I am very, very good at lots of things. Unfortunately, cooking is not one of them. Oh, what I cook is certainly edible, and sometimes downright tasty, but my cookbooks continue to gather dust while I stick to the simple basics I know.
Last week, I was busy at my keyboard writing when it occurred to me that dinner existed only in my imagination unless I took a time out to get it from the fridge to the cooking dish and on into the oven.
The main dish was chicken hinies (pronounced high-knees). That would be chicken hindquarters by any other name. Chicken hinies take about an hour, so I quickly turned on the oven to preheat as I hurried to get them prepped with a little Cajun seasoning. Then I began placing them into the glass baking dish.
I was cooking four hinies from a value pack of 10 such pieces. That’s a total of eight individual pieces of chicken, but it’s actually four thighs and legs that are still attached to each other. I nestled two hinies into the dish just fine. But the second two pieces refused to interlock the same way.
***It may be noted here that my lowest score on the Graduate Record Exam (it is necessary to pass the GRE to be accepted into a Master’s program) was in the Spatial Recognition category. I admit it: I cannot back a boat trailer or roll my hair while looking into a mirror. I simply do not think that way.***
So there I stood, with a chicken hinie in each hand, turning them this way and that, trying to configure them to fit the space left inside the baking dish. My brow was furrowed like a California prune, and I’m sure I was about to gnaw my lower lip clear through.
A friend of mine was working at the dining room table. He was configuring the audio mix on a recording I’m making of one of my books. He quickly took in my dilemma and said, “Why don’t you just swap one of those parts in your hand for a left side portion?”
“WHAT THE HELL?!”
I’m 56 years old, and until that very moment it never, ever, had occurred to me that there were right and left sides to a chicken, and that there’s absolutely nothing you can do to get two right-hand hinies to nestle.
Red-faced, I did swap those pieces, nestled the hinies and slammed them into the oven. Then I went back to my writing. Writing is a right-brained activity. You don’t even need the left side of your brain until you get to the editing. And both those things I can do, well, even without a recipe.
