The Christmas chook

Talking of Christmas in the previous post led to a comment from Tjilpi about the Aussie tradition for eating chook rather than turkey for Christmas dinner.   He is right; eating turkey seems to be an American custom which has crept in over the last 10 years or so.  It seems to have taken hold in the UK as well.  (I was trying to remember what Dickens had the Cratchits eating for Christmas dinner in A Christmas Carol ; was it a turkey or a goose?)

Poor Farmer John admits to being uncertain about what a chook is.  I wondered whether the term 'chook' for hens (and accompanying roosters) was purely Australian.   But a Google search led me to a Scottish Highlands blogger who writes enthusiatically about his chooks.  He even calls his blog Pat the Chooks.

A delightful diversional read of Pat's blog (if indeed his name actually is Pat) turned up this wonderful story reprinted from The Guardian, which he calls:

Bert the Turkey

The following story was reported in the Guardian newspaper on Friday, 10th December 2004:

Bert probably thought his goose was cooked when he was entered into the church raffle as a mystery prize. But the plump 7kg (15lb) turkey proved far luckier than his 10 million brethren who are slaughtered every year in the run-up to Christmas: he was won by two vegetarians.
Ray and Myra Stroud, who have been strict vegetarians for 25 years and tuck into a nut roast on Christmas Day, bought five tickets for £1 each a week ago at the raffle held by St Mary's church in Charlton Adam.
They were horrified when a local farmer rang them to say that they had won the turkey. It was to be killed and plucked for their table in the next few days, they were told.
"The last think we wanted was for an animal to be killed for us," said Mr Stroud, 65, a retired plumber who gave up eating meat after being called for a job at a pig farm and leaving "disgusted" by the conditions there. 'So, without thinking, I asked the farmer if we could have the bird alive.'
Bert was duly delivered to them alive in a cage.
However, Mr and Mrs Stroud then realised that there was no room for the large bird in their small semi-detached house.
Mr Stroud telephoned Viva!, an animal campaigns group based in Bristol, which found Bert a new home in Chepstow, Monmouthshire, with its director, Juliet Gellatley.
Mr Stroud admitted that he became quite attached to his raffle prize in the short time they were together.
"He was only here for one night by I'm really going to miss him," he said. "Bert is a real individual - a bit of a character with an enormous personality," added Mrs Gellatley, whose children have befriended the bird. "He's in turkey heaven."
If Bert is not the luckiest turkey alive, he is certainly the most spoilt. Instead of being filled with stuffing, he is strutting his stuff with a dozen rescued battery hens.
Mrs Stroud has even pledged to post him some pecker money "so he gets fed".

Comments

[Tjilpi]

The fatted goose sounds about right. When I was reading about Thanksgiving, the article pointed out that all the ingredients of an American Thanksgiving meal are native North American species - turkey, cranberry, corn etc.

I don't know what the equivalent meal would be in Bushtucker.

Would be interesting to know when the above species made it back to England.

Speaking of imports, I've just noticed that I have an Ipomoea batata sprouting shoots from one end. Haven't seen that before.

[Jude]

Plant that sweet potato. Mound it under a little soil and a heap of vegetable matter, keep it well watered and mulched and you should get yourself a nice crop.

I think the bush-tucker people are working on coming up with some Aussie Christmas fare. Macadamia nuts of course, and rock oysters and prawns should be part of it here on the coast. You inlanders can have your emu and kangaroo steaks and dried quondongs.

[Tjilpi]

We used to call Macadamia Nuts - Bauple Nuts - in Maryborough. Bauple Mountain is nearby. Must have been a local name. I understand that Macadam was a Melbourne chemist and had those delicious nuts named after him. I think they are found from northern NSW all the way to FNQ. They're $30 per kilogram here. We used to have a tea chest full of them under the house from the tree in the back yard when I was a kid. It was often my job to crack a stack of them when Mum's recipe called for nuts.

You can imagine how I feel about forking out $30/kg.

Should the batata be planted in shade or sun?

[Pat the Chooks]

Delighted you found this post; it's one of my favourites, and yes, my name is Pat[rick]. The personal link to this story from the papers is that this was the village in which I used to play dame in the pantomime before moving up to Scotland nearly a year ago. Am now about to play dame in a pantomime up here in the highlands, so you can't get the bra out of the boy, no matter how far you move!