Jasdip, reminds me of a conversation I heard recently in the meat section at the grocery store. A young woman (early 30's) with two young children in her cart was looking for something in the chicken section. She asked the young man who was filling up the meat counters for help.

Apparently her husband told her to get white meat. Listening to the conversation, it was obvious that neither had a clue what she wanted. I couldn't stand it any longer and I told them - he wants Breasts - Chicken breasts are "white meat". Totally clueless.

~Ann

Just wait until they discover the wishbone. At least they graduated from using the microwave to the slow cooker...... There still may be hope!

I was probably the opposite at a young age. All the chickens we butchered at home had bone-in breasts, as did the whole birds we occasionally purchased from the meat market, and I would have been amazed to find any chicken breasts that didn't have bones.

Thanks for sharing. :-)

-Grainlady

Well this is a true story - when my younger sister needed a job the local grocery hired her for the meat dept. She was probably 19 or so. She mostly wrapped the already cut meat into the packages and put them out in the case. She was wrapping what she thought was chicken parts and suddenly stopped and reported to the manager that there weren't any wings on any of these trays and he smirks and informs her that the last time he looked rabbits didn't have any wings. But then they also sent her on scavenge hunts for skyhooks and sawdust pumps and she fell for it, too.

Just wondering here: aren't all 'boomers' and older, only used to whole chickens and chicken pieces with bone in? Did butchers normally de-bone chicken in the early 50's? I don't actually recall how chickens were packaged in the grocery stores although I clearly recall meat laid out in vertical rows divided by fake bars of greenery. I grew up in essentially Palo Alto, CA (well Calif., before two char. state names) before it became Silicon Valley. I do recall having my aunt near San Jose, take us to a poultry store (who knew?) and was shocked to see whole chickens, or ducks maybe, hanging in the window. I haven't seen that since. The rubble of that store on Steven's Creek Blvd. could even really be under Apple Headquarters!

Growing up in Wisconsin in the 1960's my father worked for Oscar Mayer. We had all the Pork and beef we could eat because it came from the company market. But, chicken you had to either buy, or do in a yard bird, and meant the loss of eggs. Needless to say, chicken was a rarity on our table, but it always had bones!

When my girls were little, and had friends over, Amy watched me in amazement, pour my potatoes in to my mixing bowl and mashing them there.

I asked her how her mom makes mashed potatoes, and was told, from a box.

Hmmm now this was the daughter of a farmer.... seems to me, she should have seen mashed potatoes made with real potatoes.

Moni

Chas, when I was a young bride in the early 1970s, you could buy a whole chicken or various parts (but not the tenderloins they have nowadays). I used to buy bone-in breasts all the time. I usually baked or broiled them, and they had a flavor that boneless breasts simply don't match. I think they introduced boneless skinless breasts at some point during that decade, but I never bought them then because they were far more expensive. My, how times have changed!

I'm on the cusp of Boomer and X (either or both depending on whose definitions you use) and I remember when chickens were expensive and beef was cheap. I also remember when the packers started using some kind of industrial machine to break down chickens and the market was instantly saturated with breast fillets, tenders (the rest of the breast) and nuggets (the bits picked off the carcasses, pressed and then breaded to hold their shape). They appeared first in sandwich shops, casual dining and fast food, and were available to the public in food service sized frozen bags at places like Costco. Then all kinds of recipes for how to use all those frozen chicken fillets came out. One I first encountered at a sheep ranch in the PNW (where I guess they didn't grow potatoes, either) was "potato flake chicken".

I laughed, too, at Jasdip's story, but to be fair, the wish bone is the only bone that goes right through the breast meat, and that's just through a corner from which it easily slides out. The complete half-breast (inc. tender) off the bone doesn't look very different from on.

I am still trying to find where I can get nuggets from a chicken.

dcarch

Well, if you follow them...they tend to lay nuggets quite frequently....you could snatch them before the flies get 'em.

(Deleted dup post)

This post was edited by foodonastump on Sat, Aug 2, 14 at 21:24

FOAS, I didn't see the first post, so your duplicate would have been fine!

