again with the roasted chicken

Not to beat a dead horse, (or a dead chicken in this case) but roasting that chicken on Monday was the best idea ever. It served as dinner for jparks and myself on Monday and Tuesday. Then on Wednesday I ate it again, while jparks had a fancy dinner at Google. After I was done eating, I was going to dump the body, but then I took a good look at the poorly carved remains and realized that there was meat left. Like a lot of it. Because my carving skillz are not mad.

What happened next is not for the faint of heart or vegetarian. I thought about taking pictures, because it was so entertaining to me, but then I decided against it. I mean, do you really need to see a torn apart chicken body? Probably not, and I will openly admit right here and now, that this will probably not entertain anyone but me. Sorry

I didn't grow up in a roasted chicken kind of house. We lived with my grandmother from when I was four until I was in second grade and she cooked dinner every night. I seriously don't think we ever went out to eat, including McDonald's (there is no good reason for why I like McDonald's as an adult. It does not remind me of being a kid, it was not served to me as a "stop your crying now" comfort food. I like it now because I am a freak with an unrefined palate). But we never had anything like roasted chicken. Sure we had fried chicken, but never anything that actually had the shape of a real bird. (We also had fried cauliflower, fried salmon croquettes, fried eggplant, and fried okra. Were we a southern stereotype or what?)

After leaving my grandparents' house, I survived on a steady diet of tv dinners. Kid Cuisine was my drug of choice and I swear I had one every single night. My mom worked a lot and there wasn't time for home cooked meals, and I don't blame her, but this is probably why it's so hard for me to understand how to fit cooking into my daily life. I didn't envy friends that had dinners cooked by their mom's nightly. I felt sorry for them, they never had a say in what they ate, where as once a week, I got to go to the store and pick out my own dinners! That was so very exciting to 8 year-old me.

So, when faced with my very first roasted chicken not only did I not know how to crave it, but I also didn't know that there is meat hidden all over that thing. Tasty little bits of meat ripe for the picking. Not knowing how to get at it, I first grabbed a fork. Jabbing at it yielded really poor results; I pulled out a little meat, but could see that I was missing quite a bit. My next step was to roll up my sleeves and attack the chicken with my hands.


Dude! SOME. MUCH. MEAT. It was extremely satisfying to watch my pyrex bowl fill up with little shards of chicken. I did a once over on the carcass and realized that if I popped off the wings then I could get to more meat. After a moment's hesitation (I am an ex-vegetarian after all) the body was wingless and I had a whole new bounty of meat.

I honestly had to make myself stop hunting for more meat. When I stepped back my hands were covers in meat and chicken juices and the bird was just a heap of bones. At this point I considered boiling the remains for chicken stock, but I am not that Martha Stewart-y so I just pitched it into the trash. Tangi then circled the trash can for the next hour plotting how to topple it.

Thursday I ate my chicken shards on a gordita shell with some refried beans and it was the best meal ever because it was sprinkled with my success over the chicken carcass. Take that you dead chicken! Your tasty, tasty meat was pulled from your bones with my bare hands and I consumed it with some beans. nom nom nom.

I'm digging my place at the top of the food chain and my new found chicken picking apart skillz.