This is what my dear wife wrote to me when I told her about the chickens. She was sure that this was the meaning of the indecipherable (to me) words on the side of the chicken. Perhaps I should start at the beginning...
What are you to do, what are you to think, when a man stops by your office and gives you a few frozen chickens out of the back of his truck?? Clearly, he wants something. That being established, and having given the man what he wants, one is still left with the problem of what to do with eight frozen chickens. These aren't any chickens--there is writing all over the plastic that coats these chickens--one can imagine that it says how delicious these chickens are--much like the tasty chickens that come from the factories in the Southern United States where workers are locked into the work spaces during the day so that they don't run screaming form the factory line out into the clean fresh air (I digress)--the writing is clearly Arabic. Or, perhaps I should say the writing is clearly not English, not American fer sure... So, local chicken, wrapped in local plastic with local writing all over it--what's not to like. These things are crying out "beer can chicken"! You can practically hear it now--the clucking... Of course, we don't have any beer cans... But, Sprite-can chicken doesn't sound too bad; not as bad as near-bear chicken anyway...
You know what my wife said when I told here about the chickens and their colorful and wordy packaging (see above). I am somewhat more adventurous than my wife--after all, I am in Iraq and she is in San Diego taking care of the kids and dogs and cat and fish and house and having a baby--hardly a challenge! Anyway, being somewhat adventurous AND having an advanced microbiology lab at my disposal, not to mention a hefty stock of antibiotics, I decided that I could chance it... Think of it as a public health inspection—for the good of the people….
So, a few of the chickens were thawed, washed lovingly, dried tenderly, rubbed vigorously with various spices, and placed ever so gently on a can of lemon-lime soda and a bed of warm coals... I should mention that there was some discussion over the amount and placement of the coals; the relative merits of using Iraqi charcoal (hotter and faster) versus Kingsford (longer and slower) were also discussed at length and was the decisive factor in the final amount and placement of both the coals and the chicken...
Eventually, more of the "right" coals were added and the chicken cooked to a perfect golden brown on the outside and a tender, juicy (well, it was juicy--tender may not be an entirely appropriate descriptor in this case) inside...
You can see the immediate results here...
Shortly after, this was all that remained... Anyway, this is what the chickens looked like when we got through with them...
What did we learn? Iraqi Fried Chicken isn't the same as Kentucky Fried Chicken, but it is much better than a kick in the teeth...
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