Raw Chicken Dare

If you know me, either in real life or here on my blog, you know that I fear raw chicken. I’ve talked about it briefly here and here. The terror of the raw, slimy, salmonella-growing flesh has been known to paralyze me in ways that I am shameful to admit.



Like the time I refused to cook chicken and only used the precooked chicken strips found in the refrigerator section of Costco. And by “time,” I mean the two years.



Embarrassing, I know.



I figured if I am really going to do this and not fall of the wagon into a bag of Costco precooked chicken strips, maybe I should write about it. And then I remembered my friend Elizabeth at Flourish in Progress and the gang she was starting. She started a project about not shopping for an entire year and blogged about the whole thing. If you are not reading her blog, I suggest you click on over and start immediately because She. Is. Awesome. Seriously, awesome.



Anyway, her gang is about getting over a fear or a personal obstacle. So I am going to start a little project, and by little I mean getting over one of the biggest fears I have and documenting it so I can’t quit. And I think my gang name should be Raw Chicken. If that doesn’t sound like a scary badass kind of gang name, then I don’t know what is, right?



So here is an update: after our Disney adventure, we were in need of some serious nourishment. We needed chicken of the non-nugget variety, whole wheat pasta, and a green vegetable STAT! So I approached the butcher counter and looked at the nice, trimmed up chicken breasts that were a fortune or the ones that were in a pile that needed to be trimmed but were on special. My eyes darted between my two choices and my thoughts raced: we need chicken. We just spent a ton of money at Disney. I don’t want to trim them. I must trim them if we are going to start recouping any cost from our trip.



In a magical moment, my need for nutrition and to save money preceded my fear of raw chicken.



So I bought a separate cutting board and got to work.



I separated the breasts.



I trimmed them.



I cut them in half to make them thinner.*



I baked them to perfection.



When I went to the store this week to get chicken, it didn’t even make my heart race. I am on the road to recovery, Friends!



I *will* have cleaned and cooked a whole chicken by December 2011.



I am curious . . .what kind of goals are you working towards?




*I had the best picture of this, but due to technical difficulties, they will have to be in a future post.