Chicken in a Blanket

Cooking has never really appealed to me. For years I subsisted on cereal, bananas, canned soup and baked potatoes. When I had Heath I branched out into pasta making, frozen vegetables and take-out. But this summer I decided to try to make a concerted effort to cook meals at home. With two children it's the healthier option, as well as the least expensive option. And it turns out, I kind of like it.

Now it can't be anything too complicated. Vegetable stir-fry has become my specialty. You can mix it up with a variety of vegetables. Eggplant. Broccoli. Cauliflower. Cannellini beans can make it zing. And I've even tried my hand at tofu. But today, I decided to embark on a different journey. I made fried chicken.

Two weeks ago I was at Trader Joe's, obsessing over a cute package of chicken drumsticks. No antibiotics. No hormones. Great. I haven't eaten chicken in 20 years, but the kids and Mark love it. We'd recently had dinner at my mom's and the meal was fried chicken. All three of them happily inhaled an entire platter. But what was I going to do with these things? Do you put it on the stove? In the oven? How does one make the batter? Is that even the right word, batter? It was all just too much, so I put the package back and headed off to the noodles. Pan. Water. Boil. Done. That's all I need to know.

One week later. Back at Trader Joe's. Back to staring at the same chicken drumsticks package. This time a crowd is starting to gather, which makes my thinking process that much harder. A nice lady picks up her own package of drumsticks, smiles at me as she tosses it into her cart. Just like that. No thought, no hesitancy. It's clear, she's made them before. Do I ask her what she does? No. I have two children in the cart with me. I should know this. I move on to a package of thin pork chops. Aunt Debbie told me that Heath loved the pork chops she made recently. Pan. Cook. Flip. Cook. Done. Okay, I can do those.

Another week later. Today. Trader Joe's. Drumsticks. I grab, toss them into the cart, and go. If I think too much, I won't do it. Done.

While I'm sitting in the car pool line, I decide I'll try making the fried chicken for dinner. I try to call my mom to see if she can tell me how to cook it. No answer. During their naps, I go online and try to find a recipe. I google: Easy fried chicken.

Now, I should probably say at this point, there's something about me and reading directions. I have a habit of not. I skim, get the gist, and hope for the best. This rarely works out well in any situation. It's a bad habit. And one that is really unfortunate when it comes to cooking, when precision, especially as a novice, is key.

But why go changing my ways when I'm getting ready to make fried chicken for the first time?

I "read" a number of recipes. Some talk about baking at 425. My mom doesn't bake hers. She uses a cast-iron skillet. I do not have a cast-iron skillet. And my mom, who I usually talk to up to three times in one day, has decided to be somewhere, doing something else, besides waiting for my phone call about how to make fried chicken.

A lot of the recipes mention flour, salt, pepper, buttermilk. I've got all of that, except for the buttermilk, but surely whole milk will suffice. And for some reason I remember my mom using an egg. (She still isn't home. Where the heck is she?!)

Heath woke up and stumbled his way into the kitchen, Puppy in hand. He immediately wanted to help, so I let him dump all the batter ingredients into a bowl. Then Stella wakes up and she's in a mood that requires holding her. And I'm suddenly concerned about my olive oil bubbling pan and it splattering all over my children, and raw chicken meat and salmonella. So I'm trying to hold Stella, help Heath make the batter, rinse raw chicken, excessively washing my hands after touching anything, so I don't spread uncooked chicken whatever all over everything.

The pan is really popping now and I'm pretty sure the thick, kind of lumpy flour mixture isn't quite right, but it's too late now. I sequester the kids on the other side of the kitchen, lest a wild oil explosion land on them, while I get down to the business of rolling the drumsticks in the goop and throwing them into the pan.

I put the lid on and tell Heath he can take a peek in a few minutes to see the chicken cooking. I'm feeling nervous about the giant lump-logs inside the pan, pretty sure I've completely made a mockery of a southern tradition, and should probably have my license revoked. And my mom STILL isn't answering her phone so she can tell me where I went wrong.

After a few minutes, I cautiously open the lid and hope that whatever has happened is somehow salvageable, and maybe still edible.

Move the lid, I want to see it, Heath said, over the cracking and popping sounds.

It looks like a wet, mess of floured oatmeal covered chicken. I take the spatula, carefully scoop up the first leg, and turn it over.

It's a pancake! Heath screams with delight.

And that's exactly what it looked like. A giant pancake stuck on top of a chicken leg. Each one that I turn is the same. Pancake atop fowl leg. I start to wonder how I can pass this blunder off as some sort of a Pig in a Blanket (but Chicken) delicacy. But I continue to let it cook, and the pancakes sort of fall to the side. And suddenly, it starts to look a bit like fried chicken.

The true test came when Mark walked in the back door. He immediately sniffed the air and headed to the stove. The look on his face said everything. It was going to pass for a decent first try.

Of course, the taste test was going to be the final verdict. Between the three of them, they ate 7 pieces of fried chicken. I'm sure Mark would eat them just to not hurt my feelings, but not Heath and Stella. They said, More chicken, please, and, mo-wah.

I think we should get take-out tomorrow night.