Jethro Bodine's Favorite Meal

If you've been keeping up with the blog, we've lost a few hens and meat birds to a predator.  I think it is a raccoon, so I have 3 traps that I've been setting every night and other than catching the neighbor's cat, I haven't had much success.  If we were depending on my trapping prowess to provide our meals, we'd probably be mighty thin and perhaps be boiling dandelion roots for nutrition.

But things took a turn for the better last night and this fellow was waiting for me in the trap.  An opossum.  Could this be the guy killing my chickens?  What am I gonna do with him?  Unfortunately for him, he's not protected by the due process clause of our Constitution like we enjoy.  What are my options?  I remember as a kid, I'd watch the Beverly Hillbillies on TV and Jethro Bodine's favorite meal was Granny's possum stew.  Yum!  I wonder if Tricia could google up a recipe...


Possum in the trap! 

After I skinned him, Tricia boiled the old guy with some beans.  I'm only joking!!  This is actually some comfort food that we enjoy - 15 bean soup.  The meat is a homemade smoked sausage that our neighbor blessed us with - not possum sausage, but pork and deer. 

15 bean soup

Along with the 15 Bean Soup, Tricia has some Blue Stone ground Cornmeal.  She mixed that up and put it in the oven so that we could have some hot blue cornbread to eat with our meal.  Is there anything better than hot cornbread with a big pat of butter melting on top?  I don't think so.

Mixing up Blue Cornbread

I picked a nice bunch of fresh kale from the garden to go along with our meal.  This stuff is so good for you.  I also pulled some beets up to add some color and flavor to the plate.


Fresh Kale

Now although it is actually called 15 Bean Soup, we eat it over rice similar to what we do with Red Beans & Rice.  Scrumptious!  Look at those vittles!  Although there's no possum on that plate, I'll be Jethro would eat that plate and be standing at the pot for seconds.  Check out the blue cornbread...

A nice plate of stomach-pleasing vittles.

Back to ol' boy in the trap, I'll tell it like this.  I had a neighbor who always had the greenest, most healthy vegetables in his garden.  One day I asked him, "Mr. Bill, what do you do to make your vegetables so nice and healthy?"  I still haven't figured out if he was serious or not (but I think he was), when he said, "Kyle, here's my secret - at last count I have 62 stray cats buried in my garden."  Mr. Bill had a different twist on the old Indian trick of burying a fish with each corn seed they planted.

If the choice is between him and my chickens, it's an easy choice.  I'll leave it to you to figure out where my alleged chicken killing possum is.


RIP Chicken Killer