In Which The Chicken Marsala Does Me In

Heartburn has become my close companion these days, mostly due to extremely advanced age and lack of discretion when eating. By that, I mean I tend to eat what is placed in front of me, be it a single egg or a mountain of hashbrowns, gravy, a half dozen eggs, biscuits and a whole smoked pig thrown in for good measure.

With decaf on the side, of course.

Which brings us to this evening.

The Girl has been craving Chicken Marsala for an eon or two. She's been whining and nagging and pleading and begging and doing anything else annoying that she can in order to get me to make it to get her off my back. Which is, in and of itself, a backhanded compliment of sorts. In some weird parallel universe somewhere, another mother is really liking all the whining and nagging and pleading and begging and annoying stuff because it means her daughter is doing it because she loves the other mother's cooking so much she'll do anything to get it.

I, on the other hand, look at it as The Girl doing everything EXCEPT what it would take to get me to cook what she wants. I mean really, would offering to do the dishes afterward put her into some sort of galactic tailspin? Instead, when I offer that as a trade for my services I get the ever present heavy sigh and rolling eyes, hand on jutting out hip and the "Why can't you just DO IT???" that I've come to expect.

It's a proud moment in the kingdom of motherhood.

At any rate, tonight dreams were made reality and Chicken Marsala was served. However, the chef forgot that the chickens whose breasts had given their all for the dish at hand were of the steroid-fed variety. The stinkin' things were so thick they took FOR.EV.ER. to cook. Had I had my wits about me I would have pounded them into some semblance of uniform thickness instead of standing there for an hour waiting for the pink to turn white.

Live and learn, that's my motto.

The meal was finally ready around 7:30 p.m., at which time The Girl was able to barely drag her starved and sunken frame to the table. After she called Boyfriend and invited him to join us, that is.

The thing about Boyfriend is that he can eat three out of the four people left in my home UNDER THE TABLE. Boyfriend can flat PUT IT AWAY. Thankfully, I knew ahead of time he'd probably be here, so I cooked extra chicken, extra pasta, extra everything.

And he did not disappoint.

We rented a small crane to lift the actual chicken to our plates, loaded up on pasta and French-cut green beans, then dug in. The Girl ate as though she hadn't seen actual edible food in a week. Boyfriend and The Boy just never stopped once they got started. Apparently Boyfriend had never had Chicken Marsala before, and he just didn't want it to end. I had to call a halt after the second humongo-breast and third helping of pasta, because it hurt MY stomach to see that much food being put away - even if it was someone else doing the eating. I could just see the boys going into the office and sinking down into one of the many chairs there, turning on the tube to catch some ball and leaning back in the easy chair while they belched.

It was not a mental picture one would wish to have seared into one's memory.

So I made The Girl and Boyfriend do the dishes as I came in to let you know what transpired here tonight. Also so I could let you know that I am now suffering from a stellar case of heartburn due to the lateness of the hour we ate.

But hey, anything for The Princess. Anything at all.