What's For Dinner?

Badge recently read the Omnivore's Dilemma. What ensued was a furious hunt for pastured chicken, not to mention a persistent and nagging voice beside my ear to buy local, buy local, buy local.

He really knows how to brainwash a gal.

Last weekend, we finally dragged our butts to the Hillcrest Farmers Market. There was tons of produce which was great. Of course the first thing we did was hit the food carts since we were starving. Several gourmet tamales later, we were fit to wander the tents, picking up sundried tomatoes, chard, russian kale, jams, oranges and much more. I even discovered sweet cherimoya which looked a lot like my favorite fruit in Taiwan, the sugar apple. Sadly, when I later partook of the cherimoya, it wasn't nearly as good as the sugar apple. I was sad.

Cherimoya:


Sugar apple (taken when I was in Taiwan):


Unfortunately, the pastured chicken vendor was nowhere to be found but we did pick up fresh eggs from another vendor.

This past Sunday, Badge and I decided to hit up the Little Italy farmer's market, which supposedly had a different pastured chicken vendor. This market turned out to be quite large. Again, we found a gourmet tamale shop to attack (these were better than the Hillcrest shop). I then made the bad call to get a nutella crepe which nearly wiped us out with it's thick chocolate-y overindulgence. Luckily, we managed to not pass out and proceed with our shopping. After buying more veggies and fruit, we finally found the vendor. Since the chicken was pricey, we decided to try a half chicken first.


And that brings us to tonight. Tonight, I made roasted chicken with asparagus and garlic bread. The chicken turned out to be quite interesting. The dark meat was chewy and gamey. The breast was pretty moist and tender. Overall, it definitely seemed like a different beast than normal chicken from the store. Of course Badge looked at my disapprovingly when I fell upon the chicken carcass with my hands (sorry maybe it's a cultural thing). I think next time, I might try to cut up the meat portions first before deciding what to make. I can definitely see using the breast for cutlets or katsudon and the thighs and drumsticks for stew. I doubt my inner penny pincher will allow us to buy this chicken every week but I certainly see it making the biweekly or monthly route.