Tales from Wannabea Farm

I received an email recipe recently, a joke actually, that has been going around for decades, long before we had personal computers. Boy, did this bring back some memories! This happened about 1956 or 1957.

Joyce Stark My grandmother was one of those women that did not want to share her recipes, not even with her family. If she gave you one you could be sure that she either left something out or changed something. It really made her friends mad but of course she always denied doing it. One day she came home from one of her bridge club meetings with a recipe for “Popcorn Chicken”.

When my grandfather and I came home, there was Grandma, just home from the grocery where she had made a special trip to buy a chicken and the other ingredients that she lacked in the cupboard, just so she could try this new recipe. She was already busy chopping onions, celery, etc. She was all excited because several of her friends said that they had already made the dish and they were all raving about it. They claimed their husbands couldn’t get enough of the flavorful and unique stuffing.

Now Grandma was a pretty good cook and usually just looked at the ingredients list in a recipe as she pretty much knew how to put everything together in most dishes. Grandpa picked up the recipe, read through it and shaking his head, told her that she needed to read the whole thing through before proceeding. She snapped back at him that she had read it and when he tried to tell her that she hadn’t, she got mad. She had quite a temper and didn’t like to be disputed. “Okay, okay”, Grandpa said, holding up his hands in surrender. Handing the recipe to me he put his finger over his lips for me to be quiet and we sat back and watched. The explosion wasn’t long in coming!

Pretty soon she had that chicken all stuffed with the celery, onions, herbs and unpopped popcorn. Putting it into the oven, she asked Grandpa how long the recipe said to cook it. “You need to read it yourself”, he answered and that just made her madder. Jerking the recipe out of his hand, she looked at the recipe. The look on her face was priceless when she read the last line, “Cook until the popcorn pops and blows the tail out of the chicken”. Now Grandma didn't cuss but the things she was saying still weren’t very comfortable to listen to.

While Grandma was scraping the stuffing back out of the chicken and muttering about her “so called friends”, Grandpa and I made our escape to the local hamburger stand.