FOOD ON THE FOOD

Anyone for Games?

We’re going to play a new game today.  It’s called Who Wants to Be a Moron?  Specifically, more of a moron than me. 

The rules go like this: I present a scenario in which I’m a moron.  HUGE moron.  And you, dear readers, come up with situations in which you were an even bigger moron.  The bigger, the better.  I don’t really care how this happens.  Lying totally works. 

The object of the game is to make me feel better, to make you feel worse, and for me to be able to call you all morons behind your backs.  Character doesn’t build itself, people. 

Today, we’re focusing on one particular act of supreme stupidity.  The time, not two hours ago, when I stood up our good friends for dinner.  Stood them up at our own house.  To which they brought a lovingly prepared appetizer.  As well as their two hungry children.

Awesome.

I have a legitimately good reason for not being there to greet them.  Namely, that I’m dumb.  My calendar also shape-shifts at will.  In fact, it’s not so much a calendar as a Sudoku puzzle that I, not being much of a numbers person, insist on filling in with letters as if it were a crossword puzzle, so that even the shrewdest of Navajo Code Talkers can’t make any sense out of it.  Add to that the fact that I never know what day it is (note to self: check your own blog).  Then there’s all the hard drugs.  But all good reasons aside, there was still no one home when they arrived. 

So, back to the game.  Anyone screwed their friends worse than this?  Do tell.  And did they forgive you?  And how much did it cost?

As for prizes, well, the award of choice on the blogosphere seems to be a bacon wallet.  As AWESOME as this prize is, I don’t have any to give away.  When I woke up this morning, procuring game show prizes wasn’t tops on my list of things to do as I was too busy readying myself to be an asshole. 

Based on the evidence you provide in my comment section, if you’re declared The Biggest Moron Of All Time and you feel you deserve, at the very least, a bacon wallet for your trouble, I suggest you take some bacon and wrap it around your existing wallet.  You’ll thank me in approximately 36 hours, if not sooner.

Who Wants to Be a Moron? will, I’m sure, become a recurring feature, so you might not want to unload all of your stupidity at once.  If you do, I’ll feel great today, but just plain suicidal down the road when my comment section is painfully empty and I’m wrapping bacon around my own wallet.  So, pace yourselves. 

On your mark, get set, GO.

Scoop

I have a sneaking suspicion that a food blog isn’t the appropriate place to air my litter box grievances.  But until my new litter box blog, The Latest Scoop, is up and running, food blog it is.

My god.  The horrors I have seen.

I just left the back door open.  If you waited too long to place your order for a Thanksgiving heirloom turkey, I can cut you a deal on two free-range, grass-finished felines.

Did Brickman’s Screw You Over, Too?

Chances are, if you arrived here because of a Google search, it’s because Brickman’s, a retailer of quality hardware and fixtures, ran off with your money.  You may have tried to call them only to find their number disconnected.  You might have checked their Web site to see, oh good, it’s still up.  But, well, now it’s down.  You might even have dropped by their Moody Street, Waltham location only to find their space completely cleared out, with colorful posters announcing the imminent grand opening of an Indian Shopping Mall. 

While this may spell excitement for the Indians, my reaction was slightly less exuberant.  You see, I had ordered one freelance paycheck’s worth of kitchen cabinet knobs and pulls from Brickman’s because my kitchen, where I spend a fair amount of time, has a serious case of the uglies. 

Lovely.  And that’s when they’re clean.  I always say my hideous cabinets are part of my kitchen’s charm, but I am a liar. Husband and I agreed that the most cost-effective thing to do, besides allowing them to remain ugly for another six years, would be to paint the cabinets and just buy new hardware.  Enter Brickman’s, since 1946 (though, apparently, not nearly long enough).

The folks at Brickman’s, after commenting on how I look about 17 years old and aren’t I a little young to care about kitchen remodeling, had told me that it would take a few months for my order to come in.  That seemed reasonable.  But, little did I know that this was also the time frame during which they were planning to jump into their getaway U-Haul truck, buckling under the weight of six tons of mismatched showroom pieces, and speed away at approximately 15 mph.  It’s odd because, in their haste, they remembered to charge my credit card.  The credit card of a child.  They must have made a terrible mistake.

