Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Naked Chicken


The last few months, I’ve been working hard to get my YA novel, Screwing Up Babylon, ready to be published. And normally, I plan out my responsibilities pretty well so there’s no disruption to my family.

Last night was an exception. I’d planned on baked herbed chicken thighs for dinner. I was going to rub a combination of lemon-pepper, garlic, and fresh rosemary on the chicken.

But I was a little late getting the chicken out of the freezer. Normally, I take it out first thing in the morning. Instead, I took in out right before Matt’s piano lessons—about five hours too late. Then, I didn’t have time to defrost in the microwave because I ended up getting home late from lessons—the van stalled while I was making a left turn and I was without power steering or brakes (very scary).

Anyway, when I got home and went to put the thighs in the oven, they weren’t quite defrosted enough to properly rub. So I cranked the oven, put the chicken in, and made plans to rub the chicken after it had been in for twenty minutes. 

In the meantime, I’d edit. My editing was going really well. Then college student number two asked me when dinner was going to be ready. I said, “Five o-clock.” She said, “Uh, it’s after five now.”

So we ate. Everyone sat down, and I served the thighs. Finally, someone said, “So what kind of chicken is this?”

I said, “Naked Chicken.”

Child: “What does that mean?”

Me: “It means I was busy editing and forgot to season the chicken.”

Child: “Um, we’ve never had plain chicken before.”

Me, taking BBQ sauce and sweet and sour sauce from the fridge: “Now you have.”

Child, taking a bite: “This isn’t so bad.”

Then my youngest child began squirting different condiments on his plate and said, “This is customizable chicken!”

Yep, that’s it. Customizable Chicken. Think about the marketing opportunities!

7 comments:

  1. Naked chicken is far better than chicken-that-got-locked-in-the-oven-on-clean-mode.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Rebekah,

    I sense an interesting story there.

    ReplyDelete
  3. CUSTOMIZABLE CHICKEN. That is the cutest thing ever, I love it.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I love the way you and your family handled this. With the way your youngest came up with the "customizable chicken" label, he's a natural for advertising ... or politics.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I hate when I forget to take the meat out, usually that means we have grilled cheese sandwiches and soup. I love your idea of customized chicken, even better is customized dinner (of course we call that make what you want dinner)

    ReplyDelete
  6. Everything is cooler when you can customize it. :) I totally knew where this story was going once you said you were going to season it after 20 min. This is why I can't cook anything that involves long defrosting. I will always forget to take the meat out early enough. :P

    ReplyDelete
  7. Customizable chicken is a great concept. Certainly sounds like something that would be marketed!

    ReplyDelete