The story of a drunken fat-ass chicken...

As I've said before.. Wayne is pretty good in the kitchen. He rarely follows a recipe and just throws things in a pot that usually ends up quite tasty. But when it comes to something he's not familiar with he get's a little hmm.. how shall I say? Uptight? Yes.. uptight. Like all of us, he wants his new creation to turn out beautifully but when chartering unfamiliar waters he fusses over every detail and over thinks each step. If I hadn't been in that situation a few times myself, I would think he's going nuts.. but instead I try to be as understanding and helpful as I can, until he leaves me and then I quietly giggle behind his back. I'm so not nice, am I? ;) So as I was stuck in bed on Saturday, he was out on his sofa watching some show on Food TV that featured a chicken, with a beer can shoved up it's heiney, being grilled. Grilled? Beer? Poultry? I'm sure he could barely control himself while watching. Kinda sorry I missed his reaction. When I did venture out to see that the world still existed, and by that I mean I needed coffee, he hopped off the sofa and announced that he was going to grill chicken for dinner! Ta-da! Having not known what he had just witnessed, I was like.. "okay.. good for you, honey" and kind of looked at him strangely. He's never gotten excited over grilled chicken before, so I didn't get what got his britches in such a bunch? I propped myself up on my loveseat (yes, we have designated living room furniture) duly putting my feet up on all the throw pillows (that info is for my doc if she's reading - and I know she is.. right along with Val Kilmer and Tyler Florence) and listened to him go on and on about this fabulous beer can chicken. I was a bit alarmed as part of the story was about how the chef drank half a can of beer and then proceeded to cut the top of the can off. So I'm picturing in my mind's eye, Hubbs guzzling half that beer down (wasn't such a hard image to conjure up) and then trying to saw off the top with a circular saw.. there was blood, lots of blood and foamy beer everywhere. *shudder* After hearing his story and making him promise to not cut the top of the can off and to poke an extra hole or two in the top instead, I encouraged him to grill his lil heart out. His first duty was to run up to the store to buy a chicken and down the hallway he went (I think he actually skipped down the hallway) to our bedroom to get dressed. Once presentable and with a quick kiss on my cheek he was off. Fifteen minutes later he was back and carrying FIVE bags of supplies and a case of beer. That would be F.I.V.E. (5) bags (I wasn't shocked over the need to purchase a case of beer for one can shoved up the poultry's bum). I watched him unpack a very large chicken (big enough to feed a huge family), lighter fluid, a bag of charcoal, apple juice?, potatoes, several heads of garlic and two bottles of Hershey's Chocolate Shake chocolate milk for me (squeeee!). He so knows what meds to buy me when I'm ill. =) I snagged the milk from his hands, kissed him and went back to bed. Over the next two hours, he came into the bedroom with various comments and questions about how to season the chicken, what temperature the grill should be at, what to do with the gizzards and neckbone, should he be basting?, how will he know when the chicken is done? What temperature was that again, honey? Where do I stick the thermometer? Just wanted to let you know it's looking good and smelling great!, Shouldn't the skin be getting brown by now? So I sent him back outside with the camera and told him to take me a picture so I could see how it looked... This was after two hours.. it looked pretty sad to me and I couldn't help but to laugh. He's got one of those smoker things that can be used as a grill and a steamer as well.. here I thought he was using either our propane grill (that can also be used with charcoal) or the grill we take camping. Unfortunately, the smoker grill thingie just doesn't get hot enough for huge items to cook thoroughly (unless, of course you are smoking it for hours and hours and hours) when grilling. So that bird, which normally would have taken two hours tops, still had a good two hours or so to go. I thought he was going to faint when I mentioned that lil tidbit to him. So I told him it might be a good idea to preheat our oven and bake the chicken there. If he were to put the racks on the bottom there would be plenty of room for the chicken to still stand up on it's can. (no pun intended) I could tell when he brought the chicken in as the smell of smoke wafted back to our bedroom. I about died. He, obviously, forgot to take the old chips out of the smoker before putting the charcoal in. Gah. A little background here.. he bought a bag of wood chips a few weeks ago - a type he'd never cooked with before and I couldn't tell ya what the hell kind they were - to smoke a pork roast and some ribs. Whatever the hell type they were, they totally ruined the roast and ribs.. the taste was putrid and we still marvel at how we managed to even try the meat because getting a piece of it past our noses was amazing in itself. I waited to hear the oven door shut before I called him back to the bedroom and reminded him of the stanky and putrid pork. He said he took most of the chips out, he just left a few in.. well a few was a few too many. Can you see where this is going? Forty five minutes later, we had a beautifully browned chicken.. cooked to perfection. He took it out and let it rest. After five minutes we were both gagging. The smell was atrocious. We had hoped that because he had taken out most of the evil chips, that maybe just the skin would have that putrid taste and the meat would be fine. But noooooooo.. we were wrong. The whole fakkin thing tasted exactly like the pork of a few weeks ago. We had tears streaming down our faces.. because of the smell and the way we were both manically laughing. Three hours of cooking one chicken and some potatoes and none of it was edible. It looked fantastic.. but.. Gah. "Hello, Donatos? Yes, we'd like to order a large pizza..."