In touch with our food sources

There is all this stuff in the media how Americans are not in touch with their food sources. One summer we leased a vineyard and berry patch, so we actually are quite in touch with our fruits, thank you. Now Princess and I were on our way to the market to buy eggs and frozen chicken breasts on Sunday and witnessed for than most American 5 year olds do about the food chain. The free range chickens outside our complex are no more. In the time it took to walk the length of our apartment building in the snow/ice, one chicken was slaughtered. Right there in the snow, in broad daylight. It was the exact method my student from a village had described to me. Oddly I thought he had described the steps out of order, but indeed the protocol was exactly in the order he said. First the chicken is force fed some vinegar and something to cause the feathers to be removed easily. This is in preferance to the boil off the feathers method. Actually it is cheaper and uses less fuel. We missed the ingestion of the substance, but witnessed step 2 and 3. Step 2 plucking the feathers, while Step 3 slicing the chickens throat and draining the blood of the bird so that when Step 4 the head is all the way cut off it doesn't run around. I was quite amazed that they plucked the feathers while the chicken bled to death, I thought that was rather cruel. But it was -18 so maybe the bird was numb with the cold anyway. The process was pretty quick and there wasn't time to shield Princess from the truth of the food chain. My guide to parenting children while living in another culture had said that the easiest way to deal with these eyepopping culture shock scene was to act like its no big deal. The idea being that if you make a big deal of it then your kid will be more scared by your reaction than the actual situation. So, I just walked by like this was an everyday thing. She was quite interested and asked what was happening. I said they were going to eat the chicken and that actually that is what happened to all the chickens before we eat them. She walked along and said she wasn't sure if she wanted to eat chicken like that. I thought that she might turn into a vegetarian from the experience, but nope- we walked by McD's and she asked for chicken nuggets.

This one reminds me of Lummi Island-the eagle & mountain

New cakes on display the dragon and the pheonix

We didn't get McD's but we did get our eggs and frozen chicken breasts. I took the picture of the snow on the way home. And Princess ate chicken and pesto (from the last of our American sauce packets) at dinner and then grossed out Teenager by relaying the whole picture to her sister during the meal.
Chris has bought whole chickens at the Chinese Muslim butcher and witnessed the chicken demise. At the Muslim butcher they put the chicken in a metal pail and then chop off the head. They use the scald method to remove the feathers after the bird is not moving.

In touch with our food sources

Harbin, China