Cluck, cluck, cluck!

The daily roasting chicken at Matsuya "Super", Japan

       In this photo you see "the" roasting chicken at a supermarket back in Japan.  I say "the" chicken because, at the Matsuya store back in Nagano City, Japan, every day there were two chickens put out for sale -- the big  one and the small one. (And the "big" one was actually only "biggish.") If you were lucky and went to the supermarket  at the right time, you could maybe score "the chicken."  If you really gambled and waited 'til almost closing time, you might even get that chicken at a marked-down price.  That would make it, not  RM (Malaysian ringgit) 26, but rather RM 20.   Big savings, huh?!
      Contrast that to the situation in this Muslim country where Chicken Is King.  With the Muslims not eating pork and the Indians not eating beef, chicken is the meat of choice around here.  (Except for the expats, who want organic chicken,  free-range chicken, or antibiotic chicken, or whatever it is that floats their boats.)  So here, if you want chicken, you can have chicken, in one of a thousand different ways, and almost all of them delicious!

Daily offering of chickens at Cold Storage, Penang

        At the nearest Cold Storage supermarket (which, according to their history to be found at this link literally changed the history of Singapore by allowing colonial masters to "acclimatise" to living in the tropics) . . . .  anyway at our local Cold Storage there are chickens a-plenty.  The ones to the left are regular chickens; the green-packaged ones on the right are "antibiotic residue free chickens."  At first I was buying these very chickens (at RM 11.99, about US $3.98) and roasting them myself, as I always had to do back in Japan.  Then, duh!  I found the already-cooked ones in three different flavors,  for only one ringgit more. AND you can buy either a whole, a quarter or a half.  They'll even chop the thing up for you.  No more roasting chickens for me!  These Penangite chicks aren't quite as succulent as the broiled chickens you can get at supermarkets in the States, but they're still quick and delicious and probably a bit less fattening than those American ones, too. 

Chicken Satay -- Cheap and Delicious!

       Speaking of chicken, if you ask me, there's no better way to eat it than as satay, which is to say grilled on a skewer with peanut sauce and some cucumber and pounded rice on the side.  Um-um, good!