Left-overs soup and Laundry

Well, now you all know about the chicken fiasco I thought I'd give you an update on what has happened now. Yes, you all are going to get to read more about my food! (I think I'm starting to dream about eating more food lately.)

Early in our marriage my husband told me that he doesn't like soup because he thinks it does not fill you up. This I thought was odd since when I was growing up for the entire fall season starting about October and going through December we had soup for dinner regularly. Fall season=soup season. We had wheat chilli, bone soup (aka ten bean soup), turkey leftover soup, chicken leftover soup, beef leftover soup, and many varieties on those themes. My husband however, felt that when he eats soup all he is doing is drinking broth and not getting filled up. For this reason I tended not to make too many soups.

Yesterday I decided that we had eaten enough of the backwards bird and it was now time to make soup out of him. (Plus, my husband will be out of town for over half the week so I can eat it myself.) I made the stock and then I made noodles from scratch (which were huge because I didn't roll them out thinly enough) and it was so yummy! My only complaint was that I put in too many noodles, but when I said this my husband looked at me like I had just said something crazy (like, "maybe we shouldn't always live right next to cows.") To this he said, "I like the noodles, they give the soup some substance like the carrots and chicken." So apparently he does like soup, you just have to put really big, really recognizable chuncks in it so he can see he's actually eating real food.

Other funny things happened this weekend. I'll try to relay one. I don't know if I can catch the hilarity of my husband here, but I'm going to attempt it. This weekend my husband and I both had Saturday off of work and also my husband's brother's family was going out of town so we had some alone time. I decided Friday night that I would write down a list of things that we needed to get done on Saturday:

• Research the schools my husband is interviewing at this week (cross your fingers!)
• Clean the house (OK it's really a trailor, but I'm saying house anyway)
• Fold the laundry and put it away
• Do the dishes
• Put up the Christmas lights

There were more things, and we got them done, but I can't think of them all right now and it doesn't matter anyway. Saturday morning we got up and my sweet, sweet husband decided to make me breakfast since I had spent the entire night waking up every stinking hour! After that he decided he'd tackle the Christmas lights and leave me to do the dishes. Pretty good division of labor since I didn't want to get cold in the frosty weather and he didn't want to do dishes. There were a lot of dishes. Enough that I still had some when he was finished with the lights. Once he came in he decided to tackle the laundry (I know, you're thinking, "Where did she find this man?"). So he was in the back of the trailor finishing the laundry. Just as I was finishing scrubbing down the kitchen after the last of the dishes he walks out and marks off Christmas lights and laundry off our list. Then I say, "Now all we need to do is clean the house." To which he says, "It's clean isn't it?" I wish I had a photo for everyone, since it clearly wasn't clean. I just looked at him in silence trying to think of how to respond when he said, "Well you did do some cleaning so that task has been done." I decided that he could be right for that day since I wouldn't be embarassed if someone stopped by. So I told him that we could go into town I would just have to change my clothing. I went back into the back of the trailor and realized that he had applied the same logic from the "clean the house" task to the "do the laundry" task. Most of the stuff had been folded and put away, but there was still some stuff on our bed clearly waiting to be put away. I just started to laugh! He came up behind me and said, "Well, it was just too hard to figure out where that stuff went!" So the laundry could be counted as having been done since clearly some laundry had been done! He is so funny!

Is this really breast?

Last night I cooked a whole chicken. It was delicious! I did make a tiny mistake though that made me smile and laugh at myself so I thought I'd share it on the Internet for the merriment of the whole world (well not really since I'm convinced that very few people actually read this thing).

So the recipe said to thinly slice an orange and then insert some of the orange slices between the skin and the breast meat. Keep in mind that I have only cooked an entire bird once before and it was a big turkey. When I had inserted things between the skin and the meat the first time it was really easy. This time, however, it proved to be quite difficult to separate the skin from the meat. I concluded this must be because of the size difference between the two birds (last night's being only about 5 pounds). I did manage to get it in and dress the chicken nicely. I even remembered to tie the legs in so that the bird didn't fall apart. I even got to use my favorite Le Crusset dish because the bird fit perfectly! Then I baked it for a little under 2 hours, basting every 30 minutes or so to ensure juiciness. My husband didn't come home in time for dinner and I had made so much food I was nervous about having to eat all of it on my own so I called my sister-in-law and told her not to cook dinner that I'd be bringing it over. When I got there I realized that I would also have to carve the chicken, since neither my sister-in-law nor myself really wanted to do it. So I picked the bird up out of the dish and put it on a plate to carve. I pulled out all the oranges that I had shoved between the skin and the breast. I tried to start with the breast meat (since that's what everyone eating right then prefers). Each time I tried to get a good size cut of meat I kept running into bone! There was NO breast meat on this chicken! I was so confused because when I had looked at it before starting to dress it I thought I had seen a boat load of nice juicy breast meat. I was about to cry thinking I had failed in cooking a nice juicy chicken for dinner when I decided to flip the bird over! I immediately saw my mistake. I had placed the oranges, spices, and butter between the skin and the meat in the back of the bird! When I cut into the breast meat it was so nice and juicy! I can't believe that I had mistaken the back and front sides of the chicken! With a degree in food science you'd think I would know better!