LONG LIVE CHICKENS

I've been frequenting Queens vivo pollo markets for years. This is the first time I took a camera. Without making any jokes, I'd strongly encourage everyone to buy their poultry here. Yes, the outside looks ominous, but inside, you get a faint barnyard smell with the mix of bleach, shit and coffee. You have a fairly happy and boisterous crowd of shoppers, pointing and arguing amongst family and friends to find the most delicious, red,black or white chicken, pigeon, guinea fowl, assorted ducks, turkeys or Rabit. With the trend of knowing where your food comes from, what is better than a jovial pollo salesman grinning at you as he hands you a flapping fowl for closer inspection? After you give the bird a good carressing, he proceeds to tie it to a scale to get the weight and price. Smiling, he hands you a ticket and asks "whole or cut?" while making a chopping motion and giving an even bigger grin.


You then take your little katz' deli esque ticket and you pay a man in a bullet proof booth. The prices are slightly higher than the grocery store, $1.79 for chicken and $2.79 for the guinea fowl. The butcher disappears into the backroom and you wait amongst the fowl and patrons till you get the still warm bird returned to you, plucked clean and fresh as can be.
I stepped outside to see my quivering party for a few minutes. When I returned, I wasn't sure if they finished my bird yet. I pulled back the "curtain" to the killing room and the jovial fellow gave me another grin. "It's done." As he handed my my fresh guinea fowl and pulled his lunch out of the microwave at the same time. The guinea fowl was wonderful. I brined it for a couple of hours and roasted it slowly. Rich,flavorful and only slightly gamey. Left over dark meat made the best tacos i've had in a while and some stock out of the carcass for a few meals to come.

Let me tell you, these birds look clean and healthy and are the best i've ever tasted. Where has your chicken at wholefoods been the past week? A few distribution plants and left out on the sidewalk during a smokebreak or two? Plus, buy 10 chickens get 1 free and they deliver. Although, I'd advise going in and looking your dinner in the face.

sometimes paying $6 for head is a GREAT IDEA!

What a sunday....I missed all you could drink bloody marys...so I paid for some...then I had some beer...then an irish car bomb....then i decided to go eat some Lambs Head!! My favorite Greek restaurant in Astoria, uncle georges. They sell bbq'd lambs head for $6. It's actually quite good and has a variety of delicious textures and flavors. Cheek meat, brain, eyeballs, bit of neck meat and teeth for funny pictures. I have to say the tongue was dried out and pretty inedible. Lambs head is a genuine bargain at $6-with a side of potatoes, wash it down with a kilo (!) of awful red wine for $9 to be had out of grandma styled orange juice glasses!

The problem with Halloween

Giant Penises are adorable
Giant Hamburgers are adorable


Giant Bananas are Adorable

Giant Clowns are Adorable (sort of)






Your adorable kid dressed as a pirate for halloween: NOT ADORABLE AT ALL!!!

What parent in their right mind would dress a 7 year old child up as muhammad atta, kim Jong II, Adolph Hitler or Slobodan Milosevic and march them around for all of liberal New York to witness?? Then why, god, why, why, why are you having your sweet, innocent 7 year old glorify pirates for our whole town to witness?!?!? Have you lost your mind?? I should be calling Child Protective Services on you! How dare you!

You might ask...Sardinesforbreakfast, what the hell are you talking about????

Well...You may think your kid is adorable as you flickr the pictures off to grandma....Meanwhile, real pirates are raising utter hell on the sea. Here's just a few examples:
-After murdering an innocent taiwanese fisherman, a group of Somalian pirates finally released hostages after a 6 month standoff but only after a shakedown of 220K (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7079606.stm)
-Armed with "automatic rifles and rocket propelled grenades" intercepted UN food aid bound for Africa, disrupting crucial food aid for the countless starving.(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4424264.stm)
-Seriously wounded 3 north korean crewmen just this week. On a side note, in an odd shifting of alliances, the US Navy came to defend our friends from the Axis of Evil before further damage could be done. (http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/11/06/africa/ME-GEN-Yemen-NKorean-Sailors.php)

This could go on and on....Seriously, next year...Dress your kid as a pumpkin!!! My apologies for being political today, its election day......

We drinking

I Spent way too much money at the bar this weekend.

Tattoo You

I finally found a tattoo I like.

Rock and Roll Nurse...making it worse

I recently spoke to my Doctor. Who incidently, is very cool and will enthusiastically prescribe anything for you, no questions asked and goes by the name of Larry instead of Doctor. Anyways, he called me at 9:30 p.m. to inform me I both do not have syphillus and do have dangerously high cholesterol. Damn. Syphillus can be cured in one week. Cholesterol will be a lifelong struggle. At first I thought it had to be some sort of mistake, I'm 28, work out 6 days a week, drink lots of cholesterol lowering alcohol products and eat sardines for breakfast. Then he mentioned something about animal fats causing high cholesterol and I then fondly recalled just a handful of meals I consumed in the past week:

1) A 3 hour dim sum session where I gladly finished the extra dumpling when 5 were served for our party of four. We were also seated at the same table as another party who had 2/3rds of it not prefer the flavor of tripe. They offered-I ate.
2) 1/7 of a nine pound pork shoulder, a dozen oysters, a sort of fried pigs head pate, chicken mousse and pork belly buns at momufuko.
3) About 7 assorted german sausages my parents brought me to celebrate october fest...I finished those off with 3 smoked chickens and 3 turkey legs over the next couple days
4) See below for my night in flushing

It was a pretty normal week.

Anyone have any advice? I really prefer not to change my spectacular lifestyle. Drugs? Oatmeal? Herbs? Sardines for breakfast, lunch and dinner?

Living on Chinese Rocks

Of New Yorks 6 Chinatowns, my two favorites are in Queens. One fun thing about chinatowns is convincing your mom that you were in China last week.

Shhhh, Don't tell my mom, I'm actually on Main Street USA.

Here I am Mom, I'm drinking a Chinese Adult beverage outside of my favorite dumpling stand. As my dining companion put it, "i will never drink again, due to my 4 day hangover." We also had a chef come out of a restaurant to tell us that this brand of rice wine was fit only for cooking.



It's true, you can buy bootlegs of hollywoods best movies for pennies on the dollar.


Mom, it's fine....See, the swastika is backwards....ok, i won't cook in front of a mirror......

Frogs for dinner.

Mom, I met the nicest American Couple staying at our Hotel. It always pays to go with the big multinational hotels. What a nice experience.

Singing Karaoke with my new friends.

China is fun Mom. I hope I go back real soon.