I think free range means so much more than going to a supermarket and getting a pricey chicken with all the stamps of approval from the enviro-friendly movement, but I live smack in the middle of an anything-but-enviro-friendly (or even enviro-conscious) city and even the stamped food is hard to come by. Environmentally friendly alimentation in São Paulo is generally a euphemism for vegetarianism, which is a lifestyle choice I am not inclined to follow. I tried to buy hormone-free milk, asking for organic milk, and I was, on more than one occasion, pointed in the direction of soy milk. For a real challenge, I tried to buy hormone-free beef, rabbit, ostrich, goat, chicken, eggs, whatever; I was met, again on more than one occasion, with a blank stare. I was reflecting on this yesterday with my friend, Felise, reminiscing about my passion for Mexican gastronomy: the tight relationship between the people and their food; the free-standing market culture that permeates every village and city in the country, even the modern, smoggy metropolis of the capital; the ease of talking with the tomato vendor whose product comes from a nearby farm; and the near infantile delight of purchasing pretty much anything by digging one’s hands into a sack of whatever raw vegetable, chili or fruit is wanted and picking out the product with still dirt-encrusted delight. Her response, which played to some of my more base dreams and not one iota of my present reality (because it is a future one), was for me to buy a small farm already. I clearly am not (yet) researching my investment in a small plot of land for my goats and vegetables and fig tree.
I am, however, in God’s grace.
Felise went off on a run, and I went with my other friend, Patricia, on a more mundane trip to feed her dog, which is at her house just outside São Paulo, in one of the many cities that abuts the metropolis and whose demarcation with the booming city is, predictably, invisible. Nevertheless, there is a charm to the area; it is comprised mostly of houses, without the encroachment of too many tall apartment buildings, and is still rather sleepy on Sundays. Admittedly, my intents were the chance to spend time talking with a friend, to see a different area of the city, from the eyes of a local, and to stock my cupboard (abusive, I know, but I am very, very grateful to friends with cars). After an unfruitful stop at one bakery whose owner’s probable hangover-induced laziness seemed to imbibe the dark venue, we decided to leave, attend to the dog then hit a better bakery. En route to the other bakery, my friend pointed out where she used to work. Casually she mentioned the house across the street from her old residential office raised chickens… and my mind went racing. But first, the bakery: aptly named “The Bread Palace,” I couldn’t help but smile at the size of this mega-bakery emporium and the irony of its being located outside the big city, in the lazy outskirts, where things are general small and quiet. We sat down to order at the counter, a tradition I would have thought had been lost back in the U.S. had I not been taken to “The Modern Diner” growing up (more on “The Modern Diner” another time; suffice it to say, it was modern at one point, sometime back in the fifties, when red vinyl covering on spin-top stools was all the rage). On this occasion, I was served freshly-baked white bread with butter, grilled crisply on the flat-stove top; strong Brazilian coffee with a dollop of hot foamy whole milk; and a papaya/apple/banana blend, also prepared with some whole milk. I ate (I do not even need to describe the smile on my face), walked around the complex, which also sells fresh and hard cheeses, some wines, newspapers, magazines and fresh sweets (more on those another time), bought the thick Sunday paper, and got back in the car. Second, the chicken: I reminded my friend. “Ah, the chicken.” We went back to the office and found three old men standing around across the street. This area of the city being a small residential villa at the precise moment it needs to be, my friend recognized one of the men, the one with the greatest number of wrinkles and certainly the most charm, and proceeding to ask about chickens. It had been years since she had worked in the area and the old man didn’t recognize her, though it seemed no impediment to a beautiful, spontaneous conversation on a quiet, sunny Sunday morning on a tree-lined street of older houses. He told us the owners no longer raised chickens, indeed had given them to the house down the street and, he cautioned, purchasing the ones down the street was probably not a wise decision. “Same chickens down the street that used to be up here. I am 81 years old, and those chickens, I reckon, must be about 85.” We all chuckled, though my face could not mask how disheartened I was at the news. They all took quiet note. The youngest of the three, an assumption I make based on the man’s still thick hair and relatively few spots of grey, then said he knew of one place, and the old man’s two companions – old drinking buddies – then engaged in a bit of back and forth on how to reach the location of the live chicken mini-shop. I observed silently as everyone squabbled amicably over directions, remembered yet another locale, bantered a bit more over better directions and then reached an agreement. The young one told us he was going in the direction of the chicken vender and he would show us exactly where it was, so we got in our car and followed him. He stopped his car when we arrived, got out, shook our hands and bid us farewell before continuing on his way.
