Something is afoot in the chicken industry. I feel that SOMEBODY must be the watchdog for us chicken consumers. I don't really want to go all Erin Brockovich, real OR the Julia Roberts version, but somebody needs to investigate.
CHICKENS ARE MISSING THEIR THIGHS!
It's true. You might not have noticed if you're a big chicken-eater like me. It crept up gradually. Like the story that Pierce Brosnan tells in Dante's Peak, about how if you put a frog in boiling water, it jumps right out. But if you put a frog in cold water and bring it to a boil, it is cooked. Which is kind of a stupid story, because who wants to eat boiled frog, right, when you can eat fried chicken?
A few years ago, the gas station chicken store was renowned for it's chicken. Thus the name, silly. They had giant, succulent pieces of crispy golden fried chicken. It you were parked at the gas pumps filling up, the smell would waft across your nostrils like a visible aroma in a cartoon, and you just HAD to have some when you went in to pay. That chicken was so good that I took my mom there to show her how to buy it. It wasn't exactly like the Soup Nazi, but it's good to know the routine. Mom bought a single breast, and ate it over the course of three days (but Honey, it's just SO BIG) and raved about it's deliciousness. She even had me take her back there later on to buy another.
Well. Now the pieces are way smaller. I kept hoping it was just a bad shipment, or a mistake with the ordering. The MISTER owner makes mistakes like that. Such as ordering the foam cups that don't taper at the bottom to fit in T-Hoe's cup holder. Or the 44 oz cups that taper, but are plain white, without the blue swirl pattern. But no. It was a permanent thing. The chickens are half the size they used to be.
THENNNNNNNN...we started getting mutant thighs. Oh, not just at the gas station chicken store. Now the fried chicken 8-piece at The Devil's Playground has them too! At first I thought it was just a bad package. But then the next one had it, too. It's like they MIGHT give you a regular thigh, but the second one in the package is the mutant. Or you get three legs and a mutant.
Okay. Prepare yourself. Gird your loins. Shove down your gorge. Here comes the photo.
Sweet Gummi Mary! What in the Not-Heaven IS that?
When I was a kid, my mom would buy a whole chicken and cut it up for frying. We NEVER had a thigh that looked like that! A thigh is just meat around a bone. Gristle on each end. None of this folderol attached here! I remember when you could even get a recognizable thigh from a restaurant. From KFC when it was actually called Kentucky Fried Chicken. I haven't eaten there in years, but I suspect their thighs are like this mutant fowl part above.
That's a BACK, baby! With a little stub of thigh on it. What do these chickens even look like, trying to strut around in their tiny cages? And if this is a thigh from a different chicken, where are half the thighs going? Are they being used for medical research? Is there some dark meat delicacy that I haven't been told about? Where are the normal thighs?
Sorry about the shocking photo. I had to eat the meat off the bone. So you could see the anatomy. The stores fry it up with their coating so it LOOKS like a normal thigh, see. Until you bite into that back. Yes. I had to expose the bone. It's a delicious job, but somebody has to do it. And Mrs. HM is selfless like that.
What say you, blog buddies? Is Mrs. Hillbilly Mom being ripped off by local chicken purveyors?
5 comments:
Fried chicken is the food of the gods--please tell me you made up this whole thing!!
fishducky,
IF ONLY! Who is in control here? WHO made that decree to sell BACK pieces with tiny thigh bones as actual thighs? And what is he doing with chickens that have real thighs?
HM--I think you need to get Elliott Davis onto it. He can badger and stalk the gas station until they own up to the dark, lurid underground that is responsible for this sick shocker.
Maybe this is one of those antibiotic fed chickens we keep hearing about. Makes mw want to grow my own. I would love the eggs, but I would make pets out the chickens and be unable to eat them. Even if they were anatomically correct, with nice juicy thighs!
Sioux,
YES! And I'll send him over to The Devil's Playground deli, too! They have the same problem. There's a crooked chicken-supplier around these parts, and I aim to cook his goose!
***
Kathy,
Farmer H has always threatened to eat the excess roosters, but he never laid a hand on one. The neighbor dogs thought they were delicious, though.
We will be getting more chickens in the spring. I'll probably receive orders to station myself on the front porch pew with a paintball gun to discourage predators. I must say, there's no comparison with the free-range eggs. Just don't try to boil them if you're in a hurry to peel some pretty smooth ones.
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