NFTN 11: The Bloody Chicken

In my application to be a nanny, I listed all my domestic skills and did not omit anything muy importante--facts like: "I've cooked all kinds of food before except meat." I just wanted to give fair disclosure. My mother cooked the meat in our house and I saw her wrestle with the bloody chicken and cut pieces and cook it, but never did anything myself.

One day, after 2 months at the Shore, we were back in Bedminster in the old house, and Lisa told me she wanted me to cook a chicken. She pointed out instructions she'd left behind on the counter. They were idiot instructions. She had drawn a picture of the oven knob--"1. Turn knob to 375 degrees"; 2. Take chicken out of refrigerator; 3. Put chicken in oven." For all the detail she left behind, she didn't tell me how long to cook it. I didn't know anything about cooking meat. But I knew how to operate an oven, excuse me.

So I took the bloody chicken out of the fridge, and put it on the rack in the oven. Burger King style. I didn't know I was supposed to keep it in the pan, and she just said to put the chicken in the oven. I must have been thinking BBQ because nothing seemed odd to me, until smoke began to pour out from the oven. I panicked. I was 18, and far away from home, and too terrified to open the oven. I called my mother. "Mom!" I said, "Lisa told me to cook a chicken and now there's smoke coming out of the oven and I don't know what to do!" My mom asked me how long it had been in there. I told her not very long, maybe 10 minutes. All of a sudden, Lisa came home while my mother was still on the phone with me. Looking back, she probably had been listening in or my calls were taped (knowing how it is in the nanny business). Lisa said, "What is going on?!" and went right to the oven and opened the door. Smoke escaped and cleared and Lisa gasped, "You put the chicken in the oven without the pan?!" I said to my mother, "Mom, I've got to go." Lisa said, "You could have started a grease fire!"

Grease fire? What was that? I said, in my defense, "I didn't know you need a pan--I told you I've never cooked meat before!" Lisa looked at me. She looked at me with the suspicion that I was trying to burn their house down in revenge for the way she treated her "slaves". Later she was mad about something else, but admitted I had written in my contract/application that I'd never cooked meat before. I was exonnerated. Sort of.

I really had thought that was the way one cooks a chicken. All the flame-broiled commercials of meat on a rack is what did it. I didn't know how to do laundry either, but that came up with my next family.