Stop wasting money by buying whole chicken and learning to break it down and use it all

I stumbled on this Zen koan the other day...

One day Banzan was walking through a market. He overheard a customer say to the butcher, “Give me the best piece of meat you have.”

“Everything in my shop is the best,” replied the butcher. “You can not find any piece of meat that is not the best.”

At these words, Banzan was enlightened.

And it's true - pretty much any piece of meat can be turned into something wonderful to eat if you know how and I'm having a wonderful time at the moment turning free butcher scraps into the best meals possible.

But for those of you less adventurous than me, this is a really good introductory video to breaking down a whole chicken and getting the best use out of it.

For the same price as two boneless, skinless breasts, you can buy two breasts, two thighs, two drums, two tenders, four wings, and about four quarts of chicken stock. Plus, after buying all of this, you'll still have $2.58 to spare.

OK so I had to watch it all through to figure out what on earth he meant by four wings but even so I think it's a pretty enlightening video...



0:00 Intro
0:42 Money Saving Stats
3:06 Breakdown
4:01 Legs
5:45 Boneless Thighs
7:00 Breast and Wings
9:11 Tenders
11:26 Stock
14:22 Secret Recipe
15:12 Nine Recipes

I occasionally have to home-process young roosters (sorry guys, but they fight and make a *lot* of noise, and I don't want to annoy the neighbors.)

The work that goes into doing that is not going to be wasted by failing to use the whole bird.  OK, I let the compost worms and microbes handle the guts.

However, the list doesn't include heart and liver, which make a great pate when cooked and whizzed with an egg, onion, red wine vinegar and some extra spices.

And the list also doesn't include the feet! Bird feet (duck, chicken or goose are my options) usually put in the pot with the neck, make the most wonderful bone broth. There's lots of collagen in feet because they're made up of lots of small joints. Because we scald our birds to get the feathers off easily, the outer layer on the feet also peals off easily, taking any bits of poop with it, so it's safe.

One of my money saving tips is to buy the $5.00 Rotisserie chicken at Sams Club as this is already cooked and beats a $5.00 or more whole raw chicken.

Anne Miller wrote:One of my money saving tips is to buy the $5.00 Rotisserie chicken at Sams Club as this is already cooked and beats a $5.00 or more whole raw chicken.

It mentioned that in the video, which surprised me greatly as here in Portugal the cooked ones are significantly more expensive. Though when I hunted around on the interwebs about it I heard it suggested that the reason they are the same price in the US is that they cook the ones that aren't sold to stop them going to waste. Not sure if that's true but it would explain a lot.

Jay Angler wrote:the list doesn't include heart and liver, which make a great pate when cooked and whizzed with an egg, onion, red wine vinegar and some extra spices.

Oh I absolutely use the liver to make pate! For the freebie scraps I get, they usually come via my son who gets me a bag when he buys his meat for the week. But if ever he's in the shop and doesn't need to buy anything, he has instructions to buy me a kilo of chicken liver to make pate with as the scraps are supposed to only be for customers. If I'm really lucky the liver will be from a 'new' batch that the butcher hasn't picked all the hearts out of, because chicken hearts go for twice the price of liver here so when they have some free time they pick them out to sell separately. If I get a good batch with both hearts and liver, I pick them out myself as we both love the texture and flavour of them.  My other half is quite partial to a bit of chicken liver to make dirty rice too.

Burra Maluca wrote:It mentioned that in the video, which surprised me greatly as here in Portugal the cooked ones are significantly more expensive. Though when I hunted around on the interwebs about it I heard it suggested that the reason they are the same price in the US is that they cook the ones that aren't sold to stop them going to waste. Not sure if that's true but it would explain a lot.

Jay Angler wrote:the list doesn't include heart and liver, which make a great pate when cooked and whizzed with an egg, onion, red wine vinegar and some extra spices.

Oh I absolutely use the liver to make pate! For the freebie scraps I get, they usually come via my son who gets me a bag when he buys his meat for the week. But if ever he's in the shop and doesn't need to buy anything, he has instructions to buy me a kilo of chicken liver to make pate with as the scraps are supposed to only be for customers. If I'm really lucky the liver will be from a 'new' batch that the butcher hasn't picked all the hearts out of, because chicken hearts go for twice the price of liver here so when they have some free time they pick them out to sell separately. If I get a good batch with both hearts and liver, I pick them out myself as we both love the texture and flavour of them.  My other half is quite partial to a bit of chicken liver to make dirty rice too.

