My Wife Is Turning Into A Bohemian....

Three or four months ago, a friend of mine bought a couple of Farmall F-20 tractors from a man near Prague, Nebraska. On a cold, windy Saturday, we ventured up with his trailer to pick them up.

For those of you who don't know, Prague is in a heavily Bohemian populated area of Nebraska - and some of my mother's ancestors were from the area (some relatives are still there).

Now, after we got things loaded, we took a tour of the man's farm, and also part of his father's place. Both of them had some interesting "stuff"! After looking around for awhile, all three of us settled into leaning on the pickup, and telling stories - most of which were between me and the man who sold the tractors.

Mainly because we were both Bohemians....

There we were, telling stories of growing up with "Bohunk" relatives. Then, the stories turned to food.

We discussed things like Jaternice (Yeet-thur-neet-sa), Blood Pudding, Pickled Pig's Feet, Sour Kraut, and then--

Boiled Chicken Feet.

I wasn't very old when she died, but I can remember my Grandmother nibbling on those feet like an ear of corn. There isn't much meat on them, but she'd nibble until it was all gone.

Evidently, not an appetizing event for most non-Bohemians....

The friend I when up there with, looked like he was gonna turn green if we kept talking about it. I doubt he said a single word for about 20 minutes while he listened to tales of opening the lid on a boiling soup pan, just to see chicken feet sticking out of the broth. At one point, I'm SURE I saw him almost throw up!

At any rate, he was relieved we shut up long enough for him to start the truck and head for home before we started to talk about something REALLY gross!

There is an old saying "When Bohemians butcher a hog, they use everything, except the squeal..."
Apparently, the same holds true for chickens...

This morning, I butchered 2 of 4 old Roosters, that my Lovely wife's dad had given us - and was EXPRESSLY told to save the feet.



My wife isn't Bohemian, so I kinda looked at her cross-eyed, but ok, you want the feet, you got the feet.
I scrubbed them clean, soaked them, scrubbed them some more, soaked them again, then did a final cleaning, before adding them to the crock pot with the rest of the birds.



We decided that we'd share, so we asked that same friend who I went to Prague with, over for supper tomorrow night.

For SOME reason, he was "less than enthusiastic" about it.....