For the past two weeks Sheri has been battling a very nasty cough that sends her into a minute long fit of hacking up a lung. It's sexy, let me tell you. This past weekend I had decided to use my new crockpot to make homemade chicken soup for the first time . I enjoy cooking, and I enjoy cooking for Sheri however she is such a meat and potatoes type of woman that I rarely get to spread my wings and try out new recipes. If I ask if she wants something in particular she'll answer "I'm not really in the mood for that. Can we just have the filet mignon and the roasted red potatoes?"
I don't want to toot my own horn here, but I can grill a mean filet and my roasted reds could win awards.
Luckily she said yes to the chicken soup and I purchased all the ingredients and threw them in my crockpot Saturday morning. By the time she got there Saturday afternoon she was already bugging me about being starving and if the soup was ready yet and then picked apart how I cooked it.
"Where are the noodles?" She asked.
"In a bag," I answered, confused. "You cook them when the soup is done then pour the soup over the noodles in your bowl."
"Oh. That's not how my mother does it. We cook everything all together."
I scrunched up my face and said "Well this is how I was raised cooking it. You don't put the noodles in while it cooks, that would make them all mushy."
The afternoon passed and we were sitting on the couch watching TV. Her legs were draped over my lap and she started convulsing and shouting "Scratch my leg! It's itchy!!" She likes me to scratch because I have long nails. I started scratching her ankle and she threw her head back and let out a "Oooohhhh yeeaaahhhh!! Oh God right there!!!!!"
"Sheri! Shut up! My neighbor will hear you!" I hissed.
That sent her into an absolute fit of hysterics which in result would make her cough like she was a pack-a-day smoker. She knows that I like to be quiet out of respect for my downstairs neighbor (even though that same night said neighbor did not extend the same courtesy). She kept going at it, letting out moans and yelps of pleasure just to get a rise out of me. She started laughing so hard that she ended up coughing so bad that she had to jump up from the couch and go to the open window to catch a breath. While she was hacking and wheezing, neighbor's friends were coming into the apartment and I could only imagine what they thought was going on upstairs.
After she settled down she resumed her spot on the couch and kept asking me when the soup would be ready for dinner. I made some comment, I don't recall what I said to trigger this response but she says "Well at least what we're eating didn't have parents."
I paused for a moment trying to gauge whether or not she was serious or if I misunderstood what she said. I looked at her curiously and said "We're having chicken...." like I was speaking to a slow person.
"Chickens. They don't have parents," she repeated with such conviction that I knew she thought she was correct.
"Yes they do," I said. "How on earth do you think chickens come to be?"
The corners of her mouth were struggling to hold back an embarrassed smile. "The eggs come out of the chicken's butt and they sit on it and it turns into a baby."
I couldn't contain my laughter at the complete naiveness of that statement. That is the answer you would expect coming from a pre-schooler, not a grown woman who makes a living out of eating all things meat. "No, Sheri. What do you think you buy at the supermarket?"
"An egg that didn't turn into a baby yet. I made an omelette the other day and when I cracked the egg open it had two yolks and I thought Oh, this egg would have been two chickens."
Oh my God, I really was having this conversation.
"Sheri....an egg needs to be fertilized in order to turn into a chicken. The yolk isn't the baby, the yolk is the nutrition that feeds the baby while it's growing in the egg. Why do you think vegetarians don't eat chicken?? Because it had parents! Why do you think there are Hens and there are Roosters?"
"I don't know, I thought Roosters just walked around to keep things in order."
I pinched the bridge of my nose and said "No. There are two different kinds of Hens. There are Hens that are specifically for laying eggs for us to eat. Those eggs are not fertilized because they are kept away from the Roosters. Then there are Hens that are specifically assigned for reproduction. They mate with the Roosters to fertilize the egg. Why do you think the eggs have the little light shine through them on the conveyor belt?"
She hesitated "I thought that was to like, sterilize the egg."
"OH MY GOD SHERI!" I shouted. "No! They shine the light through them to make sure there are no babies growing in the eggs!"
She squinted her eyes and asked, "Are you sure?"
"Yes Sheri. It's not like a chicken lays an egg and then *poof* it magically becomes a baby chicken! Like all eggs, it needs to be fertilized!"
She still didn't believe me so I actually had to google How Chickens are Made which someone explained the entire process of how eggs were fertilized, from beginning to end. After she read it she stated "I'm sticking to what I believe. An egg comes out of the chicken's butt, they sit on it, and it turns into a baby chicken."
With that she slapped her hands on her knees and stood up to go to the bathroom before dinner. I called after her "That's fine, believe what you want but I'm revoking your poultry card! And you call yourself a carnivore."
Since that conversation I have recieved a few more innane questions. Like, can a Hen lay a Rooster? (the answer is yes, a rooster is a male chicken!) Or if a cow needs a Bull to have a calf.
I swear, if she weren't already a mother I'd half expect her to ask if a woman needs a man (or at the very least, man juice) to make a baby and if so, could a woman give birth to a boy.
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