What Up With The Lifeless Chicken??!!

Okay so here I was all emoting about a super yummy meal at Craft in my earlier post…even talked about chicken and how I wished I had gotten some, well after the bland soulless dinner I just made I really wish I had gotten the damn chicken…grumble. I’ve been off for three days this week and have done very little by way of cooking, just haven’t been feeling it….it happens, but tonight with the brisk chill that has been swaying back and forth through my apartment all day, I really wanted soup, something warm, rich, and satisfying for both the body and the soul.



I went back in forth in my mind wavering from a white bean, kale, tomato soup with chunks of grilled sausage and creamy garlic soup with poached eggs and a drizzle of chili oil….both sounded good but for some reason I could not commit. I tried to put dinner out of my mind, mostly because I had just finished lunch and was slightly embarrassed that I was already thinking about dinner, and rented a movie with my On Demand thingie.

I was seeking all day, searching but nothing seemed to fulfill me, even my damn movie….I wanted suspense, wasn’t much to choose from that I hadn’t already seen so I selected a horror film….I know, but I kept thinking, “People like these things right? There has to be something good about them”…fool, I was a damn fool! I rented The Strangers, soon as the hubby saw what I rented he announced he was going to the driving range, (smart man) but before he did he was kind enough to set up the movie to run through the super high tech in home theatre system that he just had to have…never mind that he almost never watches movies.



Okay I have mentioned before that I am a serious tech tard and I am not kidding, we have three remotes, (for God only knows what) and I can work one…the one that occasionally needs to be charged, yeah guess what happens when it needs to be juiced, that’s right I am sitting in a room with no TV. So okay we have this schmancy system and my sweet, I’m-about-to-bail-on-you-while-you-watch-this-dumb-movie husband was going to make sure I got the “full affect”….awesome.



So there I sat for an hour and whatever minutes, scrunched under a blanket with my bright green, (seriously the color of Oscar The Grouch) socks with the little suckers on the bottom so I wont slip, freaking out at every creek, scream and “Dum-Dummmm” it was….well, horrifying! I’ll save you the time, this couple gets terrorized for like hours, fight for their lives while these masked bad people mess with their heads….in the end they all die, well except for the bad guys, they get away…..LAME!! I sat here with my heart pounding out of my chest, a knot in my tummy and jumping left and right and the bad guys get away and the good guys die….not fulfilled. Back to dinner.

I was just about to pull out one of my many cookbooks when it hit me, I knew what I wanted….one of my most favorite soups in the whole wide world, Avgolemono…the Greek soup with chicken, lemon juice and rice thickened and silked out with eggs. My love of lemons and all things lemony is almost obscene, really I crave lemons all the time…they are just so bright and get my palate working like no other so this soup is a slam dunk for me! I sent the hubby a text message with a shopping list and toiled around on the Inter Webs. When I saw the hubby walk in with sacks, (plastic ones to boot) printed with the big red lettering, VONS my heart sank a bit….but…but…awwww.



I did everything right, I did…simmered the whole chicken with leeks, carrots, bay leaves the whole deal but after an hour and a half when I removed the chicken to cool so I could pick it…the “stock” looked like water, water…little nuggets of veggies floating in water, now were it earlier I would have plopped the carcass back in and let it leach as much “chicken” flavor as it could….wishful thinking….but it was getting really late and I still had to pick the chicken, get the rice cooking in the “broth” and whip up my eggs and lemon juice, so I just kept going. I cranked up the heat, not sure what I was thinking there, was I going to “reduce” this water into something that tasted like chicken stock?



Anyway, I finished the soup, kept adding more salt and lemon juice with each taste and sat down with a piping bowl of……rice scented with lemon and salt floating in water…even the chicken pieces had NO flavor….dammit dammit dammit!! Where the hell was this chicken from, Has No Flavor Farms?? Jesus, why bother eating chicken at all if they taste, well….”taste” like this?! I wasn’t born on the planet “It’s-All-The-Same” where I’m from I want my food to taste like what it is, that soup….I would defy anyone to tell me what animal contributed to that tasteless crud. I kept thinking, “some poor animal, (ex-vegetarian speaking) gave their life….for what?!” I’m pissed, baffled and now I’m hungry….so was not going to eat that mess…but I think I just figured out how all those fast food and national chains survive. If that lifeless hunk of bones is any indicator as to what people are eating everyday….why not frequent those joints that throw fruit salsa on your “meat”, put 27 ingredients on one sandwich and deep fry everything in tired oil and tasteless batter…..what difference does it make…and with all that crap on it at least it tastes like something! The idea of dippers, (loaded with corn syrup and salt sauces) blackened, and Cajun seasoned just appealed to me for the first time.





So here I sit, in a snit might I just add….still in my Oscar socks being a grouch. Stupid movie, stupid soup…. with my tummy growling almost as loud as I am. Decided to drink my dinner, (insert gasp here) and this was so not planned by the way...but my holiday gift from one of my wine reps was a bottle of wine, one that had been returned to him because someone thought it was a leaker, (sticky bottle and stained label) so thoughtful….turns out the wine was fine….when I pulled the foil off there was no sign of leaking and upon further inspection it seemed to me that this bottle was marred by another bottle that may have been leaking…Happy Holidays to me! The 2007 Chateau de Pampelonne Cotes de Provence Rose I am drinking right now is the one thing that has “fed” me today, light, tart wild strawberry and tons of minerals…..sigh ßthat is me practicing my breathing