When I was in high school I worked in a chicken and sub restaurant, and the chickens came whole, I had to cut them up. I'd never seen chicken except whole or as something called "pick of the chix", which was just a cut up fryer. I'd never seen a chicken pattie, a chicken nugget, a boneless, skinless chicken breast. I graduated from high school in 1973 and married in 1974, and so I think it was at least the 80s before I ever saw boneless/skinless chicken. My youngest daughter was born in 1988 and she didn't get chicken nuggets at the fast food places, so it was after that when I heard of chicken nuggets.

I have a couple of stepchildren who refuse to eat meat with bones in it, that's not just chicken, it's beef and pork too. I find it odd, but I guess I'm just getting old.

And I still refuse to eat a chicken nugget or buy boneless skinless chicken breast, I spent too many high school years cutting up chickens, I'll take the bone out myself if I want it out.

I like dark meat best, but I raise my own chickens and they come with all different parts, and still put together, LOL.

Annie

I remember going to the chicken store w my mother when I was very small. There you picked out a live chicken, had it slaughtered, plucked and drawn.

This is why it's so pointless to read reviews for the products I want to buy...because some people are total morons and have no business writing reviews. I was just reading slow cooker reviews and some of them just made me shake my head in disbelief! GAH! Poor poor pitiful people....

If you want to have good laughs, go and watch NBC's expert, produce guru, Produce Pete talk about vegetables and fruits:

1. You store garlic in the refrigerator, and it can last as long as 1 1/2 months. Or peel the garlic and marinate in olive oil, that will be good for 6 months in the refrigerator. He should be fired for that advice.

2. Pick the long asparagus they are fresher than short ones. Green asparagus taste the same as white ones.

3. When buying cantelop, the ones with lighter color on one side is the best because sugar is heavy, it settles to the underside of the melon.

4. You must wait until fuyu persimmons get very soft before eating because they are very astringent when they are firm.

5. Bananas grow on herb trees. Don't buy the green ones in the store. Some of them never ripen. The spots on the skin is because of the sugar in the skin.

They guy is so lazy that he can't spend 5 minutes to Google for correct information. How NBC thinks he is the expert is beyond me.

dcarch

This post was edited by dcarch on Sun, Aug 3, 14 at 8:59

Maybe he should just try tasting foods in the form in which he recommends them?

Growing up in the 1950s, the grocery stores had three kinds of chickens sold whole in plastic bags - fryers, roasters, and stewers. Near holidays, they also sold capons, castrated male chickens. You could ask to have them cut up or take them home and cut them up yourself.

If you look at poultry recipes from that era or earlier, most recipes start out with "one chicken, cut up" or "one chicken, cut in quarters".

We used to cut off the wings to use for soup, cut off the legs and thighs, remove the back for soup and then cut the whole breast into three pieces. The so-called "keel" was made by a cut through and including the backbone of the front third of the breast and then the rest was cut into two pieces along the backbone.

This gave seven pieces approx. equal in size from the one chicken. That was such a sensible idea.

I remember the first time I visited a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in the 1960s and they also used the keel cut for breasts in those days.

Can't remember WHEN any boneless chick parts started appearing in supermarkets?? I LOVE breast/bone-in. Seems to be SOOOO much more forgiving than boneless when cooking in about any way. A bone-in breast might get over-cooked (a touch dry, maybe?) but they do NOT turn into HOCKEY PUCKS, as boneless ones do!?!

Chicken related... eggs. My grandmother taught me that you MUST open egg cartons to check them... not just for surface appearance but to make sure one isn't stuck... possible crack on bottom. I don't think she EVER checked date, but always made sure all 12 were moving in carton. I was doing this one day when a cute kid (very polite, maybe 7-8 yo) came over to tell me there were TWELVE in the carton... too cute, probably something he had recently learned in school... 1 dozen = 12? As I explained what I was doing, his gen X mom got that confused look on her face like a dog can get... totally clueless.

Niece (turning 19 in September and off to college in a few weeks) had NEVER actually SEEN pop-corn pop until we made it at my house. She had NO idea what a waffle iron even was... even after lifting the lid?? Pretty sad, IMNSHO!?!

