Adventures in Poultry

Last night I made my first attempt at roasting a whole chicken. While I love to cook, meat is probably my least favorite thing to prepare. Don't get me wrong; I love feasting on animal carcass (that's for you, Ryan), but I'd much rather be baking some dessert or bread, or cooking something that doesn't resemble a creature you'd see at the zoo or on the side of the road driving through Texas.

Anyway, I decided it was time to cast away those oh-so-easy-to-prepare boneless, skinless chicken breasts I'm so used to and do things the old fashioned way. First, I had to remove the gizzards and neck of the chicken. This may seem strange coming from me, but I was less than thrilled about reaching my hand into the dark chicken hole (read: cavity of the chicken) to remove the aforementioned items. Micah could not understand how I managed to dissect a human cadaver in gross anatomy without complaining (at least about the grossness factor), yet was so squeamish about pulling out chicken parts.

I'm a complicated woman.

Once our chickeny friend had been robbed of his heart, liver, and other vital organs, it was time to spice him up. I haphazardly composed a mixture of garlic powder, oregano, thyme, salt, and pepper and rubbed it all over him. I say haphazardly because anyone who has spent any amount of time cooking with me knows that I don't like to measure things (except when baking; then it's definitely neccessary), and I generally don't like to follow recipes exactly; I always have to change something to make it more interesting.

Byebye chicken. I also put some squash and carrots in the bag to keep him company.

While the chicken was roasting, Disco wanted to do one of his favorite things in the world- a little something we call "play octopus." Here is how one plays octopus:

Step 1: Disco brings you his new octopus squeaky toy, so lovingly given to him by his sweet grandparents.
Step 2: Throw the octopus across the living room/into the kitchen.
Step 3: Disco retrieves the octopus, squeaks it about half a million times, and brings it back to you to throw again.
Step 4: Repeat steps 1-3 approximately 257,849,435,647,383,920,300,994,732 times.

To combat the annoying-ness step 4, Micah and I often try to throw the octopus into one of our artificial trees. The time it takes Disco to get his octopus out of the branches increases the time between throws and gives us a few minutes of squeak free time.

However, Disco is a very astute young pup and has gotten really good at pawwing his toys out of our trees.
Here he is trying to reach it so he can paw it out of there. Micah and I are clever enough that we often try to get it stuck higher than he can reach with his paw. Disco, however, came up with a great counter-attack; he has figured out how to shake the branches to release his toy. When that doesn't work, he does something even more devious....

Here he is trying to pull the tree to the ground. At this point one of us usually gets his toy for him to protect him from the falling timber.

Back to the poultry...


Here's a picture of the chicken out of the oven. It did look appetizing, despite the plastic bag.

Our dinner, minus the squash, which is a little camera shy.

The roasted chicken turned out pretty tasty, if I do say so myself. So if you want some chicken, come on over. We have leftovers!