Chicken Legs And Fridges

I know, I've not been around again. I'm still to make it back out of the bad blogger hole. When I'm wonderfully rich I shall sit around watching tennis (which I have to admit I'm currently doing anyway) and write about food all day long. A girl can dream.

For now, here's one of the things that happened this weekend, The Glutenite did it.

We've recently been buying whole chickens to smoke, basic brine, overnight soak and then into the smoker. It's ridiculously easy and yum. There's not much prep involved here, just take the chicken out of the brine, put it into the wood chip loaded smoker then create the foil tent to go on top and seal.

However, The Glutenite added another step to proceedings this time when left to his own devices in the kitchen. 

*Shouts from the kitchen*

TG: "Shall I take the string off?"

*Replies from the sofa*

ME: "No, it's to hold the chicken together while it cooks" [Actually, you said "it's up to you", which I understood to mean there would be no consequence - The Glutenite]

Soon after there were the familiar sounds of the juices sizzling and the wafts of gorgeous wood chip smoke. Lovely.

Then I got a semi panicked call to come to the kitchen where this had happened:

Wat?!

Can you guess how this happened? How the leg of the chicken had burst through layers of tin foil?

I'll tell you. Someone took the f***ing string off. That's how.

As food smoking goes, you don't get much more of a disaster than a huge bloody gaping hole in the apparatus.

TG: "What should we do?"

ME: "Dunno"

At this stage I couldn't contain my knowing laughter.

I would have loved to have been in the kitchen when that happened because it is a bit Alien-esque and it makes me laugh to think of it busting out all dramatically, giving anyone in the small vicinity a bit of a shock. The Glutenite was there, fittingly.

We ended up leaving it as it was, gaping hole untended to.

There wasn't much hope in terms of smokiness, how could there be, it's meant to be sealed. I don't know how but the chicken came out as smokey as any other we've done. Stringgate was avoided and it was lovely, but a total flipping mystery. 

Writing of which, I find the fridge a mysterious and often daunting space. Not in the Ghostbusters "generally you don't see that in a major appliance" kind of way but... well, look:

I bought the biggest fridge (to fit the very limited space) that I could when we moved but it's just not big enough (very first world problemy I know). Getting all this in took me an age and a considerable amount of patience, it's like a puzzle. A really difficult foodie puzzle. It's also dangerous as you never know what's going to come flying out at you, I'm currently sporting a cut on the top of my foot from an attack by a random chocolate mousse.

So yeah, fridge mysteries, how to get everything in, how to find anything not right at the front and random attacks. I hope it's not just our fridge that looks like this.

Could this post be any more random?!