The woman that said breast has no bones must believe they are raising boneless chickens out there somewhere. It kind of scares me to realize how dumb (some) people really are!

It always interests me to read The Kitchn over at Apartment Therapy, because they seem not to realize that cooking is a normal thing. They're always reinventing everything in a most elaborate way, like how to make a hard boiled egg. It's such an odd mix to me--they're all familiar with and take as normal ingredients lots of things which I couldn't get here or couldn't afford if I could (like konnyaku), but the basics of cooking are evidently a lost art they have to guess at.

Oh well, even my SIL buys mashed potatoes in the deli section, and most of my friends who think they cook offer to share recipes that begin, "combine one jar of Prego spaghetti sauce with one jar of alfredo sauceâ¦".

Marcolo over in the kitchens forum always maintained that this state of affairs is the result of a deliberate ploy by marketers to persuade everyone that cooking is much too difficult and you simply don't have time to boil potatoes, for example, even if you're also making a rib roast.

This post was edited by writersblock on Sun, Aug 3, 14 at 11:55

I nearly choked when a waitress in a restaurant I worked in asked me if chicken breasts only came from girl chickens.

Oh, Ruthanna, yes! Just try to get anything but a top heavy 4.5 lb. chicken nowadays! I miss little fryers. There's one grower here that packs them, but they're hard to find. Of course, the change is due to the ability of even smaller growers to manage their inventory flow and always ship chickens at their target age. Why should they feed chickens for months for lower price per pound? And hardly anyone makes chicken stews anymore, let alone roast capon, or coq au vin (which is hopelessly old fashioned but no less delicious than ever).

I just made a chicken strapuddarole with boneless chicken. I needed it off the bone for the dish, and it's worth it to me to pay for the labor to be done for me. I can do it myself, but I don't always want to. And while I agree in general about the bones--arroz con pollo, for instance, has no flavor without the bones (mom tried), so it's worth being careful of the shards--for chicken pies and such like, where the bones aren't cooked in the dish, it's not a huge difference, in my experience.

My friend went bankrupt trying to raise boneless chickens for Tyson's. Poor things could barly walk from the roost to their food.

I love chopping vegetables, and was reading a recipe that was not labour-intensive. I wish I could remember what it was, and one person complained that the recipe was good but far too much work and time-consuming. It was just chopping a few veggies, nothing like boning a chicken!

As long as people "cook" like this, there will always be a market for bags of frozen onions, peppers, and other regular veggies, and frozen dinners.

This post was edited by jasdip on Sun, Aug 3, 14 at 15:15

Ooops

This post was edited by klem1 on Sun, Aug 3, 14 at 15:51

I recently made (sort of) healthy "ice cream bites", which are fruit pieces covered in lukewarm melted chocolate and frozen so you get the crunchy chocolate coating and the fruit interior. One of the recipe commenters wrote melting the chocolate was too much work and she covered them with Nutella instead. Then she complained that they didn't harden.

" It kind of scares me to realize how dumb (some) people really are!"

What's even scarier to think is,
They not only vote,
But they also multiply!
:>)

Rusty

No, they aren't dumb, just ignorant...like I am about so much technology!
I grew up cooking from an early age, had a great mother and grandmother who were good cooks, and I was cooking eggs at 6, pancakes at 10 and frying chicken at 12. Along with every cookie, cake and pudding known to American suburbia in the early seventies. I made a Croquembouche in 9th grade ( and not from melted Kraft caramels!) and won a cooking contest.

But, my phone, computer, dvd player and all else STILL seem baffling somedays. Didn't grow up with those! (hey, I am a master with the iron, though)

My mom hated to cook, and was a terrible cook. When I was in 4th grade a new family moved in next door and I was at their house one day while the mom was preparing dinner. That night I was very excited to tell my mom about a "new" recipe I had learned for French Fries. I told her that the lady next door used Potatoes to make them.They were delicious and much better than the frozen stuff in the bag I had eaten my entire life. I told my mom she should get the recipe from the neighbor. My mother still wonders what I told the neighbor when I saw her slicing potatoes, and ate her French Fries.

bumblebeez, my 3 year old grandson, spotted my ironing board and iron.."What's THAT g'ma?" He loves pretend ironing; I'm sure his parents don't own one. Or a vegetable peeler...if it doesn't come peeled in a bag (carrots) or sliced, ready to serve (apples) or processed into some kind of crisp or candy-like "food" (vegetables and fruits) it doesn't get used.