If you’ve found yourself in a similar situation and are trying to contact Brickman’s, let me save you an hour and a half.  The Better Business Bureau’s number (508-652-4800) isn’t working (somebody call the Better Business Bureau!).  The Waltham city clerk (781-314-3120) has nothing on record for Brickman’s (although she’s gotten several calls).  The MA State Citizen’s Info line (800-392-6090) comes up empty, too.  The Bankruptcy Court Clerk (617-565-8950) says they didn’t file for bankruptcy (if they’re not bankrupt, surely they can afford to pay me back, no?).  The Attorney General’s office (617-727-8400) will refer you to the local consumer office (508-651-8812), which will tell you to visit their Web site (http://www.consumermetrowest.org/), where you can download a complaint form.  Which you should do.  The bastards.

I have no illusions about getting my money back.  It’s almost as if they’ve disappeared off the face of the earth.  But, somebody, somewhere, has my cabinet pulls.  And nobody is opening any cabinets until I find out who.  Everyone is a suspect.  Especially you with attractive kitchens.  Anonymous tips are welcome.

Um...

...whoever just Googled "cannibal roasting pan," you're really freaking me out.

Red is for Lead

Today, I was informed, by someone who follows the news, that several Thomas the Tank Engine toys have been recalled by RC2 Corporation.  Apparently, many of the toys (mostly red- and yellow-painted, wooden trains) contain lead paint.  Lead paint is toxic if ingested.  The recalled trains date back to January 2005. 

I’m extremely confident that, over the past two years, my not-quite-two-year-old has never, ever put his beloved James, James’ Tender, or the ever-popular caboose into his mouth.  Not to teethe, not to taste, not even just for the hell of it.  Children have an instinctual aversion against putting anything shiny and red into their mouths.  Nothing red is ever delicious. 

Nevertheless, I felt compelled to follow the recommendation to “take the recalled toys away from young children immediately.”  In retrospect, maybe ripping the tainted trains out of their eager hands wasn’t the best way to deliver the news.  Especially, since our 1920s home in industrial Massachusetts was probably built on a foundation composed of 100% lead.  And asbestos.  So, what’s another goddamned day after two years.

I really can’t wait to see what else China has in store for us.

My Counter-Petition to the FDA

As promised, a REAL citizen’s petition.  Don’t worry, it’s short by FDA standards, so maybe they won’t fall asleep reading it like I did with the original one drafted by the Grocery Manufacturer’s Association (GMA).  Feel free to sign it, add your own provisions, or just stamp it with your own butt cheeks.

Citizen Petition

To the FDA

To Uphold Standards for Food

(Good Standards)

(Not Shitty Standards)

On behalf of the other citizens of this country (i.e., those that have no professional or financial ties to the food manufacturing industry), I am submitting this petition to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

ACTION REQUESTED

Leave the chocolate alone.  It’s bad enough that half the cheese being sold as cheese in this country contains no actual cheese.  If the same thing happens to chocolate, I might as well run myself over with my own car.  As soon as I figure out how to do that.

Other things to leave alone include, but are not limited to: whole milk, all remaining actual cheese, yogurt, sour cream, Hood ice cream sandwiches (white paper wrapper and all), Gorton’s fish tenders (because I love them), Ben & Jerry’s ice cream (ditto), Grape-Nuts (shut up, they’re awesome with whole milk), Goldfish (or my kids will kill you), Cinnamon Life (or my husband will kill you), Fig Newtons (or my husband will kill you in a slow and painful fashion).

Also, you might want to consider giving our livestock a bit more wiggle room, maybe even reduce their poison intake.  Perhaps offer sharper and more sanitary blades over which to drag the still-conscious poultry.  Things like that.  As far as the standards for food in the public schools are concerned, I’ve drafted a separate 64-page citizen’s petition for that.  Keep an eye out.

STATEMENT OF GROUNDS

Real food is delicious.  Fake food is not.

Real food is nutritious.  Fake food is not.

Duh.

BACKGROUND

The human race has been able to sustain itself for hundreds, maybe even thousands, of years by eating wholesome food.  Fake food has no such track record.

