mmm....fresh brains...

Well, believe it or not, after nine years of marriage, I've finally adopted this strange custom of cooking dinner. What I thought was a very mundane and simple chore has, thanks to people like Martha Stewart and Betty Crocker, become an event that can consume you.

It starts with the little things really. Those little gems of advice that begin to preoccupy your brain and your freezer space:

"Save all your miscellaneous bread crusts. Eventually you will have enough to make an exquisite bread pudding or plenty of bread crumbs." Now my freezer is full of these bread bits. I'll probably never use them. What do I need bread crumbs for anyways? But... I do imagine using them. Someday my bread butts will become a culinary delight of great magnitude... the likes of which this world has never seen before! Thanks Martha!

"It's less expensive to buy an entire chicken, and cut your own boneless, skinless chicken breasts, than buying pre-cut breasts." Which really means that you save a few cents and get the added pleasure of wrestling a slippery dead chicken carcass for about three hours, until you have mangled it beyond all recognition, and have eventually extracted something that may, or may not be, a breast.

"Oh, and don't throw that chicken carcass away! Save up chicken bones and make your own chicken broth!!" Even though I didn't know what the hell I'd do with three gallons of chicken broth... I made it anyways. I saved all my chicken bits and bones... put them in a pot with some water, onions and carrots....and boilded that shit like crazy. In the end, I had what appeared to be a brownish chicken jell-o goo that was surprisingly taught and springy.

Now, thanks to Betty Crocker, I've got two tubs of chicken jell-o in the fridge...next to my bread butts. Maybe someday I'll make a gelatinous chicken-based bread pudding or something. Mmmmm...delicious!

And why do I do this? Well, since I've got the time, I figure I owe it to Brad to provide him with a nice meal after a long day of classes. And it gives us a chance to catch up with each other. You know, have wonderfully sophisticated adult-like conversations over a glass of wine...while dining on...what looks like...mangled chicken bits with a mysterious brown gelatinous goo on the side. Lovely!

Unfortunately, after spending the afternoon dissecting a chicken carcass, I don't have any stellar conversation readily available when asked about my day. Brad however, is a wellspring of vivid dinner time dialogue.

Today he had neuro-anatomy lab... and a three hour lecture on skin disorders. Over dinner and wine, Brad defined the different terminology used to describe rashes, scabs and various oozing skin lesions! Mmmm...pass the potatoes please! Oh, and in neuro-anatomy, Brad and his classmates were presented with buckets of brains this morning. Human brains. In buckets. Lovely! More chicken jello please!

And according to Brad, brains are awfully slippery. One of the students dropped his brain on his lap. Oh....and did you know that when you drop a brain...it bounces. You see, brains are heavier than you'd think, and kind of rubbery....an excellent combination for rebound capacity! And dealing with brains wasn't bad at all...they didn't smell or anything... "because these brains were fresh."

Which begged the question..."Brad, do you mean they were fresh from the bucket...or fresh from the source??"

"Fresh from the source."

Well...that about did it. Thanks Brad. For making me realize that it doesn't really matter if my culinary aspirations only amount to a shredded pile of chicken bits drowning in a gelatinous goo...I'm not feeling very hungry anymore anyways.