Beware of Pampered Chef tools. They are dangerous.

When unloading the dishwasher one day, I dropped one of our $1.25 paring knives. On the way down, it sliced my leg. I had to wash it again.

When making spaghetti, I pulled out my new Pampered Chef Executive Cookware to use. As I reached for oregano, my elbow knocked one of the small cookware lids off the counter. It landed on its edge on my foot. I cursed it, hopped around a second, and grabbed my foot for some magical healing. When the initial pain subsided, I continued with the recipe. After I finished, I looked down at my throbbing foot. Blood was seaping through my sock. I had a matching gash below my pinky toe with the scar on my chin.

When cutting pound cake for a trifle a few days ago, I sliced my thumb with the bread knife. It wouldn’t stop bleeding for the next couple days. I now have a chunk of skin missing from my thumb.

I am continually amazed at my lack of coordination and how often cooking results in serious injury for me.

One such memorable example was when I sliced my face open with a crystal vase. Ok, I’m being a little over-dramatic. It wasn’t so much my entire face, as it was my chin.

I was about to dump out the nasty left-over flower water (aka sludge) from my crystal vase into the backyard. But, this was summer. At night. This meant that opening the back door into the yard was going to have to be clandestine operation to avoid the ranks of mosquitos, moths, and other various avian insects from attacking my face like a scene from Birds. Furthermore, this appeared to be the mating season of the little lime-green frogs that hang out on our back windows, and I didn’t want them bringing their activies inside. They’re very cute, but I prefer to look at them with the safety of a double-paned window in between. So, with caution, I turned off the lights (to not attract any visitors), and I reached for the door to the porch.

In doing so, I made sure to focus on the two green frogs positioned near the door knob. I’m not afraid of frogs, but I had visions of them jumping on me as I opened the door, so I wanted to open the door as little as I could. With the vase in my left hand, I reached for the knob with my right, kept my eyes on the frogs, and proceded to cautiously open the door.

At that very moment, two copulating fairy bugs flew directly into my face, and what should have been a knee-jerk reaction became an “elbow-jerk” reaction. With my right hand still on the knob, my left hand forgot that there was a crystal vase attached to it, and it tried to swat the fairy bugs from my face. I jammed the vase into my chin.

I screamed. Somehow I managed to carefully place the vase back on the counter and close the door, aborting the plan altogether. My husband comes running to me from the living room, and my explanation of what happened barely elicited a comforting reaction from him:

“I hit myself with the vase.”
“Why? How?”
“Bugs were flying at me.”
“That’s ridiculous. I can’t believe you’re that afraid of bugs. Good grief, Erin.”
“(sniffle) You don’t understand!” (Insert exasperation). “Nevermind!”

I went to the bathroom mirror, and that’s when the waterworks turned on. I had a large bruise developing with a one-inch gash directly on my chin. I was afraid I needed stiches, but I was more afraid to explain to the doctors that I had been attacked by two copulating fairy bugs and a vase. I simply put ice on it and a lovely Pocahontas band-aid.

I continually find myself approaching recipes that appear simple, yet turn out to be emergency tutorials on how to perform intricate surgery or engineering of some sort. Last night’s adventure was the whole chicken.

The recipe was clear and concise: take a 3-4 pound chicken, remove the neck and giblets, rinse chicken in cold water, baste with olive oil, rub on a few seasonings, and roast in the oven. I allotted about fifteen minutes to complete the task. I’m educated, I thought. I have a degree. Surely I can handle this. What began as a fifteen minute sprint became an hour long battle with the chicken.

Step 1: “Remove the neck and giblets.” Easy enough. I’ve seen my mother do this three hundred times when preparing a turkey for Thanksgiving. Everything comes packed nicely in a little baggy as if Boo Radley himself was awaiting the treat of seeing a look of joyful surprise at the unsuspecting consumer. So, I take the chicken from the cellophane wrap, pick it up under the armpits, and locate the neck. Aha! I’m brave, so I reach in with my bare hands, grab the neck, and pull. It didn’t budge. Why? BECAUSE IT WAS STILL ATTACHED! Immediately, I do what any sane woman would do: I called my mother. I have chicken juice all over my hands, and I have a feeling I need both for removing this thing, so my husband calls my mother and puts her on speaker phone. The conversation that ensues becomes an inadvertant shouting match:

“Hello?”
“Mom, I need help.”
“What?”
“I need help.”
“With what?”
“How do you remove a neck from a chicken?”
“What! Why?!”
“Because I’m going to eat it and the recipe says to remove the neck.”
“Well, just pull it out”
“It’s not coming. It’s still attached.”
“What?”
“It’s STILL attached!”
“Oh, well, it shouldn’t be. There should be a little baggy inside.”
“I know, ma, but there isn’t a baggy.”
“Well, I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Thanks, I’ll call you in about two minutes.”

No help. Thankfully, I have my Pampered Chef kitchen shears which I discovered do a wonderful job at cutting through chicken necks. I removed what I could. This is gross.

Step 2: “Remove the giblets.” Ok, no baggy in sight. Are there giblets? Oh, yes…there are. I proceeded to look up the chicken’s butt and noticed two Barbie sized kidneys and liver still attached! I majored in English so I would not have to dissect animals any more, and yet here I am, performing exploratory surgery. Once again, with my kitchen shears, I attempt to remove the organs. This was not so clean or pretty. Like an eight-year-old boy, I cut the organs out, botching up the job, and wreaking havoc inside the chicken cavity. Meanwhile, fifteen minutes have already passed, and I haven’t even begun getting close to actually COOKING anything!

While my face is a little too close to the chicken’s butt for my comfort, I notice a disturbing new aspect about this chicken I have chosen to prepare. Remnants of feathers, looking like over-grown wirey hairs from an old man’s chin, are poking out from near the chicken’s butt! Upon further inspection, I notice the “hairs” are not simply adorning the rear of the chicken; they are on the ankles, elbows, and collar as well! Suddenly, I’m taking back to my novels about turn of the century women working in chicken houses, sweating while plucking chickens for only enough wages to eat a meal for that day. Now what? I immediately think to grab my tweezers to extract the wet feather remains, but I was really hesitant to use a human grooming tool for food that already resembled the body of a small child anyway. It was a little too macabre for my liking. So, I grab my trusty kitchen shears for the third round of surgery. I start trimming the skin in the problem areas, trying not to think of how much chicken juice and salmonella I was spreading.

Step 3: “Rinse in cold water.” Once again, I lift the bird from underneath the armpits, but this time, I give it a colonics treatment. As I was holding it, I was disturbingly aware of Peter Gabriel’s music video with the dancing chickens, afraid that at any moment it was going to break out into song. Then my mind, which is perhaps coping with the shock of having to perform emergency surgery, begins magically transforming the chicken into a newborn infant. Its fat belly and little arms and legs somehow prevent my ability to see this as a future meal. I feel like I should put a dress on it or something. I take a moment to think about when I might start having children. . . and the moment is gone.

Another fifteen minutes have passed. I can finally finish the recipe.

Ultimately, we ended up eating a pretty good chicken, but I’m so marred by the experience, that I’m swearing off any food that still has a body.