This week’s word gives me church giggles. That’s how good it is.
Rowdydow!
There—did you feel it? ROWDYDOW!
Magnificent, right? It means: a hubbub. A noisy, boisterous, and uproarious thing indeed.
The word is slang, to be sure, but even slang has serious “rules,” farmgirls. Rules we can’t be breakin’. So, if you’re going to use rowdydow as an adjective (an adjective describes a noun by answering one of these three questions: What kind is it? How many are there? Which one is it? Strong, fast, many, tired, terrifying, painful. You get the idea. Say “rowdydowdy.”
But first, let’s take rowdydow for a spin:
“When MaryJane went to investigate the rowdydow in the chicken coop, she found that one of the girls had laid a golden egg.”
Photo, courtesy www.fotopedia.com, alles-schlumpf
“The rowdydowdy flock became even more uproarious when MaryJane unwrapped the gold foil to reveal a solid, 72% cacao, organic, fair-trade chocolate egg.”
Little is known of rowdydow’s origin, though there are hints. The Irish protest/anti-recruitment song, “Arthur McBride,” dates back to 1840 and describes two Irishmen who go for a walk on Christmas morning and are accosted by English enlistment officers. The Irishmen have none of it, fight back, and use the English drummer’s “row-dee-dow-dow” as a football.
But back to eggs.
Speaking of surprise golden, er, chocolate eggs, my house-pet chicken, Ginger, laid her first REAL egg. Ginger is the chicken showing off her nappy in the April/May 2011 issue of my magazine. And me? I dressed up like Paris Hilton—maybe you didn’t catch that—one reader wrote in referring to “THAT woman.” Forgive us our need to get zany every now and then. Fusible. Boffo. Jocose. Farcical. Sassy?
I like sassy.
We had a sassy good time shooting that photo.
So to eat Ginger’s first egg…
I wanted to savor its full flavor and not have any interference from say, cheese or butter. So I did this trick I learned from one of my farmhands—the PERFECT way to poach an egg.
Crack one egg into a small bowl, being careful not to break the yolk.
Bring two inches of water to boil in a saucepan.
Take a slotted spoon and stir the boiling water into a whirlpool.
Pour the egg into the eye of the storm.
Watch the perfect storm take shape.
When it’s done, in about 2 minutes, use the slotted spoon to lift it out.
Ginger’s egg white had a softened divinity texture (not at all rubbery like a boiled egg) and the yolk was creamy and oh-so-perfectly runny, but warm and full of flavor, and it just BEGGED for a piece of toast to sop it all up afterwards.
Every last happy, saffron-yellow, good-for-you nutriment was passed from Ginger to me. That’s nutrition. That’s farm-made. That’s food the way it should be.
