Curtman Cooks

So occasionally my husband tries to cook for himself. This typically ends up with him boiling water for pasta, then adding a jar of spaghetti sauce on top... then he'll throw on some sort of cheese... if we don't have parmesan, he'll just melt American cheese on top. I know... american cheese on spaghetti?... but, yes, this is a combination that doesn't seem to bother him.

One night a week or so ago, I had to work a late shift at the restaurant (Dogfish Head Alehouse). I knew that I hadn't had time to cook food for Curt in a while and didn't want to make him eat his random dinner creations. I had made some amazing jerk seasoning marinade a while ago(recipe to follow in another posting), and I had some chicken legs. I dumped the chicken into a tupperware and covered it with the marinade. I wrote down the directions on a little white board that we keep on the refrigerator. All Curt had to do was preheat the oven to 350, then place the chicken legs on a pan and bake for 30 minutes. I made sure to explain what to do and the importance of preheating the oven rather than just sticking the chicken in there and turning the oven on.

The next night, I came home around 11:30. After the long day of work, I had completely forgotten that I had marinated some chicken for Curt. I walked through the door and instantly detected the smell of something burning. It didn't seem like anything was on fire, and it was a pretty faint smell. It definitely smelled like someone had burned something throughout the course of the night. I went to the kitchen to investigate, but everything looked fine- there were no dishes in the sink or pans on the stove (tell tale signs that Curt had been cooking). Having found nothing... I went upstairs to crawl in bed with my hubby. As I was crawling in bed, I asked Curt (who was half in and out of sleep) if he had burned something earlier that night. His response was, "It sure smells like it, doesn't it?" I just assumed Billy had made some dinner and maybe burned a little bit of it. Then Curt says, "Ohhhh, I never took the chicken out....don't worry, I'll still eat it... I'll just put ranch on it!"

Curt had apparently gotten home from work around 7 and put the chicken in at 7:30 (he did, in fact, preheat the oven). Apparently he found something else to eat for dinner, because he forgot completely about the chicken in the oven. All in all, the chicken legs baked for about 4 hours. Needless to say, they were a little bit overcooked for anyone's taste!

Lesson learned: I need to be more specific in my directions for Curt. I had told him to bake the chicken for 30 minutes... but I never told him anything about having to take the chicken out of the oven :)

Here's the what happens when you bake chicken legs for 4 hours!