ECONOMIC IMPACT

Admittedly, using real ingredients in food instead of the myriad cheap substitutes the GMA proposes may cost more in the short term.  Using healthy ingredients is, apparently, more expensive than fabricating fake ones.  Also, we may find ourselves eating less real food by volume because we’re just so darned satisfied.  But think of all the money that insurance companies will save by serving a healthy populace.  This is really going to help my argument, I can just feel it.

FOREGROUND

There’s been talk by the FDA and the GMA of both vertical and horizontal approaches to modernizing the country’s food standards.  Blah, blah, blah...I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.  Plus, I don’t trust either of you.  Therefore, I’m proposing a diagonal approach, whereby I draw a line from a small farm directly to my house, bypassing all of you people, so that I may have a prayer of understanding what the hell is on my plate. 

Also, the GMA’s argument that consumers won’t know the difference between the real ingredients and their cheap substitutes is more than a little insulting.  Even though I am marginally retarded, I have quite the clever palate.  And even if I didn’t, how dare you take advantage of retarded people.

Just give me the food, man.  No substitutes.

Anyway, I certify that, to the best of my knowledge, this petition represents my own stream of consciousness, and that, although it doesn’t include the opposing viewpoint, neither did the original petition.  And reading that crap was punishment enough.

Respectfully submitted,

Tammy Donroe
Average Citizen

Folks, It Ain’t Just Chocolate

Boy, was I doing some riveting reading over the weekend.  I’m so glad I chose to spend my kids’ entire nap time tucking into FDA Docket Number 2007P-0085: Adopt Regulations of General Applicability to all Food Standards that would Permit, within Stated Boundaries, Deviations from the Requirements of the Individual Food Standards of Identity.  Yeah, that was a good use of two hours.

This document has gotten a lot of press lately for the effect it might have on how we manufacture chocolate in this country.  Because, let’s face facts, chocolate is the single most important food group.  On any given day of my life, it might be the only one. 

This citizen’s petition, drawn up by the good “citizens” that comprise the Chocolate Manufacturer’s Association (CMA) and the Grocery Manufacturer’s Association (GMA), among a long list of other industry groups, hopes the FDA will relax its standards for how it defines certain foods while still keeping the same name. 

Each type of chocolate has its own definition, but the current requirements for milk chocolate are: at least 10% chocolate liquor, at least 12% milk ingredients, cocoa butter, and sugar.  If this petition were accepted, chocolate and all foods with strict definitions could be subject to “suitable substitutions.”  And we all know what that means: cheaper ingredients.  And who determines what’s suitable?  Perhaps, the same good folks who brought us Olestra. 

Lowering standards would translate into hydrogenated vegetable oils being substituted for cocoa butter.  For sweeteners, the sky would be the limit, but I’m going to take a wild stab in the dark at corn syrup.  And the chocolate liquor could be replaced with, oh, I don’t know, something else brown.  Sign me up for CMA’s Chocolate-of-the-Month Club.

But even more disturbing than the chocolate side of it (and that freaks me out more than you can possibly know) is the fact that all packaged foods would be at risk.  Even things like cheese.  It’s everything that is represented by the following groups and their subsidiaries: the American Frozen Food Institute, the American Meat Institute, the International Dairy Foods Association, the Food Products Association, the Juice Products Association, the National Fisheries Institute, the National Meat Canners Association, the North American Millers’ Association, and the Snack Food Association.  In other words, almost everything in the supermarket.

There might be some legitimate points in this petition somewhere, but I couldn’t really find them through all the intentional vagueness.  In essence, the whole thing read like this:

Hey, you.  FDA.  We know you’re too busy with clinical trials of the various erection medications flooding the market.  Do you really want to spend your time worrying about dumb old food standards?  Are you sure you want us to bother you with every single stupid labeling or ingredient change we want to make?  You don’t, do you?  Okay then.  Don’t worry, we’ll take care of EVERYTHING.

Thanks, GMA.  You’re a peach.  So, I guess that means I’ll have more anal leakage to look forward to.

The FDA has extended its comment period through June 25.  In the meantime, I’m thinking of drawing up a citizen’s petition of my own.

A New Low for Thermometers

As I was perusing the archives of the Devil’s Food Dictionary, my favorite primary source for fact-checking the lies on my web site, I was reminded of author Barry Foy’s definition of tuna.  Here’s an excerpt: “Excellent raw, cooked in any way, or canned, this sleek, majestic, powerful animal is so delicious that we have decided not to waste any of it on future generations.”

