A Chicken And Eggton Situation
We went to our first chicken festival, you guys!
We made a movie about it. To experience the chicken festival in all its glory, pour yourself an iced tea, sit down in front of a fan, rip a feather pillow open, and click play.
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My favorite way to eat chicken is in quesadillas and fajitas. When I have time, I marinade the chicken for a couple hours before I cook it. My favorite marinade comes from a chef at Stanford University. He gave the recipe to my dad in 1989.
Marinade for Chicken Fajitas {Download & Print Recipe}
from a chef at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University
Ingredients: {Serves 3-6}
1.75-2.5 lbs. skinless, boneless chicken breasts
1/2 c. soy sauce
1/2 c. vegetable or olive oil
1/2 c. lemon or lime juice
Tabasco (I usually use 2 tsp.)
black pepper (I do a healthy shake)
Directions:
Clean the chicken. Place it in a small plastic or glass bowl and cover in the remaining ingredients. Flip the chicken over a couple of times with your hands so the marinade is mixed and evenly distributed. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 2 hours or overnight. Grill the chicken, or bake at 350 degrees until cooked through. This could take half an hour or so, depending on the thickness of the meat. Cut into the chicken to make sure it’s no longer pink before removing it from the oven.
Slice the chicken into bite-sized pieces and serve in salads, or with tortillas and whatever toppings you like. I typically sauté peppers and onions together and put those on the table along with cheese, salsa, cilantro, sour cream, avocado, lime wedges, mango, and red beans and rice.
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Waiting for a piece of chicken. . .
did you get a piece of chicken? With this cute face you should get at least 2 😉
Hee hee. They don’t get chicken often, but they do get scrambled eggs every once in a while! And apples. Thunder freaking loves little pieces of peeled apple.
I didn’t know that chickens could be as beautiful as the one at 02:34!
Isn’t it cool? No idea what kind it was–I should have looked at its entry form to see.
Dream on, Thunder! (Or maybe Thunder is given chicken. What do I know? In which case, Beso the Boxer would like to come live with you, please.)
What I DO know? Only mustard on corndogs! And that chicken with the white feathers ringed in white? How beautiful is that!
Seems like the fajitas marinade has stood the test of time. Can’t wait to give it a try.
You don’t have to convince me on mustard, Stacy–I am with you 100%. I could put mustard on practically everything and forgo the ketchup most of the time. Scott must not have been thinking properly (that’s what happens when you inhale too many chicken feathers.)
I love Chicken Festivals! Crazy chickens, pretty chickens, puffy chickens, skinny chickens… love it!
BTW… Way to compromise! Awesome marinade too!
Lynn, I was amazed at the chickens with the helmets of hair (or fluff, I guess) on top of their heads. Amazing! I don’t know how they see through all that frizz. And some of the roosters were HUGE. Like, the size of a 30 lb dog.
fabulous!!! We didn’t make it this year.. was Buster the Wonder Goat there??? (Buster is a she lol) Thanks for the glimpse into what we missed.. it was great 🙂
I think she might have been! I think I remember the guy saying her name was Buster…
I would be so happy to see one of your videos every morning…can you do that? They just make my day!
You are too kind, Sue! I wish the videos did not take an eternity to edit (choosing the music and synching it up can be a challenge). If we could make them more often I would love it, because they are SO fun to make. Right now we’re just filming with our digital camera and I’m using Windows MovieMaker for editing–it comes with every basic Windows package, I think. If you’ve never used it but decide to give it a whirl, just let me know and we can chat about it on the phone. It’s super easy once you figure it out a little.
Ha! Well done video, you’re getting really good at these! 🙂 Just a thought – why not cut the chicken up into the final eating size when cleaning it? Seems it would be better for letting the marinade soak in, and you’re already covered in chicken-yuck anyway.
Yes! You know, sometimes I do cut the chicken up into bite-sized pieces before I cook it. I didn’t put it in the recipe, though, because when I was testing it I decided that the chicken was more tender if I left it in one piece for cooking and cut it later. But when you do cut it first and then marinade it, the good part is that it soaks up more of the marinade, so it’s a tough call….
It was a much better festival this year, we went two years ago, right before we got our first 4 chickens, and there were like 5 chickens there and the only eggs we saw were some plastic ones. Great video, made me laugh out loud!
Ginger, wow! They were selling some eggs for 40 DOLLARS EACH this time. The eggs were laid by some of the prize-winning hens and they were for hatching. It was nuts.
This made me laugh so much. And I agree with Kara – that chicken at 02.34 is stunning!
Suz, I have no idea what that one is, but check out barred rock chickens if you don’t know them. Aren’t they gorgeous?
you did get releases from everyone you video’d, yah?
😉
A lawyer never tells her secrets. 🙂
Thank you for the vicarious trip to the Chicken Festival! Seriously, it’s been a long day and that was a great way to end it – very clever and really funny!
