Beer Can Chicken

Beer Can Chicken
Originally uploaded by typingelbow.

I don't know how it happened, but it seems I grew up in the South without ever eating Beer Can Chicken. Apparently, I'm the only one who managed to miss this fabulous dish. If you are as lucky as I was yesterday, you'll have someone in your kitchen willing to cook one of these for you. Otherwise, run to the store and buy a whole chicken, a stick of butter and a can of light beer. Turn your oven to 450 degrees, and drink half the beer. Get to know the chicken biblically. If there's anything inside the chicken you bought, take it out and shove the beer can up the chicken's bottom. (He won't mind, much.) The chicken should look like it's sitting upright in the pan. Slather him with butter (maybe under the skin? I was sneaking hor'devours instead of taking notes at this point.) Then cook him for a while. 45 minutes, maybe??

The beer steams the chicken from the inside, and the resulting dish is moist and delish!! You can use a Sprite if you want, too.

Cheers!

Perky Hilton

This has been a fun week so far. First, I got to eat in two fabulous restaurants: Saul in Brooklyn and La Goulou on the Upper East Side. I ate food I can't pronounce both times and consumed two Michelin stars altogether. ((Now that Michelin has started nudging its opinions into New York, I can't even tell you what Zagat says about those restaurants. It's just so much easier to say, "It got two stars" instead of "This cramped but stylish bistro is hip with the size 2 fashionistas, but watch out for grumpy servers and raisins in the rice."

Secondly, through the course of my job--which I will never discuss here thanks to Dooce and Krucoff--I got to wear a 40-karat diamond ring yesterday. The salesman, in jest, slipped the rock on my ring finger ((of course it fit over my suddenly elegant knuckle perfectly)) and I barely felt the weight of the Chup-Chup sized jewel. Why, I suddenly started declaring statements in mah best suuthern accent, and ah just could not take mah eyes off that purty thing. I was wa-aving at people in the showroom, just flipping my hand back and forth to catch the light so it could twinkle. I felt like a Hilton sister. Perky Hilton, the chunky heiress who dates Alabama shipping magnates instead of the Greek variety. Who knew I'd be so easily transformed into a princess. One gigantic, shiny rock will do it.

Halloween

The end of the night...
Originally uploaded by typingelbow.

Here's my Halloween test.

Popping my own cherry

Don't tell my "friend" Tom at MySpace, but I'm about to jump ship and bring my click clacking to Blogger.

See you soon!

i fell off the wagon

my no-cigarettes wagon hit a bump in the road last night after several beers and a little coaxing from chris. but i'm back on the patch this a.m. i missed having the crazy dreams....

and i'm SO ready for my vacation to England. less than three weeks to go!!

Currently listening: Sumday By Grandaddy Release date: By 10 June, 2003

side effects of the patch

several of my friends already know this, but i am trying to quit smoking... again.

i decided to try the patch this time, and i put one on for the first time last night. i went with the medium-strength version since i smoke less than half a pack a day. i'm 12 hours into it, and things seem to be going well so far... i'm chewing a LOT of gum.

but the patch has some weird side effects, one of which my friend megann warned me about... you can sometimes have "vivid" dreams while you're on the patch. i was skeptical, but my dreams last night were like movies! in one, i dreamed that i was sitting on the bank of a pond on my paw-paw's farm, watching my dad and my brother swimming at sunset. while they swam around and laughed, i was watching for -- get this -- hedgehogs in the water. not water moccassins... hedgehogs. rabid little things, i suppose.

weird, no? i might start a dream journal to keep up with some of this stuff.

i sent this email to a few female coworkers today...

could you guys help me with a little something today? i am on breast watch... i put this shirt on this a.m., forgetting that the MF'ing buttons tend to pop open on their own. it would be handy at the after-after party, but in the office, it's a pain in the ass. so, could you guys just raise a big red flag if you see the girls coming out for an adventure? i'd appreciate it.

my seat is sore...

I saw Manhattan in a whole new way today: from the seat of a bicycle.
Thanks to my gracious host, who sensibly talked me into wearing a helmet, I have now biked through Central Park (it took me 35 minutes to get around the main loop. I was lapped by a kid with training wheels once.), Harlem, Inwood and Washington Heights. It was awesome. And I even managed to keep from flying over my handlebars when some chica opened her car door six inches in front of my bike.

It was a great time, and except for the fact that I may never be able to sit down again properly, I had a blast.

I learned a few things during our five-hour ride... Open fire hydrants are a special blessing. There is a neighborhood in Harlem Heights that looks like Quebec City, complete with cobblestones and row houses. There are men on this planet who box, salsa dance and bike all in the same week. And this city has a lot of hills. The only way I could keep pedaling at some points was to imagine twinkies and cheetoes falling off my ass.. All those spoonfuls of Ben n Jerry's vanilla ice cream, plopping to the ground after I pushed through each uphill stride. I did walk one particularly tough hill behind the Cloisters... It was so steep that I thought I might need some rope to repel back down it. Of course, I might have been able to ride up the hill if we hadn't stopped for lunch at a Harlem restaurant called Soul Food. For our mid-ride lunch, I ate fried pork chops, mashed potatoes with gravy, the best damn corn muffins I've ever tasted and black eyed peas. Oh, and a jug of sweet lemonade. I can't imagine why they don't serve that exact meal to all the racers in the Tour de France. Oof...