If you love it - it might be chicken
Raising two girls was not always easy because I had to convince them the dinners they ate were yummy. Merle and I were basically always on the same page when it came to food, which meant that we enjoyed almost everything we ate. Of course, there were those memorable meals that we never discuss. We keep those reminiscent relics on the bottom shelf behind the super-sized jars of peanut butter. Whenever we eat tuna, I am sure that tucked away in the dark recesses of our minds, one could travel back in time to the meal I cooked only a few days after we were first married. I loved tuna casserole, so I tried my hand at it. No recipe was necessary as I envisioned myself capable of cooking culinary masterpieces without any help from the outside. After all, how hard could it be?
Cooking the noodles was easy - no problem there, although they did seem a bit sticky and clumpy. But Merle loved me and I knew he would overlook this tiny fau pax. I added some salt and pepper as I knew this was an important ingredient. I figured a couple teaspoons of salt should do it for 2 cups of noodles. One teaspoon per cup of noodles. Sounds right to me. I then added cheese - lots and lots of cheddar cheese. The kind with salt. This was already looking good. Two cans of Cream of Chicken soup (they hadn't come out with the low-salt variety yet) and it was ready to pop right into the oven.
I timed it perfectly, and Merle and I sat down to enjoy one of our first dinners. Merle's mom, a phenomenal cook, was upstairs and the wonderful smell coming from her kitchen gave me pause that perhaps mine wasn't going so well. But I proudly opened the oven and gently blew the steam away, hoping to entice his taste buds to do a happy dance in anticipation for the revered dinner. He did seem rather elated to eat - but since then, I have discovered this is not a compliment. He will eat anything. He's like Mikey.
After prayer, we both took polite turns dishing up the tuna casserole. I don't remember what Merle said after the first bite, and I don't even think he had to say anything. His eyes started bugging out and he coughed. He couldn't reach for his water glass fast enough. I took a bite to see what all the excitement was about and almost gagged as well. Merle was nice about it and I was about in tears. I thought it would be such a magnificent dinner! To make matters worse, after extensive searching, we found that there was not a shred of tuna to be found. The salt and noodle casserole had to be discarded - even Merle wouldn't eat it. He said that if he thought about it hard enough, he was sure it tasted like chicken.
When I was young, a friend of ours took a rattlesnake that had just been run over, and fryed it up. I thought it was a fun adventure, so I ate some of it too. The table talk that day was that the reptile was delicious ... .. just like chicken. Now that I am older, I shudder when I think of a de-skinned snake, frying in a cast iron pan with lots of oil. It just somehow doesn't do it for me.
My girls were rather picky about the food set before them. Countless times, we would cajole them to eat because, "It tastes like chicken". Americans are rather weird. We seem to have a love affair with chicken. We even make steak that we call "chicken fried steak". We name body parts after the bird - "chicken fingers". If we see someone with skinny legs, you can almost bet you will hear, "look at those chicken legs!". I used to be a very fearful child - you got it. I got called "chicken" plenty of times. How many times have we played "chicken" with our bicycles or tonka trucks (or even real cars??). How about the busy people who say they are like, "a chicken with it's head cut off". That's lovely. If you have ever seen one, it's busy all right. It's busy running around right into freezer.
So, I guess it seems kind of normal in a weird kind of way to love chicken. I don't know how it did not make the list for our national bird. The turkey did, but the lowely chicken got left out somehow. It's funny that we never refer to what we eat as the "rooster". I guess it wouldn't look right. Colonial Sanders, "Kentucky Fried Rooster" just doesn't have the right appeal. Rooster Fried Steak sounds downright disgusting. I think we just need to stick with the obvious, "chicken" is a good all-around, neutral gender food.
I saw a picture of a dog today. He was wearing a sweater and on the back of the sweater it read, "I love cats. They taste like chicken".
Just remember that keeping peace in the home is easy. When momma cooks bovine tongue in gravy and expects you to eat every last bite, just use your imagination to its fullest. "Nothin is better from momma's kitchen: than a plate full of hot, fried chicken." You'll get through it.
Debbie
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Author: fairhaven7
Location: Victor Montana USA
Gender: Female
Age: 52
Blog Entries: 21 (archive)
Blog Comments: 77
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Good stuff, and the next time you put too much salt in something, (if you know it in time) stick a whole raw potato in it while it's still cooking. Soaks up the extra salt, it do! No kidding. Anyway, thank again. Hilarious.
