A series of unfortunate events

Or, as we call it in our house: Sunday.

We live in an apartment on the second floor. We have a balcony. Balconies are not made for bbq-ing.

So for the last while, we have been looking at electric grills, which would work on our balcony.

In lieu of having one right now though, we are using our cast iron stove top griddle on, well, the stove top.

I figured if we spatchcock a chicken, and season it appropriately, it should almost taste like bbq.

Having the chicken flat, helps with even cooking and makes it easier to handle on the griddle. We have done spatchckoking before. So we knew how it works.

The spatchcocking incident.

In preparation, this Saturday, we defrosted a fryer, to "bbq" on Sunday on the griddle.

Sunday Morning, my husband cleaned the chicken and got ready to start prepping it.

He used our kitchen shears to cut the backbone of the chicken.

The shears broke. They were old and not the best quality to begin with. 😕 So nobody gave it a second thought. We tossed them (they were beyond repair) and moved right along, cutting the ribs with a sharp knife. It worked quite well!

He turned the chicken over and got it positioned to break the breast bone and flatten out the body.

He pushed down on the chicken breast.

I heard two cracks and a moan.

I was momentarily confused, as the cracking didn't sound like it was entirely coming from the chicken and the moan most definitely came from my husband.

The second cracking sound I heard, was actually my husband's shoulder.

Somehow he managed to strain it while pushing down on the chicken?

I sat him down, we made sure his shoulder was OK and I proceeded to season the chicken and heat up the griddle.

Hubby took over the grilling of the chicken half way through, because he loves to bbq and even a throbbing shoulder injury is not going to prevent him from having fun. So I left him to it and went about some things needing attention on my desk.

The chicken's revenge. 🐓

Alas, all good fun has to come to an end, and so it was with our indoor bbq. The chicken was done, the temperature check proofed it.

My husband needed a place to put the chicken meat, and unbenounced to me, grabbed the first thing close to hand. Which just happened to be the last of our Pyrex dishes.

Bless his heart, he also made hardboiled eggs for a salad on one of the other burners of the stove. Sadly he forgot that the burner was still hot.

He had the two chicken thighs already on the plate and was moving some stuff around to get the rest of the chicken on it as well.

He must have accidentally placed the Pyrex dish on the hot burner? Because the next thing I heard was a shattering explosion behind me in the kitchen, followed by a loud thud.

I turned around.

At first I couldn't see anything wrong, except for my husband was missing. I walked into the kitchen. I could have sworn he was...

Groaning from under the kitchen table.

He was laying on the kitchen floor, amidst shards of glass and chicken bits.

Holding his already battered shoulder and his knee?

I rushed over there, our son arrived in the kitchen about the same time. We got my husband up off the floor and onto a kitchen chair.

His knee was bleeding. (He is on blood thinners, so that is always worrysome.)

I was tending to my husband, while our son started to collect broken glass and chicken bits from around the kitchen.

Turns out hubby *did* realise about the burner being hot as soon as and tried to avoid the incident by grabbing the plate and relocating it, but his socks slipped on the kitchen floor and down he went, exploding plate and all.

And yes. He landed on the painful shoulder.

After I doctored him up, we told him to go lay down and stop helping. (Something he frequently hears actually. Lol.)

Then my son and I went about cleaning the kitchen. It took us a bit over 3 hours to clean it all. Glass and chicken bits went everywhere! All the pans and dishes on the counter were peppered with glass.

We dumped all the food we had just spent hours cooking into the trash and ended up having a good laugh and sandwiches for Sunday dinner.

Monday his shoulder was still hurting a whole lot. So we made an appointment with his doctor for Tuesday.

Turns out explaining to a doctor how you managed to injure both your shoulder and your knee while cooking a chicken is never not funny!

My husband's actual doctor is on vacation. So we had to see a different one.

The vacation replacement doctor did not deal with his temporary patient influx too well. He was completely overworked and stressed out.

The scheduled appointment time arrived and went by. And we waited still. About 50 minutes after the scheduled time, the doc finally made an appearance. He was visibly frazzled around the edges and admitted as much.

He ordered x-rays and gave my husband a sling for his arm, but nothing for the pain.

And so it happens that we will spend another painful, sleepless night together. My elbow, his shoulder. We are quite the pair, I tell you. We are both using Camphor cream for the pain, a cane leaning against the closet. Sexy stuff.

To top it off there will be a full Moon. Which means yours truly won't sleep until the sun comes up anyway.

But don't let me hog the floor. How was your weekend?

Xo,❤

B🐝

If you made it all the way through this blog post, here is a picture of a pretty flower from my balcony as a thank you. ❤