Worried about meet hygiene- well kill your own chicken...

26/3/11

My  lacsidasical approach to transport did work and my absence from the blog has been due to being in the backwaters as opposed to James having killed me for messing up his plans. We hopped on the bus from Fort Kochin and headed to Alleppey. James having thoroughly researched everything informed me that we would alight at a small boat terminal and get a public ferry up the backwaters to where we were going to stay. This was infinitely cheaper than a taxi at 10p each and far more fun as we were able to combine sight seeing in the backwaters and getting to our destination. The ferry zipped from little jetty to little jetty and was driven by the Captain on the roof who communicated his engine needs via the medium of ringing a bell and another guy did the necessary speeding up or slowing down. After sitting in the wrong section on the boat (the ladies section) and bugging the driver every so often to check we had not overshot we arrived.

James meticulous research had certainly paid off as we were welcomed to a very friendly home stay where mummies (everyone called her this) mission was to feed you copious amounts of the nicest indian food we had eaten to date.

27/3/11

Rising at the  “horrid hour” of 7am James, me, Pascal and Caroline ( a french couple we met) set off in a canoe to explore the backwaters. I had gamely agreed to be the captain and take charge of steering the canoe. Well we never remained in a straight line for the 2 hours we were out and amazingly no one wanted to replace me so we persevered and went along the very small back water canals. We saw lots of  small huts and locals going about there business. The scenery was stunning and we had a lovely insight into backwater life. Amazingly we managed to get back without capsizing and had breakfast.

Over a game of cards the four of us began salivating over the foods we could not get whilst travelling. The french couple wanted cheese and wine, James wanted cheddar cheese (zat is not cheese came the inevitable response ) and I wanted meat as being a vegetarian was warring thin. This led to a long discussion about the best way to cook a chicken (without currying it) and much eyeing up of the owners chickens. It soon became apparent that we had the skills between us to kill, pluck (me) gut and cook a chicken (Pascal).

A vague plan formed that we would ask the owner to buy a chicken and we would BBQ it that night. Thinking this may be one of those plans that never came to anything I was surprised when we were watching Mummy cook Pascal asked if we could buy on of there chickens and cook it. Mummy thought we were mad as the last time anyone asked to do this was a group of Koreans 10 years ago. Matthew the son gamely agreed to buy the chicken and it dawned on me that I would be killing and gutting a chicken in a number of hours. Now it had been a long time since I worked with kevin to kill and gut his turkeys so I was beginning to get worried. Pushing this to the back of my mind we set about fashioning skewers from bamboo and metal and creating a BBQ pit.

At the appointed hour we approached the chicken shed (now with a following of 5 people as some more guests had arrived) and the cockerel was tethered and awaiting its fate. After some pre death photos I entered the cage and caught the cockerel. Sitting with in on my knee i broke its neck (1^st time amazingly) and then hung it up and plucked it (tell kevin i did not rip the skin and it was not bruised!). Pascal then took over and gutted the bird and in a tipically gallic fashion began to make a bullion soup with the innards and sent the rest to the BBQ.

When dinner was ready the chicken was divine and I got a taste for meat. James ate some as did the american couple who were faintly appalled by the afternoons activities... The owners also tucked in after telling us that BBQing a chicken was prehistoric and offering to fry it for us. Of course the bullion soup was devin and in all its one of the few times that a mad plan has moved beyond the planning stage and by god I am glad it did as meet is so tasty.