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Danny |
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Actually, the food was
pretty tasty. Your basic chicken. Although,
come to think of it, not EXACTLY your basic chicken. This chicken was
hard chilled, that is, before it was cooked. I used to think you could
go to the market and buy either fresh or frozen anything. Chicken,
however, now comes in a third category: hard chilled. It turns out
producers of strictly FRESH chicken have been up in drumsticks against
the purveyors of SLIGHTLY frozen chicken. That's chicken that has been
refrigerated to 26 degrees all the way down to zero, for purposes of
transportation, and then thawed and sold as fresh. But isn't that the
temperature at which things pretty much freeze solid, you ask. Yes, most
everything, but not chicken, it turns out. Legally, that is. Not
actually. In a state with over 30
million people, there's an opportunity to sell quite a lot of yard bird,
and any dumb cluck can figure there's a fortune to be made. So growers
throughout the South truck their birds west to the lucrative California
market. In order to do that, they have to chill them down to a
temperature where they won't turn foul. Once they get to market, they're
sold as fresh. But California itself has
a huge poultry industry and is able to sell locally-grown chicken that
is REALLY fresh, at least by comparison. Since they charge more for
fresh, the out-of-staters want to cash in on this FRESH chicken
category, but, of course, when you have a dead chicken riding in a truck
through the desert southwest to get to California for three days, it's
got to be frozen, at least as you and I know the term. But frozen
chicken sells for a lot less. Of course, it would sell for EVEN LESS not
frozen. So not to be outdone with
their paltry poultry, the Southerners have challenged the Californians
to a game of chicken, at least as far as the labeling terminology is
concerned. And the Californians have won. The latest results have just
been announced on CNN. Fresh chicken is any
chicken stored at 26 degrees or above. Frozen chicken is any chicken
stored or trucked to market at zero or below. And that temperature range
between 26 degrees on down to zero will now be known as "hard
chilled". These are the new federal guidelines, although the
National Broiler Council has not given them what you might say is a
winging endorsement. This opens up a whole new
category for everything. Those of us who spend a week or two a year
visiting the tundra states, Minnesota in my case, know that when the
temperature drops to, say, the mid-teens you can now expect to hear your
mother say, "Be careful driving. There could be patches of
hard-chilled water on the roads." Instead of giving someone the
cold shoulder, you can ease up a bit and not really freeze them out by
giving only the hard-chilled shoulder. And in summer, you could offer
guests a glass of hard-chilled tea. The possibilities are mind-numbing,
or at least mind-chilling. Make up a few of your own. Good. I don't know who thought
up this middle category, "hard chilled", but they surely
deserve to win the Pullet Surprise, if they give such an award, for who
knows what you're going to get? Is this a partially-thawed frozen
chicken? Or a somewhat-frozen fresh chicken? And what difference does it
make once the chicken is cooked? And by the way, does the National
Broiler Council have jurisdiction over baked or fried chicken? Chicken
cacciatore? Chicken gumbo? Chicken à la King (actually, a certain
boxing promoter has this one cornered). And the all-time medicinal
classic, chicken soup. All this chicanery may be
chic for some who care how their poulterer gets the bird. But, since
this squawk is mostly between squabblers, it's pretty much a lot of
cock-a-doodle-doo-doo as far as the rest of us are concerned, except for
the price we end up paying, which as you could guess, won't be chicken
feed. Say, if you're cooking a
chicken in the oven, and there's a weird noise in the kitchen, could it
be a sign you have a poulter-geist? No, I'm sorry I mentioned
it. In fact, if I don't stop soon, I'll be into "Why did the
chicken cross the road" jokes, of which there are several. Jokes, I
mean, not roads. And don't forget those roads could be covered with
water, hard chilled. Guess I've been cooped up too long. I guess I'll go
out to the store, as soon as I get dressed and ready for market.
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