More Adventures in Bird Flu

(Not for the squeamish.)

I did it. It only took me a year, but I finally bought my first whole, intact chicken. It was already, um, deceased when I bought it, but I would venture to guess that it was pretty darn fresh.

I did not buy it at Carrefour. Still reeling from the sight of women tearing meat from the bone in the open butcher cases. Ick.

However, there is a nice, respectable little butcher shop that recently opened across the street from our compound. The kind with clean floors and refrigerated cases showing the prices, and the meat is laid out in nice little rows. I've been pretty consistent about getting our meat from City Shop, because I can pretend that it's HEB. But the meat is pretty dry, and I really wanted to make Pioneer Woman's chicken spaghetti. I had made it a few weeks earlier using a rotisserie chicken and some leftover white meat, but I figured that if there was ever a time to try a whole chicken, this was it. The recipe called for a whole fryer chicken, cut up.

Let's start by saying that chickens here are about a half to a quarter of the size you find at HEB. Probably the way God intended, rather than Sanderson Farms, but whatever. They are scrawn-y.

So I go in and tell the woman -- praise the Lord, she spoke English, because I'm not sure I could have pantomimed this -- what I want. And she says, "Oh yes, we have one free range chicken. Let me show you."

And she brings out this:


Um. Sure. Looks good. I tell her that I want it cut up, and she asks what I'm going to make. Let's see, how do I explain a southern casserole? Finally I just said I needed the meat off the bones to mix with noodles. That seemed acceptable, so she went to weigh my bird.


She then started back to the kitchen, and I reminded her that I didn't want the head or the feet. She said, "No head?" and I said, "No." And she said, "No feet?" And I said, "No."

And then she said something that will haunt me for life. She turned to me, holding the chicken, and said just as plain as could be, "You want the ass?"

I'm sorry, gentle readers, but that is what she said. As if I might have said, "You know what? Go ahead, throw it in." And I'm really not sure which part bothered me more -- what she said, or suddenly realizing how many times I have been served, um, THAT without even knowing.

I guess, upon seeing the bag of chicken parts when she returned, that I should be grateful that she did ask. Because I never would have known the difference. As it was, I returned home and put the bag of chicken and chicken ANKLE BONES in my refrigerator, and went out with Betsy for the morning. I returned home around lunch time and found our sweet, precious, saintly ayi removing the cooked chicken from the bones. I had left her a note with the recipe and my deepest apologies.

Bess, our ayi, said, "Um, ma'am, where did you get this chicken?" I was so proud, and told her all about going to the big scary butcher all by myself, and how I ordered the meat and told them what I did and didn't want. And she said, "Um, I don't think you should buy this chicken again. It's pretty small, and I think you should just go back to City Shop when you want to buy chicken."

Ouch.

Later she said, "You know, I can kill and cook a chicken." I said, "But do you want to? And what would we do with all the feathers?" She just laughed and said, "Ma'am, just go back to City Shop next time."