Hi Lee and Linda -- I decided to write rather than call.  Thought you might be Graylocking in some way.  Graylocking is a verb which describes having dinner in high places and / or locating oneself in remote locations alone or in hiking groups which completely interferes with cell phone reception either electronically or (in social situations) impedes comprehension due to crowd noise.  Could this be a candidate for Lebsters? I envy you in Vermont.  This weekend I wanted so much to see some actual fall colors.  Might have to settle for some picture from you and Linda. Glad the [bus] schedule sounds good.  Looking forward to the Expo!  I forgot you are doing the FULL!  Glad you enjoyed the 2 inch nail flat.  I leave you with yet another completely unrelated [series of] picture[s] I took about 45 minutes ago.  I rode to the grocery store late this afternoon and decided to actually buy an entire chicken (de-feathered of course).  Why you ask?  Well, it seems I have never considered cooking one, let alone actually following the instructions on how that's done on the squishy plastic label.  End result? -- a major success. Here are some pics with brief explanations. Warning:  Some of these pictures contain highly graphic material and may cause permanent psychological damage.  Please remove your cat from the room also Image 1 The first step is to cut the instructions off the squishy plastic chicken bag.  Upon doing so, it is immediately noticed that it will not EVER lay flat.  Remedy?  Mount it with black masking tape to a small piece of red mat board cut with a dull Exacto knife. Image 2  Here we see the precision work of [non-archival, sorry] mounting for the chicken cooking manual Image 3  Not exactly knowing what comes next, I continued to further open the chicken bag.  Note the chicken blood and the paper towel soaked with said blood.  It was at this early stage in chicken extraction that a large river of blood meandered its way across the kitchen table and spattered on the floor.  This was a job for the quicker picker-upper; BOUNTY! Image 4  Here we see a mix of seasoning.  Six of them - all from individual packets from the same cardboard container.  I asked the meat guy (a butcher) at the grocery store if he could recommend a seasoning and he kindly showed me a HIGHLY chemical filled version of Dash-like material that had some sort of barbecue flavoring in it.  After he left me, I asked a nice woman if there was anything natural that she could recommend.  We had a great chat about these matters.  After much searching we came upon this:  It is called a "Chicken Marsala" mix and it includes the following herbs.  Only highly competent cooks like me use it of course.  It contains this rich bouquet of seasonings:  1 tsp.  McCormick Minced Garlic 1 tsp.  McCormick Marjoram Leaves 1 tsp.  McCormick Minced Onions 1/2 tsp.  McCormick Course Ground Black Pepper 1 tsp.  McCormick Basil Leaves  3/4 tsp.  McCormick Parsely Flakes The KEY to mixing these herbs and is to use the same plate on which the chicken was rolled around on the 3 Tablespoons of melted (but now partially solidified) pre-basting butter.  Without this important herb-mixing step, your chicken cooking may likely fail. Image 5  I gave serious thought (being the cook that I am) to use clothes line rope to tie off the legs in the all important leg knot.  But then a brilliant idea came!  Why not use gardening twin like REAL gardeners (and cooks?) use!  Here we see a roll which was discovered under my sink next to some car anti-freeze. Image 6  Note the precision work in this chicken leg knot.  It is also important to fold the wings back before this step.  I am still trying to process why.  At one point, after they flopped back into pre-wing movement position, I considered tying THEM off too -- but then opted not to override the manual's knot-tying instructions.  The chicken seemed a bit more uncomfortable also with tied wings. Image 7  This is the giblet bag.  I have never opened one to look inside.  I think the last time I saw one of these was when I was 12 when my mother did some soup-like thing with these body-part organs.  It is at this point you need to remove your cat from the room. Image 8  I still am unclear what the purpose of these bag parts are.  Any good cook should know that these are gross and should never be NEAR such a beautiful chicken as the one I have prepared thus far.  I have studied them here and decided to clean them as well for a clearer inspection.  Again, this is for purely anatomical reasons and for cook curiosity.  Are you curious?  Well then, you may very well have the guts (sorry) to delve deeper into the art of chicken cooking as I have today.  Image 9 Still feeling OK?  Good.  We move on to the butter phase now. Actually this step was already mentioned in the seasoning phase.  It was suggested we use 3-4 tablespoons of butter to "rub all over the cold-water cleaned" chicken.  I will discuss this cleaning phase shortly.  I used 3 1/2 T butter. Again, this was a critical desison.  Had it been too low, or high COULD have led to basting failure. Image 10  We depart now into the calm and serene atmosphere of the interior of my microwave oven.  It is here where the all important 3 1/2 T of butter now melts into a pretty pool of hydrogination -- which will soon be applied to the surface of the cleaned chicken.  This will help with browning.  Sound pretty official doesn't it?  I think this little browning tidbit of knowledge came to me from my mother some 50 years ago. Image 11  PRIOR TO to rolling of the chicken in the melted butter (as earlier mentioned), the chicken must be thoroughly cleaned in cold water.  Here we see this happening.  Image 12  We are now nearly ready for roasting.  Butter will be applied now to the cleaned chicken.  I do not have an oven thermometer, so it is at this point the truth comes out about my cooking credentials.  To insure the prevention of human death in eating this or any other chicken, one must really get one of these instruments.  180 degrees must be reached in the deepest part of the chickn thigh after 1 hour and 40 minutes (for this 3.96 lb bird). Cooking times -- as instructed are as follows: 30 minutes in a preheated 475 degree oven then [after basting with one of those suction baster things you can buy] you then DECREASE the oven temperature to 375 and continue cooking for 30 to 40 minutes. There are notations about poking the bird with a fork to see what color the juices become as cooking time advances, but I just wanted the eat the thing, so the bell on the clock was good enough for me.  Patience is important in cooking though!  We learn from trial and error Image 13  One chicken.  Cooking. Image 14  And here we have it!  My first well cooked chicken.  I did not mention the aluminum foil part.  I covered the top part of the chicken to prevent drying and loss of juices to the shallow cooking pan below. Image 15  Now, some of you may think this last image (with my special Marsala seasonings) is more like a rare fungus with highly contagious properties DEVOURING the skin of my (undercooked?) bird.  This is not the case.  It is only when one clumps his or her seasoning like this that the true magnificence of this delicacy can be achieved.  The art of clumping will be discussed in volume II of my Cooking Chicken Series. Bon Apetite. C. Bradley - Oct. 9, '11