Year of the Chicken

When I was in China my first year, I went by bus or van to the capital city of my province to get a burger at Grandma’s Kitchen, a western restaurant-now-franchise started by “Grandma” in Chengdu, about once a month. I began doing this after experiencing an almost hallucinatory craving for beef following my long anorectic phase in the fall, and continued on the advice of my (own) grandmother, a retired RN, who insisted that I needed more iron and B vitamins than I was getting from pork, vegetables, and rice.

As I have low blood pressure, a tendency toward anemia, and a ridiculously melodramatic history of fainting – rivaling any hysterical romantic heroine of the nineteenth century – I listened to her.

I ate hamburgers then the way I now take my car in to get its oil changed: as necessary maintenance. Not that I don’t enjoy beef, because I do. I just don’t normally eat much of it and don’t think about it, ever, unless one of those crisis-like cravings hits me, which they occasionally do.

You can see, then, why I was less surprised than I might have been when, Monday night, I suddenly began fantasizing about eating an entire chicken.

Okay, I thought. Where did this come from?

I tried to think of what vitamins or nutrients a chicken might have – an entire chicken, especially – that other foods wouldn’t, but couldn’t come up with anything. After all, everything tastes like chicken. It’s the most unassuming, unobtrusive meat we have.

I tried to assuage the feeling by meandering around the Stop & Shop, which was closing in less than an hour, and eventually settled on some pre-cooked “sweet and sour chicken tenders”; for some reason, my fantasies involved only pre-cooked chicken, and as I had neither “chicken tenders” nor an entire chicken at home in my freezer, I decided that giving in to this was alright.

I ate the three “chicken tenders” for dinner, and lunch the next day, and I thought that was the end of the fantasy.

But today, even before lunch, I find myself thinking about it again: a whole chicken, glazed and brown, sitting in a petite plastic black-and-clear container. I eat my crackers, with marmalade. I eat more of them than usual – but no matter how many I eat, they are not chicken.

On my way home from work, I make up my mind. I will go to the store – to Gnazzo’s, the local grocery, which removes a bit of the corporate edge from my plan to buy something pre-cooked and packaged in plastic – and I will buy an entire chicken.

I will eat it for dinner.

I pull into the parking lot, find a space immediately, and go inside.

I’ve never bought an entire chicken before, not even one I would have to cook myself – I didn’t even buy the one my students brought into my house to turn into chicken nuggets for class one day, which they had selected live, and which was the best seaweed-flavored-saltine-coated baked chicken I have ever had, or expect to ever have – so the whole experience seems a bit daunting.

I am distracted by a sale on waffles – so inoffensively bland and convenient! – but the sale is “Buy One, Get One Free!” and each package has sixteen waffles in it.

“I don’t see how I could ever need thirty-two waffles,” I mumble regretfully, and pass them by.

The kind of cake my mother wants to try is on sale, but they don’t have lemon, so I pass those as well.

I am approaching the chicken stand. This is my last chance to abort this strange mission.

It’s a big responsibility, I chide myself. Are you sure you’re ready for this kind of commitment? You’re not going to have fun with it on the first day and then neglect it, letting its leftovers rot in the fridge until trash pickup three weeks from now? You’re not going to decide tomorrow at lunch that you’ve had enough of chicken, that chicken is “so yesterday”?

No, I answer firmly. I know what it means to buy a whole chicken. I can handle it.

So I go to the “rotisserie chicken” display – which has no actual rotisseries, but boasts a number of packaged chickens whose labels claim that they (the chickens, not the labels) have been cooked by rotisserie – and look down on my choices. They are all similar, a disappointing “Brown Sugar and Honey Flavor,” and yet unique, as chickens are in life. The packaging refuses to guess the size or weight of each chicken, the amount of air-space seeming to anticipate something larger than what rests inside, but the Nutrition Facts listing “Varied” as the number of three ounce servings per package. These chickens are from the Allen farm in Seaford, DE.

I choose a small-looking chicken with peeling skin. I’m not sure what a family with kids would go for, or someone having company for dinner, but they might care more about presentation than I do, so I leave the nicer-looking ones behind. I’ve always had a soft spot for the underdog, anyway.

Uncertain of the etiquette involved in planning to eat an entire chicken, I also pick out the smallest container of chicken stuffing I can find. Then the chicken won’t be alone, I think absurdly, though I have no idea whether “chicken stuffing” refers to bread that’s been cooked inside a chicken, with chicken pieces in it, or just with spices that complement chicken in a meal.

I take my purchases to the front and pay, asking for a paper bag – again, to lessen guilt, and for my recycling – and drive the one block home.

I set the chicken on my living room coffee table and open the package. I get a fork and steak knife – though again, whether this is strictly proper seems to matter more to me than I had anticipated, especially considering that I’m eating out of a plastic take-out container in my living room. I put out the stuffing and some applesauce, and I eat it with the chicken.

I eat probably a third of my chicken, which, again, is small, but no Cornish game hen. I learn that dark meat really does taste better than white meat, and that my tendency to view poultry as a conduit for salt probably results from my tendency to eat white. I remember what it was like to eat the skin and ask for more as a child. I marvel at the bone structure under the meat and wonder if the heart is still inside.

Then I put my chicken away, on the top shelf of the fridge where I’ll be sure to see it tomorrow, hoping for the best.

After all, tomorrow is still so far away.

Who knows what I’ll want to have for lunch?