Marin Sun Farms

No. This isn't the big red hen from the last post. This is a Marin Sun Farms range free and fed organic chicken, bought with its head and feet intact.

The chicken was for a meal to celebrate friend's 11th anniversary and as we had once spent a long weekend together after I'd read The Omnivore's Dilemma I didn't bring up the source of our meal or the subject of corn. I didn't wish to have them roll their eyes, 'here she goes', while we only had an evening together.

The chicken was four pounds but cooked and cleaned off the bones with the meat on a plate it appeared we'd cooked a guinea hen. "Keep room for dessert," I said, placing the plate in the center of table. I collected the salad plates, we passed the chicken around with roasted red and blue potatoes and finger size yellow crookneck squash. The former groom, a well mannered man, nearly spit his meat onto his plate. "This is delicious," he said, more surprised than anyone that he was talking with his mouth full. "Is it free range?", he asked not waiting for an answer. "This is the best chicken I've ever had." I wanted to tighten my fist in the air and yell, Yes. And then we were done and there was still chicken on the plate. It was a miracle.

I'd like to tell you what it tasted like with an earthy metaphor or quick comparison but the truth is, it tasted like chicken. Not a manufactured taste of chicken but chicken. It tasted like a 9 on the Richter scale of chicken. Not because it smelled like chicken or looked like chicken but because the actual taste was chicken all the way through. From the rough roof of my mouth to the soft insides of my cheeks. My teeth tasted like chicken.

I'd balked at the $6 price per pound when I first saw the birds. As my aunt would say, "Can you hear that?" Dramatic pause. "That is your Grandmother turning in her grave." So I have to justify one aspect of the higher than industrial raised chicken price a bit. So far we've served four meals. When our guests left the cute guy and I got our fingers into the crevices of the carcass and with the dinner leftovers we have plenty for lunch tomorrow. Maybe chicken burritos. The carcass stripped bare, I dropped it in a pot of broth I'd already begun with the neck, feet, heart, gizzard and liver. That will be another couple of meals. Eight meals, one chicken. That's about $3.50 a meal. Grandma would be proud!