Cooking the Unthinkable: Chicken Skin
Cooking the Unthinkable is a series that examines some of the more eccentric ingredients. Whether you are a fan of the bizarre or are preparing for the eminent collapse of Western society this series will help you better stomach weird food.
Thanks to the factory farming of poultry, chicken no longer has much taste. Dark meat has a little flavor but the white meat is totally devoid of it, save for the skin. That’s why I have never understood people who pull the skin off of chicken. That’s where all the flavor is.
I know that a lot of people who remove the skin because they believe it’ll make it healthier. Poppycock! Removing the skin may eliminate some of the fat but the dangers of chicken are not in fat or calories – it’s all of the additives. What good is it to be skinny if you die of cancer at 40?
If I get my hands on raw chicken skin I’ve got a two-pronged approach – boil it then fry it. Boiling the skin for 15 minutes or so will render out most of that fat hippies are so afraid of. Then frying it makes it crispy and delicious in just a few minutes. If you are totally against frying anything you can bake it for about 30-45 minutes. However, it is a pretty involved process where you have to lay the skin flat inside sheets of parchment paper topped with a heavy, oven-proof dish to keep it flat.
Whether you fry it or bake it when you pull it out of the fire a little salt sprinkled on top is essential. Ignore the USDA and Mayor Bloomberg, salt is not bad for you. The sodium that causes problems in humans is not sodium-chloride but rather sodium from preservatives like MSG and sodium-benzoate. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that good old table salt causes anything serious.
ToFurkey Is ToFunky
Tofu is not natural. It is a processed food, a highly processed food as a matter of fact. ToFurkey is tofu that is processed over and over and over again. Then it’s processed some more.
Now if you’ll recall I have already exposed to the world that everyone who says they like tofu is lying through their teeth. No person in the history of mankind, from the wheel to the moon has ever actually liked tofu. There is no universe where tofu is appetizing. Those who eat it do so because of peer pressure, insanity or some combination of the two.
Psychologists estimate that 1 person in 10 is completely incapable of recognizing sarcasm. So for those of you in that 10% I’ll take this opportunity to point out that the previous paragraph was a stellar example of sarcastic hyperbolism. It is my favorite way to make a point because, well, it amuses me.
That, by the way, was an example of narcissism.
So back to tofu being a nasty, highly processed food. Most people do not like it’s texture because, well, it’s nasty. In all honesty it is hard to find any fault with its taste because it doesn’t have any. Tofu is like eating Styrofoam, only a less appetizing Styrofoam.
Amy’s, a veg-friendly processed food company probably makes some of the most wholesome mass-produced foods on the market and they process their soy beans nine different ways in order to produce a batch of tofu. You can watch their process HERE. I have a lot of respect for Amy’s but even they get a few things wrong.
In their video they state that they only use organic soy beans which means they are not genetically modified. Genetic modification does not disqualify something from being organic. It should, but it doesn’t. I guess that’s the result of having a President that’s in the pocket of agri-business lobbyists. Or more accurately, four Presidents in a row.
So if Amy’s, a company committed to natural, wholesome food, processes soy beans nine times to make tofu can you imagine how many times less scrupulous companies do it?
Now that you know that tofu is a highly processed food dig this. Recently the History Channel did a segment about how ToFurkey is made. It starts with tofu (which is processed at least nine times) and processes it even more adding tons (literally) of additives and chemicals. You college kids may want to try the Processed Foods Drinking Game – just grab a bottle of Jack and take a swig for each new process. But be forewarned, you may not be around for the end of this video. Check it out and then read on:
After watching that, the pink goo McDonald’s uses to make their McNuggets doesn’t seem quite as gross. An interesting note is that the narrator actually referred to ToFurkey as healthy.
There is an important distinction to make here and it is probably the closest you’ll come to an actual point in this ramble of a post. Thanks to Weight Watcher’s, Jenny Craig, et al along with Hollywood and print media we have confused low-fat/low-calorie with healthy. Low-fat/low-calorie is not pseudonymous with healthy.
Cyanide is low-fat/low-calorie.
Sarin Gas is low-fat/low-calorie.
Weapons-grade Plutonium is low-fat/low-calorie.
E-coli is low-fat/low-calorie.
Herpes is low-fat/low-calorie.
Get it? Low-fat/low-calorie is not the same as healthy. Coconut oil is very high in fat and very high in calories but it is healthier than extra virgin olive oil, canola oil, butter and it is damned sure better for you than margarine. Both the medium chain fatty acids and the calories in coconut oil will ramp up your metabolism helping your body to burn fat cells better than just about anything out there. Coconut oil is a classic example of high-fat/high-calorie being healthy. ToFurkey conversely is a classic example of low-fat/low-calorie being unhealthy. Plus, it just doesn’t taste very good.
So before you start spouting off about how healthy or ethical tofu is I invite you to go ToFurk yourself. We ain’t inner-stead, thank ya.
