"How small? I'm not familiar at all with them"
"I don't know, bigger than a softball, smaller than a basketball."
"Compare it to a chicken."
"They're like 2/3rds of a chicken."
"So they're the equivalent of like both chicken breasts and the drumsticks?"
"Yeah. That sounds just about right."
This lead us to fractionally divide a chicken between the four major parts: Breast, Thigh, Wing and Drumstick. We started with the initial statement that 2/3rds of a chicken is equal to both drumsticks and breasts. This meant the rest, the two thighs and the two wings, were equal to a third.
I know what you're thinking. It's too simple. But that's the beauty of it. From it, we derived the following:
1/3 Chicken = 1 Breast + 1 Drumstick = 2 Thighs + 2 Wings
Let that ruminate for a second, and you'll know it's true. For example, having both of the breasts is just about half of the chicken, but not quite. But having both thighs is noticeably less than half the chicken. The drumstick is at least twice as big as the wing, so when you combine the bigger drumstick, with the bigger breast, you have to be over the 1/4 mark, but not quite to the 1/2 mark. Hence, we determined that drumstick + breast had to equal 1/3 of the total chicken. The rest of that formula came naturally.
However, we were not done. While the 1/3 Fractioning Miracle of 2011 (As history books are already labeling it) was a great success, we continued working on our theory, trying to better understand how to portion out the parts of poultry. We decided to try and mix things up.
We took a look at combining the wing with the breast. Now, clearly, this had to be less than the breast/drumstick combination. But how much less? That we weren't sure of until we realized that both thighs and both drumsticks are just about half the total chicken. The meat gap between drumsticks and wings covers the void between thighs and breasts. Therefore, one thigh and one drumstick had to be 1/4 of the chicken, as did one breast and one wing. Algebraically, it looks like this:
1/4 Chicken = 1 Breast + 1 Wing = 1 Thigh + 1 Drumstick
Between the two equations, you never have to worry about how much chicken you ate. You should be able to get a rough, if not exact, estimate of your personal percentage of consumer chicken.
If you can't tell, we're serious about our food. Hence, the excitement around the future Party Cow.
