Chicken Carnage

We have had chickens for a couple of years now and were always told to watch for the pecking order to get out of control.  We raised our little brood from chicks and thought for sure our little ladies were the sweetest things ever.  They are little egg laying machines and my kids have named them all.  I told them not to name their food but they felt compelled since we no longer have a dog.  They play with the chickens and hold them.  "Look mom, they are so sweet!" 
A week ago, I went to check on the little dears to see how they were doing in our arctic weather and found them to be happily pecking below the roost.  Except, I noticed one of the leghorns was not down getting her morning drink of water.  "She must be laying," I naively thought.  When I opened the top of the coup I am sure the neighbors could hear me gasp.  Blood bombs looked like they had exploded all over the coup.  It was on the ceiling, the door, the wall, and a very large frozen puddle was sitting in the nesting box in the straw.  The leghorn was sitting, barely alive and covered in blood.  The white of her feathers and the white of the snow only increased the horrific scene.  The best part was that it was so cold all of the blood immediately froze where it landed.  She was covered in frozen blood and staring at me with a desperate look to save her. 
I called for my son to come and help me and as I was registering the damage two of the dear chickens came up to check out what I was doing.  They started for me as if to say, "she's ours, we are here to finish her off".  I had to shoo them off and work quickly.
 I have never been so thankful for Google and the internet.  We gently lifted our patient out of the coop and tried to asses the damage.  She had so much blood frozen all over her we couldn't find the wounds.  The cold probably saved her life because it slowed the blood loss down but we had to get her inside. 
As I held her little body I struggled with what I might have to do to "help" our little friend.  I am a wiz at cutting up a chicken that has already been processed but starting at the beginning was something I wasn't ready to embrace.  I checked online to see what to do.  Do you know you can Google, "how to clean up an injured chicken"?  Armed with some information, I decided to call my husband and seek his advice.  He is the kind of man that would come home from work to kill a bug for me if I needed it so I knew he would save me from the inevitable if it came to it.  He told me she would probable live if she made it through the night.  "Make her comfortable, and see what happens", he said.
Me and the kids worked calmly and I was so impressed with how unaffected they were by the carnage.  We set up a little pen for her in the guest shower and decided if she was going to live, she needed rest. 
The transition from saving the chicken to dealing with the aftermath became a nightmare version of "Dirty Jobs".  I learned online that chickens are attracted to blood.  Who knew?  I had to try to clean up the coop.  If you haven't ever had to clean frozen blood up in freezing temperatures, then you simply haven't lived.  The solution was screaming hot water in a spray bottle and Clorox wipes.  It loosened the mess, but Tilex was the real winner.  I bleached what I could get cleaned off and tried to mask the blood smell.  The only problem, trying not to kill the rest of the chickens with bleach fumes. 
We cleaned the coop as best we could.  It was at this point I decided chickens were horrible. 
I have since come back around to liking them again but I am jaded and am having a hard time seeing them as very cuddly anymore. 
Our little patient stayed in the guest shower for almost a week.  Chickens are not inside pets!  We had to slowly introduce her back into the brood and they wouldn't take her.  This presented another problem.  Where does she live?  The house smelled of chicken crap and I wasn't letting her back in.  We built a small extension to the coop that allowed the others to see her but not kill her.  Hopefully, we will be able to have her join the others as soon as her injuries are healed up.  For now, she has to look longingly through the chicken wire at the others.  She wants to be with them and doesn't seem to care they tried to kill her.  We didn't have a tip on the little pen at first.  She figured out how to jump out and hopped her way through the snow and ice all the way to the back door.  She knew she had it good inside.  The pen now has a roof.
The final task; I got to clean out the inch deep chicken poo from the shower.  There are some jobs that are so distasteful, cleaning hardly seems enough.  I feel like I need to replace the shower.  After bleaching and scrubbing over several days, honestly, the shower has never been this clean.  However, all of the kids have proclaimed they will never use the shower again.  Good thing we have other bathrooms in the house. 

Peanut Butter Bars

This recipe is a minor adaptation of the recipe I make for the Bountiful LDS temple.  It is divine.  There is nothing low fat about it and it is so worth it!

Equipment:
1 cookie sheet
stand mixer with paddle and whisk attachments-it really helps to have one for this recipe.  You can use a hand mixer too but it is a little more diffcult.
bowl scraper (spatula)
*if you have it:  difficult measure measuring tubes, here is the link to check them out.  I highly recommend getting one for the more difficult items to measure, i.e. mayo, peanut butter, coconut oil, etc.
Peanut Butter Measuring Cup
1 large mixing bow
dry measuring cups
measuring spoons
liquid measuring cups
frosting spreader

Ingredients:
Cookie
1/2 C butter
1 C white sugar
3/4 C brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 C creamy or chunky peanut butter
1 C all-purpose flour
1 C whole oats
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
 Peanut Butter Spread
1 C creamy peanut butter
1/2 C powdered sugar
1/4 C corn starch
Chocolate Buttercream Frosting
1/3 C butter
4 C powdered Sugar
1/3 C cocoa powder
1/3 C milk

Procedure:
Preheat oven to 325 degrees and lightly grease the cookie sheet and set aside.
In the large mixing bowl, combine all the dry ingredients for the cookie and set aside.
In the stand mixer bowl with the paddle attachment, cream together the butter and both sugars.
Add the egg and vanilla and combine.
Add the peanut butter and mix until completely combined.
Add the dry ingredients as quickly as they will combine without exploding out of the mixer. 
Spread the cookie dough onto the cookie sheet filling the entire sheet. 
Bake for 10-15 mins depending on how your oven heats.  The cookie should look lightly browned and it should have risen while baking.  Take care not to over bake the cookie.  You are aiming for a tender, chewy base to your bars. 

While the cookie is baking, measure out your ingredients for the two frostings. 
Clean the mixer bowl and replace the paddle with the whisk attachment. 
For the peanut butter spread, add the peanut butter to the bowl and whip.
Add the powdered sugar and add only enough corn starch to help absorb some of the oil in the peanut butter; whip till combined.  Don't exceed the 1/4 cup. 
Once the cookie has been removed from the oven,  let it cool and when it is still slightly warm, spread the peanut butter mixture over the entire cookie.  It is easier to spread the peanut butter when the cookie is still slightly warm. 
Then, let it cool completely.

For the chocolate frosting, clean the bowl out once more and use the whisk attachment again.
Add the butter to the bowl and whip.
Add the cocoa powder and then a splash of milk to wet.
Add the powdered sugar, one cup at a time and alternate with the milk till the entire amount of both have been added.
If the frosting is too thick, add 1 T more of milk at a time until a fluffy consistency is reached. 
Spread the frosting over the cooled cookie and try not to eat them all right away!