Work Part 1

Now I don't want anyone to get the wrong idea here. I'm not one of those old timers that walked to school uphill in both directions. I don't hobble around in a state of curmudgeonly rage (well actually I do, but that's only because everybody sucks) grumping about how "Kids now a days just don't understand the value of hard work". Quite simply...



Again don't get me wrong I  was always willing to work. Even though I've always had a misogynist sense that women invented work when the men weren't looking so they could have money( women invented money too I'll bet) to buy baskets for their potpourri  (why we need baskets for old leaves I'll never know. Couldn't we just leave them on the ground?). Still working seems like a fair trade off in order to have cool stuff.(Like potpourri baskets?) You don't have to like it. The world is full of stuff you have to do even though you don't like it.

Just to establish my working cred. I once worked 6 years in a row and never called in sick. These were 300 work-day years too, not the sissy 250 day years. I did 3 New England winters in an unheated cinderblock building.

I said they were New England winters!

When I got my first real job I would often work 80 hours a week every week of the summer, did that for 15 years. For 2 years I worked as a full time sub at a Junior High School (like being water boarded every day only not as fun) then did an 8 hour overnight awake shift at a group home ( awake, Ha! I had to quite that one because I started having lucid dreams while still walking around. A very creepy and unpleasant experience.) I spent a summer working at a Catholic mission for room and board and $5 a day spending money. We weren't mowing grass either, we were moving churches across the North Dakota prairie. Truth.

Now I'll be you're thinking "What a moron. that couldn't have been worth it", but you would be wrong. Cause I just got a job working in an office as a supervisor and it is easily the worst job I have ever had. My other jobs were physically challenging, low paying, uncomfortable, and sometimes dangerous, but office work? The customers yell at you. The people you supervise yell at you. The boss yells at you. Your peers distrust you and each other. You go home feeling like someone took a hand mixer to your brain. Wow, 30 years of bohemian nose thumbing at the middle-class then I find when I join the maddening crowd I was right all along. I wonder if I should sell the potpourri baskets on Ebay and just call it quits. Damn-it I'm even too crispy at the end of the day to go to trivia night and a beer with friends? Forget it. I still haven't recovered from St Patty's day.

I love fried chicken! and stents. Keep reading and you can have 2 of each.

I guess this was the long way around to the point that for most of you adding more work once you go home is crazy stuff. But... if you insist we'll fry up a mess-o-chicken to go with the french fries from Sunday. We'll take a different approach though. So there will be even more work and more mess, but less chance of setting the house on fire.

In the interests of a flame free kitchen.

I don't usually go for kitchen gadgets because most of them end up in the back of a cabinet after one use, but I'll make an exception this one time. If you want to make fried chicken an electric skillet is your baby. Buy a good one that gives you a dial for calibrated temperature control then take it for a spin before you cook, use a candy thermometer and a few inches of oil to see how close the settings are to real life. A good thermometer is kitchen gold.

1. Start with one chicken cut up if you like variety. Buy a package of all the same parts if you aren't.
2. Put all of the chicken, a quart of buttermilk, Mmm Butter... no  yuck buttermilk! for cooking only! a hefty shake of salt, and a hefty shake of tabasco in a ziplock bag. Combine and refrigerate over-night.
3. Season some flour. Pepper, garlic salt, cayenne, allspice... whatever you want. just mix it all in then place it a 9 by 13 pan.
4. Heat some lard in the electric skillet. Mmmm lard! or if you are a health (ha,ha) freak go with shortening. 350 degrees. Make sure the temperature is right. Use the thermometer.
5. While the lard, Mmm lard!, melts roll the chicken in the flower. Then let it rest for 15 minutes on a rack of some kind. A bakery rack is also your kitchen friend. See, there are so many must haves in a kitchen that the electric pizza maker is wasting space better used for other more useful purchases.
6. Lard,Mmmm Lard! 350, check. Chicken, soaked and rolled, check. Oven at 200, oops! do it now so you have a place to keep the cooked chicken warm, check.
7. Put the chicken in the skillet 2 or 3 pieces at a time. More will make the temperature drop too much and you will get greasy crust instead of crispy goodness.
8. The lard, Mmm lard! should come about half way up the chicken.
9. After 10 to 12 minutes turn the pieces and give them another 10 to 12 minutes.
10. Give the finished chicken a good sprinkle of salt.

Now that you know what a pain in the ass fried chicken is never do it again. Your Grandma made fried chicken because she didn't have a job, which didn't mean it wasn't a pain in the ass to make fried chicken, it just meant she could put 2 hours into dinner and another 2 hours into hosing down the aftermath. Why do you think she wanted a job in the first place, so she wouldn't have to make fried chicken anymore! You work too hard to spend a day making stuff that Kentucky Fried can do just as well as you do. Our corporate masters are horrible people but they know what we need after they beat us down. Mmmm fried Chicken!