Sad, bad chicken. Good, happy dogs. Go figure.

In the mid 1980's I read an article in the Point Reyes Light about roasting chicken. It was a column that ran most weeks, and while I cannot remember the name of the column, I remember the first name of the woman who wrote it: Laura. (I think. I could be wrong.)  This particular week she wrote about how her Grandmother roasted a chicken: rubbed it with dijon mustard that had been mixed with herbs (particularly tarragon) and a little oil and some salt and pepper and then the chicken was roasted for 15 minutes on one side, flipped to the other for 15 minutes, then breast down and then up and by then it was done. 

I made this chicken over and over and over in the Big White House and it never failed me. I showed my kids how to make it and I taught my brother John how to make it and we all loved this chicken. In the years after the mid 1980's I continued to roast chicken, not always with mustard but always successfully.

Until now. The chicken I roasted tonight was crap.  Have I lost the ability to make a good roasted chicken?  Am I fussing too much with it? I don't know. The oven in this place is like a furnace, so maybe it's too hot. The sides of the oven get too hot to touch, which is not safe and not good.  I will get a thermometer and figure it out, but suffice it to say that the roasted sweet potato was delicious, the chicken was stupid.

Dogs:  I am watching little Hannah, Gabe and Annie's dog, for a while.  Hannah is very soft, very cute and rather neurotic. (Sorry Gabe and Annie, if you are reading this.) Hannah is like an OCD kid. Things must be the way they must be. There must be no deviation.  She can only pee in certain places. And let's not talk about poo.  Oh, no, we cannot poop unless the grass (or tan bark) is perfect and not unless we have inspected it for five minutes.  And even then, she often walks away, looking for another perfect patch.

I am gone for 8 -10 hours a day. The dogs were home yesterday and today, alone, for all that time. I sort of expected to come home to my mattress shredded and the fake floors ripped up, but they did nothing bad, nothing wrong. They were happy to see me, we went out for a nice walk, they were as good as could be. Yes, Hannah is neurotic but so is Cooper in his way, it's just that I don't see his oddities as clearly because I live with him. But the two of them together are as cute as a pair of sock monkeys. 

Now, if I could only get the roasted chicken to be that endearing..... I would settle for a sock monkey chicken, seriously.  Sad, bad chicken.  Happy, good dogs.  Can't have everything, I suppose.  

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