Yesterday was my birthday (yay, me) and my brother sent me some photos of birthdays past.  Here I am at age 7, blowing out the candles of my cake, making some kind of wish.  I bet it was for a puppy.  I did get one a couple of years later but he ran away and got hit by a car (sad!!!!)  I still want a puppy but now I want one with a tool belt and not with the bone in his mouth, if you know what I mean.  Seriously, I currently have some blue chores around the house:  my washing machine doesn’t spin, my dryer doesn’t heat, there’s still a hole in my kitchen ceiling from that leak a few posts ago, and a crack in the door on the third floor.  THERE IS ALWAYS SOMETHING!!!  When I look at that photo of myself at age 7, I want to tell that little girl to not bother wishing for anything because sometimes when you get what you think you want, it doesn’t really know how to use a power drill at all.  If you know what I mean.

 

One of my birthday traditions since childhood has involved a bucket of KFC.  But as you know if you follow the blog, The Righteous Teenage Daughter, has made us seek out happy farm animals for our unapologetic carnivorous ways.  So I stick to the one butchershop I stumbled upon in January, The Friendly Butcher on Danforth.   They had me at wild boar.  So instead of my usual birthday bucket of the Colonel’s mutant chicken, I decided to take the concept of the “Double Down” and recreate it in a more civilized manner.  Here is what I did, step by step:

 

1. Flattened out 3 boneless chicken breasts (they are Mennonite, by the way, so they might not be happy but they are virtuous)

2. Smothered them in plain Greek-style yogurt

3. Rolled them in cornflake crumbs with coarse sea salt and some Cajun rub

4. Baked in oven at 350 for about 40 minutes

5. Lay out 6 wild boar bacon strips in George Forman grill and let it sizzle until the dog went into a frenzy

6. Put two bacon strips on each breast and drizzed with chipotle aioli and folded over like a sandwich-ish

 

It was messier than the KFC version but way better tasting.  As far as I’m concerned, I would put wild boar bacon on my birthday cake if I had one.  So I didn’t make yet another futile wish this year.  I find just taking matters into your own hands far more effective.  If you know what I mean.