Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Getting Dirty in the Kitchen




Today, one of the grossest things possible happened to me. I spilled raw chicken juice on my beautiful hardwood floors.

I hate raw meat.  I think it is possibly the most disgusting thing in the world.  When I was in college, I used to buy fruits and vegetables and then go to the drive thru at Wendys for a burger so I wouldn't have to touch raw meat.  My roommates thought I was simply an idiot in the kitchen (dumb yes, idiot is stretching it) but there was a method to my madness.  Now as a wife, I have to touch meat (and this is not a double entendre by the way).

Even though raw red meat is weird and resembles baby gerbils, I prefer it to raw chicken meat.  Chicken meat is that weird mix of white, beige, and red.  It forms that placental goo on the bottom of the styrofoam that I try to avoid while tearing off the plastic.  Every time I touch it, I feel like I am going to some sort of flesh eating disease.

I have tried several brands to remedy this situation.  Perdue has a bag of individually packaged boneless breasts but they are terribly expensive.  Sometimes, Bloom has a sale (Buy 1 Get 1 Free) but the chicken has gone bad by the time it is marked down.  Omaha Steaks sells pre-cooked breasts that aren't too pricey when bought with a coupon from Valpack but don't taste very good.  I do recommend buying the red meats though because they are quite tasty.  Anyway, I tried the Target brand (why this seemed like a good idea is unknown even to me) which was in a large bag.  As I pulled the chicken out, I saw that the each piece was frozen but not wrapped.  Ignoring my concern of contamination, I laid them on a plate and stuck the plate in the fridge.  I am sure I broke some sort of health code with that but I wanted to touch them as little as possible.  I opened the fridge this morning after my orientation, and the plate was a puddle of chicken mess.  I knew pulling the chicken out without spilling would be difficult but I tried...and inevitably failed.  It spilled onto the bottom of the fridge and ran onto the wood floor.  Frantically, I ran around the house searching for my disinfecting wipes (which a) are probably one of my favorite things in the world and b) were found by my husband this afternoon in the bedroom...why would I put them there?) but never found them so I was forced to use papertowels and Palmolive.  I threw a towel on top of the mess and the towel is still lying on the floor.  I am afraid to look.

I made spaghetti tonight (with chicken which I think is weird but Warren seems to prefer to ground meat) and spilled sauce everywhere.  Guess what?  I didn't have any towels to clean them up with.  While swearing under my breath about not having anything to clean with, Warren asked me, "Why did you try to dump the sauce from the pan into the bowl?  That wasn't smart."

"Really?  You know what really wasn't smart?  Telling me that while I am cooking your dinner and spilling shit all over the counter and the floor while I don't have any papertowels."

He did acknowledge that that comment was really stupid.  Then he smiled and said, "You know what is smart?  In fact, the smartest thing I ever did?  Marry you."

"Good save," I told him.  "Now shut up and eat your damn dinner."

2 comments:

  1. Lee just takes over when he feels like I don't know what I'm doing in the kitchen. People say, "oh you have such a sweet husband cooking dinner." I reply, "no, he just doesn't trust me." I'll admit he's sweet but I can relate to not feeling confident in the kitchen. I don't know how Julia Child can hold a nasty decaying bird like that.

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  2. I have a box of latex gloves i keep in the kitchen to handle meat with. they live right next to the clorox wipes. my husband makes fun of me all the time, or at least, any time that I'm not wielding giant butcher knives.

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