Winter gloom grabs me around the neck, and I find myself yearning for some genuine chicken soup made with a fresh plump stewing hen. Hi-Ho, hi-ho, it’s off to Pick ‘N Save I go, straight to the fresh meat department where rows of body parts wait, all in a row, set side by side in a long glass case.
An employee rushes forth. “Can I help you?” “Well, I’m looking for a stewing hen,” says I. “A stewing hen?” says the guy. I’ve never heard of a stewing hen.” He rushes off to alert the meat department guy, and returns with the news that I can use any kind of chicken to make a nice comforting soup.
“But it’s a stewing hen I seek, not just any chicken,” I reply, as I study possible replacements, i.e., chicken parts all in a row: legs, wings, thighs, breasts. He rushes off to consult with someone in a back room. Forthwith comes a frozen solid, 6 lb. shrink-wrapped thing marked “HEN.” A warning on the front says it might contain 8 percent water. Tip Top Poultry in Marietta, Georgia, distributes the birds, and a lady of a certain age (mine?) remarks that I’ll need to drive south to a meat market for a genuine FRESH stewing hen, but I don’t.
Okay, so I haul the frozen fowl home to thaw in the fridge for two days. Visions of chicken soup dance in my head, but not the same visions conjured by my mother who made her soup with a freshly killed hen, then topped it all off with dumplings. My hen weighs in at $1.69 per lb., but will she be as tough as an old hen? She looks young and innocent enough, and awaits a bath in my veggie broth, made the “modern” way, with frozen veggies ground to mush in my Hamilton Beach mush-maker.
I’m beginning to feel empathy for the little hen whose life was cut short so I could have a batch of chicken soup. I recall my sister’s pet chicken who scratched around in our Villisca backyard. “Henny-Penny” was her name, and when her time came to place her head on a bloody backyard stump and fall under the axe, my sis refused to eat her friend who was the centerpiece of our Sunday supper. The label on my little hen says she comes with “giblets,” my father’s favorite, though after his pathology training, he warned us to avoid gizzards and livers and such. There was a time when I used to make chicken livers fried with onions. No more.
Today the hen will spend a few hours in a simmering broth bath. Off comes the shrink wrap, and then it begins as I struggle for endless minutes, delving into her cold cavity in an attempt to remove the giblets. What? No heart? I leave the fat intact, then squeeze her into a blue & white speckled pot. She will not be stuffed, made into a tetrazzini or fricasseed. Her place in time will be marked as a friendly bowl of soup, unlike the watery stuff that comes from a can and promises to make us feel mmmm, mmmm, Good! Frankly though, I’m beginning to see why people open cans instead of wrestling with chickens.
11:30 am. Two hours pass and she’s ready to cool, skin, and have her white and dark meat removed and cut into bite-size bits. My sister writes in an email that she roasted a chicken last night, and she wonders if it’s our rural Iowa upbringing kicks in this time of year. Before nap time, I read Leonard Pitts’ Miami Herald take on the Cain debacle. Cain is going to “explain” in two hours, but my immediate concern is a stack of greasy pots and pans. I’m hungry, so I devour the gizzard.
1:30 pm. Nap time. The Hen has won the battle, tail-feathers down. I save the wishbone and divide the meat and broth (more salt; more pepper) to freeze. I’ll kill my Arizona family if they refuse my soup. My head is beginning to clear and I realize why I open cans instead of stewing around with hens.
Zzzzzzzzzzzz…..
