How to Cook a Moose Read Online Free PDF

living inside a children’s book—ahappy one. The view from the table where we sat working together all day was wondrous: long, wild meadows surrounded by stone walls, stretching down in two directions to dense old shaggy woods, a lake, a beaver pond, and mountains stretching back to the sky.
    Out on the porch one spring morning, I saw a robin redbreast in the crab-apple tree over by the lilac bushes. It was hard to believe the things I well knew were happening all over the world, hard to reconcile this pristine, preserved, seemingly unchanged place with the terrible things going on “out there”—the massive-scale insanity of hydraulic fracturing and Tar Sands oil, the plastic and trash deposit in the Pacific Ocean the size of Texas and growing, Manhattan-sized chunks of ice falling and melting into oceans at the poles, so many animals endangered and extinct.
    Then, as I was thinking about fracking and ocean trash, the sunlight slipped through the clouds and lit the grass and gilded the trees. The crickets were humming. The clouds cast shadows on the mountains’ furry green blanket of trees.

    Chicken à la Ding
    When I moved up here, I brought my dog with me. His name is Dingo. He’s a midsize, now-elderly former Brooklyn street mutt, a handsome, bat-eared, extremely well-mannered gentleman. He’ll go anywhere I go; as far as I can tell, there are very few things in the world that Dingo loves more than he loves me. (And by “loves,” I mean, “expresses enthusiasm for”; who can know what lurks in the heart of a dog?) One of these things—now that I think about it, maybe the only thing—is chicken. In fact, it has occurred to me that if I could magically turn into a chicken, Dingo’s life would be complete. Given that this is not going to happen, or so I hope, he’ll have to be content with the second-best thing: I invented a chickenstew to add to his kibble. He doesn’t get it all the time, although I don’t think he could ever get tired of it.
    The first time I made it, one night in the farmhouse, he somehow knew it was for him. While it simmered, he sat by the stove, his entire attention laser-focused on the pot. When everything was cooked and soft, I turned off the flame. While it cooled, I went back to work, sitting at the table. He hovered by my knees, resting his chin on them in a way that had nothing to do with affection; every now and then, his chin tapped my knees to inform me that he wanted that stew. I tried to explain that it was too hot, but he couldn’t grasp that concept. By the time his dinner hour rolled around, he was in a hair-trigger state of monomaniacal jonesing.
    I stirred a cup of stew into his half-cup of kibble and gave him his bowl. Less than two minutes later, he had licked the bowl clean and was gazing up at me with adoration, licking his chops. I was tempted to laugh about this, but I resisted the urge, because this is exactly what we human members of the household do. Every day, we anticipate our dinner, talk about it, plan it, make it, drool over the cooking smells, load up our plates—and then it’s gone.
    3 large boneless, skinless chicken breasts, chopped
    1 lb. carrots, chopped
    1 cup green beans, chopped
    1 cup broccoli, chopped, with peeled stems
    Place all ingredients into a big pot and cover with water, plus one inch. Simmer, partially covered, stirring occasionally, until the chicken is cooked and the vegetables are soft. Let cool before serving.
    Store in an airtight container. Keeps for 5 to 6 days in the refrigerator.

Chapter Two

    My First Moose and the Yankee Palazzo
    Every day in the farmhouse, Brendan and I walked Dingo along the dirt road by the lake to the main road, four miles round trip. On a very busy day, six or seven cars might drive by in one hour, most of them locals but some of them strangers taking the shortcut to Maine. “We have to get this road taken off GPS,” we