chicken and Brussels sprouts

I went on an exploratory mission to Marczyk Fine Foods on 17th at Corona, about ten blocks away from where I live. I haven't the vaguest idea how to pronounce that name. The main idea was to pick up some Parmigiano Reggiano and whatever other cheese they would recommend, and whatever else I found that looked interesting, or whatever they might have that is seasonal. I am looking for unpasteurized cheeses. While there I picked up a whole chicken because the one on display looked great. Marczyk has an excellent meat department. The place is extremely pissy. Everybody there is very engaging and eager to talk about food. They're proud of their products. I dare say, I experienced a hard case of sticker shock at checkout. Oh well, it's all an experiment anyway, and I've paid a lot more for education than that. This bird is huge. Nearly the size of a small turkey. It's one of those hoity-toity free-range types that really ranges freely and strutted around pecking at insects, seeds, grubs and worms, has not benefitted from the science of hormones, and is entirely organic, for whatever that's worth.  It's a bit older, judging by the size and weight, and by the resistance of the tendons, but I'll be able to tell more when I crack open the bones. The taste is excellent, but honestly, I can't wait to make stock. After eating that can of Swanson's broth, with its overly salty insufficient body that cannot be fully corrected even with saffron, honey, potato, collard, and miso, I am so Jones'n for good chicken stock of my own making. Is that arrogant or what?

In the photos below, the third picture of the chicken is cast in blue because I had the white balance camera setting on florescent because I reset it previously to take the stovetop photos of the bacon and Brussels sprouts using the stove's overhead light, which is florescent. Those photos were taken on automatic. I neglected to change the white balance when I went off of automatic and turned around to take photos of the finished chicken. I was late in realizing this. In digital photography, white balance is one of the most difficult things for novice photographers to get. Florescent lighting is generally terrible. The florescent white balance setting on cameras attempts to make pictures taken under florescent lighting less terrible. Best to do away with florescent lighting altogether, when it comes to photography. On automatic, the camera didn't even use its own flash. I have several other options available that can work around this situation, overhead tungsten, slave flashes, increasing the ISO. One advantage of this particular camera is the ability to crank up the ISO to ridiculously high levels enabling photography in near darkness without graininess. It's awesome. ISO on digital cameras equates to film speed for film cameras. At any rate, the photo of the chicken that' s finished being baked is taken with tungsten overhead and flash with slaves but with the camera set to florescent. My bad.

I happened to catch Jack Pepin on T.V. making Brussels sprouts and that seemed like a good idea to me. I love him. He brings out the silliness in me. I automatically start imitating him. I'm such a goof ball. He asks rhetorical questions that I answer aloud in his voice using his speech impediments, and his wet inhalations through is teeth. He would punch me in the face if he heard me doing this. I wondered why, since he was already using bacon grease, why he added water instead of wine or vinegar which would have created a complete dressing. Also, he passed on chances to hit other places on the tongue, sweet, hot, etc., and move the whole thing away from the brutal taste of Brussels sprouts which a lot of people simply do not care for. This perplexed me.

Marczyk had bags of fresh Brussels sprouts and I found that I could not resist them. My mum used to make them. Of course we played with them. Asparagus were trees on a plate, and Brussels sprouts were little bushes. Mashed potatoes were a volcano and gravy was lava. The lava erupted from the volcano, spilled out onto the plate and ran over the trees and the bushes. It all ended up in a catastrophe in miniature right there on the plate. "Quit playing with your food!" *winces* Now, Mum is in a nursing home and she eats with her fingers and pushes food around her plate. All that training right down the drain.