A dinner last week was satay-ish chicken thighs and onions with rice and cilantro salad and side limes. Afterward was a dessert that I was really excited about, but I destroyed in such a monumental way that will follow my reputation for the rest of my life.
John and I recently returned from a very spontaneous trip to Florida (specifically Orlando, the city beautiful), and the night I made this dinner we were staying with my sisters Amanda and Gina. I cooked dinner for everyone as a polite house guest would, and also made a toxic dessert as a murderer would.
For dinner, in a large bowl I mixed together a packet of Omsom lemongrass bbq sauce, some sambal, soy sauce, lime juice, peanut butter, and coconut milk. I dumped the chicken thighs in this mixture and slathered it all around until it looked like something I would have vomited up in college.
I let that sit in the fridge for a few hours, and when it was time to cook, I lined a sheet pan with foil, laid the thighs out flat on a bed of sliced onions, and broiled the chickens until they were broiled, flipping at some point (in case you needed reminding that this blog will never provide you with anything close to an actual recipe).
I made a salad of 3:1 cilantro to romaine, and served it all over rice with lime wedges. It was good blah blah. But then came dessert.
I had the idea to make some mango “nice cream” from frozen mango chunks, a banana, some agave, the rest of the coconut milk, lime zest, and lime juice. Sounds delightful, no?
Long story short, the mango was shitty, so the mixture was grainy, and I added too much lime juice, so it was too tart. Not so nice cream after all.
To add insult to injury, as we were choking it down, we discovered that there were some pieces of the blender tamper that had been shaved off when I got a little too close to the blade (aka I hit the blade with the tamper and didn’t once think there would be consequences). Our collective reaction was a mixture of awkward silence followed by deafening silence.
At the time, I felt immensely guilty for feeding 3 of the most cherished people in my life microplastics (“more like macroplastics”), and I hung my head in shame and embarrassment. Now some days removed from the incident, I think it’s funny and wish they would have swallowed more before discovering my mistake. As if they’ve never done anything to deserve it!!
After we cleaned up and threw it all away, the crew of idiots—strewn about on the couch—teased me with their bellies full of a dinner that I had prepared. I tried to ignore them as I wrote, but if anyone reading this has little sisters, you know as well as I do that oftentimes the whole experience feels like deep sea scuba diving with bees in your helmet.
Gina: “Are you giving me credit for finding the plastics? I’m the one that had the giant chunk.”
When I didn’t respond, they flung some cheap bait to “get” my “attention”.
Amanda: “Oh yeah Craigslist, look at this ad!
John: “A vintage dresser for only $150?!
Amanda: “It’s only 3,000 pounds!”
Gina: “I was thinking about getting a $4000 photograph of a tree.”
Amanda (cackling): “For a room in my house that I never go in!”
After a brief period of just howling laughter, they started shouting buzzwords in succession: “Bushwick! Local! Rolo’s! Proper cilantro storage!” until Amanda muttered “welp, that’s everything I know about Laura” and it finally ended.