Let me just start out by saying I might be cheap but I'm not free.  Also, as clearly indicated in previous post (and will be demonstrated in later ones as well) I am not in the least tacky.  Mostly, I'm classy, bitches.  Recognize.

Now that we have established our groundwork for the day I can move on...

I consider myself a thrifty woman.  I like to use the great powers of my mind to look for a bargain and comparison shop!  I'm one of those people who pulls out the calculator on her phone to calculate the cheapest price by ounce of a product before choosing which to buy.

I know what you are thinking.  You want to be just like me because I am so cool.  And you can!  For 3 easy payments of $29.95 I'll show you how!

As I am so thrifty, I have taken to buying whole chickens rather than pieces, naturally.  It's cheaper (I only purchase  them when I can buy one for under $5) and I have a few ways to cook whole chickens either in the over or crock-pot.  I freeze the left overs in serving sizes and add them to recipes as needed. It's a win/win, right?  Well, yes, but I but I don't always care for the texture when it is cooked in the crock-pot.  It's a little soft- stringy, or "shredded" tasting.  That perfect for soup and great in fajitas, and chicken pot pie, but that's about it.  (That seems like a good list, but it's still warm out here so that's not as great a list of foods as it will be in about 2 months.)

The other day I was folding up some laundry and watching the cooking channel when I, of course, became very inspired.  Let me just say that the dinner dishes from cooking channel days are a bitch.  I start thinking I went to culinary school or something and have about a 50% success rate in turing out eatable meals.  The dude on the cooking show, whatever the hell it happened to be, was slicing and dicing up a whole chicken talking about how it's less wasteful and basically Candace-tastic.  So I say to myself Hey!  Duh!  Slice that bitch up next time you buy a chicken!  So, I bought a couple chickens and that's what I did.

However, if it was a simple as that, there would be no point in interwebbing it.

Here is how it actually went.  I get this chicken (well, chicken carcass) and get it out of the plastic packaging it is in.  I've done that lots before so I have my trash sack close by to catch the trash and i'm next to the sink to catch the splatter and drips.  This time, tho there was this maxi pad thing by the chickens ass.  I guess it was jus a regular meat drip absorbency pad thing, but the position it was in was a little uninspired.

By the way, did I mention that this post is alternately titled:

My Case for Vegetarianism

Once I have this chicken in front of my and my very best dull knife in hand, I say what would be the easiest way to get this meet away from the rest of this thing?  And the answer comes to me like a voice from a television show, because it was, saying it is so easy to cut these chickens up!  Just remember to cut along the joints and it's easy peazy.  That is totally a quote because it is definitely true that more people than me talk like that.  

In my head this translates to: cut this thing in half first!

Well, that did not work.

So then I started hacking away and finally managed to get a leg off.  I spent another couple of minutes taking the thigh away from the leg.  Those two were really attached!

That's how it went with the first one.  Little son of a bitch!

So, I get it all done and take on the second bastard.  This time, I see my scissors and there is this light on them like a glow from heaven and angles started singing when I picked them up.  It was divine!  (OMG- do you notice how funny I am today?!!  Wholly Hell!  This is good shit!)  I use my handy dandy scissors to undress this chicken from its skin.  The act of was actually a lot less creepy than I made it sound right there.

I found out two things, at least, today about chickens.

1.  (this is about my knife but it's my blog so I can do whatever I want)  My knife is handy and since its so dull the back is almost as sharp as the front.  I want a double sided knife.  A kitchen sword!  ...i'm on to something here...

2.  Chickens are easier to cut up once they are undressed from their skin.

3.  If you chop up a chicken and then ask your husband to grill it, he will.

4.  Those chicken chopping people on TV have some mad skills and/or a very sharp knife and editing equipment.  All things I lack.

5.  I managed to get a full casserole dish of chicken (once it was all dismembered and grilled) for around $9.

6.  I am surprisingly good about at chicken humor.

7.  If meat wasn't so delicious I would not eat it because it is actually kind of gross.  Or at least chickens are.

That is all, for now, good folks.

