Fowl matters

Spending the Eid break in the family home in the east coast this year. I'm being very helpful, doing my duties as prep cook. I take care of peeling the onions, veggies, mashing things up in the blender where necessary, preparing the dough for the cakes and cookies and taking care of the garnishings, on top of the normal kitchen duties. All this for the rendang, acar and nasi dagang. I take a few showers a day since I smell like a blender myself.

The last time I smelled like a kitchen was more than 10 years ago, when I helped out my college friends run their chicken rice stall. It was one of those student projects for Convocation week in the uni, and my enterprising friends decided to make a bit of pocket money with the aid of their mom's recipe. I can't remember how I ended up helping them, but I remember enjoying myself helping out. I was responsible to clean the plucked chickens, cut them up into 8 before marinading and frying them. In addition to smelling like chickens, my hands were also scratched from the splintered chicken bones. I must have handled hundreds of birds over the weekend. I couldnt eat chicken rice for ages after that. After the fair ended, my friends invited me and all the other helpers to join them for an appreciation dinner.

No, they didnt serve chicken rice :-)