Watch out San Diego Chicken

As I have mentioned in the past my brother Mike has a lot of food allergies.  He's allergic to dairy (milk, cheese, etc) tomatoes and grains, MSG and a few others.  This has made cooking for him a challenge.  Then you throw in his chicken paranoia or phobia or whatever it is and that limits the culinary quest even more.   So, I'm always looking for new and creative things to cook for Mike. 

I can't remember when the chicken phobia started because it was there when we were kids.  I don't remember a time when he wasn't paranoid about chickens.  But yesterday all was revealed when we met Mike's new psych. counselor.  

I went with Mike to his appointment and thirty-year old Elizabeth seemed quite taken with my brother.  I could tell she was fascinated by his story by the questions she was asking him.  She was trying to determine when he began exhibiting signs of schizophrenia and I had always thought it was around age nineteen.  That was the first  time he received psychiatric treatment.  But as she talked to him he revealed that he was about eight years old when he first saw "The Big Giant Chicken" and he told him to do bad things.

All at once I remembered when we were kids and my mother talked about Mike's hallucinations.  She always explained them as being a side affect of his asthma medication.  I never knew the specifics of his hallucinations and never thought much of it.  Of course I was only seven at the time myself.

SO....no wonder he was afraid of chickens!  Now, he's decided to just eat them and not listen to them.  Wow, what an amazing man!

I made him homemade chicken noodle soup last night.  He ate it with gusto!