Murder Most Fowl

Bless me, Chef Thomas Keller, for I have sinned.

Heeding your story of slaughtering rabbits in The French Laundry Cookbook, I set out to be more deliberate about my ingredients. Your tale of squealing bunnies spurred me to savor the connections among animals, vegetables, the environment and my own nutrition. I joined a CSA, and things went well. I ate dirt-flavored beets and started growing sweet corn in my back yard. I ordered a grass-fed pasture-raised chicken from Au Naturel Farm in Kentucky (pictured above), which took two weeks to arrive.

With great intentions, I put the long-awaited bird in the refrigerator to thaw, envisioning a meal of locally grown veggies and fresher-than-fresh chemical-free meat. But the next day it was still a bird-cicle, so I begrudgingly drove through Wendy's for nuggets. The next night, it was still icy, so I went to Five Guys. A busy week of swim lessons, birthday parties and babysitters led my family through a nutritional spanking machine of frozen pizza, mac-and-cheese and SpaghettiOs, and every day the bird got pushed farther back on the shelf, behind crumpled Capri Suns and half-eaten Happy Meals.

When I finally got around to the chicken again, it had thawed, but it had also been out of the freezer for a good 12 days. I googled “chicken storage.” The Rachael Ray-loving basement-dwellers who blog about poultry protocol all seem to agree that chicken should not be out of the freezer for more than a day or two.

Grasping at straws, I checked the sell-by date on the package, to see if maybe coddled fowl could linger longer than factory-farm graduates. Jesus! This bird cost $20! Knowing that, I would cook it anyway—possibly test it out on the children.

My husband vetoed.

Surrendering to my sin, I unsheathed the carcass from its clear-plastic body bag and held it over the kitchen sink. As rose-colored chicken juice dripped into the garbage disposal, I gazed at the pimply plucked skin that would have been so delectable broiled and basted in its own juices. Just then, the muscle-bound neck slid out of the body cavity and plonked onto the floor of the sink. I think I heard a rabbit squeal.

I dropped the pale, headless bird and its now-free-range neck into the trash and reached for a can of SpaghettiOs, which I prepared in shame.

I did not recycle the can.

For these and all the sins of my kitchen I am sorry.

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