Yay! Thanks for the kind words, Kristen. I wish I could have filmed the part where Scott and I almost won an egg toss! We beat out at least 60 people but then a KID who was basically ROLLING the egg to his dad pulled out the victory. It was adrenaline-packed, I tell you.
Terrific introduction – although I ended up foregoing the ripped pillow 🙂
I have so many ripped pillows I can lend you, Jenny. Seymour and Thunder love to sneak into the bedroom and try to bite them open when they’re mad at us or trying to get our attention. It’s gotten to the point where my mom takes all the pillows off the beds when we come to visit!
This is your best video yet! You guys should move out here to Los Angeles and become famous so we can all say we knew you when! (Seriously…if not directing/producing, you really should consider acting/modeling. You have “it.” Get a portfolio and a reel together and send it out…come out and audition. I think you would have a shot at. I have a lot of actor friends…and you trump all of them!)
You are so very encouraging! This was very kind of you. I do love me some California, that’s for sure. I was born in northern California and lived in Irvine when I was a baby. My dad has family out there, so we go back every year or two to visit. I always love it!
This one was kinda hard for me—sorry to rain on the chicken parade. Most commercial chickens are “raised” in such horrendous conditions that if you saw them, you’d never eat another bite. Definitely not the plucky blue ribbon winners you got to see.
Oh Sandy Sue–such a good point, and I totally get it. I have a really hard time with chicken. Maybe I should have mentioned that above, with the recipe. I stopped eating regular chicken a year ago. We get our eggs from pastured hens (some local farmers do a drop-off in town every few weeks and we load up.) As for chicken meat, I get certified humane chicken from EarthFare (check out this standards comparisons chart if you haven’t seen it–it’s chilling: http://www.certifiedhumane.org/uploads/standardscomparisonchart.pdf). “Certified humane” isn’t the best but it does seem to make inroads on some of the most egregious aspects of chicken farming (chickens get hours of darkness in which to stop eating and sleep, ammonia levels have to be low, they have to be caught individually instead of 5 in a hand, etc. That said, you can still have 6 lbs of chicken per square foot, which sucks). We’ll start ordering pastured chickens at the Farmer’s Market I work at when it starts up again in 2 weeks.
Do you have any good resources on conscientious chicken buying? I’ve adopted a similar approach to tomatoes. I haven’t bought a single tomato in months and months because I’m trying to eat seasonally (that said, I ate a mango yesterday, so….) I’m reading this book called Tomatoland right now. It’s all about the commercial tomato industry in Florida and it’s damning.
Anyway, I’m so glad you brought this up.
Bless your heart! I just couldn’t keep track of everything, so I went vegan. I started out just to be healthier, but I’m glad not to be eating my neighbors anymore. I’m not rabid about it, but my guts sure do feel better.
Cute video. When was the Chicken Festival? Sorry we missed it!
Pat and Roger Schwerman – Christmas Tree Plantation.
Hi Pat! So good to hear from you. I hope you are both doing great. The chicken festival was April 12-14. Here’s the link to their website so that when they announce the dates for 2014, you can plan on it! 🙂 http://www.alabamachickenandeggfestival.com/
They had some tractors there but nothing half as amazing as the tractor that you and Roger let Scott drive last November!
I like the Russian one, at 2:15, wearing the fur hat.
Great video.
There were more like him, Kate, with different kinds of fur hats on (!), but they were always shaking their heads back and forth and they were hard to film. This one actually reminds me of a hat that Lacey and I tried on at Filene’s Basement one day but we didn’t buy it because it was something like $430. But it was amaaaaaazing.
Wow – there are lots of kinds of chicken!
I didn’t know other countries did pickled eggs, I feel quite reassured by that. I would also like a corn dog. We don’t get corn dogs here. Bah.
We do get battered and deep fried haggis though so, you know…
This was the bestest way EVER to kick off my final day at baking school.
Hahah, omg, I can’t think about eating chicken after seeing them looking so cute in your video! I think my husband’s near vegetarianism is starting to rub off on me. Love the video 🙂
SO many thoughts on this video. and ps: you make me want to make videos, but my cuteness would pale in comparison to your cuteness.
1. isn’t that the truth about how relationships work: sometimes you have to balance the lettuce wraps with a full-on fried food situation.
2. I’ve never seen scott look happier than when he was eating just then. EVER. That was real joy in those eyes.
3. i enjoy how, next to all the fried foods, they serve Crystal Light. It’s like how my gym teacher used to eat 4 huge slices of pizza for lunch, with tater tots, but paired it with diet coke.
4. I really want whatever type of chicken it is that has a giant afro. Those are obviously the best type of chickens to own.
5. is that chicken actually SQUARE DANCING?!?! I’m joining you next year. that did it.
6. that white chicken with the black outlines better be a prize-winning chicken. *how do they get the feathers like that? It’s like a drawing*
Love BBQ-sauced grilled chicken and smoked chicken:) Happy Tuesday!