That’s pretty funny, I thought.  Which reminded me that I was hungry.  And that I could really go for some sea bass.  But, I wasn’t sure what the status of current fish stocks are.  Supplies of sea bass were dwindling some years back, but is it okay to eat them, again?  What about now? 

Now?

So, I had this idea to help people like me keep tabs on their favorite (i.e., most delicious) creatures.  A giant thermometer, like in fundraisers, where the mercury rises feverishly as supplies run low.  It seems counterintuitive, at first.  But, see, as stocks begin disappearing, demand naturally skyrockets.  And with the mercury soaring, you would then feel the overwhelming urge to rush to your nearest restaurant to get your final, forbidden taste of the food in question before it’s taken off menus for good.  And if you time it just right, you could be the one responsible for the final DING-DING-DING and subsequent explosion of confetti that accompanies the extinction announcement.

For example, according to my market research (i.e., the BBC’s spectacular Blue Planet series), there are amazing species of fish and fishlike eel things in the depths that no one’s even heard of, never mind tasted.  This would barely register at the bottom of the thermometer.  However, for something like cheetah burgers, the mercury would shoot up and hover just shy of joyful dinging, with statisticians at the ready to compile a McDonald’s-like tabulation of the total patties served.

Kind of like this:

Or would that be in poor taste?

Poetic Justice

We have a mouse.  Shudder.  Maybe more than one, but I’m sticking to the one-mouse theory until they prove otherwise. 

What is it about the act of breaking and entering that makes an otherwise darling little mouse seem so repulsive?  Maybe, it’s the reflection on my own dubious housekeeping practices that’s so hideous.  But things are going to get even uglier around here, that’s for sure, starting with a very heated Q&A: Was it the cookies?  The cheese?  The festering lunch boxes?  ANSWER ME!

Anyway, I just saw someone in a KFC/Taco Bell uniform with a video camera outside my kitchen window.  Bastards. 

If anyone needs me, I’ll be vomiting in the corner of the house furthest from the mouse sighting.

The Skinny on Obesity

I was listening to the BBC on my local NPR station a few weeks ago when I heard something that got me hopping mad.  This happens sometimes.  I usually end up writing an angry letter, but now that I have a blog, I can write a post AND an angry letter.

I really try not to wax philosophical about things I know nothing about.  But the problem is that I know nothing about a lot of things.  And the things I do know, I can usually see both sides of the argument, which is really annoying when you’re trying to be opinionated about something.

Anyway, they were discussing childhood obesity in Great Britain.  See, this isn’t even my country.  But, it could be.  It seems that the fat level of British children is reaching epidemic proportions (sounds vaguely familiar).  Several experts have suggested that parents of overweight kids are negligent, even abusive, and that the state should be allowed, if it feels like it, to remove the child from the parents’ care. 

Not to trivialize an important issue, but obesity has many contributing factors.  Of course, there’s the state of our current diet and lifestyle.  The fact that it’s easier to Supersize fries than braise kale (or, when McDonald’s takes the Supersizes off the menu, ordering two large fries because there’s no law against it).  Sometimes, there’s a genetic component.  But then, there’s also that teeny tiny issue of self-esteem.  And I can think of nothing so morale-boosting as being ripped from the arms of your loving parents.  Or even your non-loving parents.  Mmmmm, it’s making me hungry just thinking about it.

I didn’t have this kind of weight problem growing up.  Mine was more an issue of chronic skinniness.  It didn’t matter how much I ate, I could never get ahead of the curve.  Just kept growing.  Upwards (though, I eventually topped out at a disappointing 5’3”).  This was during the Amazing Processed Foods Revolution of the 1970’s, so it should have been easy to gain weight.  The government got suspicious. 

The state tried to intervene in my upbringing, telling my mom to get with the program by adding more fatty foods to my diet, maybe cut down on so much outdoor play.  But she shunned expert advice and kept providing healthy snacks, enforcing vigorous Hula Hooping, and would even chase the ice cream man down the street with a garden hoe.  What a wacko!  Some days, I dreamed that Social Services would show up at my door just so I could have a candy bar.  I was never so lucky.

