Today I spent four hours cleaning chickens. Sparing you the unpleasant details, it’s enough to know that we’re doing a fund raiser for our summer mission trip. The fund raiser is called a “chicken-cue.” It’s basically a barbecue but we only cook chicken. We create individual meal units. We make some coleslaw, baked beans and home made barbecue sauce, put it all together with half a chicken in a clamshell take out container and sell it for $6 each. We make about $3 profit per unit. We typically sell about 250 units each time we do this fund raiser. In short, we make a lot of money in a couple days time.
The thing is though, that in order to create such a large profit margin we have to do most of the work ourselves. That means buying and using raw materials whenever possible; chickens included.
Take it from me, cleaning one chicken isn’t too bad. But by the time you finish your 100th chicken you’re ready to become a vegetarian. The reality of the matter is that we as a race eat far too much meat. I don’t know who to blame or when this obsession with meat started, but I have the feeling that it’s a large contributor to my weight issues.
After spending so much time today around (easily) 500 lbs. of raw meat I’ve decided that I’m going to significantly cut back on my meat intake. More vegetables, more legumes, more starches. Not only will it be good for me, but it’ll be good for the environment too.
