Two Roast Weekend

Last week, I bought a white board and mounted it on my bedroom door to keep my weekends and evenings on track. But since I forgot to write "get ass out of bed" on the top of my Saturday to do list, I wasn't as productive as I had hoped I would be.

Maybe I deserve a grasse matinee after a week's work, but Saturday morning was morbidly obese. Fortunately, I had plenty of time to shop for dinner.

I hadn't roasted a whole bird in a while. As I hefted the bird in my hand, gently rinsed it and patted it dry, I couldn't help feeling for it as a fellow land animal, a kindred four-limbed creature. "Little guy," I said, then I anointed it's body with herbed oil, laid it on a bed of potatoes, then gently slipped it into a 500 degree oven (so hot for to brown the skin, later I turn heat down for the thorough roasting).

Melba and Snacks arrived. After they generously hauled their old computer up to my apartment, we sat down to dinner.

Martin Bittman's How to Cook Everything is awesome. However, its chicken carving diagram didn't go far enough, only showing how to divvy up the bird into Cracker Barrel sized portions and ignoring the back. That, and my sadly dull and improper utensils made the bird carving too intense for one of my guests, (guess who?)who had to hide in a turtle neck sweater until the operation was complete. Too bad covering your eyes only intensifies the sounds of the procedure. Once the pieces were on the plate, the land animal sympathy had died down to a paletable level so we could feast and talk away the night.

The next day, I septa-ed out to Aunt Liz's for Sunday dinner. Even though I couldn't figure out how to wire her new DVD/VCR combo to her digital cable box so that she could tape her soap, she fed me and gave me the late Uncle P's SLR camera. So kind.