I know. I promised the game hen recipe. Now it's kind of late in the game (unintentional pun,) so the exact recipe has slipped through the sieve-like pores of my tired, late-holiday brain, but I can write up an overview that explains how it worked so that you can figure it out for yourselves.
Honestly, it wasn't hard.
What I figured out was that the difference between a basic chicken and game hens is how much fat you use and how. They are smaller than chickens, so the heat penetrates more quickly and cooks the breast faster. I'm not sure whether they are also not as fatty, or perhaps the smallness of the bird simply requires more fat to keep it moist. Either way, they do well with stuffing and adding lots of fat. So this is what I did. I also noticed plenty of recipes that stuffed the birds with something sweet like one that suggested a few peeled grapes or a dice of apples with cranberries and rice. I thought that perhaps the gaminess of the flavor did well with that kind of sweetness.
If you're on GAPS like I am, stuffing is starchless, but not necessarily without sweetness, so I made up a nice slow saute of lots of ghee with diced onions, the cooking making them even sweeter and a nice golden color. Then I added a dice of carrots, celery, and a few other vegetables. (I had hoped for mushrooms, but without thinking, had used that week's mushrooms in the burgers I made a day before. Oh well...) Between the time that the onions were complete and when I added the vegetables I added some oregano and a small amount of salt with the idea that because of the smallness of the birds that too much salt would drain them of juices too quickly during cooking, but a little would make the birds flavorful and make the juices run just enough for early basting.
I lay the stuffed birds on a bed of chopped greens with enough broth to cover the bottom of the pan. Then I rubbed them with garlic, drizzled them with the juice of a lemon and coated them liberally with ghee. After all of that I covered the breast of each bird with a double layer of cheesecloth.
I roasted the birds at a slightly lower temperature - 325, I think, with an oven initially preheated to 350. It would be fine, even, to go lower, as long as basting happens often. I basted at intervals of around 10-15 minutes. I can't remember how long they cooked for. A few recipes for stuffed birds indicated that they required between 1 and 2 hours to cook. Ours finished somewhere between those, perhaps at 1.5 hours.
So that's the story on the game hens. Next time I try them I will do my best to get a real recipe up there. These turned out really well...
So, onto other things. There was eggnog that turned out so rich that really, the bottom of a mini mason jar was quite enough. Three cups of this stuff disappeared by day three.
Then, last night I stayed up WAY too late. This morning I had the first cup of green tea that I've had in, oh, years. I stopped drinking caffeine about 7 years ago when we were trying to get pregnant and only tried a few sips a year ago or so when it was offered at a gathering. It was a terrible time to try it - I hadn't eaten anything in a few hours and my stomach immediately clenched and I was buzzed in a very uncomfortable way for about an hour, then I fell asleep.
This morning, though, I tried a very weak cup of green tea with breakfast. So far, so good. I have no plans to go back onto it - I still feel strongly that stimulant foods and drinks are bad for our bodies and our culture, both economic and social. (See Sidney Mintz's book Sweetness and Power. Ironically, it's very dry, but goes down well.)
So my challenge now is to go to bed at a reasonable time, like when time is notated in double digits without an "am" afterwards. Ha.
