New Roommates

Having roommates is never easy. Even if you get along like like fried eggs and ham, there are bound to be some habits that grate on one another's nerves, for example, dirty dishes left in the sink, bogarting the remote, and singing along with every song played on the stereo. But, what if your list of annoying roommate habits included molting, pecking, and smelling like a chicken?Buzz and Auntie have recently been subjected to two new coopmates and to be honest with you, I am beyond disappointed to find that they have not only been picking on one of the new girls, but they have been brutally assaulting assaulting her.
The new chicks arrived Sunday evening and after evaluating their temperaments we decided that, due to her unflappable and cordial charm we would sneak the funny looking blackTurken, Bruja , into the coop while Buzz and Auntie were sleeping. This is a pretty standard integration tactic for new chickens and it seemed to work well enough forBruja. The next morning Buzz and Auntie picked on her a bit, but the climate of the coop had hardly been compromised.

The integration of chicken number two- Cinderella I'll call her for now - has proven to be more of a challenge. From the start she was very skittish and defensive, and for this very reason we decided to give her one more day to calm down before throwing her into the mix. The next day, when I brought her cage into the chicken run to set her loose,Bruja immediately ran over. How sweet, I naively thought, she's coming over to greet her old friend. I could not have been farther off the mark. As soon as Bruja reached Cinderella, she began pecking at her angrily. Buzz and Auntie soon caught wind of the assault and, like a pack of high school mean girls, backed up their new feathered companion by closing in on Cinderella from all sides. It was a barbaric display, one that has persisted all week long with early morning ambushes, heartbreaking cries for help, and many a rescue. It's hard to believe that my dear little chick-a-dees are capable of being suck bitches!
It's so bad that it has me wondering if I will be forced to put an end to this torment with a recipe I found in an old cookbook from 1909.
You hear that girls! You might want to re-think behaving in such an unlovable fashion so close to Thanksgiving... I do have 17 mouths to feed after all.

The Sick and Twisted Lot...

Think about the three worst things that could happen to a foodie and sure enough, stomach ailments would be on that list – that's at least the conclusion I've come to after six days of unspeakable torture at the hands of the stomach flu. I hardly have to get into details to convey the pains, discomforts, and embarrassments everyone goes threw when they come down with a stomach virus, and if you share a bathroom with one or more people well, its just down right awful.
So everyone gets it, the Stomach flu sucks! But it sucks oh so much more for foodies. Why is that? Foodies suffer in ways non-foodies dare not imagine. For these food-frenziests, not only are they being robbed of their valuable vitamins and nutrients every time they head hastily to the bathroom, they are being robbed of something much more precious; they are being robbed of the notion of a good meal.

For the foodcentric, having their three meals a day stripped down to three saltine crackers, a ramekin of plain white rice, and a gallon of smart water may be tolerable... for a day!
But as day two rolls around, the outlook becomes bleak enough for them to gamble their digestive tranquility on riskier foods items such as, pumpkin gnocchi and roasted sweet potatoes. And such is the sick and twisted lot of a foodie, that as their stomach grumbles in protest of their imprudent decision - it was the pumpkin gnocchi of course - they ironically comfort themselves with episodes of Dinners Drive-ins and Dives, Good Eats, and Top Chef.
Sure, it may seem masochistic to fawn over an HD version of a 12oz. Burger drenched in Sister Sally’s Special Spicy Sauce as your intestines rally to take you down. But let me assure you, as the days pass - and intestinal health appears to be further away then anticipated - I myself have become so pooped (pardon the expression), that simply the idea of salt-brined pork loin and Chocolate Molten Cake has become spiritually nourishing.

For this Brooklyn Foodie, it has been six days of edible torment peppered with endless excursions to the bathroom. The only reason I am able to patiently await the day I can wrap my lips around a butter laden chocolate chunk cookie and let it melt in my mouth with little to no gastric consequences, is because I have sustained myself wholly on just the notion of the Barefoot Contessa’s scrumptious looking Carrot Cake - covered in pineapple, on the savory idea of Sopapillas from Salsa Brava in Flagstaff AZ, on early morning daydreams of quick-fire challenges involving poached eggs - Ruben style, on the itellectual essence of Crab Salad Strudel, Basil infused Ice Cream, Ham Hocks, and Bok Choy, and on the desire for Bread Pudding with a very Chocolaty Twist. How many un-foodies can say the same? Not many. That's because the only thing a non-foodie has lost to the Stomach Flu, is their lunch.