burnt nosehairs

I am admittedly embarrassed by the fact that until yesterday, I thought you could refrigerate raw chicken breast and it would stay good for longer than a day.

About six days ago, I started noticing a rancid odor each time I stepped in our front door. No one smelled it but me, though, so I didn't think too much of it. After the third day, I started getting suspicious. Either we have a dead animal decomposing in our house and magically I'm the only one who can smell such things, or I need medical attention in the nasal cavity area, NOW. Finally, my roommates started smelling it, too. I'd already gone through the fridge to see if anything was rotting.

Chicken salad? Nope. Smells fine. Week old pasta salad? Practically no smell at all compared to this. I nosed around in there for days, not finding anything that could be the source if this most foul smell that ever singed my nose hairs. It wasn't the eggs, it wasn't the tomatoes, and it wasn't the leftover meal from Macaroni Grill. And it CERTAINLY wasn't the leftover raw chicken meat that I put in a tupperware container and put in the fridge - because it wouldn't EVEN be bad after a week. Right?

Right?

Apparently not. I feel like a moron. Once Katie enlightened me on this little known (I thought) chicken fact, I knew it was the chicken and that I had to get rid of it, but how?? I have to really mentally prep myself before I even TOUCH raw meat that ISN'T rotten. I just don't know if there's anything more revolting than raw meat. Until I encountered rotten raw meat. I left it there, rotting in the fridge, for another 24 hours because I couldn't work up the nerve to mess with it.

I came home from school today (which is going very well, as of day 2, if anyone's wondering) and of course, it was a thousand times worse. The moment had come. I took a deep breath of rotten smelling air and went for it. I grabbed the plastic container from the shelf and pulled at the lid until it came off. Before the intensity of the chicken smell hit my nose, I, like a fool, went ahead and stuck my face up next to it "just to make sure" this was what it was.

It was.

I about passed out right then and there. Roommate Abby was sitting in the dining room, so she can verify that I am not exaggerating. I started gagging, couldn't breathe, and started trying to dump the chicken into a trash bag. It was stuck to the container. Wouldn't budge. In the meantime, I'm gagging, not breathing, and turning blue. I dropped the chicken, container and all, into the trash bag and headed to the backyard with it.

The house still smells like rot. But apparently only in my nostrils. I can still feel my nose hairs burning. Maybe because I subjected myself to a good sniff of the fumes from about one centimeter from the source. I'll be lucky if I can ever eat chicken again.

And to think, I thought I was making headway in the kitchen.