This week, Ben and I made another favorite recipe from Hope’s Table, by Hope Helmuth, Creamy Italian Chicken and Pasta. The recipe is found in the recipe index or below.
Of course, it was delicious. When the cream rolls up in a limo, the game is over. It’s not a fair fight. Chickpeas, step aside. Leafy greens? We scoff at you. Barley, the soup called and it misses you. Don’t let the door hit you in the behind. You get the picture. Chicken + Cream = True Love Forever. I am fairly sure that the only thing that makes this recipe “Italian” is the addition of some dried parsley at the end, but it doesn’t matter. Cream showed up to the party.
Sure, we could equivocate over herbal ancestry, but nobody can dispute the fact that the chicken was good.
So what could possibly be our problem this week when we had that scrumptious chicken in our bellies? Why is the sky falling? Fresh off the delicious chicken meal, you would think life was sunshine and roses. Nope. Ice cream dispute.
Ben plays the ice cream situation like a game of chess. He insists on picking flavors that he calculates nobody else will like (mint chocolate chip or chocolate peanut butter squirrel). He is often wrong, but he plays the odds. Meanwhile, he implants the idea of his preferred flavor in the rest of us (“Boy, that peanut butter squirrel sounds good…”) Does it feel like I just mentioned the same flavor twice? I didn’t. Pay attention. Chocolate peanut butter squirrel is chocolate ice cream with peanut butter swirled in. Peanut butter squirrel is vanilla ice cream with thick, rich veins of delicious peanut butter swirled throughout. Clear winner. Ben knows this, so he has a system. Step one: get your parents to buy both kinds. Step two: gobble up the flavor your parents like. Step three: eat the less preferred flavor at your leisure. You have no natural competition.
This week, the ice cream coffers were running low. All the peanut butter squirrel was gone. Phil mixed the rest of the plain vanilla with the rest of the chocolate peanut butter squirrel and got a tongue lashing for his trouble.
This is terrible! Are you kidding me? Look what Dad did! I can’t eat this! (Bowl is licked clean.)
For my part, I realize that I have my own Henny Penny situation going on at work. It’s my chair. During the pandemic, when all I did was sit in a chair, I ordered a new one. All the better to zoom you. A couple years ago, I had a particular substitute. I don’t know what atrocities occurred in that chair while I was out for the day, but it has never been the same. It is one of those hydraulic things. I start my day towering over my dominion, but the chair very slowly (very, very slowly, like Venice descending into the sea, or an ending to this post) sinks. I start my day as the master of my domain, queen of the castle. Over the course of a half hour or so, a demoralizing descent occurs. I look up from my desk and find that I am a child at the kid’s table at Thanksgiving. I am dispensing advice about complete sentences, exploration of the New World, and other critical topics to fifth graders as if I am a baby who has been placed on a blanket on the floor. I can’t even take myself seriously with my behind hovering 10 inches above the linoleum and 2 feet below my fifth graders. Mostly, my class humors me, but when the time comes for me to get up out of this inglorious bastard, I must rely heavily on the arm rests and upper body strength. My joints creak to the point that one of my students asked me yesterday if I’d like some WD-40 for teacher appreciation day. I said yes.
We hope your sky is not falling. We wish for you only peanut butter squirrel ice cream and chairs that hold you and your dignity intact, but we are realists. If all else fails, get your butt up off the floor, make some nominally Italian but maximally tasty chicken with cream, and eat whatever ice cream is there.
