"What are you doing?" My husband asked. His tone of voice said he really didn't get it. Not at all. Of course, I had my hand
partially up a semi-frozen chicken's rear end, and I had been turning the air blue for the past fifteen minutes, so it was a pretty legitimate question. I pulled myself up to my full height and attempted to look as
dignified as possible (which is very difficult when one's hand is inside a chicken's posterior) and said regally, "I am trying to find the rest of the giblets."
"Oh," he said, and opened the refrigerator. "Do we
have anymore Gatorade?"
"Gatorade?" I couldn't believe the man. Here I had been ranting and raving and slamming doors (which is not easy with frozen poultry attached to one's hand, I might add) and all he can do
is ask whether I have any sports drinks?
"Why do you need Gatorade? Are you planning to go outside and sweat?"
"Nah. Watching the race made me thirsty. Hungry, too. Got any cooked chicken?" He stuck his
head back in the refrigerator, leaving me alone with a half-thawed chicken who refused to give up its giblets.
Not that I really want them. I think giblets are pretty gross, although I used to ladle them all
over my turkey and dressing as a kid. I'd blithely dump giblets from one end of my plate to the other until the day someone broke the news to me that giblets is another name for insides. After that, I had my poultry
gibletless. I'm the squeamish type.
So the point to retrieving the giblets was not so that I could mash them up and eat them -- heaven forbid! -- no, the point to retrieving the giblets was so I wouldn't roast
the chicken with a paper bag full of insides in it.
Now, don't ask me why the idea of cooking a chicken with the same parts it had when it was alive still in it strikes me as yucky, but it does. And this chicken
was partially frozen, which meant that the giblets, which are packaged in a bag of sorts and then stuck back into the chicken's rear end, were still solidly frozen. And when I pulled on the bag, it tore and part of it
came out. So I was fishing around, trying to recover the other half of the giblet bag and not doing very well.
First I tried defrosting it in the microwave, but the drumsticks started cooking and the giblets
still didn't budge. Then I tried sitting the chicken upright in a pan in the sink and running hot water into the place that held the giblets in the hopes they would thaw. They didn't work, but it's certainly interesting
to see the look on a neighbor child's face when they see what appears to be a fountain in the shape of a chicken carcass spouting water in the kitchen sink.
Frustrated and ready to put the blasted chicken in the
roaster, I grabbed a pair of tongs and pulled. I ended up with a glob of giblets, which, quite frankly, are pretty nasty looking. I threw them down the disposal, stuck the chicken carcass from hell in the sink and
grabbed a pair of rubber gloves and a knife and started digging around for the remainder of the giblets.
My son wandered through the kitchen, took one look at me, and turned on his heels to head back the
direction he came.
"Oh no, you don't," I yelled after him. "You come back here."
Reluctantly he came back into the room, his eyes riveted to the chicken currently stuck to the end of my wrist.
"Mom, why are you sticking your hand inside that thing?"
"It's a chicken," I said. "Here hold it while I try to pull out the giblets."
"But it's dead!" He said, a stricken look on his face.
"No kidding. You want to eat a live one? Hold it, I said."
Reluctantly he took hold of the bird, complaining that it was gross.
"And what a 'giblets,' Mom?" He asked.
"The insides, you know
-- heart, liver..." the bird toppled over and I looked up to see him beating feet back into the play room, a future vegetarian in the making.
I sighed and went back to slamming the chicken around, hoping it
would give up its giblets. Finally I got the last of the bag out, rinsed the bird and plopped it into the super-duper electric roaster I had. That's when the husband, sauntered into the kitchen looking for more sports
drink.
"The chicken's on, no thanks to you." I said. He ignored me. "You could have helped me, you know."
He looked at me as though I'd just asked him to belly crawl through broken glass carrying a vial
of nitro.
"Let me get this straight: You're in here cursing and stomping around and slamming doors and when I take a look, you've got one hand stuck up a frozen chicken's fanny and a knife in the other and you
expect me to interrupt your rampage? Not in this lifetime" he said.
You know, sometimes I think he's a lot smarter than I give him credit for.
