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Did You Know?
Easter Island in the Pacific once was a beautiful, lush tropical island. Through centuries of use and abuse the inhabitants destroyed its habitat completely. When Jacob Roggeven discovered Easter Islands on Easter Day 1722,  he found a bare grassland with no tree taller than 10 feet and no wild animals other than insects! The only other animal that 2,000 islanders had was a domesticated one - a CHICKEN!








 History



Chicken is one of the oldest domesticated birds. Very early people figured out that chicken can be helpful for feeding their families by providing meat as well as eggs. Many families living in rural areas had chickens.
There is a lot of evidence that people knew the value of chicken and raised chicken since early centuries. For example, some pottery from the Greek city of Corinth has images of chicken on it. The pottery was created in 7th century BC! The fact that images of chicken were placed on this pottery shows how Greeks valued this animal.
Images of chicken can also be found on the black and red vases created in Greece.



We made a red and black clay vase - could it possibly look like the one old Greeks used?

In ancient Rome people believed chicken have special powers and they used them to predict future. They also had a great number of recipes that involved chicken as well as eggs. Romans like their chicken really fat and they would feed them with bread soaked in milk.  For some reason, Roman rulers did not like the chicken fattened this way, so they even passed a law against eating the "fattened" chicken in 161 BC.  It did not work well! Romans loved to eat chicken and they used every outside and inside parts - livers, gizzards, stomach - you get the idea.
Romans had several breeds of chicken and farming of the chicken was quite developed.They usually raised chicken in flocks of 200 birds.

What did the Romans do with their fat chicken. We tried one of their recipes.

(external link to the recipe)



Scott and his mom actually cooked this recipe!

For a complete step-by-stem click on the picture to go to the Recipe Box!