! I have to be careful!" He asks what she's cooking and she says loudly "PANcakes!" She uses a lot of exclamation points these days for everything, but especially the "food" that she makes in her "kitchen." Her "kitchen" exists on the bottom shelf of everything within reach in the dining room where she stores her implements....a tiny steel pot with a handle, a potholder, several small plates, wooden and plastic, spoons, and other bits and pieces. She's now proudly feeding her baby doll pancakes.

My plate is still colorful. It's my idea of the perfect dinner, more than half-eaten. I bought a small organic chicken from our local market at 6001 California St., locally raised and slaughtered in Petaluma. There was a nice head of kale and brown rice from Other Avenues Co-op in the Outer Sunset and homemade sauerkraut that is a shocking shade of pink against the greens. The kale was stewed with chicken drippings and a bit of beef tallow. The chicken was cooked very simply, roasted at a fairly low temperature with a bit of olive oil on top. When it was newly on the plate there was a lovely heap of brightly colored kale and kraut with the soft beige chicken and rice on either side. I know that the Weston A. Price people would be all over me for the fairly low fat content of this meal. We don't do laundry on washboards anymore, nor do we work in the fields from dawn to dusk or need the huge calorie load. I love the idea of eating fat well, but there's nothing wrong with a nicely distributed plate, either. 

I enjoy using everything and get several long-term recipes going at once. While I cooked the chicken, I soaked a beef bone, then put it in a crock pot with rice, a bit of  tapioca starch, a few pounds of stew beef and the broth from cooking the kale. The back of the chicken will be turned into broth in a day or so, then after that, broth-cooked rice. If I could get my hands on some decent giblets (or any giblets, actually) I could add that to the broth, too. The leftover kale will be added to the stew, possibly with leftover bits of chicken. There's a crock that's been on the butcher block since Thursday that has about three or four days left on its fermentation that contains a nice batch of tiny cucumbers in brine. 

I also enjoy sitting at the table with my husband and daughter while we all eat. My daughter asks for "a big one," an assisted forkful of a bit of everything on her plate (except for greens). My husband goes back for seconds. My child can't get enough of sauerkraut and anything salty or spicy. She started eating those foods by the time she was 11 months old. She's only now starting to be interested at all in sweet things.

All this was made in a kitchen about 8 feet square with an electric oven that barely works and burners that all sit at creative angles. (Just imagine making eggs in an iron skillet at a 20 degree angle...yep. Welcome to my life.) Our refrigerator and freezer doors seem to have no seal and are closed with duct tape. But I manage quite well. In fact, fermentation is a no-brainer in a kitchen like ours. I make coconut milk kefir in a jar that lives in our dining room hutch for 24 hours. Sauerkraut and other salt-brine pickles stay in one large crock and one small, accompanied by a small army of glass canning jars. All of them are either on top of the fridge from where my husband sweetly moves them to the butcher block table for midway checks, or on the butcher block table where I do most of the kitchen work. 

I should sign off for now to get out the coconut milk custard and fruit that's waiting for everyone in the fridge.

I wish you all a tasty, slow and savory dinner. (We went to the final day of the Slow Food festival here in San Francisco today...more on that later if I have time.)