I have cooked many a chicken in my crock pot, always with edible results. Until last week. Usually, my crock pot chickens range from just right to a bit dry. Never anything a little barbecue sauce won’t cure.

I don’t normally add too much to my crock pot chicken. A little white wine, some onions, maybe some chicken broth, salt, pepper. Once in a while I add too much liquid, and it becomes a boiled chicken. On those occasions, I shred it up for chicken salad and call it good.

But last week, I wanted to mix it up a bit. I wanted to try something new. I wanted to be daring in the kitchen, like Julia Child. Problem is, I am decidedly not Julia Child. For one thing, my voice is far too low. I’m pretty sure altos can’t cook like Julia Child. A recipe just turns out better if it is intoned at a high pitch during preparation. Maybe if I had sung soprano while pouring the orange juice into my crock pot last week I’d have had better results.

I found the recipe in my crock pot cook book. It is a mishmash of recipes collected from women all over the country by whoever is in charge of compiling such things into cookbooks for suckers such as myself. I’m pretty sure they didn’t test any of them before publishing.

This recipe was simple. One whole chicken. Check. One lemon inserted into the cavity of the chicken. Check. One cup orange juice. Check. One quarter cup honey. Check. I threw in some potatoes, carrots, and onions, for good measure. I set it for 10 hours and went off to work.

Remember on “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation,” when the family is gathered around the holiday table, and Eddie’s wife comes out with this gorgeous looking turkey and everyone cheers? Then they cut into it and cracks in two and emits this foul smelling gas and kind of disintegrates like a gremlin is living inside.

That’s pretty much what my chicken did. Except it didn’t even look pretty on the outside. It was just plain ugly, through and through. I was relatively certain when I stuck my knife into it a creature was going to come leaping out to gnaw off my face. Fortunately, that didn’t happen. But I held an extra knife at the ready in case I had to defend myself.

It had been a long time since I’d suffered such a defeat in the kitchen. Lately, I’ve had mediocre days and good days and every once in a while, I even have a great cooking day. I may not be Julia Child, but then, really, who is? I’m just me, and so far my cooking hasn’t killed anyone.

I’m pretty sure if I’d tried to feed my Citrus Surprise Chicken to my son, he would not have survived the night. It was so disgusting, I had to walk away from it and come back a few hours later. And so, off we went to Subway.

That night, after my son was snug in bed, I headed back into the kitchen to brave the crock pot. I did manage to get enough meat off the thing for some barbeque chicken sandwiches. Most anything is salvageable if mixed with enough barbeque sauce.

The moral of the story? Citrus plus chicken plus crock pot plus 10 hours equals nasty. Or so it was for me.

Sara Frederick lives and writes in Lewistown. An archive of The Sara Beth Times is available online at www.sarabethtimes.com.