Most of you may not know, but in my circle of friends I am
renowned as a “bull cook”.
One of my most famous dishes is my chicken, marinated for 24
hours in my secret sauce and then grilled to perfection over real charcoal, not
briquettes.
At work, rarely a week went by that someone would not ask, “when
are you doing chicken again?”
And it really is scrumptious, most folks eat a pile of it so
I always make sure I have plenty marinated in 5 gallon buckets.
All of which brings me to the story at hand. I used to work
with this cute little Black Lieutenant from the mid South. She was sharp as a
tack, efficient, and a pretty good leader for her age and experience. She was
also sweet as could be, polite (would not say shit if she had a mouthful!), an
all round great person. But I wager she did not weigh a hundred pounds soaking
wet.
This brings us to our “chicken cooking”. There were about 50
folks and I had probably close to ten 5 gallon buckets of chicken to grill. My
buddy had a big trailer mounted grill and it would hold about two buckets of
chicken at a time.
I had just finished the second run of grilling and had added
lump charcoal and was waiting for it to come up to cooking temp. I took this
pause to circulate through the crowd to see how everyone liked the bird.
As usual everyone loved it. When I got to the Lieutenant’s
table I saw that she had a pile of chicken bones in front of her that must have
been a foot and a half high! I asked her
if she had eaten all of that and she replied that she had and that she was not
done yet! That gal could eat some
chicken!
If she did not eat ten pounds of chicken she did not eat a
single piece!
My point is that some folks eat more from tradition than
hunger, and just because someone is large or small, that has little bearing on
what they can and will eat.
I often wonder if the folks she works with today still call
her ”Lieutenant Chicken Bones”?
