Anyway, on a more positive note, I tried another Guy Fieri recipe tonight, and it was FANTABULOUS! It was his grilled chicken tortellini soup. It took a while to butcher the chicken. He has you buy a whole chicken and cut it into pieces. It was worth it. It's nice to learn new things like that, especially in a society where so much comes prepackaged for us. I had my grandma on the phone telling me where to cut. I had to cut out the backbone!!! Steve looked at me and said, "Ewww!" as I held it up with two fingers asking him to open the back door. My grandma said that my great grandma used to kill, pluck, and butcher her own chickens. Apparently, they really do run around for a bit after you chop off their heads. She also told me that not everybody chopped off the head. She said that some people knew exactly how to grab the head and snap your wrist so that the head of the chicken popped right off the body! Oh my goodness! I apologize to any sensitive people; I'm just telling you how it was for country folk back then. Moving on. Grandma told me that they used the gas stove (hob) to burn the places where parts of the feathers were sticking out of the meat. It was a way to get rid of the feathers when they couldn't pull them out well. I wish I had some pictures of them doing that (prepping, not killing!). Do any of you have pictures or stories of your grandparents/great grandparents cooking at a time when it wasn't so... convenient? I'd love to hear about it. Next time, I'll take pictures of what I went through!
Once upon a time there was a little girl that went to a small country school out in the middle of nowhere with about 20 other children. The big Thanksgiving dinner was just a couple weeks away and a parent of one of the students offered to donate a turkey for the meal.
ReplyDeleteWell, a couple days before the big feast the little girl and all her classmates filed out of the schoolroom to witness the slaughtering of the turkey. Two grown men held the turkey down, and a third swung the axe. In all the excitement, and with all the school children watching, the headless turkey managed to slip out of the men's hands and proceeded to run around in giant circles, blood spritzing out of it's neck all the while. Needless to say, the little girl and her friends were quite alarmed.
The men finally chased the deceased bird down, then they dunked it in a giant vat of boiling water to scald it. After that it was plunked on a table and the little girl and a few others helped pluck the turkey to prepare it for it's Thanksgiving day debut.
On the day of the feast the giant roasted bird was toted into the school room on a giant platter, and a good meal was had by all.
That was 1991, and I was 7. ;)
Holy smokes! That is SOME story! Did all the kids scream when the turkey took off running? I probably would have.
DeleteI was just talking with some people about butchering chickens. I remember your Grandma, my mother, talking about her grandmother doing this. She hated the smell of boiling chicken feathers. That really kept her from enjoying chicken, most of her life. Anyway, I shared with my friends about how Mama used to tell me about the chickens running around after their heads were cut off. They told me that if you let them run around they get bruised because they run into things. THat really made me laugh. I guess the best thing is to hold them by the legs until they stop moving. THen they told me a funny story of the great grandpa in the family who still wanted to help but didn't have enough strength. Well, he whacked away at the chicken and didn't get all the way through the neck and it was about 3 times before he finished one cut. IT was sad and hilarious to hear the story.
ReplyDeleteIt's so interesting to hear what people had to do before things were so convenient for us.
ReplyDeleteThank youu for this
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