Preparedness for when

jk0

ALIBOBSY wrote: »

Wasn't this charity on an episode of the "biggest loser" a few years ago, they got the contestants to pack the bags. Basically its the ingredients for basic meals at weekend for the kids who would normally get school lunches for free, but nothing at weekend. Things like packets of pasta and a jar or sauce etc etc. Each Monday they return the backpack to be repacked for the next weekend.

Good idea, along the lines of a foodbank, but directed through schools and through the children so directing the food to the families with kids.

Ali x

Oh, for goodness sake. How useless does a parent need to be at feeding their children, before the kids are taken into care?

I saw an advert this week saying that one in seven children don't get any breakfast. Why aren't the parents getting up to make them something?

jk0

GreyQueen wrote: »

Righty, off to see what the sinners are up to. Seen ZH - the Irish are up to something with depositors' money now. I suspect that mattresses across Europe will be getting lumpier and lumpier..............:rotfl:

This might tickle you GQ. Don't watch if easily offended.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9cD3tyfKsI

pineapple

Bedsit_Bob wrote: »

There's nothing more depressing, than drinking tea without milk, as Colin Blythe (Donald Pleasence) will testify.

During a trip overseas where the only milk available was the evaporated kind, I started drinking tea without milk and now I can't abide milk in tea. It bugs me that when you go out people usually ask if you want milk in your coffee - but tea? Nahh. If I don't manage to stop them beforehand they just slosh in the white stuff. I find it so horrible that I can't even drink it to be polite.
There - that's my Saturday rant!

Perplexed_Pineapple

GreyQueen wrote: »

Evening all.

The Mad Bushcrafters had us making pigeon pies in the rainy moutain woods......as in giving you a dead wood pigeon and a demo how to twist it apart and turn it inside out to get at the breast meat. Anyone who wants the instructons can PM me.

Yes please! I've eviscerated rabbits but never a pigeon. I've heard of people cooking birds like pigeons by encasing whole in clay, and then baking in the embers of a fire. Apparently when you break the clay off the feathers and skin come off, leaving the meat. I've never met anybody who has actually done this so far as I know, so it may be a rural myth (like an urban myth, but more bloods and guts :rotfl::rotfl:).
Have done a bit of a restock today. Found some candles in T3sco - six tall thin candles reduced from £2 to 50p - usually collect the fatter candles but discount not to be sneezed at.

ragz_2

GreyQueen wrote: »

Evening all.

The Mad Bushcrafters had us making pigeon pies in the rainy moutain woods......as in giving you a dead wood pigeon and a demo how to twist it apart and turn it inside out to get at the breast meat. Anyone who wants the instructons can PM me.

Soooo, how did we cook pies without an oven? Made a fire and got a section of it down to hot embers. Pie was made in the second smallest section of a Vang0 set of nesting pots, a couple of small stones placed in the bottom of the biggest pan, piepan into it and lid on and there you have it, a dutch oven.

Turn it a couple of times and cook until done.

Thanks for that, just shows there are ways and means. We do actually have a bushcraft oven, but never really used it so it's on the 'to sell' pile. You can use them on the hob but not sure it would be safe on a fire and has limited applications. Your method may work with the billy cans we have?

I too would like to know how to turn a woodpigeon inside out. Hubby brings them hoe sometimes and deals with them but I don't know which way he does it, I do know he only saves the breast.

GreyQueen

Morning all.

Between the asterisks below you will find the destructions for dismantling a bird. It's in white print but if you highlight it, it will become readable. This is to protect the squeamish. Or those having their brekkie.

**********

How to unzip a bird.


Example of a woodpigeon but apparently works on other bird species but not waterfowl.

Assemble chopping board and sharp knife, a bin bag perhaps held open in a box and very clean hands.

Holding dead pigeon around its chest, extend a wing to its fullest extent and feel around where it joins the body for the shoulder joint. Twist to remove. You may have to twist 360 + degrees. Discard wing. Repeat for other wing.

Hold bird upside down and gently pull downwards on neck (think like milking a goat). You’re aiming to move the crop down the throat towards the head. Then grasp neck low where it joins the body and twist off. Discard. You may or may not be left with a long bit dangling from the body – it’s the thorax and nothing to worry about. Ignore and move to next stage.

With what’s left, hold between your two hands and, with your thumbs back to back (they’ll be squashed together). You slide your thumbs down the neck hole and one of them with slide over the smooth plate of the breast bone. With your thumbs as far as they’ll go into the body cavity, hook the tips of your thumbs outwards and draw them up. You’re effectively turning the bird inside out.

What you have now is the breast bone which is like a pyramid and is covered with thick dark red muscle meat. Discard the rest of the bird. Laying the breastbone down, use a sharp knife to slide around the base of the pyramid separating the meat from the bone. Then make vertical cuts from top to bottom ending up with slivers of meat for a pie.

BTW, it the bird was shot the pellet may have passed right thru or may be in the breastmeat; flick it out with the knife tip if necessary.

We made pies next. In the middle of the woods in the pouring rain. And I thought as I was doing it that I don’t even make pastry from scratch at home!
It’s really fast and easy even for a noob, if it a bit gruesome.

**************

Chilling whilst waiting for the washer to do its stuff, so I can rack the bedlinen before going to the lottie for a few hours, then should be able to make the bed up with the same stuff tonight. No point in getting older if you don't get more devious, say I.

ETA JK0, lol at that clip. My first thought was Why is he fondling a string of sausages............? Yeah, worry beads, got there in the end.

mardatha

It's a bit of a faff for one pigeon though, would be better to use two? I can do rabbits in my sleep with a stanley knife but always left birds to my son cos of the mess and fiddle.
Am sitting here writing a winter food stash shopping list that is getting longer and longer and longer..

[Deleted User]

Rabbits are the easiest thing to tackle.

It's almost as though nature designed them for the purpose.

GreyQueen

mardatha wrote: »

It's a bit of a faff for one pigeon though, would be better to use two? I can do rabbits in my sleep with a stanley knife but always left birds to my son cos of the mess and fiddle.
Am sitting here writing a winter food stash shopping list that is getting longer and longer and longer..

It only takes about 2 mins. The person who taught the Mad Bushcrafters the technique does it to about 250 birds a day. One pigeon's breast meat panfried with onions and half a pepper, and then adding a minestrone pkt mix with some water added = a pie which was really too much for one person and would have been better for two.

Because you're not plucking the pigeon it isn't a messy process. Not particularly gory either.

Some rellies who raise a few turkeys each year showed me their poor bruised and battered hands after gutting and drawing them - oww!

westlothianlass

Good Morning all
I'm a cheery button this morning as I've just uploaded my last essay yaaah:T, now I can concentrate on interesting stuff:D.
Never skinned a rabbit or sorted a pigeon out, but would give it a go if/when the opportunity shows itself.

Got some runner beans in the dehydrator (seem to be taking forever but I'm probably just an impatient so and so). Decided to make up a jar of dehydrated mixed veg that would go into stews or soups, so when the beans are done ill get on to some other goodies.

The sun is shining today so think i might need to burn all my old papers (from last years course) which are building up in the bedroom. This girl needs to make room for wool, toilet rolls, tins of toms............

Have a great day all
WLL x