prepared by Tom White
photo by Styrous®
Anatomy of a chicken
My top-of-the-list meat to eat is chicken! I could eat chicken seven days a week! Well, I LOVE avocados equally! Tomato fits in there as well, so, what could have been a better dish to enjoy?!?
Chickens come in an amazing array of types as I discovered when I visited Marcia Donahue at her wonderful world in the flat lands of Berkeley (link below).
Vincent Damon Furnier (Alice Cooper) has been known to have a passing acquaintance with chickens during his on stage performances (link below).
There is a string band named The Chickens on Wood here in the east bay. I've seen them perform a couple of times and they are a whole lot of fun to see in performance (link below).
Did I mention I like chicken?
The Chicken
The chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus) is a type of domesticated fowl, a subspecies of the red junglefowl (Gallus gallus). Chickens are one of the most common and widespread domestic animals, with a total population of 23.7 billion as of 2018.
Genetic studies have pointed to multiple maternal origins in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia, but with the clade found in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Africa originating in the Indian subcontinent.
From ancient India, the domesticated chicken spread to Lydia in western Asia Minor, and to Greece by the 5th century BC.
Fowl had been known in Egypt since the mid-15th century BC, with the
"bird that gives birth every day" having come to Egypt from the land
between Syria and Shinar, Babylonia, according to the annals of Thutmose III.
In the UK and Ireland, adult male chickens over the age of one year are primarily known as cocks, whereas in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, they are more commonly called roosters. Males less than a year old are cockerels. Castrated or neutered roosters are called capons (surgical and chemical castration are now illegal in some parts of the world). Females over a year old are known as hens, and younger females as pullets,
although in the egg-laying industry, a pullet becomes a hen when she
begins to lay eggs, at 16 to 20 weeks of age. In Australia and New
Zealand (also sometimes in Britain), there is a generic term chook /tʃʊk/ to describe all ages and both sexes. The young are often called chicks.
"Is that a chicken joke?"
~ Ruth Buzzi
The Avocado
I can eat an avocado just by itself with a pinch of salt and a touch of pepper or with just one other thing and be TOTALLY satisfied!
The avocado (Persea americana), a tree likely originating from south-central Mexico, is classified as a member of the flowering plant family Lauraceae. The fruit of the plant, also called an avocado (or avocado pear or alligator pear), is botanically a large berry containing a single large seed.
Avocados are cultivated in tropical and Mediterranean climates throughout the world. I learned about Mediterranean climates when I did a photo shoot for the Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona in Barcelona almost ten years ago (link below).
Avocados have a green-skinned, fleshy body that may be pear-shaped, egg-shaped, or spherical. Commercially, they ripen after harvesting. Avocado trees are partially self-pollinating, and are often propagated through grafting to maintain predictable fruit quality and quantity. In 2017, Mexico produced 34% of the world supply of avocados.
Persea americana is a tree that grows to 20 m (66 ft), with alternately arranged leaves 12–25 cm (5–10 in) long. Panicles of flowers with deciduous bracts arise from new growth or the axils of leaves.[7] The flowers are inconspicuous, greenish-yellow, 5–10 mm (3⁄16–3⁄8 in) wide.
"I love things that are indescribable,
like the taste of an avocado or the smell of a gardenia."
~ Barbra Streisand
~ Barbra Streisand
The Tomato
I went through a period of time when I became allergic to raw tomatoes; I was devastated! I could eat them cooked with no problem. This allergy disappeared when I got older; change in body chemistry maybe?
los tomatillos
photo by Styrous®
The tomato is the edible, often red berry of the plant Solanum lycopersicum, commonly known as a tomato plant. The species originated in western South America and Central America. The Nahatl (the language used by the Aztecs) word tomatl gave rise to the Spanish word tomate (it was the way my father pronounced it), from which the English word tomato derived. Its domestication and use as a cultivated food may have originated with the indigenous peoples of Mexico. The Aztecs used tomatoes in their cooking at the time of the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, and after the Spanish encountered the tomato for the first time after their contact with the Aztecs,
they brought the plant to Europe. From there, the tomato was introduced
to other parts of the European-colonized world during the 16th century.
The word "tomato" comes from the Spanish tomate, which in turn comes from the Nahuatl word tomatl [ˈtomat͡ɬ], meaning "the swelling fruit". The native Mexican tomatillo is tomate (in Nahuatl: tomātl 
pronunciation (help·info), meaning "fat water" or "fat thing").
pronunciation (help·info), meaning "fat water" or "fat thing"). When Aztecs started to cultivate the fruit to be larger, sweeter, and red, they called the new species xitomatl (or jitomates) (pronounced [ʃiːˈtomatɬ]), ("plump with navel" or "fat water with navel"). The scientific species epithet lycopersicum is interpreted literally from Latin in the 1753 book, Species Plantarum, as "wolfpeach", where wolf is from lyco and peach is from persicum.
While tomatoes are fruits—botanically classified as berries—they are commonly used as a vegetable ingredient or side dish.
"Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit.
Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad."
~ Brian O'Driscoll
~ Brian O'Driscoll
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Styrous® ~ Monday, September 21, 2020
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