Now here's a perfect example. Well first of all, last saturday I smoked several chickens for our annual big Italian family christmas get together, I brined them overnight in my top secret brine recipe, then smoked them with cherry wood smoke for 3 1/2 hours at 225 degrees. Needless to say, they came out of the smoker with a beautiful mohagony color to them and smelled sooooo damn good. They were almost too beautiful to cut up and eat....Almost. Anyway, I took them to the get together and carved them there so everyone could see how nice they looked before they were carved. I saved the carcasses and bones and I admit that I stashed some of the chicken(a couple thighs, a few wings and a breast or two) to make soup with. So last night I made my soup, Smoked chicken and wild mushroom soup, OMG...what can I say...Oralgasms...Mouthgasms (whichever you prefer). But in this soup I added some hens(stumps and all), chicken mushrooms, dried meadows, and dried oysters. I made sure to chop the hen stumps pretty good so they cooked well and got good and tender. It's a good way to stretch them and make them go a little further when making these types of dishes, stews are another type of dish that you can stretch your hens and make them go a little further. I'm taking the soup over to my parents tonite for our Christmas Eve, it's sooooo good. I can tell you that I'll be making this soup every time I smoke chickens.

Thanks for the tip; I'll have to give it a try. Even though I get my hens/miatakes from the grocery store instead of the woods usually I do still end up with a lot of extra stump sometimes.

Does anyone have a pic or link to what I should look for "hens " mushrooms ?
They sound good. I need to know what to look for. Thanks Jim

When you say Hens, does that mean sheep heads?