Baby Got Backs

We spent all day (literally from 7am to 6pm) butchering, plucking, gutting, and icing our 17 cornish cross.  It was a dirty, wet, messy, and back breaking affair.  My mom offered to run down to the store and buy us chicken as she watched the labor go on.....and on.  The hardest part of the whole thing was how the chickens would walk right up to you when you went to go pick out the next one.  They always expect something good from me.  Saturday they were all disappointed.  I actually enjoyed the time with Jon though.  A lot of married couples we know don't have the same working relationship that Jon and I do.  We work well as a team and sitting next to him for 12 hours on Saturday was a blessing.  Having my mom there to watch the kids was a blessing.  It was almost like an extended date......with guts and feathers.  I'm sure there's a website for that.

And moving along...

Sunday Jon worked all day and I had to finish processing.  Doing it without him wasn't much fun.  I cut all the wings off the birds and put them in freezer bags of 10 each.  I quartered the birds and put a whole bird in each freezer bag and put the backs, about 5 each, into freezer bags for making broth.  I also separated the gizzards, necks, hearts, and livers into separate bags.  Lots of broth making in my future.

Monday I headed out for Dallas and left Jon at home working.  He also had some guys coming over later to do some work for him.  He called me part way through the day and said he was going to fix the guys some bbq as a thank you and wanted to know how I packaged the chickens.  I relayed the information and got back to my nephews party.  I didn't get home until quite late on Monday but Jon was still up and we talked for a while.  I asked him how the chicken tasted as I had not had a chance to eat any yet.  "It tasted fine." he said with some hesitation.  "But I'm just not sure about the way you cut it up.  There didn't seem to be any meat on the breasts."  I told him that there was a LOT of meat on the breast and wanted to know what he was talking about.  I spied the pile of bones from his cook out on the counter (still).  As I picked through them I couldn't contain myself.  "THESE ARE THE BACKS!"  I laughed.  I couldn't stop laughing and he still didnt' get it.  "There was wasn't much meat because this was the bag of backbones!" 

I'm so glad my husband has a sense of humor otherwise this story would be the death of me.