Food: Mishaps in the Kitchen

We all have our kitchen debacles.  For example, when I was about 9, I decided to make a jelly roll.  Instead of using regular dough, I used bread, crumbled it up, and added milk to it and tried to make that into "dough."  It didn't work, and was really gross-looking.  To make it taste better, I added jelly and stirred it all around.  What came out was an unseemly concoction that my mother served to me for dinner that night to "teach me a lesson."  I didn't eat it.  She cut me a deal: I could have regular dinner with them if I had NO SNACKS for the rest of the week.  Needless to say, I took the deal.  But I sneaked a snack anyway... several times.

Which brings me to tonight's debacle.  I wanted to roast a chicken, but it was still sort of frozen.  As in, the outside was soft, but the inside?  Rock-hard.  I didn't think this would matter; I'd just reduce the oven temp and roast it for a longer time.  No problem, and the house would smell delicious when I was done.  Which brings me to the thing I forgot.

The giblet bag.

Yup, there it was in the hole of the chicken, frozen in there solid.  Ice-pick solid.  I tried several methods of removing it, all while wearing rubber gloves (yes, I'm that wimpy about raw meat).  None of them worked, until it dawned on me: heat thaws frozen things.  (Who would have guessed that I have a masters degree?!)

So I popped it in the oven for an hour.  Took it out, got out a pair of tongs, and promptly removed the giblet bag.  It is now safely in the trash.  The chicken, meanwhile, is roasting and toasting in the oven, happily seasoned and getting ready to be devoured by the occupants of my house.

And no one was the wiser.