Are you looking at me??


Oh. That's ok then. I AM rather proud of my looks.....  :-)

Remember how we wanted a rooster? Yeah, I know I've been lax with updated chicken and duck pix...which brings me to my question....Have you met our new rooster, Roscoe? Our white straight run chick with the black wing patches sure enough turned out to be a one of these. :-)

Two weekends ago we finally bit the bullet and built a chicken run (hens roaming two houses down--and they're not close-together-houses, mind you---was a bit much. The neighbors thought it was funny...but...y'know. "Good fences make good neighbors" and all....)


It's pretty roomy, though...we haven't heard too many complaints.


The gate is quite temporary, and still needs some work. We have a better one in the works and it's in the process of being painted :-)

What's that teeny tiny little egg? It's our first pullet egg of the year.

Tuesday evening, we found another egg in the nestboxes. This one was from one of the Red Stars, we know since S. saw it laying.

We usually fire up the charcoal grill on Sundays, so last Sunday, S. asked me what I would like grilled---I said maybe chicken. We had a ton of seafood on the 4th, so neither of us felt much like that...and we had been out to eat the night before and both had red meat...so neither of us felt much like that...chicken kabobs sounded like a good option. We happened to be in the grocery store at the time, so when he asked if I had any particular flavoring in mind, so I glanced over and saw a bottle of rosemary balsamic marinade. That works. Kinda sounded good, actually. And this was born (and is it good....):

Rosemary Balsamic Chicken Kabobs:
(Makes 4 13-inch kabobs)
(consider yourself warned: S. cooks in pinches and dollops and dashes...)

marinade:
2 chicken breasts, cut into kabob-sized pieces
3 tbsp balsamic vinegar (S. says that balsamic vinegar has a very strong flavor that can easily overpower your food--so be careful not to use too much...)
1/2 cup white wine
large pinch garlic powder
large pinch parsley
2 dashes Worcestershire sauce
large pinch rosemary (crumbled--we dried it ourselves so it was in whole needles)
dash olive oil

kabobs:
veggies of your choosing, the below is what we used...
1 carton cherry tomatoes
1 red bell pepper
1 green bell pepper

Combine all marinade ingredients in container large enough to cover chicken pieces. After putting the chicken in the marinade, ensure that it is all covered--if not, add more white wine and olive oil, and cover the container---place in refrigerator. (We marinated it for about 2 hours...just because that happened to be convenient for us)


If you have a charcoal grill, like us, remember to light it in plenty of time for grilling--S. usually lights the grill about an hour ahead of time to let it heat up. We also had this over yummy basmati rice--S. says he added a little garlic powder, worcestershire sauce, liquid smoke, and some frozen peas to it--gave it a very subtle flavor.

Once you're all set with your grill, go ahead and start threading the kabobs.


Then, just put 'em on the grill. These took about 15 minutes on ours...but be sure to check the meat temperature if you're not sure...raw chicken is no fun.