My friend accompanied me into the little 10-square meter locale, which consisted of six chicken pens, a woman in a faded “Jesus is faithful” t-shirt crocheting a red doily (we found out later for a friend in the hospital), a small counter with pen, paper, cash box and knives, a calendar with an advertisement for a farm in a neighboring municipality, and the woman’s husband, Romildo, rinsing the floor and sporting a hefty smile and a blood-stained white undershirt. It was near closing time. After inquiring about the food for the chickens (fresh grains and corn), how they are raised (free range and as they see fit to breed), how they are brought in (Romildo and his wife travel about two hours from Sao Paulo every Monday to pick them out, which is why the shop is closed on Mondays) and the price (yes, a bit pricy by Brazilian standards), I picked out my live chicken and followed Romildo over to the back to watch him kill and prepare my bird.
In conversations of late, people’s faces turn green when I talk of killing my own chicken, which I was willing to do had Romildo not been there. They say slaughtering one’s own animals requires cold blood. I disagree. I insisted on observing my chicken the whole time I was in the little store and I thought entirely about this claim, about life and death, as I watched Romildo pick out my chicken, weigh it live and squawking on the scale, cut its neck, drain its blood, drop it in hot water and de-feather it and then cut it into pieces, wrapping up everything in a bag except the head. I asked him about cutting the neck versus breaking the neck, how to properly cut the neck, how long he had been in the business, the different types of chickens he sold. There was nothing at all cold in Romildo’s blood. In fact, his heart was about as warm as I had seen in anyone in years. He loved his job and loved my questions as much as I loved watching him work and asking him questions. Cold blood is having no love for the animal and, consequently, for what we ingest, and Romildo had nothing but profound respect for every aspect of his job, his chickens, himself.
Patricia and I walked out of the shaded locale and into the Sunday sun, crossing the street to reach her now scorching car. It was a 50-minute drive to my apartment, more time to reflect on a small first in my life: seeing an animal go from feeding on grains to being food for me. I am 27, raised in a city, and I had just witnessed something fabulously new. It was new and real and raw. It was not a slaughtering; it was the end of a cycle and the beginning of another. It was a sacrifice; it was sacred. It was my being deeply and viscerally conscious about how I am fed, where my food comes from, what I am physically made of. And for that, I smiled my entire way back to my apartment.
Last night, I threw the entirety of the bird into salty water and prepared a fatty broth. Not one bit of chicken went to waste, and my dinner menu was as follows:
(Dessert was Felise’s contribution: homemade peach granola bars made of her fabulous peach jam.)
I am, however, in God’s grace.
Felise went off on a run, and I went with my other friend, Patricia, on a more mundane trip to feed her dog, which is at her house just outside São Paulo, in one of the many cities that abuts the metropolis and whose demarcation with the booming city is, predictably, invisible. Nevertheless, there is a charm to the area; it is comprised mostly of houses, without the encroachment of too many tall apartment buildings, and is still rather sleepy on Sundays. Admittedly, my intents were the chance to spend time talking with a friend, to see a different area of the city, from the eyes of a local, and to stock my cupboard (abusive, I know, but I am very, very grateful to friends with cars). After an unfruitful stop at one bakery whose owner’s probable hangover-induced laziness seemed to imbibe the dark venue, we decided to leave, attend to the dog then hit a better bakery. En route to the other bakery, my friend pointed out where she used to work. Casually she mentioned the house across the street from her old residential office raised chickens… and my mind went racing. But first, the bakery: aptly named “The Bread Palace,” I couldn’t help but smile at the size of this mega-bakery emporium and the irony of its being located outside the big city, in the lazy outskirts, where things are general small and quiet. We sat down to order at the counter, a tradition I would have thought had been lost back in the U.S. had I not been taken to “The Modern Diner” growing up (more on “The Modern Diner” another time; suffice it to say, it was modern at one point, sometime back in the fifties, when red vinyl covering on spin-top stools was all the rage). On this occasion, I was served freshly-baked white bread with butter, grilled crisply on the flat-stove top; strong Brazilian coffee with a dollop of hot foamy whole milk; and a papaya/apple/banana blend, also prepared with some whole milk. I ate (I do not even need to describe the smile on my face), walked around the complex, which also sells fresh and hard cheeses, some wines, newspapers, magazines and fresh sweets (more on those another time), bought the thick Sunday paper, and got back in the car. Second, the chicken: I reminded my friend. “Ah, the chicken.” We went back to the office and