2010-04-07

The Worst Smell of All Time

Chicken-BreastMany years ago, I was living in the suburbs, alone and trying to save some money by buying in bulk. Well to do that with meat, it means splitting it into smaller bags before freezing, because you don't want to defrost 10 pork chops when you are only going to cook one. Oh, okay, two.

This trip to the store (day 1), it was chicken breasts. The full, double breast. Boneless and skinless, but still, I had to split them and trim a little fat here and there. Since it's chicken, I used proper handling methods. The chicken was trimmed on a plate that would get washed soon. The wrapping, Styrofoam tray, and paper towels were all put into a separate trash bag to get thrown out right away, and the skin and fat scraps went down the garbage disposal.

After the cutting, bagging, and freezing of the chicken, I took out the special trash, washed down the kitchen and my hands, and basked in the glow of a job well done.

The next day (day 2) after work, I went into the kitchen and P-U! did it smell a little funky in there. Just to be certain, I threw out the rest of the trash, and wiped down the counters again.

That's one nasty nose nair!The following day (day 3), after work, I opened my front door, and I could almost see the green baculovirals, maloderous stench slam into me. My eyes watered. "Good Lord! What is that smell!?!" I thought. It was the worst smell I had smelled in years. Maybe in forever.

Unfortunately, it would hold the title of "Worst Smell Ever" for maybe another 45 seconds.You get the point

Braving battle with the beast, I dashed into the kitchen. I could tell the source of the stink was the sink. I stood in front of it, bent over, and looked down the drain hole…

…and flipped on the garbage disposal.

The blades of the machine sealed my doom. Not only did they atomize the fetid chicken skin and fat that were rotting in that chamber of horrors for two full days, but like a fan, they pumped the essence of concentrated EVIL into my face.

I gasped in shock.

Bad idea.

I'm not sure what was worse:

  • The unholy smell of the befouled fowl?
  • The fact that millions of pathogens had just entered my lungs, but wouldn't kill me nearly fast enough?
  • My mouth was open, and that $#!T was now on my tongue! And it smelled like a fresh mountain breeze in spring time compare to HOW IT TASTED!?!

How I didn't pass out and or developFunky Chicken chicken based super power, I'll never know. I must have been in pure survival mode. I turned on the water to try to smother the stench, then grabbed a lemon from the fridge and Darryl Dawkins'd that into the whirling maw of the InSinkErator.

Opening all the window, running the exhaust fan over the stove, half a can of Lysol, and a 20 minute tooth brushing let me claim victory over the stench.

That, and pulling a frozen chicken breast out of the freezer for dinner.

17 comments:

wigsf said...

Worst smell of all time, how about this tale.

When my brother and I were still teenagers, we came in possession of a burlap sack of dead and partially cleaned chickens. We were to help our grandmother finish cleaning the chickens and cut them up and put them into freezer bags for freezing. The day happened to be Hallowe'en and my brother thought a featherless chicken head in a jar would be a wonderful way to scare the trick-or-treaters later that evening.

The following Christmas break (two whole months later) my brother finally found where he had left the jar with the severed chicken head. It was in his bedroom beneath a pile of junk. The chicken head was rotted and decomposed and really really smelly.

Cora said...

UGH! That would have turned me vegetarian instantaneously! *shudder*

And no salmonella poisoning, eh? My, my, my Super Man. :-)

Jan @ Struck by Serendipity said...

I wouldn't have been able to still eat the chicken! Impressive!!

Laura - Are We Nearly There Yet Mummy? said...

I am sorry, I'm laughing heartily at your misfortune.

mo.stoneskin said...

In some ways I'm disappointed that you didn't develop chicken-based super powers. It would have made world-wide news. "Man turns into chicken and lays eggs" would have been the headlines...

mo.stoneskin said...

Actually, believe it or not, this whole split-and-freeze process is new to me. My talented wife taught me that. In the past I just shoved the whole lot into the freezer and then hacked off chunks of meat when I needed them. Put the pneumatic drill into use, I guess, but a lot of effort.

SkylersDad said...

After I came home from the Navy and before I started college, I earned some money by working at the city dump. My job was to direct people to the trash compactor, and if they had large objects, direct them up the hill to the landfill area. twice a day I was to hike up to the landfill and cover it with dirt and compact it driving a huge tracked front end loader. One day I drove over the carcass of a deer somebody had left there, and it exploded... into the cab of the loader... all over me. I had to finish my shift, so I went down to the stream and just laid down in it and let the water flow across me.

