The Pot on the Stove

The glue of our marriage is cooking.

This is especially true now that we are under a Stay at Home order. We talk about breakfast the night before like we’re planning a Thanksgiving dinner for twelve people. I’m figuring out that the trick to this quarantine business is to always have something to look forward to, even if it’s just your next meal.

Last night we debated about whether to have a two-egg omelet (shared) or a three-egg, knowing that we only had four eggs left. We settled on two and then my husband yelled up the stairs this morning that he was using three and later when I sat down to breakfast I saw why. He’d wisely used all our aging leftovers for the omelet, two eggs would have never done the job. Oh well, so now we have one. Egg.

After breakfast, we consider lunch. There was no question about reheating the amazing Red Lentil Soup with North African Spices I made a few days ago. I bought a big bag of red lentils as part of my first episode of pandemic shopping even though I had no idea about what to do with them. Apocalypse? Buy lentils. It was my first instinct right after loading up on tuna and Spam. The North African spices that made this soup so wonderful? Coriander, cumin, ginger, cinnamon, cayenne, mint, paprika, and cilantro.

And dinner tonight is the best, my husband’s signature dish: roast chicken using a recipe he found in the New York Times years ago. This is a no fail, amazingly wonderful roast chicken.

Howard’s Roast Chicken

Chicken: Rinse whole chicken and pat dry. Salt and pepper inside and out. Place butter inside and on the skin. Roast for 30 minutes at 500. Reduce heat to 325 and roast until skin is crispy and juices run clear (about 30-45 minutes). Remove chicken and let rest. Sauce: Pour roasting juices into a saucepan, add butter, cook and stir on high heat until reduced. Serve with rice.

If you’d told me a month ago that I’d post a recipe on my blog, I would have waved you away. Recipes are too trifling for my fabulous blog. I talk about serious things here or funny things, depending, but I don’t do recipes, not my thing.

But here I am with recipes. Because thinking about what’s for dinner or what’s for breakfast or lunch is better than considering the growing peril of the avalanche rumbling around us. We are hunkering down here, hiding from the peril that is outside, everywhere, and living our lives one meal at a time, one roast chicken at a time. So far, it’s working.

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WordPress Discover Prompt #5: Dish