When I moved to Vermont seven years ago, I stayed with some friends in Waterbury before setting out on my own. I was pretty worn down from the stress of uprooting myself, finishing my graduate work, getting a job, buying a car.... you get the picture. It was a cold spring night, and I had agreed to make chicken soup for my church’s Passover seder dinner. (don’t ask me to explain). Canned broth would not do, they told me, it had to be the real thing. So, it’s 2 AM and I’m cooking down a chicken and watching a video. The TV is perched high on a stack of unpacked boxes, and I’m snuggled into my mother’s upholstered rocking chair, the one that would eventually be stolen from my front porch despite a chain wrapped around the base. But for the moment, I felt pretty safe. The soup smelled yummy and watching a late night video took me back to familiar times.

The video I was watching was Dead Calm, a suspense flick about a couple on a sailing trip who rescue a charming nutcase killer from his sinking schooner. Once safe on board, he explains that the rest of the crew apparently died of food poisoning. Of course the couple doesn’t know the guy is a nutcase killer until the husband goes over to the other boat to check things out, leaving the wife at the mercy of, well you know how it goes... Anyway, the husband is nosing around the nearly sunk boat and gets trapped in the hold, eyeball deep in a soup of skeletons who bob around and cling onto him with bony fingers. He freaks out of course, and so do I.

Cut to me in the kitchen, the VCR on pause, poking at my chicken soup. The bird has been cooking a bit too long, and the meat has fallen completely off the bones. I’m looking at a big pot of bones and fat and meat, a skeleton broth, except that in this case it was a dead chicken instead of dead shipmates. Maybe it was just my vivid imagination, but it seemed like it wasn’t just chicken parts floating around in there. Those wee morning hours aren’t very conducive to rational thinking, so I hit the sack, submerging my grossed out fright in a swaddling of flannel.

The result of this traumatic experience is that I haven’t cooked a chicken in seven years, although I still have a particular tenderness for those deli rotisserie chickens. But even then, facing the remaining slick and slimy parts takes courage. Whoever said parts is parts sure hasn’t dealt with any chicken tendons lately. If it wasn’t for the wishbones which I paint purple for good luck, the only poultry I’d ever eat would be in the form of patties. Unlike whole chickens which I can imagine pecking and squawking, breast filets are so generic that they could be from any animal, or none.

Knowing this, you’d think I would have turned down the chance to use my friend Nancy’s chicken cooking gadget. The thing looks like a big ashtray with these wires going up and around so that the drippings drip right down into the holder there. Neat huh? I thought hey, I’m a nineties woman, I can handle a chicken.

After lengthy perusal of the poultry section, I picked up a free-range roaster with, thank God, a pop out thermometer so I’d know when it was done. I like to think that the little gal at least had a happy life before being sacrificed for my cheddar & chicken quesadilla. It was all I could do to get it in the oven considering the giblets had to be got to the garbage, not to mention that spongy thing saturated with uncooked chicken juices that looked more like a maxipad than I care to admit. And I sure wasn’t going to touch that clammy skin, even if it might result in a bland and unspiced meal.

Nevertheless, the chicken came out pretty good, due more to the pop-out thingamajig than any commitment on my part. Still I’m thinking this enchilada has really just gone beyond the pale, especially when you consider that along the way I burned my finger, set off the smoke alarm, and filled the sink with more dishes than could possibly be justified by one little chicken. So, I returned the gadget and froze the remains for a less emotional time.

Fortunately seven years in Vermont have given me a well-lit apartment for those scary video nights and few demands for homemade soup. Instead I depend on my friendly Schwan’s guy to deliver my favorite spicy chicken breasts, which means there probably won’t be any more ”incidents.” Call me a chicken if you must, but I’ll blame it all on chronic poultry syndrome. Pass the potatoes.

Copyright January, 1999