The Whole Chicken

I do not profess to be a great cook, but we certainly do okay. M*ijer had whole chickens for $4.99 and we bought a few to give away last Wednesday. It was such a fun thing to surprise people with the extra gift. Anyway, I had 1 for us too. Now... I have never prepared a whole chicken before, but thought it would be a nice experience for the kids to help with preparing it. Jordan helped with taking off the skin and I cut up onion, celery and an apple to sit in the bottom of the crock pot. When it came to opening the bag of innards I had expected the heart, liver and neck and told the children so. Imagine our surprise when we pulled the neck out and the head was still ATTACHED! The beak and hollow eye sockets were a shock. Jordan had named the chicken during cleaning and was saying how much she was ready to be a vegetarian so when she found the head, she started opening and closing the beak, used a chicken voice (and a strange voice it was, LOL!) and had the chicken plead with us all to become vegetarians and to not eat him. It was very funny.

They all examined the heart (which they have seen lots of times as I often fish with chicken hearts) and thought the liver was "nasty". I did not take pictures...the whole transferring of raw meat juices thing, but I plan to buy another whole chicken because it was delicious, tender and made a beautiful broth that I cannot wait to use.

A fun science class for all.