Me a Food Snob?

On Sunday we harvested 7 roosters.  It seems a little odd for the first post to talk about harvesting roosters.  In my corner we raise chickens for eggs and also for our own meat.  Harvesting 7 in one day is a new record for my husband and I.  Everything went smoothly with little time for lag.  Last year I was so tired after just three and I pushed myself to get a fourth one done.  I would need a whole day to recover.  Not this year I'm so happy and thankful to report.  On Monday morning I put two of them in the crockpot for a dinner party that evening.

We had been invited to go out for dinner by a relative.  In the past I would have been excited about it but not this time.  I had begun to dread invitations to go 'out' for dinner.  Over the last year or two we have gradually changed how we eat.  We currently eat no processed food.  That is unless we process it ourselves.  We have grown to distrust the food industry and find it hard to eat something which was not prepared by us or someone who we know loves us.  The big name brands are not our friends, they don't really care about mine or my families health.  What our town has is a large offering of big chain restaurants and fast food.  So we don't eat out any more.  I had to turn the invitation down and that was really difficult for me as I am beginning to feel like a real 'food snob'. 

"Oh, I'm sorry we don't eat that kind of food."

But we don't.

As it turns out we invited everyone to our place for dinner.  No one was going to ask us to invite them and cook for them.  I'm not sure why it took me so long to figure that out or why I stressed about being invited out.  Everyone was excited about coming to our house and hanging out and eating at our leisure in the privacy of our own family home, not to mention the savings on their pocket books.  My husband suggested throwing two roosters into the crockpot.  I was impressed with him, not because of his generosity, he's always been that, but because he was willing to eat chicken so soon after harvesting.  He has consistently worked on our system and set up and apparently it's working.  My health is improving too and I am much stronger than I had been.  This means I'm much more helpful this year. 

Two roosters are much too big for our large crockpot whole so I cut them up.  I slathered them with olive oil and dribbled white rice vinegar all over them.  I usually use a good white wine but I am all out of white wine and waiting for my little sister to visit so I can get some more. 
(hint hint little sister) 

Anyway the rice vinegar did exactly the same thing.  I salted and peppered and generously sprinkled the top with curry powder and sliced an onion to spread over the top. 
It cooked on high for 5 - 6 hours.

When it was cooked I got one lady to remove the bones.  She saved them for soup.  Another lady cooked the whole wheat organic noodles.  I took the liquid from the meat and using creamy milk from my whole non homogenized milk and a little flour I made a thin gravy.  No seasoning was necessary.  We put all our efforts back into the crock and we had the best chicken and noodle dumplings ever, paired with green beans from the garden gently steamed and tossed with real butter and sliced almonds.   For dessert we had apple/berry crisp with

vanilla ice cream.