Cows & Cooking & Crafts. . . B J O'S Way

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So a lot of that good farmland which folks are looking for is round, but it's not available. If the acreage isn't fenced, then you can forage wild foods or run animals from your own farm on it (some Arabian-horse ranchers I know use nearby abandoned homesteads for good pasturage). But that's about the extent of the use you can make of somebody else's property.

I was astonished to read in Richard Beardley's article on Chinese foods in MOTHER NO. 11 that he considers making chicken stock a hassle. What else is there to do but throw the whole mess into a kettle, set it on the lowest possible heat (or, with a wood-burner, at the back of the stove) and just check it sporadically to make sure it doesn't boil dry? Every single bone can be used. Also the tails, necks and if you really don't like 'em the innards.

When cooking chicken bones for soup, use a Chinese chopping knife also called a French knife, to whack the bones and chop off their ends. The soup will not be the pretty, clear broth that you might be used to, but it'll be richer and contain more vitamins. (Use this method to reuse the poultry bones of any fried or roasted fowl and you'll get all the food value from them.)

Macramé is still going strong, but just plain old macramé is becoming a real drag on the market. Ken Osumi a young designer who lives and works in Tokyo, has been adding cut and polished stones to his twine masterpieces. His idea is a goodie. Here's why: If you look closely at the drawing (Fig. 1), you'll see that the stone in the necklace is travertine . . . the trusty practice rocks of lapidary workers all over the United States. Nobody in a gem shop (a hobby of mine) keeps these stones after they're through experimenting on them (because they're a dull black and white and never take a topnotch polish). Other stones used in this way are jasper, or the brown agates known in rockhound circles as "gelid gravy" after they're cut.

What happens to the travertine and jasper after we've finished practicing on them? Well, mainly we unload them at the next rock show, in grab bags for children or in a bolo tie. Practically every rock shop in the country has an overflow of these, and every lapidary and mineral society has people who've tossed the stones in the back of their workshop. Someone into macramé could visit these shops and clubs and gather their rejects. The rocks aren't pretty enough to fit into gold-filled settings and so on, but they sure as blazes are "organic" looking. They are just charming in a naturalistic macramé necklace (especially soft tones of twine).

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