You know, I wish I had the physical capability to do this more often. I wish I could expect that the next few days would not be horrible, but the fact of the matter is.... my hands suck. Not literally, but very emphatically nonetheless...
So, here is the way my brain works... When we sat down to have our family meeting on changing our eating habits, Phyllis raised a good point. Chicken wings.... are they or are they not allowed? Seems pretty straight forward, but really quite complicated. You see, those chicken wings neatly packaged in the grocery store represent chickens' lives to me. Yes, I do eat meat, but in an effort to make us more conscious of what we are eating and how it was raised, I had to really look at this. Let's see, an average family sized package of chicken wings is about 20 wings, maybe 16 wings. That is 8-10 chicken's worth of wings. As Lazar so accurately pointed out, that does not mean only that many "volunteered" their wings, it might have been 16 or 20 with one wing "volunteered". Dear reader you may remember the debacle of our $30 chicken, which sounds much worse than it truly was, because it could feed us four meals at $7.50 for organic protein, not shabby. I digress... So how many of those oh, so yummy, but expensive chickens does that mean would have to raise a wing or two to help us feast on wings? Sorry, does not compute! Too much money. Even if I saved the wings, I am in no way prepared to eat that many gold plated chickens this year.
Which brings me to my quandary. How many chickens does the average American family eat per year? According to the American Meat Institute, in 2008 the average American ate 85 lbs of poultry, at 4 lbs a bird that's 22 chickens per person or 88 per family of four. Wow, thats a huge number of chickens being raised in dark, overcrowded conditions, never seeing the light of day. I realize some folks eat more roasters which weigh more than four pounds, but for the purposes of this illustration I used the slightly above average weight of a fryer. How much of that 85 lbs of chicken is in wings? No idea, but wings are a specialty of happy hour buffets, Super Bowl Parties, and a bunch of other places that a handy finger food is required.
Back to my family, we decided that this year we would raise our chickens. We are raising 30, significantly less than the average family's poultry consumption, but a ton to us! We talked it over and decided that 14 of our thirty will be raised for roasting and the other 15 or so will be cut up for stir fries, grilling, and wait for it... wings. Yes, Phyllis is going to have her wings. Imagine her happy dance as I type this. However, we will be having them with something else, so that we can enjoy less but still have those wings of deliciousness. We'll have 2.5 batches. They will be a treat, something for a birthday or special occasion. That works for us. Are you still reading????
Working my way through all this, I considered cutting up 15 chickens. Stripping the breast meat, to make boneless skinless breast meat, making stock with the bones and wing tips, saving the gizzards, hearts and livers for us to eat later, leaving most of the legs and thighs together because my dad loves them grilled and it all will be organic, free ranged, happy chicken meat. Yes, we are killing and eating animals, but we are doing it with deliberate, conscious thought of the sacrifice that animal made for us to live. Anyone wishing to debate vegetarianism or vegan choices is welcome to ask why we don't do that, but I have gone far afield enough for one posting. I also realized that I would have the skin and fat from cutting up the chickens. Back when Mark and I first got together, I offered to keep a kosher home and all that entailed. I even bought a cookbook, but Mark voted an emphatic "no!" In the cookbook, there were directions on making schmaltz or rendered chicken fat from the skin and fat. I'll come back to this in a moment.
Last winter when I purchased my half of a pig, I didn't get any leaf lard, but Jody, dear sweet friend that she is, gave me some of hers. I made lard with it, a simple chore but time consuming. Lard making involves diced fat, a heavy pan, a bit of water to get things going and a low flame. Cook and cook until the bits of lard become hard and no longer squishy. The liquid after you skim of the "cracklings" or bits of cooked fat is your lard. Very simple. I am still working my way through what I made, which is about 4 cups. I don't bake a whole lot, so that's why.
Now, fast forward back to the chicken dilemma. Because I am considering how much fat I will get from those 15 chickens and my potential leaf lard score later this year, then it hit me. I wonder how much fat the average American consumes... Good old Google comes through, again. The average American consumes between 148-164 grams of fat per day. We'll give everyone the benefit of a doubt and use the low side, even if I know that that is probably way off... converted to oz. That's 5.19 oz of fat per day, making 1894.35 oz per year or 118.4 lbs of fat per year! Yikes! Zoiks! And a whole bunch more Scooby Doo references. That's 473.6 lbs per family of four. I am betting most of that is based on the consumption of fried foods in this country. But, pie crust, biscuits, cheeses, mashed potatoes, and a whole host of other potentially fat heavy foods go into that number, I hope.
My family has a long way to go to consume that much. We eat almost entirely all homemade food. Yes, I do fry some, but mostly it is stir fries, or eggs for breakfast. Yes, we do eat bacon and sausage, but I can safely say that 475 pounds is way over what we can conceivably consume. What started me on this is that because of our change in diet, I am *far* more conscious of what we are eating and where it came from. So, my butter comes from Cabot, my lard from my friends' pig, my schmaltz from our future chickens. Soon, a friend will have milk, and hopefully so will we. When that transition happens, our butter will all come from there. Yes, I know how to make butter. I now know a possible reason why we are an overweight nation, because we have no idea how much we are eating. I had no idea that the average American ate that much chicken or fat. I did know that our consumption was drastically dropped with our commitment to be as fair as omnivores can be with their animal friends. Our forefathers and foremothers ate what they could raise or trade, cheap fats were almost non-existent. We live in a culture of cheap fat, its everywhere and it shows. Because of our change in eating habits, we will naturally be eating far less fat. Why? Because we won't have it. I don't use Crisco, I will only be using homemade butter or lard or schmaltz. The fat to protein ratio will be as it appears in the animals, naturally, with the exception of butter. But, even then, a pint of skimmed cream will only produce a little butter. Huh? I never thought of this as a "diet" but I guess it will be. Yes, I am going to make special calorie heavy things for my dad, but we will all be eating far more veggies than meat and grains... but that is for another time.
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