Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Fowl Most Fresh

On the Eve of Turkey Day many cash-stuffed folk will turn their thoughts, and forks, to their favorite festive bird - usually one that is fully dressed, shrink-wrapped, and frozen to Kelvin scale depths. For the more upscale, there are heirloom birds, such as those reported in this week's LA Weekly by Jonathan Gold.

But, for the more adventuresome, the LA Times gave morning readers a nice shock with a report on a thriving slaughterhouse serving a mostly immigrant clientele, who prefer to pick and choose from the winged offerings. Five minutes from pen to plastic bag - try that at a Honey Baked Ham store tonight! And for those of you getting squeamish, remember I ate bugs during my fieldwork. Get over it. Besides, the old Angelino families remember when Sunday dinner required killing a chicken from the coop - my father did that most of his childhood life in Pomona. Now a days you only get to count the chickens riding the Gold Line to Union Station.

Before you take a bite of the chemically-enriched Butterball tomorrow, take a peek at the article. Too bad it wasn't included in the Times Food section, something about advertising revenue....

But if you won't read it for the ethnographic background, read it for the honed rhetoric like this:

Today, Samy Morsy is so deft with his 12-inch chef knife that it seems that he could turn a turkey into a hood ornament if he were asked to.

Soon coming to a fashionable vehicle near you.

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