Watch out Rachel Ray!

So, our story begins on Sunday evening. The P, Adam, and I went down to Harris Teeter to get some milk for The P. I spotted some organic Smart Chicken and decided I had to buy one for The P. Smart Chicken is air-chilled, hormone and antibiotic free (i.e. more expensive than regular chicken), and The P deserves only the best, right? Anyway, I decided to pick up a "whole chicken" instead of a simpler format like breasts or tenderloins. We didn't have time to make it on Sunday night and Adam is "out of town" for work, so that left me alone with a chicken that needed to get cooked. I, being the non-meat-eater that I am, had no idea what to do with this thing. So I googled "cooking a whole chicken" (how do you solve problems without google?). The instructions looked simple. Sprinkle a little salt and pepper, and throw it in the oven on 350 for an hour or so until the thighs are 180 degrees. Here we go... I took the chicken out of the wrapper and looked at it. The label said no giblets, so that was a bonus. I could see the neck inside, hmmm... I tugged slightly, but it didn't come out, so I just left it (hope that's right). There was a piece of string holding things together. I just left that on too. Salt, pepper, and into the oven. After an hour I took it out and took the temperature. Over 170 but I didn't think it was quite 180, so I out it back. 10 minutes later I checked again. Still wasn't sure, I stuck it back in again. After another 10-15 minutes I figured it had to be ready. So I took it out, stuck in the thermometer, and got to the magic 180 pretty quickly. It was still early afternoon, so I covered the chicken with some foil and left it out to cool until dinner. Fast forward to dinner time. I removed the foil and attempted to "carve" the chicken. (I hope all of you carnivores out there can appreciate this effort I am making for The P. Meats are just not my thing.) Once I started getting into it, I noticed the thigh meat still looked a little pink, and the juices (which are supposed to "flow clear") were also a little pink. Great! Now what do I do? Pink chicken scares me (in fact it's the main reason I don't eat chicken)! I decided to heat up the oven and throw the chicken back in. After another 15-20 minutes of cooking, my chicken now looks done and not pink. However, I think it is completely dried out since I poked it so many times and cut some pieces out to investigate before cooking it again. I served it to The P for dinner with some "dip dip" (i.e. ketchup) and she actually ate it pretty well. So that is my story. I hope you weren't hoping for an exciting, witty, or tragic ending because there really isn't one. I am just rambling on so that I can give my dear friend something to read (you know who you are!), and so that you can appreciate just how much I love the P and how far I will go to make sure she has a nutritious balanced diet.

Hopefully tomorrow The P will do something interesting, so I can blog about her and not my culinary escapades. Tuesday is gymnastics day, you know! Oh, and the picture above was taken today, but it really has nothing to do with my chicken story. I just thought she looked funny pushing her stroller around with her shirt pulled up. I don't know where she comes up with this stuff!