A New Year’s Resolution
Until next week that is!
I have decided that my New Year’s resolution will be to eat less chicken! Not exactly sex, drugs and rock n’ roll, I know but it’s quite radical for me.
My decision is based primarily on ethical grounds and partly on being sick of eating it. For months I have eaten chicken every other day as an easy source of protein to help fuel my weight training regime, but the more I read about intensive farming the more guilty I felt about it.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not the sort to lecture anyone and everyone on ethical living because I am far from perfect myself. I do make a real effort to be as green as possible but not to the extent that I would be labelled a ‘tree hugger’ or other such nonsense. I care about the environment and what is going to happen to it but I don’t want Gordon Brown lecturing me on recycling a box (which I do anyway) when he and other world leaders could be doing far more. Hypocrisy makes my blood boil.
I am just as bored with putting chicken on the menu, it’s on there due to public demand but I want to gently persuade the guests onto other meats. So with that in mind I shall be giving guinea fowl a bit of a run, for me it is more interesting to cook with and has far more flavour than a standard chicken, but will the punters pay the price?
I talked about the ethics of chicken production in an earlier post but what I didn’t realise was just how much chicken is consumed in this country (United Kingdom) According to the author Paul Waddington, whose new book ‘Shades of Green; A practical (mostly) A-Z for the reluctant environmentalist’ is now published, the British consume over twenty kilos (forty plus pounds) of chicken per person,per year. More worryingly he goes on to state that to meet this demand some 800 million birds are killed each year of which 98% are raised under intensive conditions.
Given these sort of figures I feel determined to do my bit, my friend has chickens (see photo) and I am grateful for the odd egg or two. The quality of the egg is quite outstanding, but these are free frange chickens in the real sense of the word. This is my resolution and I am going to stick to it.
What’s yours?
Miles,
this both interests me and surprises me !
I too eat a lot of chicken, for much th esame reason as you.
I have to admit to wondering what garbage I am eating at times but choose to kid myself that because it is from M&S it’s OK !
I too would like to get away from it but what are the practical and fiscally sensible alternatives ?
As to my new year’s resolution - it’s already started …
No more claret and smoke fuelled evenings
December 28, 2007 @ 8:49 am
Miles,
You must have been reading my thoughts. Some of your wonderful recipes widen our cooking base and will provide us with alternatives. A wide variety should therefore provide us with a healthy mix of foods. The chicken in your photo looks very tempting though and ready for plucking
As to New Year resolutions - still pondering - big decisions to make!
December 28, 2007 @ 2:39 pm
Rod,
Fiscally speaking there aren’t many solutions because generally speaking, cheap meat equals intensive farming. You will have to rely on your home grown veg!
As for the claret, well!
Miles
December 28, 2007 @ 3:18 pm
Elsie,
Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Yes, thought so…. and neither could I frankly, pull the trigger that is… so it’s up to Miles to bag his own bird. As for that chicken, it’s obviously the Madagascan one legged, famous hopping variety…. makes for tremendously muscular legs so I’m told (if you eat enough of them
).
Cid
December 28, 2007 @ 4:19 pm
Miles,
Every year I have a list of resolutions which never hang around for long so this new year’s eve, I resolve to have no resolutions. That way I may achieve something worthwhile for once. Although my hopes of ever meeting Donny Osmond seem pitifully small now and I’ve had to come to terms with that…. my latest hope for meeting Colin Firth has many years to run its course and that is a great comfort to me
Cid
December 28, 2007 @ 4:44 pm
Cid,
Never meeting Donny Osmond, it could be worse, but not by much!
Miles
December 28, 2007 @ 8:29 pm
Cid,
I think that they will all be hunting snipe soon. We must be vigilant.
And as to Colin Firth - I’ll race you
December 28, 2007 @ 8:29 pm