Go Cook a Chicken

Oh. My. Goodness. I am forty-two years old and have almost zero experience in cooking whole poultry. As in, plucked, hollow, sans head and feet, and frozen. Well, thawed, now. I can't remember ever cooking a whole chicken before, and the one time I tried to cook a turkey, it wasn't pretty. I'm used to cooking them after they've been cut up (by someone else, obviously) into their various parts. I have next to no idea what to do with a whole chicken carcass. I like my meat pre-cut, skinned, and pre-packaged. The easier to pretend is isn't really meat, my dear. I do not like this idea of handling and cutting apart a dead chicken carcass. It's disturbing me on so many levels. Maybe I should become a vegetarian. Except that I can't be a vegetarian--my body seems to crave meat protein on a regular basis; I just don't like to be reminded that what I'm eating was once a live bird or animal. I'm stressing out right now about this dead chicken. And it was even a free-range chicken, humanely processed. It just wasn't quite processed enough for me. All of my married life, I either bought pre-cut and skinned chicken, or the Huz cut it up and cooked it while I tried not to watch. But the Huz isn't at home right now, and will be away until the end of the week. He thawed out this chicken on Saturday and left it for me to deal with...and I've got...stage fright, or something. I'm pathetic. And the really sad thing is, I know I'm not alone. I know that many of my fellow Americans are likewise ignorant of such a basic thing as how to cut up a chicken carcass.

Gulp. I'm going to go do what the Huz said. I'm going to rinse it with water, put it in a roaster pan, sprinkle some salt, pepper and herbs on it and put it in a 350 degree oven for two-plus hours. Forget this cut-apart-the-carcass business! Yech. I'm being a total chicken about cutting up this poor dead chicken. But I can't waste it; it's food, and it cost money. Ahhhh.... Well, everyone has their quirks, I guess. Shudder.