When we use our own birds, we usually pay a local Mennonite family to process them for us. At $5@, it's worth it to us, because our labor, time, & spoons are worth more to us, than the $5. That said, we do get the innards we want, the necks, and feet, if we tell them we want them, then if we want them cut, we do that ourselves, which allows us to pick & choose which ones we want to use in which way. Definitely boosts the value!

That said, after our trip to Costco, yesterday, cut up was almost half again the cost of the whole bird, in the same brand (we eat more chicken than we process, as our birds are primarily for eggs). We bought both. We often just don't have the time/spoons to process them, so we buy both - and get more meals out of the whole one, making them even more cost effective.

For us, it comes down to spoons, and whether we have company coming, how many people, and how we want to cook for them.  If we have a couple days notice, but will be pressed for time, when they come, we will thaw a whole bird & roast it - 2 or 3 more people fed, only a few minutes of actual work to be done. More than 4? Soup or chicken&dumplins it is - whole chicken, not much more work than the roast, fed an army. Only 1 or 2 people coming? A little more time available? Fried, baked, bbq, or something-a-little-fancier-chicken, probably a pack of pieces.

We almost exclusively purchase beef & pork by the whole muscle, too - and when we buy a 'side of', we order it cut to the whole muscle. The savings there are even higher than for chicken, plus we can have it the way we want it. John cures & smokes all of our own bacon, grinds and blends our own sausages (a few types of breakfast sausage, plus a couple styles each of Italian & brats), and grinds & blends our hamburger, jerky-style meat sticks, cures our own corned beef & cures & smokes our pastrami. He also cuts all our steaks, chops, roasts, etc. Since he's willing and able to do the labor, we often save 75% or more on all these items, over the market prices. $3.50/lb, for ribeye steaks & filet mignon? YES PLEASE!

Burra said, Though when I hunted around on the interwebs about it I heard it suggested that the reason they are the same price in the US is that they cook the ones that aren't sold to stop them going to waste. Not sure if that's true but it would explain a lot.

I don't know either though that sounds like a great strategy.

Our grocery chain has started offering a lot of chicken meals and salad so working folks can just grab some for lunch.  They may use that same strategy.

The grocery chain also has the Rotisserie chicken for $6.00 or Shredded Dark & White Meat Rotisserie Chicken one pound for $10.00.

They have cooked seasoned legs or thighs for $5.00 about 1.25 pounds so I might start buying that as that is a better deal for me.

Growing up, there were six people in my family.
My mom only bought whole chickens, cutting them up herself.
She ate the wings and back, so we could have the legs, thighs and breasts, because my mommy always put us first!
The rest of the world eventually figured out how good chicken wings are, but if you can buy backs at low price, do, it, they are delicious, especially the tail.
I recommend poultry shears, they make dismantling a chicken much easier.
Because of momma I  can cut up a chicken, no problem, but where I live a 10 pound bag of leg quarters costs less than 9 dollars.
This is basically the least commercially desirable cut of chicken.
Since the thigh is to me the very best cut, land legs are close behind, buying leg quarters is like buying porterhouse steak at a cost less than filet mignon.
Its crazy to me, but there it is.

Our basic go to is leg quarters baked over onions and potatoes.
Potatoes/onions  cooked in schmaltz is chefs kiss delicious.
Leg quarters on the grill or smoked are as good as anything I've ever tasted.
Peel back the skins and season underneath, its worth the extra effort.
But I even  like them boiled, with some salt.
Fry the skins with some water, they will cook in their own fat, for pork free chicharrons.
Basically, leg quarters are fatty goodness that is hard mess up.



After your family gnaws the bones, collect them in the freezer.
When you have enough, pressure cook them until they are soft to the touch.
I throw this to my chickens, who incorporate it into the compost.
I like to use the broth to make rice, in vegetable soup, or for chicken 'n dumplings(which I just cant eat very much of).

When we were dead ass  broke, we ate well by focusing on these low cost bulk ingredients.
I'm embarrassed to say, we don't cook like this much anymore, since I've found better work.
That bothers me, but its just another thing on a long list.

Jay Angler wrote:
...
However, the list doesn't include heart and liver, which make a great pate when cooked and whizzed with an egg, onion, red wine vinegar and some extra spices.
...

Hi there Jay,
We have a couple of roosters that need to be, hm, upcycled soon. Do you have the recipe of your pate to share? Sounds yummy!

