Granulated Garlic

One of the more gratifying things about sharing my life on social media is the response I receive from posting stories about my kids. The greatest development in Facebook in my humble opinion is this app "On This Day" where you can access the posts that you made in years past on that particular day (today, April 5th, we have video of Beloved bashing some drums, and our neighbor giving three kids a lift home from school on his motocross bike). In the past I've been able to access the story of how we found our female cat was in fact a male (uncomfortable physical examination performed by yours truly) the story of me getting a pushpin stuck in my foot and Tank replying "Well I was going to put that in my corkboard but since it's been in your foot, I'll pass" or the time that Bumpo hid my birthday gift from Grandma and Grandpa since they sent it so early, and I never received it for my birthday. (Kudos to my father-in-law for calling Eddie Bauer back and apologizing for getting upset with their customer service when he assumed they had never sent the coat).

Raising a family has been overwhelmingly fun, and I have been glad to have shared it with my Facebook friends. This past week I shared a story about Tank engaging in political conversation with a Bernie Sanders supporter, and hilarity ensued. The image of my tow-headed heavily-freckled beach boy trying to educate an elderly man about the idiocy of voting Socialist is still one that brings me a lot of joy. And some people (well really none of my Liberal friends) seem to appreciate the humor.

A close family friend of mine, a longtime friend actually, insisted that I start a YouTube page about my family. Truthfully, I always thought I would love to host a cooking show, see because I don't think everyone would appreciate the earthy, non-pc, loud, never profane but rarely appropriate topics du jour that we confront and discuss over the dinner table.

But a cooking show. A realistic cooking show. A bedraggled woman with bags under her eyes, wobbly arms that waddle when I stir cookie dough, the constant influx of dog and cats (plucking various assorted cats off the kitchen sink who seem obsessed with running water from the tap) dirty floors, sticky surfaces, and crusty kitchen towels. There may be a market for that.

So for example here would be the storyline for this evening's episode.
Mom takes 3lb package of chicken thighs out of the freezer at 11 am to start thawing. By 3pm, the chicken thighs are still clutching one another in an icy embrace. Fine. Take the cast iron skillet and dish drain out of the second sink (their semi-permanent homes), plug the drain and fill the sink with hot water. 2 hours later, press the surface of the packaged thighs. They're soft, but not as soft as I would like, but time is of the essence.

Drain the water, trying to ignore the oily iridescent surface of the water (polystyrene packaging? GMOs? Dirty water? Awww...it'll all bake out). The phone rings (yes dearies we still have a land-line. I like to answer the phone and breathe heavily into the silence before I hear the chatter of background voices and a tinged "Hello?"). Then I hang up 'Click' because I live for the drama.

"TaAank my hands are ooky can you answer it?"
"Mom he wants to know if Dad is available."
"No Dad's not available" (Dad is still at work? Hello?)

Phone call extinguished, and I am left with a plank of frozen chicken thighs that were not as thawed out as I had hoped for. Take my raw-chicken-contaminated left hand, grab the closest sharp knife and start jabbing the chicken meat away from the plastic diaper-liner that food manufacturers soak in water before they freeze it to add to the total weight. Thankfully I thought far enough ahead to place the pan close enough to the sink so I can fling the plank of thighs into it. As I turn to toss out the dripping contaminated Styrofoam packaging of chicken juice, I run into Tank who is (guess what) making himself a bagel with strawberry cream cheese for a 5pm snack. "Excuse me"
"Excuse me"
"EXCUSE ME"
MOM WHAT THE HECK WHAT DO YOU WANT? (arms flung up in the air as we dance around each other in the a 3-ft diameter space between the island and the open frig, which is directly blocking access to the desired trash bin).

I WANT TO THROW THIS AWOUTTTT!!!

Trash delivered without any dripping of the chicken juice.

Olive oil (I'm so flipping proud of myself for figuring out a dinner idea that I start lugubriously flinging olive oil a la Giada. Olive oil drips over the edge of the pan and drips onto the floor. Enter the paper towels.) , poultry seasoning, S&P, where is the garlic? Wash hands. Comb through the contents of my refrigerator, tossing out an empty sour cream container and a bottle of fuzzy-white roasted red peppers (that pisses me off those things are not cheap!) and cannot find any chopped garlic.
Maybe I left it in the pantry. Nope. But there is an open bag of sweet potato chips that have been settled in the backcountry of the pantry since 2015.

Mm they still taste okay though. Toss.

Lower my STANDARDS to use the Granulated garlic I bought from Sam's Club in 2005 and heavily season the plank of thighs. Since my paranoia of E. coli runs strong, I am uncomfortable with handling raw chicken. So I grab a large roast fork, stab the plank and using Geometry try to figure out how to flip over the plank of chicken while still in the pan without a backsplash of oil and seasonings all over my navy blue tunic.
After I successfully turned the plank once, season, and then turn the plank back to skin-up in the baking dish, I set the infected roast fork on the counter.

Ew. Dirty chicken-juice'd roasting fork was set on the countertop.

Aw well. At least the tines aren't touching the surface of the counter.

Halfway through the baking (425 for 5 mins, lower temp to 375 cook for another 50-60 minutes) I check the chicken. The baking process has started to do its magic and the chicken thighs are starting separate. Fork-splitting them apart I see 1/3 of unseasoned chicken flesh, and go back to oiling and spiking the virgin flesh.

So No, I don't think any cooking show would be a raging success.

But maybe a roundtable discussion with Tank and his Millenial-era classmates would be a spicy encounter.