found three old men standing around across the street. This area of the city being a small residential villa at the precise moment it needs to be, my friend recognized one of the men, the one with the greatest number of wrinkles and certainly the most charm, and proceeding to ask about chickens. It had been years since she had worked in the area and the old man didn’t recognize her, though it seemed no impediment to a beautiful, spontaneous conversation on a quiet, sunny Sunday morning on a tree-lined street of older houses. He told us the owners no longer raised chickens, indeed had given them to the house down the street and, he cautioned, purchasing the ones down the street was probably not a wise decision. “Same chickens down the street that used to be up here. I am 81 years old, and those chickens, I reckon, must be about 85.” We all chuckled, though my face could not mask how disheartened I was at the news. They all took quiet note. The youngest of the three, an assumption I make based on the man’s still thick hair and relatively few spots of grey, then said he knew of one place, and the old man’s two companions – old drinking buddies – then engaged in a bit of back and forth on how to reach the location of the live chicken mini-shop. I observed silently as everyone squabbled amicably over directions, remembered yet another locale, bantered a bit more over better directions and then reached an agreement. The young one told us he was going in the direction of the chicken vender and he would show us exactly where it was, so we got in our car and followed him. He stopped his car when we arrived, got out, shook our hands and bid us farewell before continuing on his way.
My friend accompanied me into the little 10-square meter locale, which consisted of six chicken pens, a woman in a faded “Jesus is faithful” t-shirt crocheting a red doily (we found out later for a friend in the hospital), a small counter with pen, paper, cash box and knives, a calendar with an advertisement for a farm in a neighboring municipality, and the woman’s husband, Romildo, rinsing the floor and sporting a hefty smile and a blood-stained white undershirt. It was near closing time. After inquiring about the food for the chickens (fresh grains and corn), how they are raised (free range and as they see fit to breed), how they are brought in (Romildo and his wife travel about two hours from Sao Paulo every Monday to pick them out, which is why the shop is closed on Mondays) and the price (yes, a bit pricy by Brazilian standards), I picked out my live chicken and followed Romildo over to the back to watch him kill and prepare my bird.
In conversations of late, people’s faces turn green when I talk of killing my own chicken, which I was willing to do had Romildo not been there. They say slaughtering one’s own animals requires cold blood. I disagree. I insisted on observing my chicken the whole time I was in the little store and I thought entirely about this claim, about life and death, as I watched Romildo pick out my chicken, weigh it live and squawking on the scale, cut its neck, drain its blood, drop it in hot water and de-feather it and then cut it into pieces, wrapping up everything in a bag except the head. I asked him about cutting the neck versus breaking the neck, how to properly cut the neck, how long he had been in the business, the different types of chickens he sold. There was nothing at all cold in Romildo’s blood. In fact, his heart was about as warm as I had seen in anyone in years. He loved his job and loved my questions as much as I loved watching him work and asking him questions. Cold blood is having no love for the animal and, consequently, for what we ingest, and Romildo had nothing but profound respect for every aspect of his job, his chickens, himself.
Patricia and I walked out of the shaded locale and into the Sunday sun, crossing the street to reach her now scorching car. It was a 50-minute drive to my apartment, more time to reflect on a small first in my life: seeing an animal go from feeding on grains to being food for me. I am 27, raised in a city, and I had just witnessed something fabulously new. It was new and real and raw. It was not a slaughtering; it was the end of a cycle and the beginning of another. It was a sacrifice; it was sacred. It was my being deeply and viscerally conscious about how I am fed, where my food comes from, what I am physically made of. And for that, I smiled my entire way back to my apartment.
Last night, I threw the entirety of the bird into salty water and prepared a fatty broth. Not one bit of chicken went to waste, and my dinner menu was as follows:
- Finely chopped tomato, carrot, cucumber, bell pepper and chive salad with a lime, salt, pepper, olive oil and cumin dressing.
- Chicken liver paté with chopped onions slow cooked in broth.
- Whole grain rice and onions cooked in broth.
- Chicken pulled from the bone in small, stringed bits and cooked in a Mexican mole sauce with a broth base and added chocolate.
- Chicken skin slowly fried in chicken fat and a bit of oil.
(Dessert was Felise’s contribution: homemade peach granola bars made of her fabulous peach jam.)
Great text. It's a crying shame that the profound significance of what we eat every day is now lost on most of us.
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