Friends, Food, and Feathers

Saturday afternoon found my husband and me in Kirkland with our best friends Kimberly and Steven at

Northwest Cellars

for their wine and food pairing event (a

Groupon , of course, because let’s face it – that’s just the way we roll here in Mentalburg).

Normally, these establishments give you just enough wine to dance daintily across the tongue, roll around the mouth a brief instant, and swallow leaving you wondering how long it took them to learn to pour out so little into the glass while actually tipping the bottle past completely vertical. Well, not so at Northwest Cellars.

The wine portions were generous, both in quantity and volume – a good 3+ ounces with each course, and there were 5 “courses “ (or was that 6? Because, let’s face it, after 12-15 ounces, who can keep track any more)?  The “pairings” of food were just that – a pair of several choice menu selections from the Indian restaurant Shamiana…excellent quality, minimal quantity.

While it’s true I could seriously hold my liquor 30 years ago in my “wild child” college days at the Florida State University (beer, bourbon, tequila, and more than my fair share of Everclear – Daytona biker bars and local Tallahassee dives where local celebs Butch Trucks and his good friend Dickey Betts periodically dropped in for little jam sessions).  Now, however, at “T minus 1 from 50, it is safe to say that my tolerance for spirits is sharply diminished (because, let’s face it, if they weren’t, I’d be dead by now).  By the time we had worked our way from the samosas to the tandoori chicken, from the sweetest white wine to the final red (a blend called Fortissimo), I could have cared less about “pairings”…it was all good, whatever it was we were eating and drinking.

Along with a 10% discount on wine purchases, we received a BOGO coupon for dinner at Shamiana.  Thankfully, the men (doing the driving) had demonstrated more restraint than we gals, so we all piled into our vehicles and headed to the restaurant for dinner.  Kimberly and Steven arrived first, and by the time we sat down, they had already ordered a bottle of one of the Northwest Cellars selections to go with dinner, so Kim and I picked up where we left off.  Dinner was fabulous (I highly recommend the Tika lamb, and the chicken Major Gray was equally superb).  Since the guys were driving, it was up to Kim and me to finish off the wine, because it is sacrilegious for a coupon clipper to leave a paid-for bottle of wine unfinished upon departure.  It just isn’t done!

Upon arrival home, it was time to close up the chickens for the night, and my incredibly servant-hearted husband graciously offered to handle that for me, so I headed indoors.  A few moments later, however, he came inside with the message that we had a problem.  When the word “problem” and “chickens” are in the same sentence, I immediately think someone is dead, but such was not to the be the case.

Brief background: we have two groups of hens, 8 in each coop/run combination.  We acquired extras with very short notice, so we had to scramble to come up with appropriate hen housing.  So, our poultry accommodations are a hodgepodge of coop/run combinations – aftermarket parts fitted together, and in some cases, jury rigged, to be sure.  One of the “temporary adaptations” involves a sky bridge connecting the run to the coop, and when my husband went out to close up the “girls” he found a feathered traffic jam – both inside and on top of (they had broken out of the run) sky bridge.

Our Buff Brahma (originally named Raji in honor of her Indian heritage, now called “Bertha Big Butt” after last night) was in the sky bridge facing the wrong direction (in the “coop exit” position rather than the desired “coop entrance” direction).  Two Easter-eggers had come up the ladder and entered the sky bridge, but encountering Bertha, they were crammed together and “beak to beak” with Big Butt herself.  As if that weren’t humorous enough, Lucy (free Black Australorpe we acquired) had climbed up the backs of the two Easter-eggers and through the netting to roost atop the sky bridge, while two additional BA’s simply decided to call it a night inside the run without even trying to get into the coop.  All of them were sound asleep.  It should be noted that the Rhode Island Reds were warm and dry, all comfy and sound asleep inside the coop, apparently making the journey before BBB blocked the sky bridge.

This would have been challenging to untangle stone-cold sober, but suffice it to say, after my evening of imbibing, it was…well…let’s just say I’m glad (and you’re sorry) we didn’t have a video camera catching our little chicken sky bridge adventure in living color. 

As for “Bertha Big Butt,” I’m thinking I might have to Google “chicken pot pie recipes” and give it a whirl.  I wonder what wine I should pair with chicken pot pie?  

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