Thanks in advance

At Nina's request:

Jay's Liver Pate

1-2 chicken livers and hearts chopped finely
2-4 mushrooms chopped (depending on size)
either: ~1 cup of green onions (I use walking onions) or ~1/2 cup of cooking onion microwaved to soften, both chopped finely
2-3 garlic cloves finely grated
1 egg
~1 Tbsp wine vinegar
~2 Tbsp mayonnaise

Put the livers, mushrooms and onion in the fry-pan and cook. Add the garlic when 1/2 done. Add the egg and scramble it when meat is essentially cooked. Download pan into whatever you're going to use to puree it (blender, food processor, hand blender bowl). Pour the vinegar into the pan and spatula it around to clean the pan and reduce it. Add the results to the liver mix. Add the mayo and whizz it. If things seem dry while preparing it, you can add extra of either the vinegar or mayo as you go. Walking onion seems moister than cooking onion, and the type and kind of mushrooms affect it also. It's one of those dishes one has to judge as one goes.

Maybe we need to ask Burra for her recipe?  See how different they are?

Instant Pot Whole Chicken Bone Broth Recipe (adapted from Mary’s Nest on YouTube):

1 very small whole chicken (4-5 lbs)
1 onion quartered with skins on
1 carrot quartered
1 celery stalk quartered
1 bay leaf
1 tbsp peppercorns
1 cup dry white wine
6 cups water

Add chicken first then aromatics to Instant Pot.  Add water to just cover everything.

Cook under Soup/Broth setting on LOW for 2 hours.

When done and depressurized, carefully remove aromatics and chicken with tongs.  The chicken will fall apart, so be mindful which pieces you want to keep intact.  Ladle broth through strainer into a fat separator.  The broth will become gelatinized in the fridge

Make soups with 100% bone broth or dilute with water, adding the separated aromatics, chicken, and the fat to your preference.  Salt to taste of course.

Between the family and dog with an iron stomach for chicken bones, everything is consumed, but for the bay leaves and peppercorns which go to compost.

I do this from time to time, if I see good quality chickens at a reasonable price. The most I have done I buy four at once. It took about 30 minutes once I had the kitchen cleared and ready, and my butcher knife sharpened, to break them down into portions and packed in vacuum sealer bags. The bones all went to make stock (roast them first for the fabulous deeper flavour and colour). It saved a lot of money, compared to buying that same amount of chicken in portions.

We buy leg quarters from Walmart at 80 cents a pounds and they come in a 10 pound bag.  When I seperate the drum sticks from the thighs and weigh them it comes out to around a dollar a pound which is around 50% less than thighs or drumsticks cost by themselves.  Just thighs in Walmart are around $1.55 a pound and moving up.  There is what looks like a part of the spine on the leg quarter which we remove, and use those pieces for crab bait.  Living on the coast of Maine its pretty easy to catch a bucket of green crabs which are a lot of work to pick but delicious.  

i love this thread.
where i am, whole chickens are not usually the cheapest options, but if I'm willing to buy the cheapest cuts (bone in leg/thigh/back, usually) I can pay about half. Bone-in breast usually costs a few bucks a kg less than boneless, too.
knowing how to break down your meat, whatever it is, can save you a lot of money (and  the bones make a lot of stock)

Ed Waters wrote: There is what looks like a part of the spine on the leg quarter which we remove, and use those pieces for crab bait.  Living on the coast of Maine its pretty easy to catch a bucket of green crabs which are a lot of work to pick but delicious.  

We raise chickens and if we have one die of predation or other mishap where or when we don't have time to turn it properly into people food, I take any of the easy stuff and we have a bin in our freezer clearly marked "crab bait". Friends use it more than I do (just too busy to take the time off when the weather and tide is perfect for crabbing), but they invite me for dinner, so I get the benefits! The target here are "Red Rock" crabs.  Considering the cost of crabs at the grocery store, upcycling dead chicken into crab dinner is an awesome use!

Burra Maluca wrote:I stumbled on this Zen koan the other day...

I came across this video a little while back and while I agree in principle, I strongly disagree in practice with what he's saying.

In principle	In practice
Buying in bulk/less processed/lower demand cuts and performing some of the processing yourself dramatically lowers costs.	Whole chicken is not the optimal choice. It's arguably one of the worst

If we use a sort of Process Engineering lens, there are basically three things that stand out about whole chicken: cycle time, input costs, and ECRS/KISS. I'll compare against chicken leg quarters and chicken livers since those are the strongest competitors.

