September 3, 2004
-
The word for the day is viscera 1. The internal organs of the body esp. those contained within the abdominal and thoracic cavities.
IOW - guts.
Chaotic Theory: this is where my life (as most mothers' lives must be) is chaotic despite any careful planning to keep crap from happening. I think it has something to do with a butterfly somewhere half way around the world. Every morning, for example, is tending to all the children, dogs, cats, chickens, ducks, and other birds. I seriously doubt that anyone can do that without chaos. (The reason only the previous birds are mentioned by type is because they are the noisiest. Quail and pheasant are quiet.) The noises start with the roosters around 3AM. It has something to do with the idea roosters have that they need to 'crow' to show how great they are. My old dog takes up around 5AM with whining. I must say that the morning goes down hill from there.
Today's word is brought to you because I was butchering chickens for the freezer. There is nothing like being elbow deep in guts to think about great words like viscera. My visceral feeling about all of this is that butchering poultry puts me in a thoughtful mood. Being that it is such a dreadful job one must be thoughtful to make it bearable. Eating of another animal lifeform gains a whole different dimension when one has to work with the animal before it becomes a package like the one simply picked up in a store - just ask a fisherman. Birds are a dirty smelly job. It is usually a very chaotic chore. Planning tends to stand at the sidelines and watch you while you work with all sorts of unexpected stuff coming up. Not the least of which is when a chicken escapes before realizing that it is dead. That is always a mess - and still not as bad as the plucking and cleaning part.
Updated: I'm here to add that I just enjoyed a roast chicken dinner the likes I have never seen! Not only was the chicken organic (& mine!) but we had fresh local corn on the cob, portabello mushrooms & wildrice stuffing. Since I eat like this but once in a blue moon, I simply had to have Ben & Jerry's ice cream to top it off (don'tcha know!) I may not be able to move for a week now
Chaos thy name be YUM this time!Just a foot note, I decided this entry is not chicken shit so I could put it in... but it is chicken feed
!
Comments (17)
Ugh!
Butchering chickens is not my cup of tea!!
I would eat less meat if I had to eviscerate it myself...
however, I'm not sure it's legal to slaughter your own food in my city's limits... and even if it is legal, I sure as hell don't want to do it.
My parents' neighbors, who are Samoan, had some "pet pigs" once, or so my mom thought when she saw them running around in their little pen... until there was that big party in their backyard that smelled really good.
Wow you do your own chickens! And I thought I had noise living by a major road. I do feel like slaughtering things because of the cacaphous noise. Does that count?
Although I have spent my fair share of time on the farm and have been around for the slaughter of various animals, one thing I have never had to do is kill and pluck a chicken. I'm really glad about that, the task doesn't exactly excite me. But, I guess it's all worthwhile when you get to eat a great roast dinner.
My friend used to have to help her parents do the butchering...they'd do 50+ at a time, from butchering to cleaning and freezing...I remember she had a really hard time with it.
I don't know if I could do and then eat...some things are still mysterious to me and will remain so!
Butchering chickens really sounds like a dirty job. But someone's gotta do it! I agree, most of us only see the pretty packaged final product at the supermarket and don't really fathom the entire process which gets it to that stage. When I was young I recall visiting a friend up at his farm, and dealing with farm animals was second nature to him. Some of the things he routinely did opened my eyes. I witnessed him shooting a pig, and cutting a chicken's head off with a butcher's knife: but the chicken still continues to run, headless. Not being exposed to such gruesome scenes before, I was taken aback and somewhat horrified by it. And it broke my heart: those poor animals! But then I realized, this is probably something that farmers must see and perform on a daily basis. I have a new respect for what they have to go through in order to provide us with food on the table.
Anyway, I'm gald you enjoyed your meal, not to mention the ice cream! Have a wonderful weekend!
Fresh organic chicken sounds delicious. I've cleaned fish and grouse and helped with duck and goose, but never had to clean anything large enough to crawl inside of to keep warm. Before I moved here I had a friend who refused to eat anything that didn't come from a supermarket. She didn't know what she was missing. Fresh food that's not pumped full of antibiotics beats anything sitting on a shelf.
Do you reckon that if we devicerate all those damn butterflies on the other side of the world, things would get a whole lot simpler?
That dinner sounds like a wonderful downeast dinner. What flavor of Ben and Jerry's was it?
Another Shari in Maine. Wicked good gals!
I saw a great recipe in one of the books in my shop. It was for a four-legged roast chicken
Just the legs well positioned and stuck together with something sticky or other. Looked great 
Thank you for your kind words towards me recently. They mean a lot to me, and I appreciate them tremendously.
I need the support that you have offered.
I hope that you had a great day. Have a wonderful week. God bless.
that sounds soo good and soo nasty all at the same time.
what a great metaphor for life, hehe.
oooo...yucky, yucky, double yuck. That's the limit of my intelligent comments today.
eviscerate is one of my very favorite words, despite its meaning.
Now that is my kind of dinner! Organic chicken, corn and wild rice...PERFECT!
Mmmmm too all of that food. Except maybe the mushrooms. I like em, but if the place next door isn't ruining portobello mushrooms, than I don't like those ones.
So, did that makes sense?
Comments are closed.