WARNING  Those of a delicate nature should stop reading now. This post contains images of raw meat and chicken body parts.
This is the story of an ex-vegetarian buying meat, being traumatised and finally learning the lesson that if you face up to something and just get on with it then it is not as bad as you imagined.
So, for those who are still here…..
One of our neighbouring shops is a butcher (doesn’t that sound so much nicer if you pronounce it ‘badger’ as many people here do?)

I don’t normally go into butchers unless I am looking for bones for my dogs but recently I have starting visiting this one. I was vegetarian from age 14 until I started eating fish in Cornwall and since coming to Catalunya I have opened up to the occasional chicken dish and sometimes, out of food desperation, eaten the lentil stews that come with bits of ham included. So, I am a novice at meat buying and in Cornwall I usually bought it nicely packaged in the supermarket and only if it promised it was local, organic and free range.
Here the supermarkets have mass produced and intensively farmed meats. I have never seen free range eggs in a supermarket either – for that you must go to a health shop or know someone who has hens. So when I want to buy chicken breasts I go to Cal Treto and ask for ‘pit de pollastre de pagès’ and they usually have some waiting in trays under the counter.
Just before Christmas I went in and stumbled through my usual request – they are kind to me as I am a neighbour but it still doesn’t feel easy. They didn’t have any ‘already prepared’ and after asking how many breasts I wanted she dived down out of sight and reappeared with two enormous chickens, clearly reared especially for christmas and with everything intact except for their feathers.
I watched in horror as she ripped them apart, pulled out their innards, sliced off breasts as big as dinner plates and gradually accumulated a pile of ‘bits’ which she insisted I would want to take home  so that I could make a ‘caldo’.  I tried to explain that I had never made a ‘caldo’ and wouldn’t know where to begin even if I decided to have a go. I mumbled that I was a vegetarian. She ignored this as it was clearly not true.
She sliced and chopped and ripped and tussled with these two birds – weighed them and it looked as if I was going to pay 45 euros for four chicken breasts. I didn’t know how to stop it all – I felt an utter idiot for not being able to make the most basic dish – chicken stock and when you can’t explain yourself in words sometimes you just have to accept the general flow of events.  And I realised the idiocy of being a sort of vegetarian who would eat only the ‘nice’ bits and waste the rest of the body.

Thankfully she kept the legs for someone else to buy and I eventually left the shop with four breasts and a large bag of unidentified bits. If I couldn’t use them she insisted, my mother in law would.
Back in the kitchen I stared at the bag. I couldn’t throw it away.

I had to accept the challenge otherwise these chickens would have died in vain.
I turned to Delia for help and got my camera out so I could record the process.

First I laid out everything for identification. I put aside parts which I thought Duna would like, dogs can eat raw chicken vertebrae although cooked bones are dangerous.

Then I proceeded to make a ‘caldo’ and froze it in several pots, pretending to myself that one day I would actually do something with it.  Chicken stock is very useful and good for when you are recovering from flu, I told myself.  I pretended to be a Catalan housewife, doing the most normal and everyday thing in the world.
In the end, I felt proud that it was another fear faced up to – it was the most respectful thing I could do for the chickens and if I was prepared to eat the breasts then I knew I must be willing to deal with the liver and kidneys and stomach and spine and those beautiful red crests.