I have a new girlfriend. She has come and spent several weekends with me. She is originally from some city in Southern California and can’t get over what life is like in a rural area. I was really amused when she saw her first oppossum (it comes and eats left-over catfood). Last weekend I decided to cook chicken. Chicken is an agreeable dish with everyone. She was fine until I went in the yard, picked one up, killed and commenced to slaughter it. I tried to tell her that chickens don’t all come neatly packaged in plastic. I said that “free range” chickens of a much lessor quality than mine come at a premium price. The former Mrs. Lanelee, rest her sole, wouldn’t agree to let me raise rabbits. Should I give up and abandon all facets of homesteading. I gave up heating with wood when I grew up and left home, too much work.
You need to start considering the way people and things** really** are, versus what they should be.
Technically, you are right, but in reality people can’t quite deal with watching their dinner be slaughtered when they never experienced it before.
Since most of us have watched fish die, or we’ve look at Larry the Lobster in a tank before we ate him, we have the capacity to connect the dots: “Please boil that alive for me so I can eat it”. Yet there is still a leap one needs to make to watch a chicken be killed for their dining pleasure.
Yes…everyone knows that things die to become parts that are wrapped in celophane, but unless one is used to watching their land animals be slaughtered for dinner, don’t get hung up if someone isn’t used to this idea.
I think I understand what you are saying. I call it the “Walmartization” of foodstuffs. Everything comes in a clean, square, pretty package now and we are pretty far removed for our food sources these days. This isn’t a bad thing necessarily, but may be surprising to some (especially younger folks) who haven’t haven’t put alot of thought into where food comes from.
Anyway, how do you get all the feathers off?
:eek: You killed Mr. Bock-Bock??!!??
bottom lip quivers
Granted, I’m 22 and probably not the younger type you were referring to, but I much prefer the “Walmartization” of our foodstuffs and am well aware that when I’m eating a hamburger, that it’s ground up dead cow and that the slice of cake I have for dessert has scrambled baby chickens in it.
Doesn’t mean I want to see Mr. Bock-Bock killed right in front of me though.
Eek, I can’t even pick out a live lobster from the seafood restaurant.
Um…I agree 100 %. I mean, I call this progress, that my grandfather lived on a farm and I rarely see live chickens or cows these days.
Why do I need to see where they come from?
December 6, 2004 - Francis “Cockadoodle” Bock-Bock
Quite suddenly at home, age 1 year (44 in chicken years). Beloved brother of Eugene, Rita, and Foghorn, loving uncle to Chick-Chick, Merwan and Egghead. Veteran of the Anti-Hlanelee Chicken Soup War, Francis served served proudly in the WishWeWere Airborne from May to September. Family and friends will be received at the Hlanelee Dinner Table, on Friday, December 10th. Emtombment will be in Tupperware, December 11th. In lieu of flowers, please send contributions to the Drumstick Society for Poultry Amputees.
sniff
Bye, Mr. Bock-Bock…
I just love reality cuisine!
Just last night, it was my doggy’s birthday (no this is not about eating my doggy) and as a treat my boyfriend went to chinatown and bought smoked duck heads. Yep the whole damn head, complete with neck and beak. It made me only slightly queasy when she started crunching on the skull, but it was great to see her crunching the beak, she saved that part for last. I loved how she looked up at me when I first gave it to her, like Are you sure this is all for me???
I buy whole fishes and gut them, I buy whole chickens and chop them up, I’ve helped fatten up pigs that later I deemed very tasty, and although I’ve never actually helped to kill an animal, I loves me some dead animal parts. Y’all respect other people’s right to slaughter and butcher animals, and we’ll respect your right to eat prepackaged unrealistic squares of animal parts, OK? 
Fowl Play Suspected in Bock-Bock Death
Great Salkehatchie Swamp (Dec. 7) – The Salkehatchie Poultry Deprtment is combing a swampy neighbourhood in search for clues in the sudden death of local family bird, Francis Bock-Bock. The poultry are trying to locate a woman whom wintesses say is “originally from some city in Southern California”. The woman is not a suspect in the case, but is considered to be a “person of interest.” She was last seen in the company of a catfood-eating oppossum. A Poultry Department spokesman has not revealed the cause of death, but has said they are treating Bock-Bock’s death as “suspicious.”
Errr…no actually. Well yes it’s dead cow but no it’s not baby chickens. Chicken eggs are not fertilized. It’s more like eating …chicken placenta. Or chicken menstruation maybe…hope that makes it better :D.
hlanelee, whatever you do don’t go see Chicken Run :).
I presume he plucks them.
Well, if it is the “Walmartization” of america, it began LONG before Sam Walton was around. They had canned meat 100 years ago.
I don’t think my parents who are 65 ever slaughtered their own chickens either. I think they got them at the A&P.
I would give anything to eat those chickens and rabbits that hhanelee is talking about. Good on ya, hhanelee. She doesn’t have to watch you slaughter them. And if she won’t help you eat em, she’s missing out.
Next time bite the head off. That’ll teach them sissified city folk. 
I just want to know how you can get to be a grownup person without ever having seen a possum. They’re everywhere. We had one that would come and eat our catfood, too–outside an apartment building in the middle of decidedly non-rural Oakland, CA.
Mmm, fresh chicken!
I don’t know if I’d want to watch my dinner being killed – at least, not the first time or two that I ate such a dinner – but I bet that was damn good chicken.
Well, *most *chicken eggs aren’t fertilized. The ones you buy at Jewel are not fertilized. The ones I can (but don’t) buy at Whole Foods or Wild Oats *are *fertilized. I don’t quite understand why, but lots of the hippie health food veggie (but not vegan, obviously) types demanded that these stores stock them. Apparently because with a fertilized egg, they feel the chickens have been humanely raised enough to get laid. (Ha!) There’s enough room for them to run around and breed and lead happy chicken lives. Until hlanelee catches up with them! :eek:
Hey, hlanelee, do they really run around like chickens with their…umm…you know…?
I seem to remember a family member getting the feathers off by dipping the carcass in hot water. Apparently they’re easier to pluck once you’ve soaked the chicken body in hot water.
My free-range farmer buddy scalds them in boiling water and then puts them in a big cylindrical tub with hundreds of little rubber projections. The tub turns and the rubber projection-thingys (he calls them “fingers”, but they’re pretty stationary) smoodge out the feathers. The feathers are all torn up in the process, so it’s not what you want to do if you want to save the feathers. He’s also doing dozens of birds at a time, so I don’t know if a one-bird-for-dinner farmer would do the same or just do it the ol’ fashioned way - plucking and plucking and plucking.
I can personally testify that dipping the bird in hot, but not boiling, water makes the plucking go much easier. If you’re living where you have no refrigeration, you can even ‘can’ chicken meat in jars.
Satch “oh yeah, hundreds” mo