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Because Junie , who is one of my oldest blog-buddies*, loves this post enough to hunt it down, copy it and email it to me (since I am apparently too addled to locate my own past posts), I give you the recycled 'Chicken Post'.

*Oldest as in long-term. She is, in fact, much younger than me and has better hair. But she loves things like scrapbookin' as much as I do - which is not at all - so I loves her.

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I went to the grocery store yesterday, as I do at least once every day because I lack enough planning skills to make it through a single day without a trip to the grocery store. I don't know if it is because I am inherently cheap and I think that $40 spent daily is much less than $280 spent once a week OR if it is because deep down I still think of the grocery store as an escape hatch. When the girls were little I could get out of the house alone without too much trouble if I said I was going to the grocery store. God knows, Homer is not about to stand in the way of getting the pantry filled. Homer loves food more than he minded single parenting for an hour or two.

Well, there I am cruising the aisles when something catches my eye. A new product: Gold'n Plump Bake It Easy chicken in a bag. The easy part is what jumped out. 'Convenient bake-in-bag!' 'Sweet bbq flavor'. Hmm. This sounds like my kind of meal. No fuss, no mess.

Against my better judgement that says you don't pick up Sunday's meal on Saturday, I bought it. This worked out well since I came down with a severe case of the lazies today. After the weekly trip to Target, I was beat. Probably because I coughed up $160 dollars for.... Target stuff. The cheapskate thing again.

Okay, it is now Sunday afternoon and the oven has not succeeded in sucking the chicken out of the fridge and baking it on its own so I drag my lazy arse off the couch to jumpstart the "bake it easy" experience. I check the directions. I should have read all THREE steps of the instructions before proceeding but 3 things seemed like a lot to remember so I went with the one step at a time method.

Step 1 - Preheat oven to 350. Remove outer bag. Leave chicken in oven bag. Place chicken breast side up. Hmm, the oven bag is fairly opaque. How do I know which side is the breast side? I grope the chicken extensively and make a call.

Cut six 1/2" slits on top of bag for steam to escape. Place pan in oven......yada yada. Wow, they didn't lie. How easy was that? Except... I should set the timer.

Step 2 says it will take 1-1/2 to 2 hours or until the pop-up timer pops. Pop up timer? Where's that? I didn't come across it when I felt up that chicken. I grope around some more. Aha! There it is on the 'bottom' of the chicken. Well apparently I can't tell a chicken's breast from its ass cuz that's where the pop up seems to be. I can't really fault the chicken because if I, myself, were in a cloudy plastic bag anyone groping ME would mistake my butt for my breast if they were thinking the breast would be the plumper part.

At this point I can't simply turn the chicken over because I cut all those holes in the 'top'. The seasoning will all run out. My chicken won't be plump. I try to rotate the chicken in the bag. It's just too tight and all I accomplish is squirting myself with raw chicken juice which will probably give me a mad case of tuleremia. So I can't turn the chicken because of the holes and the timer won't pop out if it's pointed down. Hmm.

I am forced to think and suddenly this is not easy chicken after all! I rifle through the drawer-of-odd-things. I find one of those ring thingys that go on the top of canning jars (why don't they call it jarring?) and I place it under the chicken butt/breast like a little donut pillow. That should give the popper room to pop. I place the cockeyed chicken in the oven.

I check the chicken after about an hour. The chicken bottom is starting to look nicely browned but the breast is looking like boiled chicken. Ugh! Since the breast is the only part I eat, I make a radical decision. I break open the bag, free the chicken and place it breast side up on the pan. Only.... as I place it back in the oven I notice.....there is no pop-up timer ANYWHERE on the whole damn bird. I swear it WAS there and I swear it is now NOT there. I am swearing a lot.

I'm also exhausted and I have no idea how it will all turn out but I'm pretty sure this wouldn't have happened if I hadn't screwed with my one day at a time shopping policy.

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Note: For those of you who won't sleep tonight wondering where the heck the popup timer went, it was was under the skin, which is why I could feel it but not see it. Let me tell you that was one messed up chicken.

You all have a wonderful weekend! I hope to catch up with everyone on Saturday.... or Sunday?

Peace, love, time-management!