Practice makes perfect

MUCH to my dismay, dinner was not on the table until 7:05pm this evening. Our usual dinner time is right around 5:30pm, so the dismay of my children was all the grander, as you may be able to imagine.

It started off to be a rather productive day - I made my loaf of bread, this time with proper bread flour, a batch of banana muffins, read two chapters of my book - I even walked around the mall for two hours looking for some good deals. At 4:30 things began to change, however ... although not right away ... I gathered all my ingredients and necessary utensils; "mise en place" - everything in it's place as the french like to say. I was excited yet a bit nervous as I had the task of separating a whole chicken into 8 beautiful, separate pieces, as in the photo above. We all know that when something looks simple, in reality it is not! But first things first, I began peeling back the plastic wrap on the chicken and a foul waft of rotting meat hit me so hard, I just about fell over. I was pretty sure there was time left before the expiry date, and, there was. Thankfully I have made it a habit to keep my grocery receipts until the next shop, so I packed up the kids, and the chicken, and headed back to the store. The car quickly smelt rotten as well, the kids were complaining and so a 5 minute car ride felt like an eternity. I was annoyed, and tired from a long day, and getting hungry! This nuisance has now pushed dinner back by 45 minutes. I returned my chicken, and ended up getting two for the price of one since they went on sale that day - so, not a total waste of time I suppose!

When all was said and done, I did manage to cut one (fresh) chicken into 8 pieces. And although they may not be pretty, there are 8 and that is all that matters to me at this point! I slathered them with herb butter, wrapped the prosciutto around them, and popped the things in the oven for an hour. These better taste good, I though out loud, as if the chicken could hear me.

And I must say, this was probably the juiciest and most flavourful chicken I have ever made. But in the end what this was really about was learning a new technique, and it looks like I am going to have to do alot more practicing.