How can you not iron once in awhile? I still don't understand that. Unless you send everything out to be laundered and pressed?
I don't mean crazy ironing like sheets and underwear, just basic stuff that comes out wrinkled.
Or linen napkins...hahaha!

Speaking of breasts, this Churchill anecdote is illuminating:

During a visit to America, Winston Churchill was invited to a buffet luncheon at which cold fried chicken was served. Returning for a second helping, he asked politely, "May I have some breast?"
"Mr. Churchill," replied the hostess, "in this country we ask for white meat or dark meat." Churchill apologized profusely.

The following morning, the lady received a magnificent orchid from her guest of honor. The accompanying card read: "I would be most obliged if you would pin this on your white meat."

I've had a good laugh reading this thread! Probably 13 yr ago, our niece and her best friend (both 17 yr old) visited here to go to the beach. Well, I had to cook for them. When they came back with stories about being hit on at the beach (they should have worn clothes), I was whipping cream to put on the frozen key lime pie I love. They looked at each other and asked what I was doing ... they had never seen it. They thought whipped cream came out of a can. Not in this house.

I can only imagine what that niece thinks now. We don't talk often, but her husband called a few days ago and my DH put me on the phone in time to speak to our niece. Didn't have much to say, so told her about my project of a cookbook to give as a wedding gift. I was working on the Mexican food chapter at the time. She asked what was in it, and proceeded to gush about how great it sounded. She asked, and I sent that chapter. I'd love to see her face when she reads the recipe for tamales. Doubt she has had any real ones. She didn't ask for the whole book, but after that, I doubt that she will. It requires the interest of a person who COOKS.

She got on my list when we visited after her marriage. She tipped up the wood trays we gave her and asked what she should do with them. Those trays were purchased from Ann up in Canada. They were beautiful and blended in with her decor. In the wedding gift package, she had the write up that Ann gives with her wonderful wood products. I just shake my head. Guess it would have been better to get something from Pottery Barn. She's familiar with that.

Bumblebeez, I think they wear only synthetics or wrinkled clothes or throw stuff away and buy new. Maybe put things back in the dryer with a damp towel? I don't know, it's mystery to me, too!

I've never used or owned an iron in my life. :) I'm 31. I don't wear fussy clothes, I guess. I have some clothes that will wrinkle if I don't take them immediately out of the dryer and hang them, so I do that. Sometimes my sheets are wrinkled but I don't really care about that enough to buy an iron. I should probably figure it out someday.

I also don't think the people who make mistakes like the above are dumb or moronic. It just depends how you are raised, and what your interests are. People on a computer forum might smirk at some of the "stupid" questions by cooking people!

I consider myself a good and knowledgeable cook now, but I honestly never knew that people ate vegetables that weren't from a can until I was a teenager. I also had no idea how to bake a cake without a cake mix until I was out of college. Food just wasn't important in my house growing up.

Nowadays I eat very little processed food and make almost everything from scratch, so my future kids will have an entirely different exposure than I did. However, they probably won't know about chicken parts as they will be fed vegetarian food in my house. :)

Reminded me of the time my Dad tried to keep veggies through the winter by burying them deep. Mom was showing off the fresh carrots to her friend that she had just dug in January, and her friend said, yes but don't they get all covered in dirt? Like where did she think they grew???

ritaweeda - did they ever ask her to get a bucket of steam too?

:-)

Another funny: Last night at a cookout, the host served some fantastic baked beans. I had two helping and everyone was commenting on them. I suspected they were "doctored" as the hosts aren't great cooks ( but wonderful people) and asked if they were homemade.

"Oh yes!
Really? I asked. You didn't use a can as a base ?

Oh! Well, they're not from scratch!
I googled worlds best baked beans and used that recipe."

