Bird Confessions

Someone asked if I cooked the turkey with the breast side down. To tell the truth, I'm not sure. How you see it on the table is how I cooked it, I think. And I'm not sure if that's the breast side that's up or not. I try not to look at raw whole birds too much.

My aversion to raw whole birds comes from two incidents in my childhood. The first, an ongoing occurrence, was hearing my mother cutting through whole chickens when preparing dinner. Just hearing the sound in my mind still gives me the willies.

The second incident was killing and plucking chickens at my grandparents' farm. My cousins and grandpa did the actual chopping off of the heads, but my sister and I had to wait for my grandma to dunk the headless chicken in boiling water and then we would have to pluck all the feathers off. The plucking wasn't too bad, but the smell of hot, dead, wet chicken is enough to make just about anyone crazy.

So, with the exception of Thanksgiving, I only use boneless, skinless breast portions. And when I cook the turkey, I cook it until the meat slides off the bones, so I don't have to do any cutting. There you have it. I'm a poultry weenie.