When it comes to weight-related custody battles, while my inner 10-year-old thinks that a big brouhaha with police, restraining orders, and maybe even a spot on the local news would be totally awesome, the parent in me thinks the rehabilitation is worse than the crime.  Maybe, there's another way.

(Incidentally, my favorite part of the story was when one of the experts being interviewed called the overweight 8-year-old in question a “freak.”  Does the word “freak” mean something different in British English, by any chance?)

Noble Rot

Okay, I have something to say and it’s not going to make me popular.  You see, everywhere I look — blogs, magazines, TV shows if I watched them — they all send the same message: Always use the freshest ingredients you can find.  And I think we’re taking this idea just a little bit too far. 

Yes, fresh ingredients are good.  Yes, they taste better.  But isn’t ALWAYS using them just a little extreme.  You can’t always have the epitomy of freshness.  Sooner or later, your greens are going to experience that not-so-fresh feeling and even the most absorbent Roca-Pads with wings aren’t going to be able to help.  So, are we just throwing these wilty greens away?  Nonsense.  (Actually, yes, my husband threw them away and I cursed him.)

So, from now on, let’s just amend ourselves to say: Use the freshest of ingredients only when it matters.  Like if you have one opportunity, and only one, to impress someone (like your insufferable mother-in-law!!!).  Or, if it’s your last supper.  Or if it’s summertime and fresh produce keeps dropping from the sky and hitting you in the face.  This is okay.  But for your average winter weekday meal for your dumb family?  I don’t think so.

Take last week.  I wasn’t going to say anything, but that rice pudding in the photo was made with expired cream.  That’s right: expired AND previously opened.  It smelled…a little funky.  But I suspected it was just the congealed stuff on the inside of the carton, and, lo and behold, once I poured it through a strainer to get rid of the lumps, it tasted totally fine.  (Kind of like when you’re making a crème anglaise and you cook it until just a few curdles form, you strain them out, and it’s totally way better than when those curdles were just a glimmer in your eye.  Don’t pretend like you don’t know what I’m talking about.)

Now, some of you might find yourself jumping to conclusions about the vomiting that wracked our household around the same time as the rice pudding consumption.  You can’t prove anything.  It was a virus, and do you know how I know?  Because I do this kind of thing all the time.  And rarely, if ever, do I vomit from my own cooking.  I only vomit in swanky, high-end restaurants where they use the freshest of ingredients.

So, the moral of this story is: stop being such a bunch of food snobs, you food snobs.  And, additionally, I’m now off the hook for having to cook for any of my friends or family ever again!

M is for Meme, Masochism

Oooooo, my first, and perhaps my last, meme.  For your reading pleasure, here they are: Five Things Most People Don’t Know About Me.

1.  When I was [redacted] years old, I used to sing less-than-tuneful songs to the squirrels in my backyard, whom I named Buffy and Muffet.  My repertoire included show tunes, patriotic anthems, jazz standards.  It didn’t matter.  Judging by the performances currently taking place at our house during “potty hour,” I can see that this gene has been propagated in all its glory.

2.  I was in the pep squad in high school, also known as cheerleading-for-smart-girls.  Apparently, this is not as much fun to watch.

3.  I once ate three boxes of Samoas in one sitting.  Then again, who hasn’t? 

(By the way, I’m talking about Samoas, not Caramel “deLites.”  The former were much, much better.  Must have been that sprinkling of delicious racism.  Plus the fact that groove is in the heart, not a box of cookies.  Stupid Girl Scouts.)

4.  I went through most of college thinking I was a biology major.  This made no sense whatsoever.

5.    In addition to wearing braces, I also wore a retainer, a headgear, and a god-awful invention called “The Bionator.”  Contrary to the name, it didn’t make me bionically strong (unless emotional resilience is a muscle that can be flexed).  Instead, this hellish contraption clamped your front teeth and bottom teeth together over a series of tortuous months, thereby bringing your lower jaw forward  (while simultaneously setting all social progress backwards).

Now, my jaw makes a horrendous popping/crackling/ exploding noise whenever I chew.  I have the following conversation almost everyday:

Stranger: What’s that sound?

Me: What sound?

Stranger: Like a jackhammer, but coming from your mouth.

Me: Oh, it’s probably my TMJ.