We then went on to discuss the addition techniques and what made it So Good. They were.
I was not at all critical or condescending, just amused that Homemade is different from Scratch!

Very enjoyable thread.

While living in Wisconsin in the 80's we had a visiting Foreign Exchange student who stayed with us while they were trying to find him a new home. I was making the evening meal with the young man hanging by my side. I asked him if he'd never seen anyone cook a meal from scratch. He said, "Not in America."

Turns out his Austrian mother was a chef. His American 'mothers' were blue collar workers who served all meals: out of the freezer - into the microwave - onto the table. He didn't know that Americans could even cook for themselves.

Poor boy! And what an unfortunate view of America.

I learned to cook "scratch" also. Was checking the eggs, making sure none were stuck, at the grocery. Young guy steps over, quietly asks, "What are we looking for?" I had to laugh, and told him to make sure none were stuck. Also "taught" a young lady how to cut up a fresh chicken, as she was vegetarian and wanted to add it to their diet. She absolutely turned green! Was also asked once, "where do you find the scratch?" I've enjoyed your stories. Amazing how little people know. But, as the saying goes, a child will learn what he lives with. So true.

I was once preparing a half dozen fryers for the smoker. My ten year old niece had never seen whole chickens before (they had chicken in their family, of course, but it came already cut up in packages) and asked me where I got the little baby turkeys.

Deleted when I thought better of it.

This post was edited by Bellsmom on Fri, Aug 8, 14 at 13:58

bumblebeez - First off thank you for not being judgemental! Secondly, you bring up a good point.

How far down the chain do the ingredients have to be to be considered homemade? Or from scratch?

If I use a cup of canned chicken stock in my chicken francaise, did I still make the meal from scratch?

If I throw together no-boil pasta, a bag of shredded mozzarella, a tub of ricotta, and a jar of pasta sauce, and throw it in the oven, is it a homemade lasagna?

My MIL often scoffs at what I make from scratch, not because it's not good, but because there are way easier (and often cheaper) ways to make it that she thinks are just as good. Sometimes I agree with her, but I let foolish pride get in my way when preparing "special" dishes.

It certainly is an interesting topic, foas.
I don't grow wheat, or raise any livestock ( and my tomatoes, are, less, than, desirable, for anything) so is something still homemade if I buy flour, cheese and already cut up chicken? A can of beans or broth? A box of pasta or a loaf of bread? The wonton wrappers that I am using tonight? Are my eggrolls still homemade?

A Greek cook probably makes their own phylo dough, yet, I consider my baklava homemade/scratch with purchased dough.

I don't care if I don't meet the standards of someone else (and mine are higher than almost everyone I know irl), but I do want to cook food that is generally highly appreciated and enjoyed.
Personally, many of my choices are made for economy and health. My own chicken broth made from the carcass of an organic bird is cheaper/healthier than anything I can buy. But possibly not as tasty.
When I entertain, which isn't that often, I ignore everything and go for perceived great taste/presentation/luxury to the guest.

Bubmblebeez, I'm a Greek cook, as were my mother and grandmother before me. My grandma used to make fillo by hand. I have fond memories of visiting her and seeing the huge sheets of dough stretched out on her kitchen table and bed. Of course, being the immature kid that I was, I thought it was so funny to stick my finger into the dough and shatter it. My grandma was a saint, though, and never held my youthful foolishness against me.

That said, my mom never tried to make her own fillo because she could get it at a local Greek deli. Then it started showing up in the frozen sections of grocery stores. I've never made it myself either.

Whatever you call it, putting together several large pans of baklava each Christmas was a Heraclean task. I suppose technically it'd be homemade rather than from-scratch, but it was a far cry from convenience cooking.

Same with spanakopita. My mother used frozen chopped spinach and so did my grandmother after living in the US for several years. Back then, the feta required a trip to the Greek deli, so it certainly wasn't convenience cooking either. My grandmother and mother were well known as great cooks in their Greek community. So I figure if frozen spinach was good enough for them, it's good enough for me.

This post was edited by shambo on Fri, Aug 8, 14 at 22:19