Night of the Frankenchicken

the_red_shoes attempts to make chicken stock:

"Putting it v, v charitably. I tried to make REAL chicken stock once in our first apt here from the leftover carcass of a (boughten) roast chicken, bones fat scraps and all. It looked like Hannibal Lecter's apprentice had been carefully preparing for a life of extremely unappetizing crime in our kitchen, practicing on pullets while Working His Way Up. I wound up with this horrible watery-yet-gluey mess with a visible inch-thick scum of frothing fat on top with horrible bobbing mangled things occasionally poking through it only to be drowned again in the percolating ooze. The cats hid from the smell. (The landlady upstairs said "What is that?" I said maybe her cat had left a dead bird in the hedge, or something.) T wanted to decontaminate the pot by leaving it in the back yard to get rained in. You remember when Meg's jelly won't jel in Little Women? It was like that, only extremely gross."

This reminds me of the biology class assignment I got in tenth grade, which was to boil a whole chicken, until the flesh fell off the bones, then dry the bones and reconstruct the skeleton. We were given a month and a diagram of a chicken skeleton to do this. I put it off till the night before because I was so terrified of the assignment, then made shamefacedly confessed and made my Dad drive me to the grocery store to buy a whole chicken.

Several hours of boiling (the chicken), yelling (Dad's), and weeping (mine) later, the meat was not off some bones, while others had turned to jelly or even dissolved. Dad, having refused to go to bed and leave me alone with the chicken, suggested that I put the bones in the oven to try to dry them out. Several hours later, we had a pile of bones that were more-or-less dry enough to glue together. That was when we discovered that the bones did not match the anatomy diagram. It was like a jigsaw puzzle... FROM HELL.

By 3:00 am, we were pretty much randomly gluing bones that looked sort of right to other bones that were sort of in the right place. Eventually we achieved a chicken-like object, although there was still a pile of bones that we didn't know what the hell they were or where they should have gone, and went to bed.

The next morning we awoke to see the Frankenchicken lurking there atop the tabletop, lopsided, mutant, malevolent. I burst into tears and said I wouldn't turn it in at all, because I'd done such a bad job and I was embarassed to be seen with it. Dad, who is a very wise man in some ways, said that on the contrary, he had no doubt that everyone else also left it to the night before and probably gave up well before we did. Not only did he drag me and the Frankenchicken to school, he accompanied me into the classroom because he was so curious to see what the rest of the kids had come up with.

Some kids had their very own Frankenchickens, which much like ours were lopsided, wet, smelly, only vaguely chicken-like, and sometimes with extra vestigial limbs. Some kids had partial chickens. A few despondent folk carried plastic bags of bones, with maybe a leg or a wing glued together. One boy had taken all the bones and glued them into a solid ball, like Darth Vader's prototype Chicken Star.

And then there was Elizabeth Sugar. Elizabeth Sugar was clearly the only person in the class who had actually bought a chicken and boiled it the day the project was announced. I suspect that she went through several chickens before getting the hang of the project. Her bones were polished and gleaming and wired together. Her anatomically perfect chicken skeleton was mounted handsomely on a polished wood base, and was posed as if poised for flight.

Elizabeth Sugar was chosen as valedictorian, to no one's surprise, and went to Harvard to study genetics. I believe that even as we speak, she is mapping the chicken human genome.

Me? I became a writer.

Night of the Frankenchicken

the_red_shoes attempts to make chicken stock:

"Putting it v, v charitably. I tried to make REAL chicken stock once in our first apt here from the leftover carcass of a (boughten) roast chicken, bones fat scraps and all. It looked like Hannibal Lecter's apprentice had been carefully preparing for a life of extremely unappetizing crime in our kitchen, practicing on pullets while Working His Way Up. I wound up with this horrible watery-yet-gluey mess with a visible inch-thick scum of frothing fat on top with horrible bobbing mangled things occasionally poking through it only to be drowned again in the percolating ooze. The cats hid from the smell. (The landlady upstairs said "What is that?" I said maybe her cat had left a dead bird in the hedge, or something.) T wanted to decontaminate the pot by leaving it in the back yard to get rained in. You remember when Meg's jelly won't jel in Little Women? It was like that, only extremely gross."

This reminds me of the biology class assignment I got in tenth grade, which was to boil a whole chicken, until the flesh fell off the bones, then dry the bones and reconstruct the skeleton. We were given a month and a diagram of a chicken skeleton to do this. I put it off till the night before because I was so terrified of the assignment, then made shamefacedly confessed and made my Dad drive me to the grocery store to buy a whole chicken.

Several hours of boiling (the chicken), yelling (Dad's), and weeping (mine) later, the meat was not off some bones, while others had turned to jelly or even dissolved. Dad, having refused to go to bed and leave me alone with the chicken, suggested that I put the bones in the oven to try to dry them out. Several hours later, we had a pile of bones that were more-or-less dry enough to glue together. That was when we discovered that the bones did not match the anatomy diagram. It was like a jigsaw puzzle... FROM HELL.

By 3:00 am, we were pretty much randomly gluing bones that looked sort of right to other bones that were sort of in the right place. Eventually we achieved a chicken-like object, although there was still a pile of bones that we didn't know what the hell they were or where they should have gone, and went to bed.

The next morning we awoke to see the Frankenchicken lurking there atop the tabletop, lopsided, mutant, malevolent. I burst into tears and said I wouldn't turn it in at all, because I'd done such a bad job and I was embarassed to be seen with it. Dad, who is a very wise man in some ways, said that on the contrary, he had no doubt that everyone else also left it to the night before and probably gave up well before we did. Not only did he drag me and the Frankenchicken to school, he accompanied me into the classroom because he was so curious to see what the rest of the kids had come up with.

Some kids had their very own Frankenchickens, which much like ours were lopsided, wet, smelly, only vaguely chicken-like, and sometimes with extra vestigial limbs. Some kids had partial chickens. A few despondent folk carried plastic bags of bones, with maybe a leg or a wing glued together. One boy had taken all the bones and glued them into a solid ball, like Darth Vader's prototype Chicken Star.

And then there was Elizabeth Sugar. Elizabeth Sugar was clearly the only person in the class who had actually bought a chicken and boiled it the day the project was announced. I suspect that she went through several chickens before getting the hang of the project. Her bones were polished and gleaming and wired together. Her anatomically perfect chicken skeleton was mounted handsomely on a polished wood base, and was posed as if poised for flight.

Elizabeth Sugar was chosen as valedictorian, to no one's surprise, and went to Harvard to study genetics. I believe that even as we speak, she is mapping the chicken human genome.

Me? I became a writer.