Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: Cooking or Baking (01/04/07)
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TITLE: Chicken Divine | Previous Challenge Entry
By Al Boyce
01/10/07 -
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Sam just shook his head at his roommate and laughed, saying. "I'll have to give you the recipe."
Bob started to say something, then paused as an idea dawned.
"That's it!" he said. "Yes, give me the recipe! I'll make it for Sharon!"
Sharon was Bob's love interest at the moment; sultry, elusive, tall and intelligent -- and totally uninterested in Bob.
The lack of interest, however, just spurred him on. When Bob found out Sharon enjoyed astronomy, he borrowed Sam's textbooks and boned up on everything from constellations to comets. When she expressed an interest in jazz, it was Sam's music collection Bob raided so he could burn her a CD. Now, apparently, it was gourmet food.
Patiently, Sam jotted down the recipe and handed it to an enthusiastic Bob.
"This is great!" Bob said. "What do you think? Have her over Saturday night?"
"That's fine," said Sam. "I can't wait to see how it goes."
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Sam got the first inkling that things hadn't gone well when he got up Sunday morning and saw the casserole dish by the sink.
Plump, white bites of chicken bobbed with broccoli in a greenish sea of what looked like water with blobs of olive oil. With some trepidation, Sam dipped a finger in and touched it to his tongue. It tasted quite a bit like, um, cotton candy.
At that moment, Bob barreled into the kitchen, clearly miffed.
"Thanks for nothing, buddy," he snarled.
"Come again?" said Sam.
Hand shaking, Bob gestured at the congealing casserole.
"Some recipe!" he spat. "Think you're pretty funny, don't you?"
"Hold on," said Sam. "THAT is my chicken divan?"
"Yep," Bob came back. "Followed every word of that recipe to the letter. Well, except for one tiny substitution."
Bob recounted how he had set the table for a romantic evening, bought wine and flowers, then he’d gotten the ingredients for the chicken divan from the grocery. No matter how hard he looked, he couldn't find heavy cream for the sauce.
"I mean, they had milk," he said. "And they had half-and-half. But the recipe said cream and I wanted it to be right.
"Then it hit me -- why not whipping cream?"
"Sure," said Sam. "Whipping cream should have worked fine."
"Fat lot YOU know," Bob replied.
It was then that Sam noticed, embedded in the top layer of the kitchen trash can, the
signature blue and white label for "Cool Whip."
Bob went on, unaware of Sam’s growing look of understanding.
"So I put in all the ingredients and it looked great going into the oven."
He had Sharon sit at the table, dimmed the lights and pulled the casserole out of the oven, only to discover that "Cool Whip," when heated, reconstitutes itself into its original ingredients.
So, Bob unveiled a casserole with chicken, broccoli and cheese bobbing in water, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated coconut and palm kernel oil, sodium caseinate, natural and artificial flavorings, xanthan and guar gums, polysorbate 80, sorbitan monostearate, and just a smidgen of beta carotene.
"It tasted even worst than it looked," he lamented.
"You ATE it?" Sam exclaimed.
"Well, not much of it," Bob admitted.
Sharon was a pretty good sport, Bob said. He showed her the recipe and made quite sure she knew it was Sam's.
"Guess that's the last I'll see of her," he said.
Little did he know.
Sharon called the next day and got Sam.
"Hey Sharon," he said. "Bob's isn't here, but ..."
"That's fine," she cut him off. "It's you I want to talk to."
"Hey, if it's about the chicken divan, I can explain," Sam started.
As it turned out, Sharon was putting two-and-two together about some other things.
"My guess is YOU are the astronomy buff, not Bob, am I right?" she asked.
Sam admitted he was.
"And you have the jazz collection? And it's probably YOU who wrote the poetry Bob showed me. And my guess is he didn't think up all those cute jokes either."
Within five minutes, Sharon had discovered that everything she had ever found interesting in Bob -- he'd stolen from Sam.
"Listen, Sharon, I'm really sorry," Sam said. "I had no idea ..."
"Forget it," she said. "I just have one question for you."
"What's that?"
"You busy tonight?"
Sam thought about it a minute, then said, "It looks like I might be."
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Now, if only things could work out that well for me ;-)
Oh well.
God bless,
Kevin