Chicken barbecue for Planned Parenthood?

In a roundabout way I was talking about chicken last time, as I was on my way to Weis for my Wednesday Southwestern Chicken Salad, when I needed to get windshield wiper blades installed at the windshield-wiper-blade-place. So now it’s back to chicken.

Whenever I go to one of the chicken barbecues or BBQs or barbie-Qs or bar-b-Qs, however, you want to pronounce it or spell it, which usually are held down the street at the local Agway, I always ask whom they are going to benefit. Most likely, I’m going to get the chicken anyway, but I like to know to where my hard-earned $5 to $8, depending on what’s included, is going.

It got me thinking what would I do, say, if the money were going to Planned Parenthood, which as a good Catholic I shouldn’t be supporting? Would I turn it down? Would I say, “Oh, I’m sorry, but I can’t support you, even though the chicken smells pretty good and all. I can’t support your giving out condoms and supporting abortion and all.” My wife joked (I know, totally inappropriately, as the good — well, not-so-good, now that I’ve written this post– Catholics that we are) that it could be called “Chickens For Choice.”

In our area, though, it would more likely to be a fund-raiser for the National Rifle Association, or “Chickens For The Trigger-Happy,” as I imagine it would be called. I actually went to one barbecue and asked what it was for and they told me it was for a trapping club. I didn’t argue and just took the chicken, although I did wonder if it actually was chicken I was getting or some other animals the club had trapped. As with most mystery meats, hey, it tasted like chicken….

which doesn’t everything “taste like chicken”?

Which reminds me….

…about five or so years ago, as a newspaper reporter, I attended a frog legs dinner that the local Italian club in the town where we lived at the time held every year for the last 40 or so years, and when I asked people what frog legs tasted like, they all said, “It tastes like chicken.”

Of course, it didn’t. It had a less “gamey” taste, whatever the heck that means, and tasted like…well, not chicken…it actually might have tasted more like fish to me, if anything. In the end, I think it didn’t really taste like anything. It wasn’t good. It wasn’t bad. It was just there.

Oh, and where did the money go for the frog leg dinner? It went to the local Italian club that hosted it, and right back into buying more frog legs the next year that the club had imported from Thailand — and kegs of beer to wash down the frog legs. After all, who would eat frog legs sober? Oh, and did I mention that this Italian club was a Catholic group (of course), so I didn’t have to worry about the money going to Planned Parenthood. Thank God (as I cross myself…).