The Best Tuscan Chicken Recipe

Don’t you hate when you click on a recipe, only to find not a recipe, but some blowhard going on and on about their Italian grandmother’s journey to the United States, and how all she had was two Sicilian dollars and her recipe book to get through the boat ride? And how the boat sank and she swam to shore, now broke, and the only recipe that survived was one for Tuscan Chicken? Fast forward a few years, and now the grandmother (who wasn’t a grandmother at this point in the story) is slangin’ hash for 25 cents a week, while at night she climbs to the roof of her tenement, gazing east towards home, trying to recall all those lost recipes, but still taking comfort in the fact that she at least still has her Tuscan Chicken. Then one day after work, a Wednesday to be exact, because she cooks Tuscan Chicken every Wednesday, a really hot guy follows the scent up the the grandmother’s door and knocks. People were still really sexist back then, so the guy is like “Hey, you’re gonna be my wife and cook that for me.” She says ‘yes’ and they get married. The guy’s misogynist patterns only continue. The years pass, and she begins to resent Tuscan Chicken, because it has now become a symbol of her oppression. She vows to make a change. Next Wednesday, she makes the Tuscan Chicken, true to the recipe, as always. Except for one minor addition—-POISON(and also some of her pee)!!!! They sit down for dinner, and she secretly pulls out a piece of pee-and-poison-free chicken for herself so she can eat without her husband becoming suspicious. Fifteen minutes later, the guy is barfing and crapping everywhere. Next thing you know, he’s dead, and the grandmother ends up in jail. Ten years into her sentence, she finally gets a job in the prison kitchen for 25 cents per month. She still remembers Tuscan Chicken. The prison kitchen doesn’t have the ingredients for it. The head of the prison says it’s not in the budget. So she sleeps with him. It turns out he was lying when he told her that if she slept with him he would have the ingredients brought in. So she poisons him and escapes. I think this is how she became pregnant. Anyways, now she’s an ex-convict single mother who has killed two people. Tuscan Chicken helps her forget all that.

It’s usually about this point in the story that the person actually gives you the recipe, and it’s really annoying that they could have just put it right at the top. It’s rather vexing. Now, you came here for a Tuscan Chicken recipe, didn’t you? Cook some chicken and pour Italian seasoning on it.

The People of Trader Joe’s

Browse through People of Walmart for a bit. Pretty scary stuff.

The universe needs balance, though. Enter the yuppies of Trader Joe’s, a force countering the grizzled mass that comprises Walmart’s patronage, not in looks, but in sheer pomposity.

Last Friday, I witnessed a 40-something male, clad in snug, halfway-down-the-quad navy blue short pants and a tight pastel plaid shirt, shaming an elderly woman that may have been his mother, lover—or through some sort of strange sci-fi twist, daughter—for suggesting that they buy frozen corn.

Picture that: unfettered fury, arising from the mere mention of produce stored below thirty two degrees Fahrenheit.

The situation played out like this:

Mother, daughter, or lover: “They have some corn in the freezer.”

Man, through gritted teeth, with a vein protruding from his forehead, talking very slowly: “What did……..I tell you……..about frozen…………………… products.”

Then he stood, glaring at her in silence, as a look of genuine terror overtook the woman’s face.

I feel like I should have intervened, but I got the vibe that this would have earned me a room temperature organic daikon radish stuffed into one of my many unfrozen orifices, courtesy of short pants.

 

Trying Again At The Recipe

Alright, what was in the thing I was going to cook yesterday? Tree nuts? Gluten? No, that would end up killing too many people. Why is everyone allergic to nuts and gluten all of a sudden? Time was, that’s all we would get for Christmas. Now, if aliens invade Earth, all they have to do is pepper the major landmasses with flour and peanuts, and this world becomes theirs. But not me. I’ll gladly eat the free peanuts falling from the sky. I’ll find a use for the flour. In the post-apocalyptic world, perhaps it will become a form of currency. I’ll invent some sort of vacuum device to suck all that grain dust from the lungs of the deceased, using peanut energy to propel me from body to body, siphoning the respiratory gold that lies within the airsac of each corpse. The remaining humans, those who haven’t swollen to death or sworn allegiance to the new alien government, will gladly follow my lead. But I won’t want to be their leader, and I won’t share the flour I have hoarded. So they’ll all disperse and kill each other off. Then it’s just me versus the otherworldly troika regime of Blandox 3000, Drunvalo 458,739,457, and The Everlasting Fluff, (Fluff has a different meaning on Ungerstudt, the oddly German-sounding planet these aliens hail from) the fate of Earth floating in the balance.

Maybe the recipe had alien poison in it?

Now that I mention it, I think the recipe actually did have something to do with both nuts and gluten: perhaps I do desire a dash to power after all, maybe a yearning for Armageddon. I don’t know.

While prepping for this post, I did find a ripped piece of paper, containing what I believe to be half of the recipe, with the words ‘pollen’ and ‘bee stings’ written on it. Beneath that it reads ‘marinate in cat hair and lactose juice.’ Hmmm. The missing half of that paper probably lists all the required seasonings, because what I have in front of me does not sound like it would please the palate.

Looks like I shot my wad early again. No recipe today. Sorry.

Toilet Paper Buying Anecdote

We all love buying toilet paper. Here’s an interaction I had while purchasing some.

Counter guy: ~looks at what I’m buying then up at me~ “You know what they say, a job is never complete until all the paperwork is done.”

Me: “Yep.”

Counter guy: “That’ll be /whatever the price was/ for the paper.”

Me: “Here.”

Counter guy: ~as I’m already walking away~ “Well, looks like you’ve got a lot of paperwork to do!”

Things I learned:

1/ That guy was really obsessed with me wiping my ass.

2/ Never go there again.

3/ Get a bidet. It makes more sense. If you step in dog poop, you don’t wipe your foot off with a paper towel and call it good.

An Interaction I Had With A Person Today

A person stopped me at the local community center today, a place where I don’t work, and also had no part in constructing.

Guy: “Hey dooood, is there an electrical outlet, like, anywhere in this building?”

Me: /Pointing ten feet behind him/ “Right there.”

Guy: “Oh, well that’s not a great location, soooo…..” /implying that it was my fault/

Me: “Well I didn’t design the building, sooooo….”

Then he walked away.