Perfect Chicken Search
4) UP AND DOWNS
My apologies to all for being so long on the search for the perfect chicken, for we would not prepare any other. The simple fact is that the perfect chicken requires a perfect world upon which to scratch, peck, roost with its kind in warm sunsets, and so to flourish. Sad to say no such world exists. The world we know is teeming with frustrations, dead-ends, and useless maps. But! My solution, I have one, was to breed my own birds in my perfectable backyard. Hence, the delay in posting our cooking work. Indeed, months ago my backyard was lovingly coaxed to make good on all its promises to me. I shall spare our dear reader the details. It is enough to say that from within a pen of soft gossamer wire Rita tied all by herself the chicks grew to great heaps of feather and marbled meat. Oh, the pillows to come! Of course I fed them a special diet to expand their succulent beings, a diet I shall keep secret but will market to other great chefs only if they beg for it in entertaining ways.
The fowl had sunsets, sweet breezes, friends. It was Rita's idea to read to them when, on hot afternoons, their panting in the shade from under aromatic shrubs seemed less than perfect. What beautiful results followed! They would frazzle in the deep half-wine casks of fine sterilized soil provided. The more Rita read the greater their grooming. How the dirt would fly! Often they would bury their little heads completely. Once the heat passed they then drank deeply of fresh Evian. Rita would close her book, (she read only organic gardening books to them), and return to her own house, until heat struck again. How tanned she became in the early summer.
I must relate a difficult thing: first, a rooster was added to the hens from the beginning, but there was no peace. How awful was the chicken love-making. Such shrieking and bloodletting. They played favorites. Hearts were wounded. The relentless flapping of dirty down! Rita spent entirely too much time repairing the gossamer wire. Sigh! How ugly is nature when fornication is aprowl! Finally, I took the rooster away and tossed it into another's yard. That is what is done with animal problems in our latinized neighborhood. Not the children, they merely tresapass, but the swine, goat, a misshappen pony once, these are the creatures I mean. You never know what you'll find in your yard from one glorious morning to the next. Fun to guess what stirs in the brush at two in the morning!
Anyway, it must have been the presence of the rooster that kept the raccoons away. For one black night all my perfecting chickens were killed by them. Its true, the murderers could have been smallish pandas, however. A Chinese circus passing through town some weeks ago suffered a traffic accident during which a sun bear and panda family escaped. 
So I don't know. By whatever malevolent agency my chickens were ripped to shreds. Scattered, too. Woe was me! Rita, too, was woeful. But because the night was cold and owing to the freshness of their parts (most were still warm) I was able to assemble one complete chicken. Tomorrow, the recipe.
My apologies to all for being so long on the search for the perfect chicken, for we would not prepare any other. The simple fact is that the perfect chicken requires a perfect world upon which to scratch, peck, roost with its kind in warm sunsets, and so to flourish. Sad to say no such world exists. The world we know is teeming with frustrations, dead-ends, and useless maps. But! My solution, I have one, was to breed my own birds in my perfectable backyard. Hence, the delay in posting our cooking work. Indeed, months ago my backyard was lovingly coaxed to make good on all its promises to me. I shall spare our dear reader the details. It is enough to say that from within a pen of soft gossamer wire Rita tied all by herself the chicks grew to great heaps of feather and marbled meat. Oh, the pillows to come! Of course I fed them a special diet to expand their succulent beings, a diet I shall keep secret but will market to other great chefs only if they beg for it in entertaining ways.
The fowl had sunsets, sweet breezes, friends. It was Rita's idea to read to them when, on hot afternoons, their panting in the shade from under aromatic shrubs seemed less than perfect. What beautiful results followed! They would frazzle in the deep half-wine casks of fine sterilized soil provided. The more Rita read the greater their grooming. How the dirt would fly! Often they would bury their little heads completely. Once the heat passed they then drank deeply of fresh Evian. Rita would close her book, (she read only organic gardening books to them), and return to her own house, until heat struck again. How tanned she became in the early summer.
I must relate a difficult thing: first, a rooster was added to the hens from the beginning, but there was no peace. How awful was the chicken love-making. Such shrieking and bloodletting. They played favorites. Hearts were wounded. The relentless flapping of dirty down! Rita spent entirely too much time repairing the gossamer wire. Sigh! How ugly is nature when fornication is aprowl! Finally, I took the rooster away and tossed it into another's yard. That is what is done with animal problems in our latinized neighborhood. Not the children, they merely tresapass, but the swine, goat, a misshappen pony once, these are the creatures I mean. You never know what you'll find in your yard from one glorious morning to the next. Fun to guess what stirs in the brush at two in the morning!
Anyway, it must have been the presence of the rooster that kept the raccoons away. For one black night all my perfecting chickens were killed by them. Its true, the murderers could have been smallish pandas, however. A Chinese circus passing through town some weeks ago suffered a traffic accident during which a sun bear and panda family escaped. 
So I don't know. By whatever malevolent agency my chickens were ripped to shreds. Scattered, too. Woe was me! Rita, too, was woeful. But because the night was cold and owing to the freshness of their parts (most were still warm) I was able to assemble one complete chicken. Tomorrow, the recipe.
posted by KJP | 10:25 AM
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