Moot Thoughts & Musings

While I'm at it with the whole chicken thing, here is the long-promised chicken testimonial for why buying all natural foods is just better.

I usually can't afford fancy, all-natural meat, as it is already a bit pricey in its grocery mass-produced variety. But I've found a bit of a way around that with chicken. Often I'll get a whole-chicken fryer (wh. Cook's says is the best for all your chicken needs, but I already knew that, too), cook the whole thing in the crock pot, then we'll eat off the easily carvable meat for a couple of meals. When it starts to get annoying picking off the meat, I boil the carcass with some bay leaves and get lovely chicken broth. The remaining meat comes of quite easily. By that time, I feel like I've got my money's worth out of the bird. I divide the picked meat up in equally distributed containers and pour the broth over it, and freeze these containers. Then for a quick meal, thaw the broth/meat cube, add veggies, and you have yummy chicken soup!

To buy a whole chicken fryer at the grocery is pretty cheap, in fact half as cheap as Whole Foods (but it's about the difference between $3 and $6). So one day I though, "Am I just being a snob about this natural food thing, or is it really better?" Well, when I got to final frozen broth stage, I think the proof is in the pudding. In this picture from my freezer (geez, you think I could've wiped it out before photographing the insides of my freezer!), the top one is the Whole Foods chicken, the bottom one is the grocery store chicken, which has so much fat, it couldn't displace the broth, and completely discolored it! Eeewww!!! I think the end result of the upper container is worth the $3 extra.