it's very surprising...

...how dirty my kitchen can stay when i haven't cooked a meal in it in over a week. between last week's terrifyingly late (12:30 am and 10 pm respectively) nights, the weekend's company, and the senses-obliterating allergies/cold i now am wrestling, all i have made lately is a pot of tomato soup. out of necessity, because everyone needs soup when they are home sick, and since my momma is 13 hours away...welp, i had to hike up my (sweatshirt)sleeves, pull back my (unwashed)hair, clean off my (wet/snotty/used tissues-strewn) countertop and go to work.

i do feel the need to explain that i did attempt cooking a meal over the weekend for my lovely guests, but it was a failure of epic proportions. let me preface this 12 part miniseries by saying i love roast chicken. it is delicious and juicy and i love the crispy skin and i love making BBQ sandwiches out of the leftover shredded meat and eating them with sam.

now for a confession: i have never successfully made roast chicken. ever. i did "help" momma make one one lovely sunday (who the hell knows what day of the week it was, i am guessing a sunday because it sounds nice and feasible) and granny and pawpaw came over and we ate carrot souffle and it was all very nice. and by "help" i mean i rubbed butter on its' skin and sprinkled salt and pepper on it. she handled the yanking-out-the-guts, washing its insides business because...well its just disgusting. i don't like raw meat, and if i thought resigning myself to a vegetarian lifestyle was a reasonable option, i wouldn't eat meat at all. i believe at some point i have discussed my distaste for most meat, although i eat chicken and turkey with the occasional ground beef thrown in. to be honest, if i have not ingested meat in a while, those first few bites (or meals) kind of gross me out. especially chicken. i don't know why this is, but i have my suspicions.

it began in 9th grade in mr. gambon's biology class. who knew it would be a critical life lesson-type moment, and that 8 (dear god i'm getting old..) years later i would remember it clearly. he told us meat was muscles. now...i know i am opening myself up to ludicrous ridicule with this revelation, but here it goes: i never knew the meat we eat was muscles. maybe somewhere deep inside my subconscious i realized this fact (i think it must have been self preservation that kept this knowledge from drifting to the surface), but seriously what teenager thinks about A. what they are eating B. where it came from C. whether or not it is some vital organ. i don't like thinking about my meat. anyone who has eaten with me or within a 5 mile radius of me has probably heard someone making fun of how i pick apart my meat, removing the gluey, gummy gel-like substance that i do not want to consciously identify and the offending veins and sometimes TENDONS. gross, who wants to eat that junk?! no one. people who can suck chicken wings dry in one fowl swoop (i am looking at you SAM) just must not realize how many foreign objects they are ingesting into their bodies. it's bad enough that we eat muscles, no other tissues please.


back to the roast chicken story.....

so i don't like touching raw meat because of aforementioned reasons #1-5687. so yeah, all i did to that big nasty gutless bird was rub it a little, and let me tell ya if it wasn't a little squishy (pretty much my only fascination with meat, ask mom) i wouldn't be touching it at all.

the whole prospect of roasting an entire animal is just so daunting. you have to search from the bakery to the clorox aisle at the grocery store to find one that isn't 12 pounds (what are they DOING to these birds?!), then if you do find one that's somewhere between a game hen and an ostrich you gotta make sure it isn't frozen solid. (obviously it will be, why do you think no one else swooped in to buy the only bird small enough the fit in a trunk). SO, if you find a bird and its frozen you have to thaw it for about a month in your fridge, and OH since there aren't any normal sized ones, the rest of your fridge's contents are: that 15 year old box of baking soda at the back you're half sure came pre-assembled inside the unit and a container with half a can of beans in it. (i can never seem to use a whole can of beans, so this is the other constant in my fridge life)

so you have no food because your fridge can't fit anything, you've been starving for weeks waiting for the bird to thaw....it's been a rough ride people. roasting chickens is a month-long commitment. once its thawed, cleaned, rinsed, stuffed with whatever squashed veggies you threw it on in the fridge, and ready to be roasted....oh yeah. you need a roasting pan and rack. this for me is very frustrating, because these cost about a million dollars and don't fit ANYWHERE and since you never roast stupid chickens because they are such a pain in the butt....you see my point.
 no one has one, except ina garten, martha stewart and God. God probably has one. He is God afterall...maybe God hates roasting chickens too. rightly so.

if you are still alive after the last 3 weeks of preparation and anticipation for your birdie, you have to decide which lying cookbook author to believe. "Bake at 425 for 1 hour and 30 minutes" "Start at 425 for 20 minutes, reduce heat to 325 and cook for 6 more hours" or my personal favorite, from the lovely Julia. "Bake breast up at 425 for 15 minutes, turning to the left side after 5 minutes, then to the right side for the last 5 minutes, AND basting it with butter and oil after each turn"......obviously i stopped reading here, and cried for an hour. and the damn chicken probably wouldn't even be WARM by the time this ridiculousness was over, much less cooked.....you basically baste and turn the stupid thing every 30 seconds for hours on end. if you were curious, this was what P90x looked like before tony came along.

so to finally get to the story of my failed attempt(s) this weekend, here are the facts:

1. whole chickens were BOGO at giant eagle (my sad excuse for a publix here in ohio)
2. i selected two
3. the smallest bird was over 5 pounds, the next smallest, 6 pounds. (why i didn't walk away here, i  don't know)
4. i tried roasting the small (ha!) one, and over cooked it, shredded the meat, and never ate any (but not on purpose)
5. i froze the other one, and put it in my fridge to defrost on tuesday morning.
6. saturday evening it was still frozen solid inside--like can't-rip-out-the-bag-o-guts-out frozen
7. sunday, after leaving it in the sink for 45 minutes to thaw, i shoved some junk around it and cooked it at 425 for 20 minutes, then for 325 for 2 hours.

....and still it was not cooked. the thigh (although my meat thermometer registered a perfect 165 degrees) was slowly leaking pinky juices. so we threw it back in, but i don't know for how long.

note: it is now about 10:30 pm

and the damn bird that wouldn't thaw now wouldn't cook. and so you know what i did? i threw it in the trash and went to bed. i am ashamed of myself for wasting an entire chicken (ok, 2, since i never ate the other--i'm only one person!) but i was not having anymore of this garbage.


now i have to get a sam's club membership just to buy their $5 roast chickens twice every 6 months.

i think the correlation between this debacle and my illness (and now, throbbing headache) is obvious.

reliving this experience has sucked all the lifeblood out of me, and i will now crawl in my bed and sleep the peaceful sleep of one who will never roast a chicken again.