Cycle Times
A cycle time is the amount of time a process takes from start to finish. Something that's become more and more apparent is that long cycle times have substantial monetary costs, usually a combination of Capacity Costs, Opportunity Costs, and inventory Carrying Costs. Inventory Carrying Costs will be more important when we get to the point about KISS. Capacity Costs are mostly a question of how much bulk you're buying in. If it's just one chicken, then the Capacity Costs (refrigerator and freezer space, a normal cutting board, some packing material) will be the same as if buying most other cuts. But large numbers of whole chickens, such as from a home flock or from a bulk purchase, can incur hefty Capacity Costs, especially if the alternative cuts aren't usually processed in bulk (it's totally normal to have 25 lb of whole chickens, it'd be really unusual circumstances to have 25 lb of chicken leg quarters or especially livers).

Opportunity costs are the big one though. The time required to process and use a whole chicken is several times more than chicken leg quarters and an order a magnitude more than chicken livers. The butchering time is the first thing, since even with a great setup and great skills, breaking down a whole chicken (and packaging the different parts it and cleaning up...) takes much longer than leg quarters, especially since most leg quarter recipes are for whole leg quarters so there's little to no butcher time, ditto for livers. But that's not the main factor: Most of the time, the various parts a whole chicken will contribute to several different recipes, and each one of those involves comiting time. 10 lb of whole chicken and 10 lb of leg quarters will both feed a small family for a week or thereabouts, but with the first, it's likely there will only be one or two cooking steps (roasting all the quarters, then perhaps a soup cooking step), whereas the whole chickens will probably involve cooking a meal with the breast meat, a meal with the drumsticks and wings, a meal with the thighs, stew from the trimmings and offal, and soup from the bones and leftover meat. That's a much, much larger Opportunity Cost, because that's hours of time you could be spending doing other things. True, some people, especially older people, have time to burn, so Opportunity Costs aren't as much a concern and have a lower monetary cost. Depends on your situation, but regardless, the cycle times for whole chicken are much higher.

Input Costs
When I've actually priced out the different chicken options in the grocery stores around here, the cheapest per pound isn't whole chicken, it's leg quarters. In fact, leg quarters are often half the price per pound as whole chicken, which is a pretty dramatic difference. Chicken livers and chicken drumsticks also tend to be cheaper.

There are also auxiliary Input Costs. Handling, processing, and using a 10 lb bag of leg quarters or a quart of livers, you'll probably just need the electricity to power the fridge and a reusable container for leftovers. With whole chicken, you're likely going to be freezing some parts, and you'll probably be using a variety of different materials or containers to re-package the different parts, plus the electricity for the freezer and the fridge. And if you're doing stuff like vacuum sealing, then the material costs will be pretty significant long term. Using gloves each time you handle the raw chicken? That's an additional input cost (incurred once for leg quarters and liver, maybe a half dozen times for whole chicken).

Whole chickens cost more, and handling and storage costs are higher as well.

ECRS/KILL
Eliminate, Combine, Rearrange, Simplify, and Keep It Simple Stupid, are related principles that basically boil down to: the more complex you make something, the less effective, efficient, or reliable it will be. When you have just one input that produces one or two outputs, your inventory will be very simple and easy to manage. If your process creates a bunch of different outputs that all have different consumption pipelines and inventory conditions, things get out of hand really quickly. The most obvious cost is waste. How many times have you broken down a cut left some part of it uncooked in the fridge with the intention of using it later but didn't get around to it in time and had to toss it? I'd wager more than you'd like to admit. Freezing is better, but has higher packaging costs, increases the chances you'll simply forget about the inventory or won't remember how much you have and won't be able to easily plan to use it, and might still have waste due to freezer burn. Freezing dramatically increases cycle times as well, both for packaging and for utilization.

Waste is inevitable as complexity increases. Even under perfect management conditions and with no unexpected plan changes (ha!), having more outputs and more recipes to consume them will lead to more waste. You'll have to balance cooking the various cuts in the fridge with using up already cooked leftovers, you'll have to make sure you keep good track of how old all the different things in the fridge are and how close to spoiling, etc. And probably the least appreciated one: you'll have to manage and prevent waste or spoilage of all the additional ingredients that you need in that long list of recipes to actually use up the whole chicken. Chances are, you will have extras and small leftover amounts of most of the other ingredients in each recipe, all of which might go to waste. Plus there's the extra management costs of inventorying and ensuring you have enough of each thing prior to cook time.

