Are You Chicken?

We had a roast chicken supper yesterday evening. Our second in 15 months in Sri Lanka.

It is certainly a heavy, wintry meal to have in 34' heat, (particularly if you are in the kitchen cooking it) but the main reason I don't cook it, is the chickens you buy here are so scrawny, with very little meat on them. Certainly not well endowed in the breast department either (which let's face it is quite crucial for a roast chicken)

It turns what should be a 'Sunday lunch' extravaganza, of the kind that Nigella Lawson waxes lyrical about, into a rather sad, deflated affair.

Still I was determined to give it another whirl. The meal did not begin auspiciously. I put the skinny chicken on the table with as much pazazz as I could manage, whereupon our 3 yr old took one look at it and said "mummy, is it a froggie or a chicken?"

I explained that despite its spreadeagled crouch and overall 'smallness' it was indeed a chicken, and that we didn't eat frogs. She would not believe me however, and said, "I don't want any".

M began to carve it, or rather ferreted around, increasingly frustrated, trying to locate the white meat, muttering pointedly "thin birds don't have breasts".

However things began to look up when our daughter, on spotting the familiar looking meat emerging as dad carved it, said "Oh sorry Mummy, it's a rabbit. Can I have some?"

Obviously a cold-hearted carnivore. The emotional impact of Charlotte's Web, or Peter Rabbit would clearly be lost on her....