Not a chicken person, but...

Having lived on a hog farm for most of my life, where my family also raised the occasional calf to butcher, before moving to cattle country in Wyoming, I've always had ready access to pork and beef. And, since beginning to work for the paper, I regularly see the numbers about the competition between the 'red meat' industries and the poultry/turkey/feathered industry.

Take this blurb, for example, that will run on this week's cover:

"In the recent 'Agricultural Projections to 2020' report, USDA forecasts poultry consumption will surpass red meat consumption for the first time in 2018. The agency says consumption of chicken and turkeys will reach 106.7 pounds in 2018, while consumption of beef, pork, veal, lamb and mutton will total 106.3 pounds."

Now, we did have our share of laying hens and broiler - or butcher - chickens at one point growing up, and we did eat our fair share of them, but lately I find myself avoiding chicken in favor of beef or pork. Mostly because both my upstairs refrigerator freezer and my deep freeze in the basement are chock full of both, because of events like this that tend to happen around here:

Almost a year later, I'm just now using up the last of the ground beef from this old lead steer. I became very creative in ground beef uses! There's more than just chili and hamburgers to be enjoyed from ground beef. (Don't worry, that's our health inspector friend Jamie in the white shirt. She made sure everything was kept clean and kosher.)

So anyway, the point is that I haven't cooked or eaten anything chicken (on purpose) for at least two years, if not longer, but this recipe posted by Pioneer Woman just might inspire me to cook up and consume some chicken:

It's called Creamy Chicken Spaghetti Casserole, and the combination of Parmesan, mushrooms and pasta looks too good to pass up... It reminds me of the Chicken Tetrazzini recipe my mom used to make frequently for catering jobs.