Big Mother Clucker!

 This is our new fried Mr Cluckers, or as he prefers to be called, Big Mother Clucker.  We met him at the now famous butcher stall in Les Halles.  He seemed a cultured chap, complete with jaunty sportswear and a fetching silver band on his wrist telling us the name of the individual farmer he had previously lived with and were the farm was located.  BMC is what's known as a "Bress Chicken", highly regarded as the best tasting chicken in France.  Given the food we have eaten here, that is quite a statement.  Such a nice guy, we invited him home for dinner...

 BMC looked a tad tired from all his travel so we gave him a chance to nap while we hurried about preparing dinner.  At some point BMC stripped naked and embarrassingly lost his head, jumping into the completely innocent roasted vegetable dish I had worked so hard on for hours.  We busted out the wine and the evening went on.

An hour and a half later, he was completely baked!  Ah well, we decided to have him for dinner anyway, seemed cruel to toss him out on the curb in his condition.

 He did seems to appreciate the well laid table we present here in Lower Froglandia!

In all seriousness, that really was one of the best roast chickens I have ever done.  The meat pretty much tasted like chicken, yet with the "chickeny" dial turned up to 200%.  It was tasty and amazing.  I would also point out that the killer caprese salad Nita made was hand made mozzarella from the market that morning and tomatoes so sweet they are like eating candy.  A damn fine meal all around and the culmination of a food geek thing I have wanted to do for 2 years.  Not a bad vacation.

 Wait, what the hell is that thing Audie has?  Artichokes don't grow that big!!

Tonight we are having artichokes from the stall across the street.  These are by far the biggest and best arties I have ever seen.  It's kinda humbling that the tiny, hole in the wall market on the street sells a better quality of produce than the most high end, snooty markets back home.  At least in regard to certain things, we do have something yet to learn from the Frogs.