This post is alternately titled:

Bringing Back Duh

Those heavenly chocolate chip cookies I made the other day are, wait for it, yes, heavenly.  I love them.  I love them with a fiery passion.  I have loved all 75-82 of them I have eaten.  I loved and appreciated each one in it's own unique way for it's own special gifts and qualities.  Of course I did.  Jesus, I'm not a barbarian.

However, I am a bit disappointed at the effect they are having on my body.  (But that does not diminish my love.  That is unconditional.)  I've read that you can combat fat with fiber.  Heeded not did I.  Heeded not.  Damn!  I should have sacked them full (yeah, you can sack things full.  Try it.  Duh.)   I don't often find use for the word distended.  However, no other word quite describes what is going on with my former stomach, now a gut, quite like distended.   It is.  Distended.  Shit!  ...wish I could....

I would load up on fiber (i.e. sack myself full of it) like I was going for the gold in constipation olympics, but tomorrow is my first day of lecture and that would be... awkward.  Memorable, but awkward.  "Hello scholar-lovelies.  I have consumed 87 servings of fiber to combat my distended gut due to a love of glorious chocolate chip cookies and a disregard for moderation.  Now, you must excuse my while I cherry bomb the toilet with the innards of my bowels.  Feel free to read ahead."

Don't I paint a lovely picture?  Don't you want to be my friend?  I am not at all gross.

Also, I have decided that I like to use "duh"when I am on the interweb.  That is the most appropriate place for it, after all, where the whole world can have access to its witty essence.  Also, just so we are clear, I only use it as a 12 year old smart ass with braces, bad hair and attitude-eyes would use it.  That is, after all, the only appropriate use for such a word.  Duh.

And, if we know anything about anything, it is that I am the epitome of appropriate.  Duh.

Until we meet again,
Me
Duh, who did you think it was?

This post is alternately titled

The delicious cookies born of DOOM and DISASTER!

Once upon a time in a village far far away lived a girl (used very loosely here) who desperately wanted to be skinny.  So much so that she even got a gym membership and used it regularly.  However, one fateful day in early september, her ever present craving for chocolate chip cookies became so powerful that she said, 'Imma make me some of those!'

This cookie making session began like any other, by locating the chocolate chips, of course.  Alas, upon reading the recipe on the package, our heroine was unsatisfied  decided to look up the toll house recipe on line (this one).  Our heroine, lady that she was, said "Ah hell nah!  I can't be having all that mess! Imma substitute regular flour for whole wheat and half the butter for organic low-fat-vanilla yogurt and all those sugars for raw sugar."  Secretly, she knew that she would be eating at least 75 of the cookies so this only made sense.

Our lusty heroine (why not, right?  There aren't any pictures here...) put the stick of butter in the microwave and heated it for 10 seconds as she dumped the sugar in <strike>my</strike> her mixing bowl.  With the help of her fine skills of observation, she realized that the butter wasn't quite softened enough so another 10 seconds was thought to fix that.  Into the bowl the butter went.

After mixing for a moment, she realized that her amazing powers of observation might not have been quite so amazing and the butter might not be quite softened after all.  Of course, the only logical thing to do in order to dislodge the too-hard butter from the mixer mixing thingy was to get her blow dryer.  Duh.  BOOM!  Worked like a charm!

Once the butter was actually softened and all fluffed into the sugar and vanilla, enter the eggs!  Now, our heroine being the master of efficiency she truly was saw no need to stop the mixer and raise the head to crack the eggs.  Rather, she cracked one on the side, but in a stroke of bad luck, most likely the result of some sort of curse, half the egg shell fell into the mixing bowl!  Forsooth!  (that fits here, right?)

Our lovely heroine tried to pull out as much of the egg shells as possible, but again, her powerful urge for cookies kicked in and she said, "fuck it" and went on with the business of making her own personal ambrosia.

The cookies, born of doom and disaster, with the help of a multi-purpose kitchen tool, aka a blow dryer, turned out delicious and delightful, albeit crunchy.  As a result, everyone lived happily every after and there was piece on earth.

The end.

PS- As for mixers, that'a the one I have and I LOVE it!!