Saturday: Let's just say that I was disappointed

After playing a standard game of "what do I want for dinner," I came to the conclusion that I should try out Wings and Things by Serg.  It's close to work, and I tend to get pizza next door every week or so.  The yelp page is full of people talking about "how big the wings are."  This is a mistake, and nearly a lie.

First, let's review the anatomy of a chicken.  Turn to page 2, review the skeletal structure, and then skip to page 6, and go over the musculature.  Fundamentally, a chicken wing is composed of three regions:  the "drumette," corresponding to the upper arm on a person; the "flat," matching the forearm; and the "wing tip," analogous to a hand.  The skeletal names are the same as in people too: humerus in the drumette; radius and ulna in the flat; metacarpals in the tip.

Now, the proper way to cook wings is to sever these three parts with a knife prior to cooking.  The wing tip is discarded, as it contains basically zero meat.  The drumette and flats are then fried and tossed in sauce, and then eaten.  This provides two hand-sized portions per anatomical wing, both of which are easy to eat.  The drumette is eaten by holding the small ("elbow") end, and biting off the meat.  The flat is actually easier to eat, as you simply hold both ends, twist in opposite directions, and feel the two bones separate.  In the ideal case, you can remove the ulna, and then simply suck the meat off the radius.

As you can see from the picture below, the entire wing has been fried and sauced here.  This is incredibly difficult to handle at the table.  The joints have a number of tendons, which makes them difficult to separate, even after frying.  This is why you cut them in the kitchen.  The superfluous wing tips serve little purpose here, other than to inflate the apparent serving size.  The final reason this is not the way to do things is that when you sauce the separated wings, there is more surface area, so the wings retain more sauce.

"Six" wings = 6 drumette + 6 flats + 6 useless tips.  Fries are a mix of curly, straight and waffle.  Root beer.

So, ignoring the fact that the wings were prepared incorrectly, how were things?  The sauce was a bit light, again an issue with the connected wings.  I went with medium Buffalo, which was a bit milder than I was hoping for.  When I could separate the parts, it was tasty, but there was a lot of extra work involved.  This was more difficult than it should have been, as the wings were still hot from the oil.  The fries were very good, cooked to a perfect crisp.

I wasn't that impressed with the wings, partially due to the serious amount of work needed to enjoy them.  It might be better to get the tenders next time instead of wings, as that would allow a better judge of flavor without the complicating factor of "doing it wrong."

"Hey! Get in! I left my license at home, so you'll have to drive!"

• Bee and Puppycat.  Seriously.  Go watch it.
• A quick summary of how insurance works, why retirement is effectively insurance, and why it's best run in a centralized manner.
• Pikachu.
• It's nice to see that absolute fucking morons can try to be politicians in other countries, too.
• BMO.
• I saw this article, and it again reinforced why I put in these commands in my LaTeX documents when I'm writing papers.  The idea being that all editorial comments that aren't the final text show up in colors.  That makes it nearly impossible that you accidentally leave something inappropriate in the document text.
• \newcommand{\draft}[1]{\textcolor{red}{#1}}
• \newcommand{\replace}[2]{\sout{\textcolor{red}{#1}}~\textcolor{blue}{#2}}
• \newcommand{\question}[1]{\textbf{DISCUSS! }\textcolor{green}{#1}}