Parlez-vous?

     I've never been accused of being a French language scholar.  In fact, I took 2 years of French...twice-one time in high school and then again in college.  About the only thing I can still recite in French is The Lord's Prayer and the French National Anthem, La Marseillaise.  So you can begin to imagine my misadventures on our vacation in Provence.  I knew just enough of the language to be misunderstood.
     The villa we rented was magnificent, a spacious retreat for the 5 couples who made the trip.  And I was privileged to be the Chef de la Maison in a modern and well equipped kitchen.

     With several cookbooks at the ready I polled the crowd as to their culinary preferences for our evening communal meals.  It was no surprise that at the top of the list was Coq au Vin, literally "rooster in wine."  So on one of our designated market days I went in search for a boucherie, a butcher shop, to procure the main ingredient for dinner that day.  I found a small shop just to the side of a large open air market and confidently walked in to look over what I expected would be cuts of poultry.  To my surprise and chagrin I found not the aggregate parts of a chicken but the entire bird itself.  Reluctantly I ordered up 3 and asked that they be wrapped up for the trip back to our villa.  As the transaction was being consummated the clerk asked me a question in French that I did not quite understand.  She said, "Coupe la tete?"  Since I wasn't sure what was being spoken to me I responded with my best French accent, "Non!"
     It wasn't until I was back at the villa that I understood her words.  When I unwrapped the birds here is what I found:

     Yes, it was the whole bird, including the head and feet!  It was then that I realized that the clerk had asked me if I wanted the butcher to cut off the heads of the chickens.  I had never encountered such a compete package before and it took a lot of work to "dress" the chickens for the pot.  In fact, I had to enlist the aid of a medical professional traveling along with us to eviscerate and decapitate the birds.  This was a little bit too up close and personal for me, a decidedly amateur chef.
     But the story had a happy ending as the final result was an authentic French meal that everyone at the table savored.  And there was quite a story to tell around that table about it's preparation, n'est pas?