Frozen Meats and the jog through Sunset Park...

I had an epiphany the other night while shopping at the Asian grocery. Maybe epiphany is too strong a word. Mildly startling realization, curious cognizance. The chicken thighs and breasts and what-have-you, are always frozen on the shelves. Duh. I've noticed this every week I've gone in there. But this week they were well on their way to thaw-dom when I picked them up. I'm not sure why, but this led me to ask myself, "how long have they been on the shelves," which led to me asking myself, "how long have they been frozen," and then "how many times have they been thawed and re-frozen?"

It seems like the only reason one would freeze some piece of meat would be to keep it and sell it later, unless one was going to sell it frozen. None of the chicken pieces were being sold frozen, only the whole chickens. And these pieces of meat were thawing fast. (Incidentally, I hate the thought of refreezing chicken, especially when it's been fully thawed once. I will cook meat that I don't eat and save it for later in the fridge rather than refreeze a thawed piece of meat.) So, it occurred to me, that what they maybe do is, if they don't sell the whole chickens the day they're brought to the market, they freeze them as they butcher the chicken into pieces, however many days before they sell them and then on any given day they put some of the frozen chicken pieces on the shelves in the open air fridge where they thaw out until the end of the day. Which is when I came in to find a heavily sweating package of chicken thighs. God only knows what they do with the ones that don't sell. This was, in fact, my realization: that regardless of whether or not this is the first day that it was frozen and thawed, I have no way of knowing how old the chicken is unless the chicken is obviously old and freezer burned.

I guess if you want them fresh, either buy a whole chicken the day it's slaughtered (and worry about cutting the head and giblets off and out yourself) or just shop somewhere else. The eggs and produce are cheap at the Asian market but I'm a little disenchanted at the handling of meats and the like here. Sure, I can get cow stomach and duck tongue there but it's almost not worth it anymore (j/k). I remember when I could afford organic meats back in Greensboro because the chickens came from a farm in NC (which shortly after went out of business) and I long for those days.

I would also like to live near a place that sells good organic foods again, like Trader Joe's (which I still go to but it's quite the schlep). Cheap produce is nice (I paid $1.99 a pound for cherries the other day and got a pound of blackberries for $1.00 at the same place), but if it's not organic, you start to realize it may be cheap for other reasons. God only knows.

Anyway, enough of my produce and meat rant. I'm almost done with this film score. I had the producer/director over last night and we nitpicked the hell out of the last piece that isn't done yet. This morning I'm going to rerecord a part on the end credits song that is pretty much done and then I have to work at 1:30. And I'm jogging again. I find that when I have a goal in mind I focus on it when I'm jogging and therefore I go the whole mile without stopping more often. So, as long as I'm thinking of getting out of this neighborhood to greener pastures, I will take advantage of my determined mood and get that energy out jogging and exercising on the yoga mat when I get back. Exercising always kills any depressions that crops up as well.

After all these years of being diagnosed with GAD and clinical depression, I've figured out that the best and biggest kick in the ass I can give my depression is to fight it with the very discontent that started it.

So, that's that and here I go. Rent is due.