Luck = Opportunity + Preparedness

Ok, yeah, I know that isn’t original. But that is what we are eating tonight.

You see, Sunday husband was out and about and heard a great chicken racket, too much of a protest to just be a rooster taking his liberties. When he got nearer to it, a hawk flew up into the sky. The hawk was too small to carry her prey, one of our good laying hens, with her. So husband picked it up and brought it home. Nothing was wrong with her except its neck was broken so we would of course not waste her, we would honor her by eating her.

I heated up a kettle of water and daughter and I plucked her. Husband and daughter gutted her, with the added attraction of seeing how eggs develop inside a hen. We put her in a bag and put her in the meat compartment of the fridge to age. And today she is boiling with some onion and garlic, to be later deboned and the broth going to moisten the masa filled with spiced chicken making tamales. Or as an old time neighbor of ours always calls them, “hot tamales”. He’s the one who also says, when things are going particularly well, that he is living under the cross, yep, in the shadow of the cross.

If one is going to have chickens roaming loose, one is going to lose some of them to predation. The loses are worth the healthier eggs, the healthier chickens (after all, the chicken knows more about what she should eat than any scientist at PurinaMonsantArcher knows what a chicken should eat) and the lesser feed bills (another drawback of manufactured feed). But here and now we also get to eat the loss. Make the loss a gain.

Stacking the deck in the game of life.