“Interesting," Elaine said as Rick poured the vodka over the chicken and struck a match. "Until I met you, I never thought of using 'Polish food' and 'romantic' in the same sentence.” From Death In the Science Classroom
Polish Chicken Flambé
Serves 4
4 chicken quarters
2 tablespoons salt
2 tablespoons strong Polish vodka or other vodka
4 stale dinner rolls
1/2 cup milk
1/ 4 cup butter or margarine
2 eggs
1/4 cup dry bread crumbs
1 tablespoon finely chopped walnuts
1 tablespoon finely chopped almonds
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/ 4 cup chopped fresh parsley
In a medium bowl, soak rolls in milk add butter or margarine, eggs, 1 tablespoon of salt, dry bread crumbs, walnuts, almonds, nutmeg, and parsley. Use a food processor to combine ingredients.
Grease a baking pan, place the stuffing inside and cover with foil.
Rub chicken with 1tablespoon salt. Preheat oven to 375F.
Cover and bake 30 minutes. Remove cover; bake 30 minutes more or until juices run clear. Place chicken quarters, skin -side up, on a platter. Pour vodka over chicken. Using a long match, carefully ignite vodka. Serve immediately.
This dish is perfect with a bottle of Pinot Noir.
And Now, Something for the Skeptics
Chapter 6 from Mellow Out--Lessons Learned From Household Cats
We are most alive when we’re in love.
John Updike
Love Is Overrated
It starts when we are teenagers. We see someone that we like, and we can’t think about anything else. Our bodies tingle when we see this person. We can’t sleep. Our thoughts only focus on this special one. We become jealous because this individual can’t spend every waking moment with us. Even though it may be just physical attraction, we proclaim from the rooftops that we are in love and then proceed to do crazy things. This condition may occur several times during our lifetime and it is always hard to overcome. What is this thing we call love?
Samantha needs to be loved. So, I’m sitting on my recliner and watching Jeopardy, totally relaxed with a glass of wine. All of a sudden, Samantha has to jump up and sit on my lap and purr very loudly. It’s so bad that when the Mitzer in sitting on my legs, Samantha will come and sit on my chest. Of course, when the commercial comes on, I decide to take a bathroom break, and I move the Mitzer to the couch without incident, but Samantha screams. This also happens when I’m sitting in my office chair—she has to jump up on my lap. At night, she has to sleep next to me. I sleep on my back and Samantha sleeps on my right side, facing the bottom of the bed. My hand sits on her back. It must be that she loves me dearly.
However, when I am not available during waking hours, she jumps up on my wife’s lap and the procedure is repeated. The cat always has to have someone touching her.
The thing we don’t understand is that when we have company—especially someone that doesn’t like cats—Samantha jumps into his or her lap. She acts like a cheap whore, and we are embarrassed. This behavior became so bad that we consulted an expert. The reason, it seems, is linked to another common cat behavior. When cats discover a new piece of furniture or enter a room for the first time, they will brush along the walls and go up, down, around, behind and underneath everything in sight. While the uninitiated might interpret this in-depth maneuvering as mere curiosity, the cat is actually marking its territory.
This territorial nature is also what drives cats to rub up against any and all visitors who enter their home. (They will also often go to the trouble of “reclaiming” their own people when they’ve been around other cats.) What might seem like a “welcoming home” ritual is, in reality, a way of making their owners and everyone else around them the cat’s personal property.
When I heard about this concept, I was devastated. I thought that Samantha and I had a very special relationship, but her affection was all about marking her property. We men are very aware that many women complain that their husbands treat them as objects, and so we take special precautions to keep this from happening. Now I know that is exactly how my cat feels about me. I don’t feel special anymore—I am just an object. However, my wife doesn’t feel this way. She is sure that Samantha is different from the other cats.
My wife has a strange view about love. On Monday night for two hours, she is glued to the television, watching The Bachelor or The Bachelorette. In these shows one woman (Bachelorette) or one man (Bachelor) has to whittle down a field of twenty-five men or women to find perfect love. For fourteen weeks we (not by choice, for me) watch as the main character reacts to persons of the opposite sex in some of the most romantic places in the world. The background music enhances the event, and at some point, the main character has kissed all of the contestants.
Finally, the group gets whittled down to the final four, and the production crews move to the hometowns so that the main character can meet the families. There is a date, and the main character can take each of the four contestants into the fantasy suite where they spend the night without cameras. The main character then picks the perfect person, and at the last minute in some incredibly romantic place, the bachelor proposes to his future bride or the bachelorette accepts the proposal from the man that is left. The whole thing is so wonderful, and the chat boards are busy because everyone has an opinion about who should get the ring. This is a true affirmation that romantic love exists…until you look at the statistics.
There have been 19 seasons of The Bachelor and only two couples are still together. As for The Bachelorette, it has been on for ten seasons and only three couples are still together. This shows that something else was going on instead of true love.
My cats have the right idea: what looks like love may not be love at all. So, if you are a man and meet your “true love,” keep your wallet in your pocket until you are absolutely sure that it’s love.