International Respect for Chickens Day celebrates the devotion of hens to their chicks and deplores the suffering of motherless chickens on factory farms. In this photo, Ruby fosters Ivy, a chick rescued from a factory farm in North Carolina to live in a safe and loving home.

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And here is a mother hen sheltering her chicks from the storm.

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Alternatively, it is a mutant chicken with about 17 feet and a vestigal chick growing from her chest.

aw kyoot mutant shelter hen!

And dang, I Was going to make Chicken Korma for dinner. Now what?

I am currently not eating any chickens.

I was just thinking yesterday about how much I dislike most chicken meat.

How could anyone NOT respect chickens? Man.

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Hey, I respected chickens a long time before the trendy, cool-kid vegan crowd started doing it.

Just sayin'.

A good friend's Black Sex-Link chickens. They lay yummy large eggs.

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i respect the chicken.
i got some problem with the cocks, though. They can be... uncooperative.

Karen Davis (UPC) is really a cool and a wonderful lady. I met her at a vegetarian summerfest one year where she was speaking and tabling. I was waiting in line for some incredible food, standing next to her table, and she, trying to assemble a small tripod for her display, handed it to me and said, "You look like you know how things work."

The next year I saw her at another conference in the afternoon between speaking gigs and we started complaining about things. "Let's grab a beer instead of standing here," she said.

She's just really cool. After years of being around chicken and other fowl, she really understands that they're basically little kids, with personality, intelligence, sociability, affection and warmth, and everything else.

One of the suggested events for Respect Chickens Day is to show a screening of Chicken Run. You may laugh, but my Mom saw it years ago and hasn't eaten chicken since.

Oh, fine. For today -- AND TODAY ONLY -- I will refrain from criticizing, harassing, insulting, condescending to, or throwing things at my chickens. But just for today. Or, rather, until 12AM GMT, since it's international and all.

Enjoy it, chickens. You've got a few hours of peace.

And I'm still going to make chicken fajitas for Cinco de Mayo tomorrow (because my beef fajita-ing skills are non-existent and the cheap steak always ends up the consistency of old naugahyde).

The trick with the cheap steak, wendell, is the marinade. If you use lots of lime juice in the marinade and leave it overnight, the meat tenderises beautifully as the enzymes in the citrus fruit soften the meat fibres. Extra tequila in the marinade is, of course, optional.

* 1/3 cup fresh lime juice
* 1/4 cup tequila
* 1 teaspoon crushed dried oregano leaves (preferably Mexican oregano)
* 2 large cloves garlic, crushed
* 1 tablespoon minced fresh cilantro
* 2 teaspoons ground cumin
* 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Combine all ingredients and mix well. Pour marinade over meat in shallow glass, plastic or other non-reactive container (a 1-gallon plastic zip-top bag works well). Refrigerate overnight or up to 24 hours.

Makes enough to marinate 1 to 1-1/2 pounds flank steak. Makes 4 servings.

Show some respect.

I respected chickens today by happily devouring leftover bits of the roasted one in the fridge.

Also: black...sex...link?

"Sex link" chickens are nifty. When they hatch, the females are one color and the males are another. This saves you from making mistakes when sexing them. (It's really hard to know definitively whether a chick is a boy or a girl, until it hits puberty.)

Saves lives, too, 'cause lots of roosters are a-killed once it becomes clear that they're roosters.