bacon-wrapped dog food

The recipe for bacon wrapped cornish hens from A Year of Crockpotting is appealing on so many levels that I want to go to the store and get the ingredients right now. If I thought there was any hope of finding a replacement glass lid to my crockpot on that shopping trip that's what I would be doing instead of just telling you about the recipe.

Cornish hens are a favorite of mine. And they used to be a favorite of the dogs, until Penguin developed an allergy to chicken. See, we give raw food to the dogs at our house. Raw meat, raw bones, the whole nine yards. (You feed your dogs BONES, Kim? What are you thinking?? Don't you know chicken bones are dangerous? Here's the story:  Cooked poultry bones can be deadly. Raw are a-okay.) I used to drive many hours to Eberly Poultry two or three times a year and get a couple hundred pound of turkey necks, chicken backs and cornish hens. The hens were always the best. They were "split for the grill" in the summer and we humans often dipped into the dog food for dinner. Half a hen was a perfect balance of muscle meat, organ meat and bone for the dogs, or a nice meal for CD or me. Whole hens could be cut in the back and pierced with two wooden skewers making an X to stay flat on the grill too.

Then Penguin's chicken allergy reared its ugly head and there hasn't been a cornish hen in the house since. I think that was an error on my part, one that I will have to remedy soon.