"chickens" news and stories

I'm not gonna pretend that this picture is pretty, or in the least bit appetizing, but I will note that the results are disturbingly delicious. The heart of the matter is that I went to a cookout a few weekends ago and was offered a grilled chicken heart by a friend who has yet to serve me anything that is less than madly tasty. Emboldened by this, I picked up a package of chicken hearts on a shopping jaunt this week, and started perusing my favorite recipe sites for marinades. It didn't take me long to find a 1956 James Beard recipe suggesting that these would make a dandy appetizer for a group of 25. Twenty-five of whom, I'm not entirely sure, 'cause even as staunchly carnivorous as my pals tend to be, few of 'em dig getting their offal on as much as I do, and I wouldn't subject them to it. There are exceptions, though.

Some friends came over this afternoon to serve as panel members for AOL Food's upcoming Hot Dog Taste Test. As I tended the grill between rounds, one of them began holding forth about how methods of barbecuing and grilling really were born of the necessity to bring greater flavor to cheap and previously discarded cuts of meat, and how folks were getting way too fancy-schmancy with the whole thing these days. I left my post at the flames, walked him to the fridge, pulled out the plastic container full of marinating hearts and started putting them on bamboo skewers.

He shut up and started eating.

James Beard's 1956 Grilled Chicken Hearts Recipe on Epicurious

(Note: In the above pic, I was out of sherry and subbed in brandy, which proved perfectly yummy.)

A word to the wise. If you've just stolen the box of doughnuts you're eating, it is probably not particularly smart to offer said doughnuts to the officers who are investigating the robbery.

If you're planning on having a heart attack, doing so in a restaurant where a college student majoring in cardiovascular technology works is probably a good way to go.

The 85 chickens that were let loose in a Philadelphia high school have found a home at the Fox Chase Farm, where they'll be able to graze for bugs and lay eggs to their hearts' content.

Two German airmen are being court-marshaled after trying to start a sausage-making company in which they used human blood. They were found out when one of their fellow soldiers inquired to a superior as to whether the venture was permissible or not. [via Yumsugar]

A new grocery store in the Giant chain opened Willow Grove, PA yesterday that is the size of two football fields and has a babysitting center, a cooking school, an on-site nutritionist and valet grocery pick-up. Who knew that grocery stores were becoming the next place for family entertainment.

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A viral campaign produced by website Sustainable Table, The Meatrix is a cartoon that reveals "the lie we tell ourselves about where our food comes from." It started up a few years ago, and has since been translated into 30 languages and boasts new features.

Not familiar? Though cleverly animated and peppered with humorous anecdotes, The Meatrix films are definitely not a joke, and probably not suitable for kids. There are three installments, the first being an introduction to what Sustainable Table calls "the dark side of the meat industry," and the second and third, The Meatrix II: The Revolting, and The Meatrix II 1/2, which explores new avenues into the dairy and meat-packing industries.

Our pig protagonist, Leo, chooses the red pill, and follows Mootheus, a trench coat-wearing cow, who reveals the grim reality about most of America's meat and dairy products. As they walk around the farm and Mootheus explains how animals are packed into tight-knit quarters and injected with RBGH and fed the carcasses of their relatives, the juxtaposition of the simplistic, brightly-colored cartoons against the shocking statistics helps to drive the point home.

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Double-yolked eggs are reasonably common for ducks and chickens, despite the fact that we so rarely see them in stores. It is estimated that 1 in 1,000 eggs (out of 50 billion produced annually in the US) have double yolks. Eggs increase in size as the number of yolks increases, but most of them are caught by "candling," or holding the egg up to a light source to reveal a shadow of what is inside the shell, and used for other egg products instead of being mixed in with single-yolks. Stores that do offer the eggs usually have one local source for them. The chickens, ducks and other birds that lay them have a genetic tendency to produce the eggs, so if a farm is stocked with such birds, most of their eggs with have double yolks. The eggs are popular with anyone who likes yolks and are also believed to be good luck by many.

Far less common are multiple yolk eggs, including triples and quadruples, like the one pictured above. Apparently, the greatest number of yolks found in one egg was nine!

If you can't find any multiple-yolk eggs in your neck of the woods, you can always separate one egg, add the yolk to another, and save the white for later.

The Partnership for a Drug Free America is famous for using a fried egg analogy in their public service announcements in the 80s and 90s. Those eggs didn't fare too well in the ads, but eggs are actually quite good for you. Test your egg knowledge in this quick and easy true/false quiz from the Detroit Free Press:

1. One egg supplies 10% of the protein you need in one day.
2. Eggs are a good source of vitamins A and D.
3. When a recipe calls for eggs, you should use extra large.
4. If you are trying to cut down on cholesterol, in most recipes you can substitute the whites of two eggs for one whole egg.
5. Grading, such as AA, A and B, indicates quality rather than size.
6. Eggs as old as five weeks that have been stored in the refrigerator are safe to use.
7. Free-range eggs are more nutritious than other eggs.
8. Fertilized eggs have a longer shelf life than unfertilized eggs.

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