Sordid Tales to Entertain Your Guests, Or How to Cook a Chicken

Want to learn to cook a whole chicken? Here are a handful of simple, yet bleak, steps. Follow along!

1. Cut open the plastic wrapper around your chicken. This will explode pink chicken slime all over your shirt and contaminate your entire counter. 

You will probably hose down the counter with bleach afterwards as if you are a fireman and the counter is on fire.

2. Reach inside the body cavity to pull out the “accessories." If this is your first time handling a whole bird you may vaguely wonder which end of the chicken gets groped. You'll figure it out. 

The chicken accessories are all the interior bits (organs) that they thoughtfully saved for you, which will bring you some small amount of horror. You will pull out the organs one by one, vaguely feeling like you should know which organ you're looking at but 7^th Grade was so long ago.

3. Rinse the chicken corpse under cold water. Around this time in the process is when you'll drop the chicken into the sink by accident.  

While you rinse the chicken you also may make it dance, flapping the wings a little. Then you will know for certain that you are broken on the inside. Proceed to the next step.

4. Assess your chicken to decide which way is "up." If helpful, recall a Norman Rockwell painting.

Who decided that the breast of the chicken should be up and perkily on display? Some man, probably. 

5. Add chicken right-side-up into the slow cooker and shut the lid before the chicken comes back to life. Cook until your soul feels clean, or about 3 hours, whichever comes first.

Prepare yourself for a little disappointment when your chicken doesn't look like it came off the deli rotisserie counter. It's kind of like the cooking version of “photoshop versus real” celebrity comparisons.

6. When the chicken is cooked through, carefully remove the bird onto a cutting board and begin carving the chicken as if you actually know what you're doing.

If you're like me, after you finish carving, you will look at the carcass that remains and think, “I don't know much about biology, but didn't this chicken used to have ribs?” Somehow the ribs always disappear. Then you'll discover that the tail, which previously was kind of cute, has turned into a horrifying greasy sponge from which tiny vertebrae pop out.

 

Bonus Round

One of the exciting chicken “accessories” is the neck. Yes, they save the neck for you and cram it up inside the chicken. I feel like there is a “jerk chicken” + “head up your butt” joke somewhere here but I can't find it. 

But I digress.

One time while I was pulling out the accessories I didn't notice that the chicken neck went down the drain. Imagine my horror when I later stuck my hand in the drain only to find some bony, fleshy thing caught in the garbage disposal. Good times. 

Night Birds

One of the perks of living in the southern parts of the U.S. is that while much of the country is still covered in snow, we are starting to see spring. Hate us or love us for it, spring is here.

The flowering trees here are stunning in the spring. Unfortunately, right now, the Bradford Pear trees are blooming. While they are particularly beautiful they have a soul-wrenching odor. Look upon the trees but do not stand downwind from them. The fumes wafting off those blossoms smell like a giant vat of urine that's covered in mold. Wikipedia actually describes the smell as "a cross between rotting fish and semen."

But I digress.

This weekend it was warm enough that we opened the windows at night for fresh air and a breeze. My husband and I cuddled a little, awake in the excitement of leaving the windows open for the first time this year. 

We made hushed small talk about how much we enjoyed the fresh air and I commented on how much I enjoyed "to just lie here and listen to the birds chirping."

We cuddled some more and listened to the night noises. It suddenly occurred to me that the noises were from bugs, not birds. From the sound of it, these were giant, mutant crickets of a violent sort.

As is my brain's natural inclination, I started to wonder exactly where those bugs were. Are they on my windowsill? Do they live in the trees? Did one climb in our bedroom?!? My brain helpfully supplied lots of thoughts about the bugs we were hearing (why is the word thorax so disturbing?) and it started to damage my calm. 

About this time, my husband caught on to the "bird noises" and he clarified, "Actually, I don't think those are birds, I think they're-"
"I know. I'm trying not to think about it."

"I mean – those are night birds," he corrected in an innocent yet manly falsetto, trying to redirect the conversation. "The birds that chirpy at night!"

"Uh, night birds, yeah."

We lay in an uneasy silence for a while, the magic of the moment lost. Finally, I got up and shut the window. He thanked me, saying, "I didn't want to listen to the bugs- uh, BIRDS any more either."

Ah, the perils of spring. If I haven't mentioned it previously, I do not like bugs. This is only the sweet chirping of crickets. When we hit the foul days of summer and cicada season you will find me in the fetal position trying to find my mind palace. 

May your windows be open, the breeze be pleasant, and the midnight chirping be night birds.

-Rachel's spring proverb

Two Ducks On A Pond

Bob & George.

George the duck dived and swam, kicking his webbed feet in the water happily.

"Nothing could be better than this," George quacked loudly while flitting about. "Today is the best day!"

Bob slowly drifted across the water.

"Really, George? I'm barely staying afloat. It was all I could do to get out of the nest this morning."

"Are you kidding? I can't swim through this water fast enough. Let's sing duck songs! And organize the sticks in the dam according to size!"

No duck is that happy at this time of day.

Bob knew the truth: George was on drugs.

* * *

The above is a short example of the sorts of things I feel like writing these days. Usually, it's a tragic-comedy of some sort because after a long, ridiculous day that's what comes out.

Serious Consequences.

That is all. Carry on.

He wants my Bones

I can see him watching me. His dark, piercing eyes rolled in his head to watch me as I moved about. His head never moved, except to suddenly cock to the side occasionally to examine me from another angle. He wants to eat me. I know it. He's thinking about the taste of my flesh. He can't wait to tear into my skin. I should run. Maybe I can get inside before he comes after me. Maybe he'll find someone else who looks tastier. Really, I've consumed so much diet soda I probably taste like aspartame. God, I hate birds.

* * * * *

The above is my first attempt at a drabble, a fiction of exactly 100 words. Needs work I'm sure, but I wrote it during the sermon at church, so that's gotta say something. I hate birds. My husband's family has a bird. Birds are like cats: they sense the ones who don't want them around and camp out on their person. I'm scared of birds. Their skittering little feet remind me of roaches. Big roaches with talons and a mean beak. (His family has a cockatiel so my imaginings don't quite meet with reality.) Husband's cockatiel liked to land on my head, and then his feet would get caught in my hair. The bird would panic. I was already panicking. Panicking ensued on several sides. Yeah, I hate birds. Even outdoor ones scare me. But, at least outdoor birds generally want to stay away from you. Though, for some reason there are great big black birds that hang out near our home. They sit in the trees and watch me when I go to the mailbox or get in the car. Once, I was unpacking my trunk and the bird cawed at me. My first – instant – response was to call out, “I'm not dead yet!” Dirty, mangy scavenger birds.