Chicken Feet

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/16/business/global/16chickens.html?em

I had never eaten chicken feet before coming to South Africa. Here, though they are as much a less-desirable part of the chicken as in the US, they are still often eaten and served because they are more affordable than other parts. (You're not missing much, there's very little in the way of meet on chicken feet. They are mainly skin.)

Some eighteen months ago, during our "shopping day" where the PCVs in my group purchased the stuff we would need to get through two years here, a few of us met an Afrikaner salesperson who regaled us with his business plan to export chicken feet that no on in the US wants to South Africa, where they are frequently consumed. His plan would have failed. South African chicken feet, it seems, are if anything less expensive than their US counterparts.

I had no idea, though, that someplace in the world actually paid top dollar for them (see article above). Perhaps South Africa should start exporting them, too--though since most of the chicken I've had here had been delicious, locally-raised, just-killed, they probably don't have the Bigfoot sized feet of American Frankenstein chickens.