chicken little

ok, a weak title. Until you consider how we use the word chicken.
"You chicken", a taunt for the faint of heart, those who are cowardly, who" turn tail and run". who call to cancel, to end it, not do it face to face. But that is a few blog postings back. Still chicken. White feathered, weak of spirit and spine.

But the chicken endurs, he, or she, (who can tell), lives all over the world. No Victoria, pigeons are not chickens, and penguins think they are, but not.

back to chickens.

They stink, they are noisy, and really, not much room up there to be smart. They are just smart enough to be, well, a chicken! Birdbrained is just dandy for them. But they don't make wars, they don't want to take over the world, they just are.

And a darn efficient little food machine they are too. If you are Vietnamese, or from the American south, you can eat the whole bird. Little fried chicken feet to nibble on, Tom Hanks in Big-like nibbling on the corncob, eat the gristle and spit out the toenails. Suck on the vertebrae, bite and suck out the marrow, fry the gizzard, saute the liver in soy sauce and ginger, and eat all the meat, white or dark. Render the fat to fry something else, baste the skin until it is crunchy, strip it off, douse with salt and pepper and eat it standing over the stove. Rip it apart with your hands, or use a knife to eat the meat. Don't be squeamish now, the whole darn bird is a gift.

Victorians, respressed souls in public, but ragingly, neurotically sexual in the boudoir, decried the use of the word leg or breast. Don't even consider that women, moving like automatons gliding without showing their feet fro perambulation ( Victorian word) might have legs. limbs. SO, all their furniture was draped, no swaddled in fabric down to the carpet to cover the table LEG, the piano LEG. And, at the table Sherlock, one ordered a drumstick, not a chicken leg. And, after the excess nonchallance of the Napoleonic era when bodices dropped to the sternum and women powdered their breasts with powder, Mrs Darcy in the manor house of 1860 would order 'white meat'not chicken breasts.

Good thing that the chicken's genetalia wasn't in evidence, ( was it ever?) or heaven's knows what we would be ordering down there. anyway....

Once you eat the bird and make soup of the bones, and suck out the marrow, strain and deglaze the stock of those nasty fats, you can always turn the bones into costume jewelry. And the feathers can be used for stuffing for pillows. Great thing, a chicken.

And eggs! They make eggs! Well, all birds do, and alligators, but that is another topic. I spent today shelling, halving, rinsing, and piping pureed egg yolks with an ungodly amount of mayonaise and hot sauce into the bottoms for a restaurant gig. Four dozen halved, and rinsed egg whites looked like a pile of squid suckers sans the squid. But eggs are a good thing, they are sculptural, you can use the egg shells to filter coffee if you are, pardner, home on the range; add calcium to your dog's food, paint them and make mosaics with glue if you have no other ideas for Sunday School projects.

Yep, the chicken is a noble little bird. Productive, not too smart, but does what God intended he do as a chicken. No resume, no what to do, no chicken angst that he should be more than a chicken, and until you kill the beast, can produce a nifty best example of natural design for food that I can think of.

So, why do we say someone is "chicken"? Why do we have a campaign that says what we cannot identify, ' tastes like chicken" Why, when we are upset, do we say, ' now, dear, don't get your feathers ruffled," or, " running like a chicken without his head.? Poor thing, just a little bird. The sky is falling. Sometimes I have been chicken, I have been without my head.

Yet, tomorrow, I will massage the beast, rub olive oil over its whole body, slowly, plunge inside lots and lots of garlic, insert under the skin some dijion, and minced onion, dill, thyme, and bake it off in the oven. I will lovingly heat it to 500 while I make some coffee. Five minutes later , I will reduce the heat and cook it slowly for about 90 minutes while I deglaze the pan around it with some wine and olive oil again. I'll make some broccoli on the side, some roast onions carmelizing in its pan juices, and some sliced nectarines drizzled with vanilla and brown sugar. The house will smell not like a ditzy little beast, or a scared little bird, it will smell like home, like love, like memories, a warm fragrance sweet as Mother's love.

My daughter is coming for Mother's day, we will share dinner together in the few hours we will have together before she goes back to work on classes.

I would rather have dinner with her at home than go out to have someone else's chicken, drumsticks, white meat, and all.