Personal note to my favorite big brother: You're a pain in the ass! Please excuse my profanity, but as pretty much anyone reading this knows him, you will know that he is, in fact, a pain in the posterior. Whereas I can't talk to him anymore unless I've blogged — thus being able to avoid a stern lecture — I am henceforth and forthwith attending to my blog so that I may be able to communicate with him sans bitching.
This, of course, begs the question: If he's a pain in the ass, why would you want to talk to him? And it's a good question, dear reader (and by dear "reader," I mean that literally ... I'm pretty sure there's only one of you, and he's the subject of this paragraph.)
Well aside from being a blood relative, he's also a fairly amusing person to chat with. Funny looking, too, but it's really not his fault. Moving right along to the REAL subject of this blog...my recent adventures in fried chicken....
It was a dark, stormy night on the isle of Galveston. Rain lashed the windows of a well-hidden building just off Interstate 45, and the troubled workers within puttered to-and-fro among lines of modular desks. The workers, pale and red-eyed, muttered words like "dangling modifier" and "AP style" with the occasional heavy sigh, eye-roll and shout of "@*$&". The copy editors were restless....
OK, it was absolutely nothing like that. In reality, I was working late one night, when my fellow copy editors and I began a great debate on the merits of fried chicken and the best places to find it. Being a true Souther girl, I know the only real answer: my mom's house. And after an hour of pithy back-and-forth, I realized something. I needed a fix of the battered-poultry-in-hot-oil persuasion. What to do, though? Popeye's or KFC could, of course, have provided the necessary entree. But would that be enough? Would my craving be satisfied? No, I decided it simply would not do.
The next day I embarked on a shopping trip of epic proportions. Not since the days of yore has such a shopping adventure been attempted. Woe unto any of you who should follow in my steps, for the way is rife with uncertainty and peril. There was much to buy and little time.
As I fought my way through Wal-Mart, shoving aside little old ladies and puppies, leaping over pallets of vegetables and Tonka toys, I managed to procure an overflowing basketfull of flour, chicken breasts, potatoes, some Golden Crisp cereal (hey, everybody's gotta eat breakfast, right?) and a mixer, among other items of dubious usefullness.
My shopping completed, I oozed my way home in the sweltering Texas heat. After lugging bags of food and equipment into my air-conditioned apartment, I decided a little relaxation by the pool was in order. Popping a Corona open, I took the Da Vinci Code and lazed by the pool for an hour before deciding I was just cooled down enough to attempt the inevitable culinary disaster that was to be my attempt at making the famous fried chicken and potatoes of my forebear (aka Mom).
Potatoes were peeled and stewed, chicken was battered and slung into a cast-iron skillet. It was a glorious, momentous day for underachieving cooks everywhere!
About two hours later, sweat dripping from my brow (not into the food, that would be gross), I stumbled from the kitchen, exhausted but pleased with my work. I sat down to my feast and discovered the satisfaction that comes from devouring something you made all by yourself....except for six or seven calls to mom to make sure I wasn't screwing it all up.
