Post 14: Sorry Vegetarians - the Chicken Wins

originally created as Column Fourteen, November 2000

Sorry Vegetarians – the Chicken Wins

I don’t know if I am a feminist, a post-feminist or just plain feminine, but I have never taken an interest in cooking. I did learn to mix some ingredients in a blender when my son took an interest in solid foods, but he was six months at the time and now he is six years old. I have always been blessed with boyfriends, husbands, or nannies/au-pairs who cooked. I survived dinner parties by making fruit salad, and if I did invite friends over for dinner I either heated up pre-prepared food or my friends felt so sorry for me that they ended up cooking.

Recently I took ill and my mother flew into Israel for a month to help take care of my son and me. I was on a very restrictive diet and one of the few things I was allowed to eat was chicken soup. So my mother made me promise to learn how to make chicken soup so that she could fly back to her home across the Atlantic without any guilt that her daughter would starve to death. I was thus forced to learn how to make chicken soup. By the time she left I was attacked by frozen chicken jumping out of the freezer and cut by raw onions – yes, by the onion, not even the knife.

Word got out slowly but surely that I knew how to make good chicken soup. Before I knew it I was invited to dinner parties and asked to bring chicken soup instead of fruit salad and even my ex-boyfriend showed up three hours late instead of his usual five hours late for dinner (I gave him chicken soup in exchange for some electrical and computer assistance – it helps having a computer whiz and ex engineer/journalist as an ex boyfriend). I am beginning to think that I might actually get a new boyfriend soon if he finds out that I can make chicken soup. I know that in this world of feminism or post feminism, one shouldn’t admit that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. I have a friend who has been married for over 13 years to a man who is as different from her as fruit salad is from chicken soup, and until I was forced to make chicken soup I did not understand what prevented them from getting divorced. Then it dawned on me recently that chickens are either marriage counsellors, aphrodisiacs, or peace negotiators. Yes, they might be dead, but do their children know the truth? Everytime I call this particular friend she is either preparing chicken, buying chicken or eating dinner (chicken!)

I have lot of friends who are vegetarian and they are still married, but apparently their sex drives are similar and so they don’t have to worry about chicken soup (although this particular friend makes lentil soup, pea soup, vegetarian lasagna and a fortune of other assorted vegetarian dishes). I still dislike cooking and would rather be doing dishes anytime, but sorry to tell you vegetarians, in the chicken and egg contest, looks like the chicken wins.

This writer is going to sleep alone tonight but she has chicken soup in her freezer.