Stranger: Oh, okay.  I thought there were chunks of cement in your yogurt.

Sometimes, my jaw unexpectedly locks up in a most painful fashion.  Unable to call for help, I’m forced to fling myself against the wall over and over with great force until it unlocks.  And then comfort my crying children.

And, I think that’s all of the embarrassing facts for today.  Thanks a lot, CookieCrumb.  Let the humiliation continue with Ed and, oh, I don’t know, Julie?

A is for Apple, Addiction

Fun fact: that’s my expired EpiPen that got injected into that apple. We will not be eating this apple.  But, it’s having one hell of a moment right now.

When I started writing this blog in November, I had no idea how addictive it would become.  In fact, I was pretty sure I’d get lazy and bored with the whole thing once the novelty wore off after, say, Week 3.  But, here I am at my whopping 2-Month Anniversary, and I can’t wait to sit down at my computer.  I even have a new reader (hi Julie!) to add to my other reader (hi CookieCrumb!) besides my dad (hi Dad!).

How could I possibly foresee how liberating it would be to write in my own shrill voice instead of the pleasantly chipper, responsible-adult type of voice I get paid to have (sometimes) for professional assignments.  How thrilling it would be to get revenge on my husband after years of being helpless fodder for his unmatched verbal wit.  And, most importantly, experiencing the joys of miniscule gains in readership. 

The downside, of course, is that blogging doesn’t pay the bills.  But, frankly, neither do my paying gigs.  If I calculated how much I made in freelance writing contracts this year and broke it down by month, it would just about cover the cost of my feminine products.  And so, with an end-of-the-month magazine deadline looming, I find myself behind schedule and just plain uninspired.  And, yet, here I am writing a post. 

Guess I’ll have to give up having my period.

What I’m trying to say is, gee, this is fun.  Thanks for reading, you three.  And for those of you who are considering starting up your own site, this is a warning.  Blog at your own delicious peril.

(Disclaimer: I reserve the right to get lazy and bored at any time in the future with nary a day's notice.  Or if something better comes along.  If this policy was good enough for my high school boyfriends, it's good enough for me.)

Ask the Pseudo-Chef: Post-Holiday Gingerbread Question

What is the proper way to dispose of a gingerbread house? --Ed, MA

I’m so glad you asked.  According to my husband, the proper way to discard a gingerbread house, which his son lovingly crafted by hand out of graham crackers and the frosting that he didn’t eat, would be to “whip it” into the bushes from the back door.  Drop-kicking it might work, too, but the point is that it should be airborne for as long as possible, and mostly still intact upon landing in the shrubbery.  If all goes well, it will end up near the sunken pumpkin carcasses from the previous Halloween.  And in plain view of the child’s bedroom so he will ask puzzled questions.



Happy New Year, little sparrows.

Breaking News: The Certified Organic Chicken Broth Debate Rages

In keeping with this blog’s recent poultry theme, I feel a responsibility to bring you coverage of the week’s other important chicken-related story.  It all started with a box labeled “Certified Organic Chicken Broth.” 

If a little voice is chuckling inside your head, then you might appreciate the original post on the matter by Heather Armstrong of dooce.com.  Basically, she argues, the whole idea of organic chicken broth is ridiculous.  “Do you really expect me to believe that [the organic free range part] can be transferred to the water?” she writes. 

“The idea of organic free range chickens isn’t necessarily funny,” Armstrong later explains, “but when you put that label on a box of chicken broth, there is an incongruity there that is a little absurd.  As if the broth water itself was out grazing feed next to the barn.”

I kind of get where she’s coming from.  After the point at which a carcass has been stripped of its usable flesh, plunged into a pot of boiling water, and rendered into liquid form, does its organic designation really matter?  And if it does, would it be okay, then, to market free-range chicken bouillon cubes, where the chicken broth has been dehydrated into a powder, mixed with certified organic MSG, and pressed into cube form? 

Somehow, these things seem a few too many steps removed from the chicken’s organic upbringing to merit full credit.  Partial credit, at best.  Or, maybe, it’s just the thought that counts.

Of course, most rational people believe that chickens (and all livestock, for that matter) deserve humane living conditions as a matter of course, a point so blatantly obvious as to be easily glossed over (which Armstrong did).  And so the writer, no stranger to hate mail, was bombarded with complaints accusing her of being unsympathetic to the plight of the chickens and organic farming in general. 