Keep it simple, stupid.

Buy whole chickens for roast chickens and nothing else. Leg quarters and livers and sometimes drumsticks, and even in some instances boneless thighs/breasts are cheaper in reality.

Jay Angler wrote:At Nina's request:

Jay's Liver Pate
Maybe we need to ask Burra for her recipe?  See how different they are?

Thank you Jay!!! And yes, let's

Alex Vivaldi wrote:When I've actually priced out the different chicken options in the grocery stores around here, the cheapest per pound isn't whole chicken, it's leg quarters. In fact, leg quarters are often half the price per pound as whole chicken, which is a pretty dramatic difference. Chicken livers and chicken drumsticks also tend to be cheaper.

That is likely to be very dependent on location.

Here, chicken necks are the cheapest, then whole chicken, chicken feet and chicken liver are around the same price. And legs are usually nearly double, except around feast days like Easter and Christmas when breast meat is very popular and the price of legs drops to below the level of whole chicken. Supply and demand and all that.

That has changed over the time I've been living here too. Twenty years ago chicken liver was twice the price of whole chicken, unless you knew the one or two places that had it cheaper. These days liver is less popular and it's now the same price as whole chicken.

One of the local butchers has just started to sell 'pork scraps' at a nominal 25 cents a kilo. It's much higher quality than the ubiquitous 'meat scraps' they usually give away and I got several portions of high quality meat from it, plus fat for rendering and scrappier bits for quick meals and bones for making broth.

I enjoy 'rescuing' meat that might otherwise go to waste. Obviously other people don't, else I wouldn't be able to pick it up so cheaply, or for nothing. But if money is tight and you have time and you enjoy it why not?

I love to see how the prices change in different places at different times and get the best possible value for money. Bacon, for instance, is really expensive here. But if ever I go back to the UK one of the first things I do is to source a big budget-pack of 'cooking bacon' and do my best to guess which ones are smoked.

Burra Maluca wrote:

Alex Vivaldi wrote:When I've actually priced out the different chicken options in the grocery stores around here, the cheapest per pound isn't whole chicken, it's leg quarters. In fact, leg quarters are often half the price per pound as whole chicken, which is a pretty dramatic difference. Chicken livers and chicken drumsticks also tend to be cheaper.

That is likely to be very dependent on location.

That's fair.

The forum says you're in Portugal, I would expect the markets to vary a lot between smaller European countries. For sure things depend on where you live.

I would also say that there's one big difference between your experience and what I'd expect the average American experience is like, you've actually got a local butcher shop. Outside of big metro areas, that's very uncommon in the US, especially for poultry. There are a fair number of independent butchers who handle deer, hogs, and cows, but it's very unusual to find one who works with poultry. Buying scrap meat or "rescuing" meat that would otherwise be thrown away just isn't a thing in the US that I'm aware of.

Burra Maluca wrote:
But if money is tight and you have time and you enjoy it why not?

Yes, I don't mean to say no one should. As I mentioned there are some people who have time in excess, so for them processes that eat up a lot of time are a good thing and aren't a cost. My comment was aimed more at people who are probably still raising a family, who have work and chores and a home to keep up, a laundry list of repairs and projects around the house and farm, etc. and at people who are a bit more suburban but still have lots of different commitments and for whom time is more precious.

Granted, those kinds of people are probably not the kinds of people who often read forums like this anyway.

I get the point you are trying to make, but I'm not sure it is as strong as you suggest.

1) Capacity issues are resolved by just having a chest freezer in the garage. I have one. Why not fill it with meat? It is running anyway and costs no more to run empty than full.

2) I don't think anyone is opting to buy multiple whole chickens without at least having a plan for when and how they will process and store them. Even if your scale is small like mine, taking the opportunity to buy 4 when the price is right and circumstances allow is making the most of an opportunity. I'd happily walk away from that opportunity if I knew I had no spare time or energy to deal with it.

3) What you end up buying is just better - chicken breasts, for example - are not my favourite. But when I look at the drum sticks, wings or thighs they look insipid and watery. But when I buy a whole chicken the pieces I end up with just feel more satisfactory. They tend to cook up better, and have more flavour. That probably says more about the quality of processed chicken normally available in the supermarkets than anything else. With whole chicken it is more transparent that you are getting a good quality bird.

