Heart-warming. Lots of chicken recipes. Would recommend if you eat a lot of chicken. ( )

This is a lovely, readable book with delicious sounding recipes and a sweet story of how the author first started keeping chickens in her backyard. I was disappointed with it because the subtitle led me to believe that there would be more information about raising chickens to become more self sufficient. I recommend this book for the recipes with a few cute chicken stories thrown in as a bonus but it is not in anyway a handbook for homesteading or raising chickens as more than egg producing pets.

The recipes look delicious, though for the most part I won't be using them without tweaking since maybe half use butter or other dairy products and we have a dangerously severe dairy allergy in my family. The author includes handy cooking tips and advice on her directions for each recipe.

I was more interested in the memoir part than the recipes when I decided to read this book. I'm interested in homesteading so the subtitle caught my eye and I enjoy reading about other people's experiences raising backyard chickens. It's like hearing another couple's love story when you are happily in love too. However the author states in the intro that she had only had chickens for four or five years at the time she wrote the book, so her advice grates on my nerves a little. Going with the love story analogy again, it's a bit like reading a book about how to have a happy marriage by someone who had only been married a few years. For instance, the author is not likely to have deal much with illness, injury, old age, decline in egg production that comes with these issues. These are things a person should consider before getting chickens to raise for eggs because as a responsible chicken owner will either have to cull their bird (and hopefully eat it so as not to waste it) or be prepared to have a chicken pet for many more years without the benefit of eggs. The author does have some really good thoughts about the importance of realizing where our meat comes from and eating with a consciousness and thankfulness of the animal's life.

Her advice about hatching chicks (only for those who are, in her words, "obsessive compulsive") is simply wrong and misleading. She states that any fluctuation in temperature and humidity will kill the embryo which shows that she's never tried it. Yes you want to keep it as constant as possible but naturally brooded eggs are exposed to the elements for at least a few minutes everyday when the hen gets up to eat and poop and the eggs survive. (I have hatched eggs in an incubator and under a broody hen so I have experience.)

I have some serious issues with the subtitle. The author only has three hens and bought one of the most expensive trendy coops I've drooled over online. As far as I can tell, that is the extent of her "homesteading". I am not disputing her experience and I think it's important for everyone to do their part to eat more locally and aware of the living conditions of the animals they eat or use for milk and eggs, etc. But three hens is not suburban homestead by any stretch of the imagination. I would have been much happier with this book if I hadn't read the subtitle.

(I currently have 24 chickens, six geese, and thirteen turkeys but I started out by babysitting my friend's five hens in my suburban backyard. ) ( )

A memoir of suburban homesteading with 125 recipes