As usual, I somehow managed to turn a simple roast chicken into a near mental breakdown. All was well on Saturday afternoon, watching football with my beau and his parents while preparing a lovely fall dinner of roast chicken, roasted brussel sprouts and mashed potatoes with pumpkin ice cream from our local ice cream shop for dessert. I trussed and salted the chicken and set the timer for an hour. One hour later my world caved in around me. I asked my beau's dad if he would carve the chicken and, in the process, he remarked that "this one must be a stewing hen!" followed by, "My dear, the blood has settled in the thigh and she's not done yet." What the hell does that mean? Stewing hen? Settling blood?
Immediately, I started spiraling in a self-loathing tornado. Tears pooled in my eyes much like the blood in the chicken's thighs. I swear if that chicken's head were still attached, she would have looked over at me and mouthed the words, "Yes, you fool, the sky is falling."I pulled my beau aside and whispered, "I have made this twice before and this never happened and now it's ruined when your parents are here!" to which he replied in his logical tone,"Honey, it's fine. We'll fix it," to which I replied, "It's not fine; it's ruined and now what are we going to eat?" Just then, his dad turned to me with his hands full of chicken entrails and said, "Well, here's part of your problem: You forgot to clean out the cavity and she's a big one!" His mom commenced with the chicken triage, saying, "I do this all the time" while she heated the undercooked parts.
I'm still standing in the middle of the kitchen fighting back tears while Kyle looks at me. I know what he is thinking but afraid to ask, so I answer his silent question, "Yes, I took my medication today. The pre-medication Sherri would have thrown the chicken in the garbage, run upstairs and flogged myself Medieval-monk-style." He smiled at me and at that moment, I managed to dosomething that I have just recently learned to do in the face of failures large and small: I stopped spinning, wiped my tears and shrugged it off, realizing that a four-pound undercooked chicken with bloody thighs is not the stuff that failures are made of.
Dinner turned out fine and I was reminded that while I may never shed all of my hard-wired, uptight, emotionally intense personality, I have learned to put things in perspective with a little pharmaceutical help and a partner to laugh with me.
1 comment:
Totally happens to the best of us! Have I told you about my chutney disaster? I got the recipe over the phone from my grandmother and I thought she said to add a quart of vinegar. But no....she said a cup. It was heinous, completely unsalvageable, and I was supposed to take it to an office Christmas dinner at our former tyrant's (I mean boss's) house. Instead, I went to the store, bought jarred chutney and the pot sat out in the backyard until spring and Big J finally through it out -- pot and all!
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