But, I had another bone to pick with her, and so I fired off an angry letter of my own.  It went a little something like this:

Dear Heather,

Somehow, I think you have lost sight of the BIG PICTURE!!!

Yes, the chicken in the broth of which you speak may be certified organic, but what of the water?  IS THE WATER ORGANIC?

What’s the point of going to all the time and expense of raising organic chickens for organic broth if you fuck it all up with non-organic water?  Sure, you boil it.  That, perhaps, may get rid of some impurities.  But what kind of conditions has that broth water endured P.C. (pre-chicken)?  Has that water ever been confined unwillingly?  Has it spent any time at all in a toilet bowl?  Sure, it may have been sanitized by the city, but was it a “certified organic” chemical treatment plant?  And, more importantly, were the chemicals harsh in their treatment of the water?

Not to mention what happens once the broth has been stripped of its organic, free-range packaging.  Have we considered the psychological abuse waged on the broth by the certified organic chicken broth buyer, who, despite his/her liberal stance on farming, glares viciously at the pot’s contents, cursing it up and down for its lethargic boiling properties?  This is degrading to the self-esteem of all broth water, organic or not.

I find it laughable in the face of this debate that no one has stood up for the welfare of our most valuable natural resource.  So, grow up, Heather.  I trust next time you’ll leave the chickens alone.

Name withheld    (okay, it's Tammy)

P.S. I heart H2O.

Bird by Bird

You know the holiday season is approaching when I’m bent over the sink trying to pry a bag full of giblets out of a mostly still-frozen chicken.  Or turkey.  Or duck.  I can’t seem to remember to defrost my birds.  This happens every year at least once.

Nobody else seems to have this problem because, really, how hard is it to remove your poultry from the freezer the night before?  Or better yet, buy it fresh in the vicinity of when you want to cook it.  What can I say, I’m not that organized. 

One thing I've learned: don’t bother with the microwave, unless you'd like one steamy, overcooked drumstick with your frozen giblets.  The best way to defrost a bird in a hurry is to place its shrink-wrapped frozenness into a bowl of warm water and let it sit, adding more warm water every so often.  Water conducts heat faster than air, so you can defrost a meaty carcass in maybe a quarter of the time it takes to thaw it in the fridge or even on the counter.  Two hours, if you’re lucky. 

Two hours?  I don’t have that kind of time.

On goes the faucet full-blast at its most blistering temperature.  That’s more like it.  It’s like a day at the spa for one lucky dead bird, he who gave his life for theoretical deliciousness.  A little soak here, a little soak there.  A bit too warm, you say?  Don’t be a wuss.

Things seem to be progressing nicely, so I remove the wrapper and find that, no, actually the chicken is still pretty much frozen solid.  Think, Tammy, think.  How about a deep-tissue massage so the heat can really penetrate?  A little to the left.  Up a bit.  Right there.  Ahhhh.

By now, I’m experiencing that stinging sensation in my fingers that happens when you go from too cold to too hot too quickly.  My engineer husband has also arrived on the scene to provide me with “helpful suggestions.”  Things like “why didn’t you take the chicken out of the freezer last night?”  Well, maybe if you could have torn yourself away from World of Warcraft for five minutes, we could have had a full-blown poultry discussion.

Everything is under control.  Get out.

Suddenly, a day at the spa turns into a sort of reverse water boarding.  If I just concentrate on defrosting the inside of the chicken, I figure, I can get the giblets out and just add extra time in the oven for the rest.  I focus the faucet squarely on the chicken’s crotch.  Not enough.  I attempt to help things along by prying the giblet bag away from the cavity to make more room for the scalding water to work its magic.  But the already defrosted section of the bag disintegrates in my hand and I’m left to pull out slimy organ pieces, one at a time.  Was that a gizzard?  A partial spleen? 

Most of the bag is still rock-solid and fused within its bony cage.  More hot water.  More uncomfortable jabbing in a chicken’s nether regions.  Twenty minutes later, the bag is out and I have one defeated and disrespected chicken on my hands. 

This time I’ll learn my lesson, I swear.  Until next year.