The End of My Love Affair....With Fried Chicken.

A word about fried chicken.

Delicious.

It is my favorite food that I no longer consume. Before I met Carol, during the bachelor years, I could eat fried chicken five days a week. Oh, I had variety. One night I’d get it from the deli of one grocery store…the next I’d grab it at the fast food outlet….and of course there was my home-cooked recipe.

I couldn’t get enough of it.

Then I met Carol and she filled my head with all kinds of negative propaganda about the fat in fried chicken…..the total unhealthy crust….and how it had a negative impact on my blood sugar.

Such a killjoy.

So I went cold chicken. Harlan Sanders took a major hit. I only ate baked or roasted chicken and had to develop a taste for mixed vegetables and fruit for dessert and snacks. In fact my wife doesn’t fry anything at our house.

No more grease soaked paper towels to smell up the house with the heavenly smell of burned fowl. I don’t get to ever eat fries…but if I brought some home, she would certainly lay them out in an interesting pattern on a bake sheet and put them in the oven.

George Foreman was expelled from my home. With him, he took my fry baby. They left because they didn’t feel loved anymore.

I was observing a healthy approach to the Fry Baby fare by using only peanut oil. But no….that wasn’t acceptable to the lady of the house. She refused to do the research that I had gleaned that said peanut oil was healthy. I can’t fight someone who refuses to look at the literature.

For the first time I realized that a pineapple was eatable. And I have come to appreciate the melon family. Most nights my dessert is watermelon. Seedless, of course. I can’t be spittin’ in the living room. It is permissible in the man cave….but that is our secret….OK?

Now I am going to admit something that also must stay between you and me. While there are times when I fall off the wagon (when Carol is on a professional conclave elsewhere in Texas) and drive through the Chicken Express. I have to admit, when I do a half dozen wings…..I not only feel sluggish….I also feel guilty. Damn that woman! My most innocent of guilty pleasures has been ripped from my greasy lips. I can’t cheat with the Colonel. When she gets home she often checks the garbage…and makes immediate eye contact with me and asks…….”Any fried chicken while I was gone?”

I immediately lose eye contact.

“Yes,” I say after a moment of silence. Here’s the irony--- My sons know of my inability to lie to her and that I have turned my back on deep fried fowl.

The irony is what they call me behind my back.

“Chicken.”