Putting the name to the face...or the face to your food!

The Omnivores Dilemma
""...nobody was insisting I personally slaughter a chicken, but I was curious to learn how it was done and to see if I could bring myself to do it. The more I'd learned about the food chain, the more obligated I felt to take a good hard look at all of its parts. It seemed to me not to much to ask for a meat eater, which I was then and still am, that at least once in his life he take some direct responsibility for the killing on which his meat-eating depends". (p.231)

I didn't kill anything...directly. But when indicated in my last order to Green Hills Farm to "throw in something that would make my chicken stock gel the way yours does" what I took home in a plastic bag made me gag in my throat. Two bald chicken heads, with eyes half shut, tangled in a little baggie with 4 scaly yellow feet. This was the first hard look I have had in a while of the true ingredients in my food. I was proud of myself in some ways, for playing a part in not allowing such a valuable body part, if you consider a head to be important, to go to waste. The chicken was destined to end up in my freezer anyway, right?

The stock turned out fantastic, a rich golden color, semi solid in the glass jar in the fridge.
Still, I must admit, when I went to the pot to skim off the scum that had formed on the top, and I saw my little chicken friend bobbing around, I tried to push him down under a huge onion. Something about his little swollen face made me uneasy. But apparently he liked the fresh air because his little beak popped right up. Thanks little chicken head.