Tastes like chicken

Tonight I made my first roast chicken ever, using a heritage chicken, (i.e., slow grown & antibiotic-free) via FreshDirect, which is only a little more than $2 over the cost of regular steriod-stuffed industrial chicken, since it was on sale when I bought it.

Ever since I read The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, there's been a small corner at the back of my mind which has been quietly boggling at the methods involved in most supermarket meat which I've been blithely consuming all of my life. Since my diagnosis, I've been wondering more than once if all of the hormones, steroids, and antibiotics pumped into most livestock grown for domestic consumption might have affected my body...

While that may not be a direct, provable cause of my cancer, it certainly wouldn't hurt health-wise to go for more organic foods., but the price gap always gives me pause. For example, a regular roaster costs $1.49/lb. but weighs in at 7 lbs., while the slow grown heirloom chicken was a little under 3 lbs. and cost $3.99/lb. You see the bizarre differential in size, no? Of course, then my natural cheapness battles against my newly cautious omnivore... decisions, decisions...

On the other hand, my friend Marci tells me that kosher meat frequently tastes better than "regular" meat, since those animals are also raised the "old-fashioned" slow grown way, so there is that.

And indeed, Marci pronounced it quite tasty. Despite the smallish size, there is still more than enough for another meal after both Marci and I plowed through Il Pollo Buono. (She called to ask what time she should meet me for tomorrow's MSKCC follow up visit -- as she is kind enough to accompany me tomorrow* -- and I mentioned that I was roasting chicken for dinner before it was old enough to hatch a crop of fuzzy chicks.)

* Many sources recommend that a friend accompany the cancer patient to appointments, both for moral/emotional support, and because 2 memories are better than one, since well, the patient is usually a WEE bit stressed out and can be distracted even with notes jotted down (which I do, in one particular notebook which I always bring).

In any case, I used a recipe I found on the FreshDirect website, for roast chicken with apples and onions, which turned out both aesthetically and culinarily well. The roast vegetables also included some sweet and Idaho potatoes I had lying around, along with some red onions instead of regular yellow, since they added more color. The secret of this particular recipe is that BACON is used to baste the chicken internally: by slipping 4 slices of bacon under the skin in the breast and thigh areas, the "rendering" of the fat while roasting keeps the meat moist.

Since this was the first bird I had trussed for roasting, you can entertain yourselves with the image of me wrestling with a cold, clammy chicken while trying to tie it into something vaguely resembling the diagram in the Joy of Cooking. Later this week: I discover how to make chicken stock from the leftover carcass.

So yes, as you can deduce from tonight's post, I am feeling better, despite my endless series of stress dreams/nightmares. My friends Margaret and Jackie talked me down off the ledge, as it were, the other night. I also try not to freak myself out by reading medical stuff in the evenings.

And on that note, I leave you all and go off to organize my medical papers for tomorrow's follow up visit., as suggested by both one of the books I bought and my health insurer's patient materials. (This does not count as reading, merely as [ick!] filing.)

Due to the sheer volume of material, there will be one 3-ring binder for the medical stuff (chemotherapy info, pathology report, etc.) and another one entirely for insurance and disability paperwork. Ugh.