Confessions about Chicken

Prepare yourself. What I'm about to say may irreversibly change your opinion of me for the worse.

I've recently discovered canned chicken breast.

I know, it's shameful. But it's also pretty rad. It saves me the time of cooking it myself, and I actually think the taste and texture are pretty good. What that says about me, I'm not sure. Except that I'm clearly lazy and possess a palette that has quite possibly lost all touch with reality.

I'd been leery of trying chicken in a can ever since my unfortunate run-in with canned Alaskan salmon a couple of months ago. Words cannot, and I mean canNOT, describe the horror. I thought I was getting edible pieces of ready-to-eat salmon, but what I actually got was an entire salmon stuffed into a can. So unawares was I that I actually opened the can and poured it directly into the half-assembled mixture that was on its way to being salmon burgers. When I realized that I had just poured a whole fish, bones and everything, into the bowl, I about died. If you ever want to know what happens to fish bones that have been stewing in a can for who knows how long, let me just say that they expand and take on a very gritty texture. Thinking about it now, I'm relatively close to vomiting, so you can imagine how I felt then. Still, I actually spent a good half hour picking through the fish and even cooked myself a burger. What possessed me, I'm not sure. Except that salmon isn't cheap. And I really wanted a burger. But when push came to shove, I couldn't bring myself to eat it. I just couldn't. I swore off meat in a can right there and then. And yet here I sit, eating chicken salad made from canned chicken breast. Hypocrite? Maybe. Fool? Probably. Satisfied customer? Absolutely.

Also worth confessing is I'm currently drowning in chicken broth. I woke up last Wednesday morning with a voice about three octaves lower than normal. I called my friend and co-worker J to let her know I'd be staying home, and when she answered I hit her with the following:

TJN: "Do I sound like a man?"
J: (slight pause) "Isn't this a man?"

I drug my sweet and sour out of bed at noon and headed to the store for the 2 essentials: Orange juice (I choose Simply Orange because it's tasty and because we do those labels) and chicken broth. I buy low sodium because it makes me feel good about myself, and then I try not to think about all the salt I dump in once I realize that low-sodium chicken broth has the approximate taste of water. To this broth I add a little bit of rice and potato, and when I'm sick, this Sick Soup is the only thing I feel like eating. Well I've been eating Sick Soup for a week now, and I'm still only halfway through the chicken broth I bought. Which goes to show you should add 'sick' to the list of conditions under which you should never go shopping. You'll overestimate your needs, your degree of sickness, your capacity to eat chicken broth.

Had I not just discovered the canned breast, I'd say it was about time for me and chicken to go on a break.

(PS - How about them Cavs, huh?? It's just one game, and it doesn't exactly settle the LA-schooled-us-by-50 score, but for those of us in Believeland, it was the best day ever. You've got to give props to Cleveland fans. Our team is argulably the NBA's worst ever, LA beat us by 50 last time around, and still the Q was sold out.)
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