Dead Chicken Dinner

Proof that my mother is growing younger while I am growing older:

Today my mother went skydiving while I stayed home and did a great deal of cooking from scratch.

(If my mother had a blog she could tell us all about it. Alas, she does not. But I will get to see her video of it tomorrow, so that should be fun!)

Since I am clearly growing sedate and boring in my middle age, I did not even consider skydiving myself. Instead, I made pumpkin muffins using my very own homemade pureed pumpkin and whole wheat flour I ground myself. They actually turned out pretty yummy. I felt like such a successful little homemaker that I decided to carry on and make a roasted chicken for dinner.

You know, using a real roasting chicken instead of the frozen boneless, skinless breasts I normally use.

It's not a new thing for me. I have roasted poultry before, but I haven't done so in quite awhile. And with my middle-age dementia creeping in, I guess I forgot why I no longer roast chickens. Raw meat and I don't get along well much to begin with. And the more that raw meat looks like an actual animal, the harder it is. (Ground beef? No problem! A whole fish? Ummm, maybe not.)

So when I found myself rinsing off a flubby, slimy headless chicken corpse this afternoon, it all came back to me quickly. (If we ever have to go back to raising and butchering our own food, I'm becoming a vegetarian.) Then, when I had to dig around the inside of the thing and pull out those squelchy little "presents" my appetite fled and took up residence halfway across the globe-- Italy, perhaps. Seriously, do people actually use those necks and kidneys??? Wait, don't answer that question.

Anyway, when the nasty business of preparing the chicken was done and the pan was safely hidden from sight in the oven, even the pleasant aroma of roasting chicken couldn't reawaken my appetite. Still, I figured it would be worth it if the rest of the family enjoyed the dinner. Unfortunately, my hopes were shattered when I pulled the chicken from the oven.

J came in to see what we were having and exclaimed, "You're making a dead chicken for dinner??? But Mom, we can't eat a dead chicken!" Maybe I should have gotten it carved up before the kids came in to eat. Let's just say, eating a "dead chicken" was not too popular tonight, no matter how I tried to explain that it was no different from any of the yummy chicken that they love. Really, would they prefer to eat a live chicken?

(And I was only able to manage two small bites myself, since handling the raw chicken had obliterated any desire to eat it. So much for homemakerly glory.)