Recipe spectacular: Feed the birds (and squirrels and mice, too) at midnight on Christmas Eve

Page from Great Wolf and the Good Woodsman
by Betsy Bowen.




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This is a continuation of a series running this week on authors’ favorite holiday recipes.
See also: Bury your fish for better flavor and other questionable Norwegian advice, by Eric Dregni.
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BY BETSY BOWEN

Ingredients:
Carrots
Popcorn
Corn
Sunflower seeds

Instructions:
* Cut carrots in chunks
* String some of the popcorn for the tree outside.
* Put everything in the empty pie dish (after dessert).
* At quarter to midnight on Christmas Eve, bring it outside.

First, hang the popcorn string on a tree near the bird feeder, to distract the squirrels. Put fresh seeds out for the chickadees (and a few for the squirrels and mice, too). Accidentally drop a few carrots near snowshoe hare tracks. Next, go to the goat barn. Give them the carrots, and the corn and leftover popcorn to the hens who wander in.

By now, it will be midnight. Sit a while, and listen. Did you know that on Christmas Eve, at midnight, all the animals can talk?

Watch for stars and northern lights when you walk back to the farmhouse. Sweet dreams.

Page from Great Wolf and the Good Woodsman
by Betsy Bowen.
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Betsy Bowen has written and illustrated many children’s books, including Tracks in the Wild, Great Wolf and the Good Woodsman, Plant a Pocket of Prairie, Twelve Owls, Hawk Ridge, and Big Belching Bog, all published by University of Minnesota Press. She lives in Grand Marais, Minnesota.


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