89 percent Chicken

I find buying groceries interesting these days.  The Boss and I spend less on people food and way more on animal food than we used to. 

There are many items that were always on our regular shopping list that we no longer buy.  Like apples, grapes, lemons and seasonal stone fruit.  These we now enjoy compliments of our own back yard.  There's no need to buy jam, pickles or savoury sauces - I make them all at home.  Naturally eggs have been off the grocery list for some time now, although between moulting hens and shorter days, the egg count has definitely dropped.

Also in the no buy zone are venison (The Boss looks after this department), lamb (ditto for The Boss) and beef.  Having gone halves with The Winemaker in a lovingly raised Southland cow, the idea of eating supermarket beef is unthinkable - it is totally tasteless in comparison to our delicious cow Tinkerbell. 

Pork is soon to join the list of unpurchaseables as the piggles are getting chunkier by the day. Whenever I feed them I'm thinking "grow you good things, grow!"  There's a certain irony in watching a happy pig running around the paddock with a freshly picked apple sticking out of in its mouth.  Mmmm, bacon....

As of yesterday, supermarket chicken is also off the menu.  Have you ever read the label on a bag of Tegel drumsticks? They contain 89 percent chicken.  The other 11 percent isn't just water, it's all sorts of things. How wrong is that?!

Luckily another rooster cull is looming (grow you good things, grow).  It's difficult to describe what REAL chicken tastes like.  The closest I can come is the smell of a freshly opened bag of chicken flavoured chips. What I always thought of as over the top, artificial chicken stock cube flavouring is actually pretty close to the real thing.

So, do I feel guilty about eating critters I know personally?  Nope, not at all. They're all healthy, pampered and given the opportunity to enjoy life in the beautiful big open spaces around us. When Noodle and I spent ages last weekend herding the turkeys out of the Pinot Gris grapes in The Vineyard, I didn't begrudge them my time.  Turkeys can't help being brainless, and hey - the more grapes they manage to devour - the tastier they're going to be.  Grow you good things, grow.

What I've learnt in the last 24 hours:
1.  The Boss will quite happily spend half an hour in the semi-darkness digging out a rabbit burrow with Noodle to help her in her rabbit hunting training. (I think he likes her).
2.  Now that I can see snow on the mountain tops when I look out the window, it's time to bring in the firewood and put the fluffy sheets on the bed.