Real men

This past weekend, my brother and I became real men.

Last week when my brother was up for a visit I told him that for Thanksgiving, we would cook ourselves a real meal -- a Thanksgiving feast. He was skeptical and admittingly, so was I. The idea that the two of us, having no experience in cooking anything but stir-fry and steaks, could put together a meal of Thanksgiving proportions, seemed a little far-fetched. But the Yao brother prevailed.

Sunday morning Darryl was feeling ill so I stayed home with him. So we both missed Sunday service.

In the afternoon, he was feeling better so we went on the internet to look for recipes for a chicken. A WHOLE chicken! We found a good one for Roast Chicken with Orange Glaze. "Feeds 6 people", it said. Sounded pretty good.

So the two of us jumped in the car and drove out to Markham to a small chicken farm. The chickens there were plump and juicy and we asked the farmer if we could do the slaughtering ourselves. He let us on the condition that we clean up the mess. So we ran around the pen and grabbed a sweet looking hen. Given my brother's experiences with an axe, I did the cutting while he stretched out the neck. Needless to say it was pretty satisfying when she breathed her last "cluck-cluck-clu...rp". The farmer took care of the rest. I dunno how he got all the feathers off but he did and it was almost like a store bought chicken after 15 minutes. I took the head and it's now hanging from my rearview mirror.

All kidding aside, we ended up getting the chicken at Dominion because Loblaws was old out.

We marinated the chicken, stuffed it with vegetables and prepared the orange glaze broth. I had to buy a baster because I didn't have one. Popped it into the oven and 3 hours later and after two coats of orange juice glazing, the chicken was done. It looked *amazing*. As we pulled it out and put it down on the dining room table, my brother looked at me and said "We're real men now." I agreed.