My nieces in the past week have just mastered the “interrupting knock knock” jokes and their most enthusiastic is “interrupting chicken”

It goes like this;

person A: “knock knock”

person B “who’s there?”

person A “interrupting chicken”

person B “ interrupting chicken” -suddenly interrupted before they can say “who” by person A who says ”BEGAWK!”

yes, it is always funny, especially when the “begawk” is delivered with a five year old’s enthusiasm. I am always on the hunt for recipes which surprise me with flavor as much as an interrupting chicken, especially when dealing this common kitchen staple of chicken breasts. This recipe, as simple as it is, is on the list of the best recipes for chicken I have found recently. The chicken is juicy, even though I cooked it in a skillet instead of on the grill, and the ginger lime combo is subtle yet satisfying.

We all have things we wrestle with, whether it be doubts or behaviors and even verbal crutches. I remember when my speech was littered with excessive uses of the word “like” from watching too much eighties television and it just isn’t now. Food and my relationship with my body image has been for me a life threatening struggle at times and though I have been in real recovery for at this point since college, whenever I least expect it seems, I find myself inadvertently falling back into bad thinking about food being a vehicle to manage my fears, my sadness and my anxiety. Rarely does it affect if I eat at all but sometimes it affects what I feel comfortable eating and it often affects how I feel about eating. CS Lewis’s book “The Screwtape Letters” was written as his version of a conversation with the Devil and he makes him funny, cunning and very convincing. Whatever their faith tradition, many addicts, addiction counselors, and people like me who struggle with what they consider non chemical addictions, find it resonates with them as reminiscent of the conversations people in recovery have with themselves every time they thing about making unhealthy choices and risking their recovery. In recovery when you are too sad or too angry or to anxious, bad choices rarely seem illogical before you make them and always seem to have a payoff which makes sense at the time. The messages we give ourselves are very powerful and since I know there are no choices with food except to eat in a healthy way for me if I am interested in being healthy and still breathing, I just tell myself sometimes my “screwtape” thoughts are like an overplayed song on the radio which used to remind you of a bad breakup but now just needs to not be listened to. The funny thing about certain habits is they die hard and though I am past, in my life, the stage of counting the calories of everything I eat, the phrase “marinate in the mayonnaise” immediately started the calorie calculator in my head whirring. Reassuring myself comes easier on certain days than others, but on this day I soldiered on reminding myself of many things including it was light mayo and nobody has ever immediately balloooned up in a Violet Beauregard way from a having a tablespoon of highly processed egg products…Recently, because of the flux in the world and my private anxieties, reassuring myself has been harder than it has been in years, but this is on the list of the reasons I religiously keep this blog- to keep me honest and keep me eating. I was rewarded with tender chicken breasts which I ate at night for dinner, and today atop a summer salad. “High five to myself “ I said and being able to enjoy something cooked in mayonnaise was as much of a grateful surprise to me as an interrupting chicken.