Did any one butcher ducks and drain the blood from the heads and make a soup with it? Adding sliced apples, raisins, prunes and dumplings. My Mom made this and called it "duck soup". I loved it as a kid; but now that I realize what it was , I don't think I could eat it.

When I was born our family lived on a farm. Years later we moved to town. Mom complained that the chickens purchased in the grocery store tasted terrible. As a surprise dad bought 6 live chickens. Assembly line fashion, dad chopped off the head. After they ran around until they finally keeled over. My sister and I dunked them in boiling water and then pulled feathers. By the way, the feathers were saved to make pillows. Mom would burn the rest of the feathers off. Then she prepared them for the freezer. She said when you let the chickens run around without their head, they would bleed out. The blood wouldn't pool in the meat, which gives it a bad taste.

I remember those days, too. I used to slop the hogs, gather the eggs, and pluck the chickens. We had an outhouse and a pump outside for our running water, a wood stove for heat and a cookstove, had a little oven in the top for the biscuits.

We butchered a hog in the fall, milked the cow everyday, churned the butter and sewed on the treadle. We were tired at the end of the day. Our bath was a sponge bath at the pump, except on Saturday nights we'd have a "real" bath, drawing water from the pump, heating it on the stove, and bathing in the washtub.

Oh yes, the first time I saw a duck killed that way, I was appalled, and I was already 30 years old. When I was younger my grandmother made duck soup, called "Chadnena" and one time she brought the blood home from the butcher, I stuck my finger in it, thinking it was cholcolate.....Yuck!!!! But the soup was out of this world.

i didn't know that... see ya learn something new every day on this list

:) :)

my mom tells me of this soup she remembers from when she was young. Polish immigrants in Chicago.

My Mom was Polish and Dad was German.

This was a Hungarian family, my great grandparents came from 'the old country.' It's interesting, they changed the last name to Americanize it, and we know that anyone with that particular last name, is somhow related to us.

About 8 years ago I got some money, only about $170, because my Grandpa's sister died, no kids, never married, and since my dad was dead , her estate was divided among her heirs. I guess I was one. Until that time, I never knew she existed (she was in MO, I'm in OH)

The family was a poor farmer's family, but we (I lived in a trailer on the farm when I was little) had a 5 seater outhouse!

Remember back in the 50's, we used to get peeps at Easter time - all dyed pink or blue or bright yellow!
I made a pet out of my peep. He grew into a feisty rooster. He wouldn't let Mom into the hen house to gather the eggs, so I had to gather them when I got home from school. I used dress that rooster up in doll clothes! It's a wonder he didn't hate me.
But one weekend, I was sent into town to my Granma's house with one of my sisters. Came home the next day to find out that I missed the chicken picking day. And the day my poor pet Rooster met his maker. . . .
I could pluck and scorch a chicken but I will not gut them!!!
'

what wonderful memories!! thank you for the thread loved it! :) :thumbup: :wink:
dar