The Exploding Chicken

Note to self, found jamming up the hoover after a particularly frenetic fit of tidying-up:

My beard is a ghost.
(A guy whose beard is a ghost.)

Now, if I recall correctly, I'd promised to tell the tale of my vanishing eyebrows. Let me see. Well, it happened the week after I wandered away from the Internet in search of real-world excitement. It was the middle of July, and the city languished under a monster heat wave. It was too hot for long sleeves, too hot to sit on leather, and most decidedly too hot for cooking. I had ordered a selection of delicious cold treats from Stong's Market, somewhat along these lines:

- Three packets of cold deli meat (one each of ham, chicken, and turkey)
- Two English cucumbers
- One packet of baby carrots
- One bunch of celery
- One bottle of cool cucumber dressing
- Two pots of lime sorbet
- Eight litres of fruit juice, assorted
- Four litres of chocolate soy milk
- Two packets of bagel crisps
- One tube of goat cheese
- One box of Creamsicles
- One loaf of nut bread
- One pot of mustard
- A chicken.

I'm coming to the bit with the eyebrows, but first, I've got to explain about the chicken. See, what I'd meant to order was a cold roast chicken, to be eaten along with the nut bread and mustard. Quite delicious. They put thyme on it, and a bit of lemon, as well. I was rather looking forward to it.

Only, see--and here's where things begin to unravel--what you order from Stong's isn't always quite what you get. For instance, you might ask for two bottles of shampoo and two of conditioner, but they'll bring two bottles of shampoo and a hot-oil treatment. Or you'll ask for pretzels, and they'll bring water biscuits. That particular week, I asked for a roast chicken, and they brought an ugly ol' raw-arsed bird.

Under ordinary circumstances, I might've noticed the problem before the delivery boy left. That day, however, I was distracted. I hadn't paid my Visa bill in a couple of months, so I found myself in the embarrassing position of having my card declined. I ended up searching for my chequebook while the grocer's boy brought in the bags. See how it happened, there? The minute my back was turned, he slipped that chicken right by me. Whoosh!

I should've marched it straight to the food bank. I realise that, now. I'm not to be trusted with raw fowl (or anything that doesn't come with instructions.)

I should've marched it straight to the food bank, but instead, it went in the oven, with the temperature on four-fifty and the timer on three hours. (Why? Because you put a Schneider's Cordon Swiss in for half an hour at four-fifty, and a whole chicken's about six times that size. Sounds reasonable, right?)

Some undetermined time later, smoke began seeping from the oven. I opened the door to see what was afoot, and--and--well, something happened. I'm not entirely sure what. Something exploded, maybe. There was a whooshing sound, like gas igniting, and I think I saw flames. I wouldn't swear to it, though, because I closed my eyes instinctively when I felt the heat.

At any rate, the chicken was ruined. It was black on top, bubbly on the bottom, and pink inside. Some dimwit had jammed a bag of--oh, I don't know--some sort of innards--up its arse, and that had adhered to the broiling pan. It was an unholy mess, any which way you looked at it. Since the chicken was inseparable from the pan, I had to toss the whole lot. I imagine I looked a right pillock, marching down the Dumpsters with my oven mitts on, and the chicken still smoking away.

The evidence thus dispensed with, it was time to assess the damage to myself. My forehead was blistered, and my eyes stung like the dickens, but my eyebrows had borne the brunt of the explosion. The left one had burned away entirely, and the right one was grievously singed. I had to shave it off, for symmetry's sake. My eyelashes and the rest of my hair were crispy, but okay.

Now, as the year draws to a close, my brows are back to their former glory, and I've resolved never again to bake anything more complex than a pie. I can't remember who the man with the ghostly beard was, but perhaps the ghosts of my last pair of eyebrows are floating about the kitchen, searching for my face. (They won't find it. I'd have to go in there, first.)

That wasn't the only disaster I had this summer. Remind me to tell the one about the Day-Glo yellow watermelon goo, some time.