Betty the Basted Beauty

One of my love languages is good food. When my kiddos tell me that a meal or dessert I prepared for them is delicious, my usual response is, "Well, that's because you are tasting the love and goo." Goo being the warm mushy feelings that surround the love itself. We have our family favorite recipes that have their frequent appearances on the menu cycle and then we have those meals that are meant for special occasions because they require a little more love and goo to get them on the table.

A few years back, I decided to try my hand at a new recipe, one of those extra lovin' numbers. I was craving roasted chicken and I had never before prepared a whole chicken. So feeling a little adventurous and really excited to knock the socks off my family with a juicy succulent bird, I hunted down the perfect recipe. I knew it was the perfect recipe because Ina Garten said so, and let's face it, she would know. Recipe in hand (Perfect Roast Chicken), ingredients, and a kitchen all to myself...not sure how that happened...I started the process. 

"Preheat oven to 425." Done. 

"Remove the chicken giblets." Wait, what?

"Remove the chicken giblets." Eyes glazed over. What?

"Remove the chicken giblets." Chickens still come with those? No, that can't be right. 

Picking up my plump whole chicken, I took a closer look at its packaging and I saw the most horrific words, "with neck and giblets." What? Nooooo. I carefully put the chicken back down on my counter, washed my hands and left the room. I was not prepared for this. I don't do blood and guts. I was the most ineffective lab partner when it came to dissecting creatures. Nope. This surprise feast just wasn't happening. I could wait to make the meal when George got home and he could remove the giblets and apparently the neck, too. So there I sat resigned to wait for my man to save the dinner, when that nagging woman in my head (she's old and rugged and most likely slaughtered her own pet chickens before removing their giblets) started fussing at me to put on my big girl panties and if I needed to wear some latex gloves that would be okay, she wouldn't tell anyone. So I did put on my big girl panties and a pair of latex gloves and I marched into the kitchen praying the whole time that I would not faint or vomit. 

I removed the wrapper and carried my hefty bird by it's legs to the sink. Let me just say this, raw chicken is slippery and I don't know about you, but I don't hug naked chickens so getting that heavy bird to the sink without dropping her to the floor and sending her into a salmonella spin was a feat in and of itself. Gosh, this was about to get real personal and I didn't want to be rude so I introduced myself to the bird, named her Betty, and promptly apologized for the many ways in which I was about violate her. I gingerly stuck my hand in Betty's carcass and pulled out a plastic bag of what my Aunt Nita would have probably called gravy goodies but we were not having gravy with this meal...especially if I had to put those goodies in it. I was not ready for that. I could just imagine ripping that plastic bag open and the slimy innards flying out all over the place slapping me in the face before skidding across the kitchen floor and coming to stop under the oven. No, I would not be opening that bag of gravy goodies. 

After tossing the bag into the trash can, Betty and I clumsily danced our way from the sink back to our workstation. Feeling like she and I were in this thing together...I mean we were really getting to know each other..I looked at Betty and with all the confidence in Ina's recipe, I simply said, "Let's do this."

"Remove any excess fat and leftover pin feathers and pat the outside dry." Okay, I could handle this part although who was I to judge Betty's fat as excessive? So there she was, Betty with her newly performed lipo all waxed and dried. Betty was ready for either a day at the beach or an afternoon in my oven. Unfortunately for Betty, the rest of the recipe was simple enough to handle (though I did not relish the task of stuffing her with a whole lemon sliced in half, a bunch of thyme, and a head of garlic) so she spent the afternoon working on her tan in my roasting pan. 

I'll have to say, and not pridefully so because after all it was Ina's recipe, that was the best tasting chicken I have ever had. My family enjoyed it but I don't think they tasted as much love and goo I as I did. I have made that recipe a few times but I usually make George prep the bird or I use pieces. I just can't allow myself to get so involved with another bird. In the end, there could never be another Betty.

The Old Lady at the Club

I have a secret to share with you tonight. It's something that only a few of my closest friends and family members...and several Costco employees...know. I don't photograph well. Not only that, but I especially don't photograph well for IDs. I truly seem to lose all sense of myself just before the photographer snaps the picture. I start overthinking the whole situation. Seriously. My mind starts racing. Should I smile? Should I look seductively into the camera? Should I go for that studiously serious look? Should I make duck lips?...I kid...no one should ever make duck lips. The obvious answer, at least for me, is smile. It's as simple as that. Just smile. No doubt about it, always smile. Otherwise, my ID will look like a pocket-sized mug shot. No lie. So you're probably wondering if I know I should always smile, what exactly is the problem? Again, let me remind you that I overthink these ID photos. I can't seem to help myself.

Allow me to give you a case in point. When I went back to school a few years ago to work on my master's degree, I had to get a new student ID, much to my chagrin. While standing in line behind a bunch of tight skinned pimply faced 18-year-olds at the campus ID Systems Office, I started to feel like the old lady at the club. In my mind, all those kids were staring at me as I was breaking out in my best Hammer Time moves. So I got nervous, awkwardly nervous, palpably nervous. Then it was my turn, and suddenly, my Always Smile philosophy was hiding behind The Nervous Old Lady with the Moves Like Hammer who was thinking, "I don't want to look too excited about school and have people think I'm a nerdy old lady at the club, so I 'll just look aloof and pretentious...that will make me the cool old lady at the club." Yeah that will indeed make me cool. As it turns out, my Aloof and Pretentious Cool Look strongly resembles the Deer in the Headlights Look or more accurately the Drunk Squirrel in the Headlights Look. Judge for yourself.

I suppose when the student employee asked if I would like to try that again, I should have said yes, but alas, I have years of ID photo experience to know that the second shot would not have been any better, after all, I now had his What the Heck Was That expression seared on my brain causing the Nervous Old Lady to bust out the in-case-of-emergency tootsie roll move. And that, my friends, would have been all the more embarrassing. 

No, aloof and pretentious is not better than smiling.

Going back a few years from my student ID photo shoot, I had a very similar experience at Costco. Oh, how I love Costco but oh, how I loathe my Costco ID. The photo was taken about 8 years ago, when I was at the peak of my not brief enough frumpy phase in which I looked older than I actually am now. Apparently, I thought 30 was the new 50. My Costco ID is so bad that the cashiers routinely ask if the person on my ID is shopping with me. When I inform them that the old woman in the photo and I are actually one in the same, I get some surprising and somewhat rude reactions, like asking what work I had done. One particular cashier always seems a little too excited to check my driver's license to verify my identity. I call her Deputy Fife because I know she's expecting to bust me on some gross misuse of someone else's Costco membership. I wonder, does she get a bonus for unmasking fraudulent shoppers? Does she really want to deal with the bulk size toiletries, juice boxes, and snacks that I would leave on her conveyor belt should I not actually be the Costco member? I wonder if she has really thought this through or if all the power of her handheld scanner has just gone straight to her head. The real quandary is that my driver's license doesn't look like me or my Costco ID. I seem to always leave Deputy Fife with a baffled look of disappointment on her face. I just may be the Roadrunner to her Wylie Coyote. With a little ingenuity, she just may drop that anvil on me yet.

I should get a new card made, I know, but then again, I don't need that kind of pressure in my life.