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Articles, Thoughts, and ReflectionsThe Breast of ChickenI can't remember the last time someone served a whole chicken at a meal. The breast has taken over - homes, restaurants, banquet facilities, all serve breast of chicken, done up in one fancy way or another. If you ever worried about someone crossing the threshold of decency by indicating a preferences for "breasts" or "thighs", worry no longer. Appropriateness and the meat market have colluded to remove the scandal. Breasts are easier to cook with, true. But they can also be tasteless and dry. And, for those of us who like to participate in the carnivoral process, they're a bit boring. Why did they take over? I think it has something to do with sameness. When you serve chicken breasts, everyone gets the same thing. And though they're probably the favorite meat of only a few, they're despised by almost no one. No host will ever run the risk of an unfilled guest if chicken breasts are served. They're safe. There's only one meal that I can think of that dares to produce a whole animal for consumption, and that's Thanksgiving. Even then, however, the market has risen to our need for sameness by producing birds that can serve large gatherings of kin on white meat alone: slice after slice of breast meat. Safe again. I get tired of the safety, to be honest. I don't like to be treated as if I'm the same as everyone else, to be reduced to the lowest common denominator of palatability. There are parts of the chicken that I love, and miss. Nibbling on its neck bones. The density of the heart. Some of you may be close to feinting at this point. My intent is not to argue taste, but merely to assert that tastes vary. Some people like parts of the chicken other than the boneless breast. And it seems to me that not too long ago, we gathered around tables at which our preferences were known: "save the liver for Grandpa!" Furthermore, there seemed to be an economy at work, reminiscent of Jack Sprat and his wife, in which the whole bird managed to get eaten - sometimes with some squabbling over which child got the drumstick, but there, too, elders sought to apply principles that kept the peace - and served the pieces. Isn't it a wonderful, warm feeling to be served by someone who knows what you like? And wouldn't it be a sign that community is being restored to our tables if hosts began roasting whole chickens again? ~ Tom Van Milligen
Made in...My year goes through a kind of Jekyl and Hyde thing with regard to food. From about May to October I eat things that come from soil about three miles from my house. The rest of the year my vegetables have little stickers on them that indicates what state or country they were raised in. The "store-bought" produce is perfect: the beans have no spots, the tomatoes no scars, the lettuce no fading or blotches. The stuff from the garden bears the marks of this year's conditions - weather, soil, seed, and the skill of the growers. But the stuff from the garden fills me in a way that California's perfection does not. And perhaps cannot. I think it has to do with degrees of connectedness. The path from the garden's food to me has one stop: the gardener. The links in the chain from the grocery store's broccoli to me is much more complex - and almost unknowable. TV ads have tried to restore intimacy to my relationship to their products by showing pictures of their green fields and their kind and hardworking farmers, but even such images are mediated by media. In the end, I don't know if those people are farmers, or merely paid to dress up like them. "Now hold up the corn.... Gaze lovingly at it.... look over the fields with a smile.... Cut!" And it pains me to have to wonder. A little bit of the humanity in the tomato gets removed at every step of its journey from the Netherlands to me. The tomato that I eat in August, however, was raised by the person who gave it to me. The glint of its skin reminds me of the thumb that rubbed some dirt off before it went into the basket. The crack in its side brings to mind the wordless musings over this fruit's acceptability. But, I protested, it's fine. And it is. "... and bless the hands that prepared it" was the way many meal time prayers ended, and still do. It's a prayer that makes more sense when the eyes that match the hands have met mine. ~ Tom Van Milligen
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