Spencer: So, I understand, you two want to be involved in the deboning of the birds in the preparation process?

Tina: Yes, deboning a bird is a skill that can be useful for more than just Thanksgiving.

Spencer: Okay, let’s get started. I suggest that you both put on aprons as this could get a little messy. Our objective is to get this bird ready to go into the oven by lunch. Now, we won’t put her in until this afternoon. Now besides the deboning, is there some other part of the process, you want to participate in?

Bette: Well, I would like to participate in the whole stuffing process including the sewing and tying up the legs and so forth.

Tina: I have some large carpet needles and some butcher’s twine.

Juanita: Good, let’s gather what we need. We need the cutting boards, the best knives in the house. Now we brought our own just in case. We need the birds, the sausage, the seasonings, the ingredients for the dressing or stuffing, and the spinach.

Spencer: You have a nice kitchen set up for this. We need some olive oil. Oh, that is a good quality oil. Perfect. Now, why don’t we make the dressing first so it will be ready to go into the bird when we start to assemble. Now do you guys have a preferred recipe for that?

Tina:  No, I think you are the chef and we are going to let you guys mix something up.

Spencer: Excellent. Juanita, let’s do this.

They busied themselves with mixing bowls and a corn bread mixture which had a few jalapeno bits and pimento bits as well as some fine bell pepper and onion. They made enough to stuff the bird and some to put into a large casserole dish to serve as a side dish. Bette and Tina watched with great interest. Juanita put the casserole dish in the oven to begin to bake while the raw dressing was in a large bowl awaiting the bird prep.

Spencer: Now ladies, I am going to request that you put on some prep gloves and we are going to go wash the birds first. They are fresh and we want to get this done fairly quickly so we can get them back into the fridge. So, we are going to cut the chicken first. It’s the smallest and the easiest to replace should we screw this up. First, we need to make sure we have removed the package the butcher includes in the body cavity. Now, I want to set this aside because I plan to make a gravy from the chicken livers and other extraneous parts. And we want to make some chicken broth from the bones and fat we remove from the carcass.