He is Risen, and I am High

April 20th, 2025

In a phenomenal twist of fate, Easter this year fell on April 20th, or 4/20 for the cool kids. 

"We have the opportunity to do the most blasphemous thing." - Eliza Hillard

And boy was this day action-packed. It started with me performing at Dr. Zielke's church for the Easter Service. This is something that I have done in years past, but I was invited back this year, which I was very excited about. When I did it the first year, I wanted to tell my pastor uncle that I was going to be at an Easter service, but my mother told me it doesn't count because I was being paid to be there, and you know what, she's kinda real for that. 

The service was incredibly insightful, as this church focuses on using the Christian framework to worship Jesus and building a foundation of social justice and healing in this community. For a solid 20 minutes, she was disparaging the trump administration, which was very nice to listen to. Even if you don't believe, the end of the sermon included the pastor talking about how the bible instructs you to love thy neighbor, but everyone else must also love thy neighbor, and that means they will love you too because you are also the neighbor and you are worthy of love. Fun stuff!

After the service, there was much to be done. Earlier in the week, I had purchased 12 lbs. of chicken drumsticks from Fred Meyer that were taking up enormous space in our fridge. The night before, I made 2 different overnight marinades to soak half of the chicken in. The first one was a honey mustard marinade that I made with Dijon mustard, honey, jarlic, and some cayenne pepper. The second one was using Eliza's favorite BBQ sauce and Kinder's Peach Bourbon. The next morning, I put together a quick pickle brine with salt and brown sugar. The last 3 lbs of chicken, I just did a dry rub with some Nashville BBQ seasoning.

There was a lot of chicken to be cooked, but everyone at my house was also cooked, so I didn't anticipate it to be an issue. Eliza asked me 3 separate times in the first batch when they would be done, which is okay because she had no idea that about 40 legs were about to be set out over the course of the next hour and a half. This picture contains 1/4 of the chicken that we had. 

To pair with the chicken, we had 4 different sauces:

- Bourbon Peach BBQ

- Honey Mustard

- Garlic Parmesan

- Bourbon Apple

The chicken was generally good on its own, but I love sauce. I would rank the chicken as follows:

1. Honey Mustard

2. Pickle

3. Bourbon Peach BBQ

4. We didn't end up cooking the dry rub, although as I am writing this, Eliza and I are discussing a pickleback brine, which is pickle and whiskey. 

The chicken lowkey exploded when you bit into it and sprayed juice everywhere so that's fun, but my concern was that it was going to be dry, but it absolutely was not. The key is letting it rest after you take it out of the oven to let the juices redistribute. Soon, I think we are going to have chicken night pt. II, because we still have 4.5 lbs of legs leftover. 

Topically, I made the commitment about a month ago to quick smoking weed until my recital, for the exception of 4/20, and I didn't even have that much. However, I forgot how much I love weed and had a taste of joy along with my taste of chicken. I don't think I will be able to smell chicken for a while after this without getting flashbacks to the kitchen. 

The preparation that went into this was that of what someone might put into a Thanksgiving dinner. I think I need a fun apron to go with my cheffing next time. 

P.S. This is a cat I was twizzed up with on our walk