Give Me Convenience Pt. II

"Mommy, What's a Chicken Bone?" The undeclared battle cry of a new generation and the thorn in the side of many a Chef around the country. In our unsolicited search for more food convenience, we have deemed it necessary to take the bones out of everything. This is not entirely new or entirely bad. We (cooks & butchers) have been removing bones from animals for almost as long as people have been eating the beasts. Without bones we wouldn't have such wonderful things as stocks with which to make soups and sauces, gelatin with which to make, well jello and some other savory albeit less than popular applications, hell, some people even eat the bones, or at least the protein rich soft gummy marrow in the center. However, It seems like ever since the introduction of the chicken nugget (which has become less chicken and more nugget, regardless of who makes it) people have begun to develop culinariboneaphobia (I made that one up), this is an irrational fear of bones in their food. This fear is, I believe, due to "Business" trying to sell such a convenience with food, an "added value" and having taken our food so far away from the farm where it began that we no longer can identify what we put in our mouth with where it originally came from. It is even our own sick desire for convenience that has driven this as well. We have no problem plucking a plant from the ground and putting that in our mouth (after it's been thoroughly washed of course!) but we don't want to face facts when it comes to animals. Probably because the massive industrial complex that is American meat packing ("Business") is so perversely disgusting, corrupt and unethical that we don't want to face up to what we are supporting, especially since it's so damn affordable. We are so self absorbed in our own convenience that we have even recently taken the chicken wing, a very affordable (at least before it's massive popularity) piece of meat, placed naturally and conveniently on little tiny easy to maneuver bones, which gave it not only it's name (since it was obvious that it came from the wing of a chicken) but also imparted a great flavor when cooked, making it edible with out sauce if you were so bold. Now this too is being lost, making way for the "boneless wing" (OK you realize how fucking stupid that sounds), a chunk of strangely formed chicken and miscellaneous other products pressed together and sauced for your eating convenience. The ingredient list alone is ridiculous, a chicken wing was naturally designed to consist of : Chicken wing sections, Oil in which to fry the wings, Flour *optional to coat the wings for better sauce adhesion, and whatever goes into any one of a thousand + sauces that you could choose from. A boneless chicken wing ingredient list (also known as a renamed chicken nugget): I don't want to type them all out for fear of carpel tunnel syndrome, but it varies from between probably 12 and 40 ingredients, that doesn't include the sauce.
Wherever he is, Gary Larson (created the Far Side Comic) is probably laughing his ass off whenever he sees boneless chicken-something on a menu, because I'm sure that some scientist somewhere, someday will figure out how to bring Larson's "Boneless Chicken Ranch" to reality.
I know I've already mentioned before that if you can't face the fact of what you are eating then you should be a vegetarian but don't worry, "business" is hard at work as we speak, making sure that you never have to recognize your food ever again, hell, eventually it will all be different flavored concoctions of corn and soy and you won't have to worry about it (not that you do now), but until we reach that great soilent green moment, remember-
Eat your Corn!-g