In The Matrix, people who escape the fabricated word are offered the choice of the blue pill or the red pill. The blue pill enables people to forget what they have learned, and return to the cosy comfort of the fabricated reality. The red pill means they take the tougher choice of living outside it.
What's that got to do with me?
We've been raising our own chickens for the table for about 4 years now. We made a conscious decision to only eat chicken we raised ourselves and so we don't have chicken that often.
Except for when we have a takeaway curry, when we are very weak.
We probably have chicken 4 or 5 times a year and when we do have one, we stretch it to out. We haven't had chicken for some months as I only have one let in the freezer, but we decided to indulge on Sunday, starting with roast chicken. It was probably a small to medium sized bird, just over 2kg.
Being a slow matured bird (and not pumped full of water) the meat was full of flavour and one breast between us was plenty. The meat was dense and delicious.
Monday we had the other breast, with chips. DH took the rest of the meat off the bones and we vacuum sealed it. I put the carcass into a stock pot and covered it with water.
Tuesday, I bought vegetables to make stock. I also used some of the leg meat to make Thai Creamed Coconut chicken, following Delia's recipe. I machine chopped the lemongrass though, which wasn't a good thing. We tookth erest of the meat off the bones and vacuum sealed it. I turned the carcass into stock.
Wednesday I made Delia's Oven Baked Risotto, using a very small amount of chicken in place of parmesan cheese. I used a bag of stock from the freezer, as I like to keep my stock stock rotated. It was absolutely gorgeous. We didn't really need the chicken pieces because the chicken stock was so full of flavour.
Tonight I want a break from chicken, so I think we'll have fish.
Tomorrow, it'll probably be chicken fajitas - or I might make risotto again (but I have too much chicken left for just risotto).
I think I should probably take the meat off the bone on the Sunday, next time. I can freeze it in portions ready, and have the same meals but spread over more weeks.
Sometimes - only sometimes - I wish I could take the blue pill and go back to the old days, when I was happy buying free range chicken and could eat KFC without worrying about it too much.
But then it didn't taste as good.