Candy's daily Dandy said...

That little tale was not only interesting, but very well written and it's detail rich enough to create many different sensory images.

just sayin'....

well done.

J.J. in L.A. said...

I lmao, knowing it was the garbage disposal before you even got there. When I was a kid, I helped my mom bag the chicken for freezing.

To this day, the sound of the disposal is like nails on a chalkboard and I don't like looking at raw chicken either.

I heart FFD said...

I love that one of your tags is, "I Should Be Dead". Dork. :)

Cora said...

@ JJ: I hate the look of ANY raw meat. Dammit, if I see it raw, I'm not even going to feel like eating it once it's cooked. Sad, I know. But I think you just helped me figure out where this quirk came from!!

Hey, hey - We're having psychotherapy over at Scope-Tech! Woo!!!!

I just remembered a camping trip I went on with the girl scouts where I got picked to be the one to cook the bacon for like 30 girls at breakfast. I had to cook it on a "camping stove" made out of a coffee can and a tealight candle.

Creative, huh? But utterly useless.

(I meant the tealight stove, not me.)

Those flippin' bacon strips would NOT cook!!!! There were all these floppy, slimy, pasty, perpetually raw bacon strips all up in my face and 30 ravenous girls waiting and waiting for ME to hurry the eff up and cook their freaking bacon.

Talk about pressure. And panic.

Worse was this: the troup leader planned to cook pancakes on the same pan I was "cooking" bacon on once I was done. After about an hour she made me throw the uncooked bacon away (while all the girls pouted and gave me I-hate-you glares) and then she made semi-cooked pancakes WITHOUT WASHING THE DAMN PAN and, GOOD LORD, I swear those were the nastiest, slimiest, most revolting pancakes I'd ever seen.

I think I ate smuggled-in Pop Rocks for breakfast that day. Heh heh heh.

Okay, this has been fun. 'Bye!

Scope said...

wigsf – A jar of chicken head? Sitting there for two months? And you broke the seal on it to get a whiff? That's demented!

Cora – I grew up on a farm. Nothing will ever turn me vegetarian.

Jan@SBS – I paid good ca$h money for that chicken. I'm not throwing it out just because it tried to kill me.

Laura (AWNTYM?) – Laughing at the misfortunes of others. Isn't that what Blogging and Wal-Mart are all about?

mo.stoneskin – Ain't not thing, chicken-wing.

mo.stoneskin – I did that "freeze it whole" thing once. But wives (and fiancĂ©es) are smart people, and there is no shame in learning things from them.

SkylersDad – I would have search the dump for a change of clothes. They would have to be cleaner and more sanitary than the ones you were wearing.

Candy's daily Dandy – Thanks. I actually wrote this one out by hand over 2 months ago after I was telling it to Cora and realized I'd never posted it. I think that really helped me create just the right imagery for this.

Yesterday, your post gave me the will power to not finish my lunch. If this post put you off yours, then we've helped each other on the whole diet thing.

J.J. – I was hoping that people would catch that, but I didn't want to draw too much attention to and ruin the suspense.

I heart FFD – I didn't want to use "I Shouldn't Be Alive" and get traffic from that reality show.

Cora – Back for round 2. Looks like I've provided a number of people with ideas for blog posts today. And we are going to have to get you over this aversion to "raw meat". ;-)

BeckEye said...

Ewwww! That's gross, but I totally laughed at the end. I'd still eat the chicken, too.

JenJen said...

K ew. Running away with girly ew ick noises...

Moooooog35 said...

I really thought this was going to involve Paris Hilton somehow.

The Urban Cowboy said...

Oh man, that would totally suck...I don't think I would have been able to sleep for a week if that happened to me, I'm paranoid like that.

Scope said...

BeckEye - Exactly. Revenge is a dish best served grilled, dusted in ground red pepper, and served with a side green beans.

JenJen - My only other option was to abandon all my belongings, break my lease, and start from scratch.

Moooooog35 - There was going to be a reference to "the funk of an unwashed Brad Pitt", but I figured the ladies might misinterperate that as a "Good Thing".

The Urban Cowboy - No matter how many candles I burned, I was haunted by the "Ghost Smell of Chickens Past" for about another week or so.