4) I can't buy bags of bones. I want bags of bones for stock making. It's worth the extra effort just for the chance to have beautiful stock in my fridge.

Just a thought: soon is (for the US) the time of year when people often do have a lot of meat that they might find themselves "rescuing" - I'm talking about Thanksgiving where you might find yourself with a whole bird you got real cheap, or someone gave you, or you got for next to nothing with a supermarket coupon (we had years when as a family of 4 we had 6 turkeys by Thanksgiving day. The food bank got a few, and we broke down the rest. Knowing how to break down a turkey (or a leg of pork, or whatever) can be a useful skill.

I do hear you about time efficiency. Time is money, etc etc (if i think about it that way, most of my homestead and garden are losing propositions. Luckily you can't put a price on happiness or mental health....). If you have to prioritize, you pay for convenience.

Many people on the forum raise chicken.  I used to until we moved and left them with our daughter.

I bet the majority of the folks on the forum who have had chickens know how to process a whole chicken.

Isn't this a permaculture way of doing things?

For me processing a whole chicken is easy because I have been processing whole chickens since I was old enough for my mom to show me how.

Since I know longer have chickens, I usually buy leg quarters. No processing needed. This may be the permies way for folks who do not have chickens.  

I did enjoy try the Sam's Club rotisserie chicken once just for fun.

I like the idea behind the video which show that persons way of thinking.

Jay Angler wrote:At Nina's request:

1-2 chicken livers and hearts chopped finely
Maybe we need to ask Burra for her recipe?  See how different they are?

Well, when I make it...  it's about like this

Ingredients:
About 1/3 Kg chicken livers, cut into smallish pieces  (we use re-purposed butter tubs to freeze the liver when we get a lot cheap from the shop and they go 3 to the Kg for fresh liver)
1 medium onion or equivalent, chopped
4-5 cloves garlic, chopped (or to taste)
If available about 100g mushrooms, chopped
If available fatty scraps from meat or failing that a decent amount of fat.  Can be lard, oil, butter, whatever is to hand.  You want a generous amount for frying, which ends up in the paté
herbs to taste
salt/pepper to taste

method:
Using an iron skillet or other pan-of-choice melt the fat if needed (or heat oil), add the onions, garlic, mushrooms and fry for a few minutes on a medium heat.  Add in the herbs, stir around nicely then add the liver.  Turn the liver frequently until it's browned all over, then reduce the heat, add a small amount of water (around 2 tbsp) and let it simmer until the liver is cooked through (doesn't take long if you cut it small).  Turn off the heat, cover the pan and let it cool.
When it's cool enough blend it with a magic wand/stick blender etc.  If you don't have that it can be done in a jug blender but that's more cleaning.  Or you can use a fork but that's a bit like work - my grandmother would approve though
Season to taste and place in jar(s) with a good lid and put in the fridge.  It keeps for at least a week in the fridge although in this house it rarely lasts that long!

Thank you Jay and Burra!

Although we keep chickens it is for their eggs so the old girls get to live out their lives as free loaders

We always buy free range chickens and the price per kg of ready portioned chicken is much more expensive than portioning them myself.

Like William, Michael and Anne, I am comfortable portioning and/or deboning whole chickens.

I prefer to use the thigh and drumsticks in stir fries, my husband uses the breasts for pilaf, risottos, caesar salad etc.

When we roast a chicken, I often debone and stuff the chicken. It is so much easier to carve and the chicken goes so much further. We had roast chicken last night that fed 4 and there were six portions leftover for my weekday lunches.

I try to cook enough vegetables for the leftover portions.

The bones get bagged up for the freezer and used for stock.

Carla,

because our labor, time, & spoons are worth more to us, than the $5

What are the spoons you speak of please?

John C Daley wrote:Carla,

because our labor, time, & spoons are worth more to us, than the $5

What are the spoons you speak of please?

Spoons are an expression for the available energy we have

https://permies.com/t/48536/spoon-theory

Megan Palmer wrote:

John C Daley wrote:Carla,

because our labor, time, & spoons are worth more to us, than the $5

What are the spoons you speak of please?

Spoons are an expression for the available energy we have

https://permies.com/t/48536/spoon-theory

Exactly - and, physical, mental, and emotional "spoons" all count. Those of us with disabilities often start our days very low on available spoons, sometimes with none, and sometimes even in a deficit. All in comparison with how we would be, sans those disabilities.