My bedroom window looks out into the backyard. When I woke this morning, delighted to see the sun (a brief respite before more snow and rain) I lucked out and saw Pip at the very moment that my husband opened his stall door to let him out. I think that Pip was as surprised to see the sun as I was. Instead of a inch of standing water on top of ice, there was bare ground underfoot. Pip leapt. He ran. He bounced. In short, he gamboled. I grinned. And I thought, how often does a person get to use the word gambol? It’s a good life when that’s the first thing one thinks of in the morning.

gambol |ˈgambəl|verb ( -boled , -boling ; Brit. -bolled, -bolling) [ intrans. ]run or jump about playfully

It is a miserable, rainy, cold, dreary, February day. But, I know what to do to perk myself up. Yesterday, the girls laid five eggs, and when I have an excess of eggs, I make pudding, an extravagant recipe that uses six egg yolks. I use the recipe from my Farmstead Egg Cookbook. It’s the filling for Chocolate Cream Pie, but today I’ll skip the pie part and just have the pudding.

If you’ve ever wanted to know how to make pudding that is perfectly smooth, with no lumps, and has the right balance of flavor to sweetness, follow along with me here.

The first thing to do is to separate the yolks from the whites. I could make meringue cookies out of the whites, but the weather is too damp for those to bake into the perfect airy texture (a rainy day like this makes chewy meringues.) So, I’ll be putting the whites aside and freezing them. As you crack each egg, drop each white into a small bowl, then add it to the rest. If even a speck of yolk breaks in with the whites, they’ll be useless for meringues, so, with this technique, only one white becomes contaminated and not all.

I always assemble all of my ingredients before I start cooking. Then, I clean up as I go along. This makes it impossible to forget an ingredient (a lesson learned when I left the bananas out of the banana muffins.) Here are all of my ingredients measured out and ready.

Notice that I’ve weighed my chocolate. My scale is one of my most-used kitchen tools. I’m using Trader Joe’s Belgian bittersweet baking chocolate. Also, I’m using 1% milk, but use whole if you’d like.

Here are the ingredients:

8 ounces dark chocolate
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
6 egg yolks
3 cups milk

I melt the chocolate and butter in a bowl set over simmering water. Use a large bowl, because you’ll be stirring the rest of the ingredients in later. Mixing in a too-small bowl is frustrating and messy – always use a bowl a tad bigger than you think you’ll need.

After setting aside the melted chocolate to cool a bit, I combine the cornstarch, sugar and salt in a pot. Then, whisk in the yolks.

Aren’t those yolks a gorgeous color? Even in the winter, my hens eat greens and table scraps, so the yolks remain a deep yellow. Once this mixture is smooth, add the milk. If you dump all of the liquid in at once, the flour will become lumpy. So, pour slowly and whisk at the same time.

Now you can turn on the heat. Bring that mixture right up to a boil, but be careful, because milk browns and sticks quickly. Keep whisking. I like to use a pot with curved sides, so that all gets whisked – a flat-sided pot has corners that the whisk cant’ reach.

As soon as it boils, set a timer for exactly one minute. Whisk, whisk whisk! Don’t be afraid of the bubbles! But, don’t have the heat on so high that it’s erupting and splattering all over. After one minute you should have a thick, smooth custard, but there’s always a lump or two lurking, or a bit of stringy, cooked egg white. So, the next step is to strain the custard through a mesh sieve.

Now you can stir the custard into the chocolate. Use a folding-over motion with a spatula. This keeps the pudding free of lumpy air bubbles.

When the color is uniformly, lusciously, chocolately brown, scrape it into a bowl.

Cover so that the plastic wrap is touching the pudding. This prevents a skin from forming as it chills.

Refrigerate for at least two hours. Or have a little bit while it’s warm. I did.

The goats are shedding. They have itches. If you scratch Pip between his forelegs he goes into a happy goat trance. See the smile?

More than 150 people came out yesterday to the Westford Farmer’s Market Backyard Chicken Program. This is a good-sized crowd by any measure, but even more so considering that it was a gorgeous sunny above-freezing day, the sort of afternoon meant for walks and outdoor chores, not being cooped up in a church hall (pun unintended but noted.) But, there they were, people of all ages, interested in keeping poultry.

I’d be delighted to bring my presentation to your town. Email me at terry@terrygolson.com for details.

For the first two years of Petunia’s life she laid eggs all spring and summer, about 400 of them. In her third year, she laid an egg every couple of days. She’s now six and I don’t know how often she’ll produce eggs this year. Maybe none. I got Marge at the same time that I got Petunia. She’s still as noisy as ever, but also not laying.

Buffy is five years old. Two years ago she was quite ill. I nursed her back to health – it took months – she now looks fine, but hasn’t laid an egg since she got sick.

Eleanor is six years old, and she spends her days basking in sunbeams. Her sister, Edwina is more active, but probably not going to lay many eggs this summer.

I’ve been thinking about my old hens, and it’s dawned on me that these are the first elderly chickens I’ve ever had. I don’t cull for productivity, and if a hen gets sick, I try to save her (even though it doesn’t make economic sense.) This morning, I went back through my records. I even made a chart to make sense of what has happened to my hens. I’ve had chickens since 1996. I’ve  lost chickens to a vicious raccoon attack, to hawks and to disease. I was surprised to see that Eleanor and Edwina, Petunia and Marge are the most long-lived hens that I’ve ever had.

I like having old hens.

I like that I can recognize Marge’s buk-buk-clucking. I like seeing Eleanor laze about, her beady eye cocked up at me, clearly saying, I’m here and I’m not moving. So there. I like seeing how Buffy puts up with Lulu’s attempts at friendship. I know these hens. The chickens give me more than eggs. There’s something inexplicably satisfying about standing in the coop, early on a cold morning, tossing corn to the girls. They talk to me. I talk back. They go about their busy chicken day. I go back inside to mine, having gotten to a good start with the community in the coop.