SNL Takes Shot At HFCS Commercials
Since it first aired in the 1970’s Saturday Night Live has tackled issues the regular media won’t touch. From time to time they have also been guilty of trading their ethics in order to advance their personal political agendas (especially the past four or five years). But they still occasionally take on “the man” on controversial issues.
Recently SNL spoofed those highly unethical Sweet Surprise disinformation commercials the folks at the Corn Refiners Association (CRA) lobby put together in an attempt to confuse the general public about the ever increasing dangers of High Fructose Corn Syrup (aka HFCS, aka Corn Syrup). This is not only a big deal because it is the first real attention the national media has given to the issue but also because it seems to buck at SNL’s recent trend of blindly supporting the Obama Administration regardless of its obvious failures in certain areas.
You see, Monsanto and other large agribusiness companies (the ones who profit from HFCS) were among the largest contributors to the Obama candidacy. In return for their financial backing they were rewarded by getting to put their own people in charge of the government agencies that are charged with regulating them. The number of agribusiness lobbyists now operating within this administration is staggering with the two most notable moles being USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack and FDA Food Czar Michael Taylor. The result is that neither department can be considered reliable anymore.
I was recently at an event with a number of food writers. Most worked directly for large publications. They related tales of how food writers were being harassed by Sweet Surprise anytime they wrote something unflattering about HFCS. If they wrote an opinion column they were hit with libel suits. If they dared to publish any of the mountains of scientific research that reveals the truth about HFCS they are getting buried with cease and desist orders and other frivolous ligation.
From a legal standpoint none of these suits have a leg to stand on. Opinion columns (like this one) are just that, a statement of opinion and are Constitutionally protected. And it has never been a crime to print scientific results. That isn’t the point, CRA knows they don’t stand a chance of winning any of these suits. The point is to harass the parent organizations into telling their food writers to just leave well enough alone. It is litigious terrorism.
Well, chalk one up for the good guys:
Has the First Lady Crossed the Line?
Though I have some issues with the job the President has done thus far I have continued to have respect for Mrs. Obama. Her mission to teach people how to grow their own produce is commendable. More than that it’s admirable.
The White House kitchen garden has inspired thousands of school gardens across the nation. That is a positive not only because it teaches children to have a relationship with their food but because it has helped ease a little of the burden on the cash strapped tax payers in this country.
But. . .
Recently it was revealed that Mrs. Obama has been meeting behind closed doors with the National Restaurant Association (the other NRA) in an attempt to impose her personal views on the menus of tens of thousands of restaurants. The First Lady has tried everything short of having her husband send in the troops. She has spent the past year trying to strong arm restaurant owners to reduce the size of portions and to, in essence, replace everything a child likes to eat with everything they hate.
With all due respect, Mrs. Obama, get your nose out of my menu. Let’s set aside for a moment that this is an egregious infringement on our civil liberties. Let’s also jump over the fact that a non-employee of the federal government is attempting to make US domestic policy. Let’s get straight to the burr under my saddle.
When Mrs. Obama went from setting a positive example of proper diet to mandating proper diet she moved into the category of hypocrite. It’s one thing to wage the war on obesity. It’s a whole different story when you try to force me to follow your example while your husband is auctioning off the nation’s food system to the very people responsible for causing the obesity epidemic.
In 2007 then Senator Obama spoke at the Iowa Democratic Primary Debate saying, “. . . we can also improve the economic engines in a lot of these rural communities, and that is something that I’m absolutely committed to doing as President, but it’s going to require overcoming the excess influence of agribusiness lobbying.” He would go on to say “I don’t take a dime of their [lobbyist] money, and when I am President, they won’t find a job in my White House.”
Well Mr. Obama’s very first hire after his election was to tab Monsanto lobbyist Tom Vilsack to head the USDA. His very first hire mind you. Not White House Chief of Staff, not Secretary of State or Secretary of Defense but Secretary of Agriculture. Campaigns, after all, are not cheap. He has since gone on to place no less than six lobbyists for the agribusiness giant into policy-making positions in the USDA and FDA that directly regulate Monsanto.
Granted Michelle is not responsible for Barry’s business dealings. After all we elected him, not her. However, before Mrs. Obama dare try to force us to reorder our homes she should first take a look at her own.
I believe that in covertly trying to manipulate the populace into changing their eating habits while her own husband continues an unholy alliance with agribusiness is nothing short of hypocrisy. There is nothing worse than a hypocrite for a hypocrite combines all of the distasteful characteristics of a con artist with the self-righteous edicts of a narcissist.
The respect I once had for the First Lady is now gone. I cannot trust someone capable of such hypocrisy. By employing cloak and dagger techniques like this Michelle Obama has done serious damage to her own image. However, it would be easy for Mrs. Obama to earn our trust back. She simply need to publicly admonish the President for hiring Vilsack, Michael Taylor and all those other Monsanto lobbyists. Do that, Mrs. Obama, and you begin to regain our respect; do it not and I must politely ask you to butt out.
