It is a rare occasion in this world when you can out do a "best you ever had" moment in your life.
So there I was, with my second chicken from Riverdog Farms, stuffed ever so lovingly into my small cooler and transported home on my two-wheel truck. The first bird from them the week earlier was nearly the best chicken I've ever had, so my expectations were running high you might say. I prepped and baked #2 in a similar fashion, and as before the results were awesome. After carving it up and enjoying it with a side of rice and carrots, I put it in the fridge to think about later. We still had much leftovers, because running around 8 pounds, this small turkey was more like 3 meals. After something like a minute and a half, I wanted chicken salad.
The next day, I got to work. My salad was composed of diced meat, pesto (last fall I planned well and still have about 4 cups in deep freeze), chopped olives and celery, with just a dollop or three of mayo to get the right consistency. I looked around for bread, and luckily (because I have the best wife in the world) there just happened to be some biscuits laying around. I sliced one and gave it a light toasting. I heaped on some saladic green hunkiness. It looked good. I ingested it in about 4 bites. Then, with drool streaming from my face like some large breed of dog, I made another. Tilting my head a touch for the second first bite, a thought tumbled off a shelf somewhere deep in my head and came to rest in a legible spot. This is the most chickeny chicken I have ever had! If it could stand up to all that pesto and such, and still cry out roasted chicken, then it just had to be true.
The next day, chasing the spector of reliving a "best of" moment, I made another chicken in a biscuit sandwich. Granted, it wasn't as good as the first, or second, but really, because the only remaining biscuit was another day older, there wasn't the same volume of salad, and because somehow, getting closer to the subject in a photo is not always a good thing.If you have access to the Berkeley Farmers' Markets, enjoy chicken, and don't mind hacking off the head of the tastiest bird you might ever eat, then do Trini and Tim a favor. Do our planet a favor. Support small farms and sustainability. Go buy yourself a Riverdog Farm chicken.
