I am very sorry to report that despite my best efforts and intentions, January is not through with me yet. I guess today is the 31st, and I will just have to endure until the very end. I did not do anything wrong in December though, I swear, aside from complaining about the holidays, which should be humanity’s inalienable right, as far as I’m concerned. So, I’m not sure where this vengeance is coming from, unless Santa got really, really mad this time. If he did, I want to say here that I got the message loud and clear, and that I am sorry. I won’t do it again, or I’ll do it more discreetly. Not on a BLOG for everybody to read, even though my readership has been quite limited so far. I will be a good Christmas mom, who runs joy-filled holiday cookie parties, gets high on eggnog, and enjoys every second, the way old ladies tell us we should when they see us out on the street, mindlessly pushing our strollers while running endless to-do lists in our decaying minds. Whatever I need to do to escape the January revenge, I will. Just send me a list of good deeds for next December. I hereby solemnly promise that I will follow it to the letter.
In the meantime, what is there to do? Trying to stick to my routine as much as I can, and keep cooking, no matter how hard it can feel some days. Like it has this week, so far. Everything feels so challenging right now, that the slightest deviation to my dinner routine will send me into an even worse tailspin. Take Monday, for example. My seven-year-old woke up complaining about his stomach, and was looking a little pale. His little brother was home with “la gastro” – French name for a stomach bug - for three days last week (you might begin to understand how unsparing January has been, after my oldest’s Covid at the beginning of the month). Since I was already in a cycle of ruined expectations, I bravely decided that I would keep in home just in case and spare myself the trouble of having to pick him up from school in the middle of my morning run. Thanks to my husband’s kindness and transatlantic work hours, I did take my weekly run, which greatly helped me navigate the rest of the day. But I couldn’t go grocery shopping as I was planning to. And I had a school meeting in the late afternoon, which meant I had to resort to a quick “Bio c’ Bon” run on my way back, and a “coquillettes with cordon bleu” menu. Prompting EVERY SINGLE ONE of my kids to ask if we were going out, because, sadly, that is how predictable I have become. Almost every time we go out, they are served coquillettes with gruyere, or coquillettes with gruyere and ham. Or, more rarely, coquillettes with cordon bleu, because that is what was available at Bio c Bon. I feel silly just writing this but sadly, this seems to be our reality, as my children had an almost Pavlovian response when they saw the pasta on the countertop on Monday. So, Monday was a no-go, and I was fully expecting to have another sick-child day on Tuesday. But miraculously, my son was fine and eager to go to school that morning. I thought to myself that it being January 30, the tide was starting to turn, and that I was slowly entering a new, glorious era of my existence. Except I wasn’t. By 10 am, after a nice coffee with a new mom at school, and as the sun was finally starting to come out, I received some upsetting news that threw me off for the rest of the day. I know that motherhood is supposed to be hard. And, believe me, I have found it more than hard enough so far. But my teenage son is giving me a ride for my money right now, and it is all I can do to keep myself afloat. In some ways, I know he is just following the job description for his age. He is doing what teenage boys are programmed to do. And on my end, I must do what parents are programmed to do, which is stay consistent, re-state rules and regulations, and be a sturdy captain to this family ship. I have to say, however, that while it seems very easy for him to be checking all the teenager boxes right now, it is NOT easy for me to be checking mine. All I really want to do is curl up in a ball and cry, hoping that it will go away. And keep asking myself what I did wrong, playing in my head the movie of this perfectly adjusted and happy, successful boy, acing all his subjects in school, and happily taking off for his early-morning sports practice and late-afternoon community service at the local soup kitchen. Which my son couldn’t be doing, because there are no early morning sports practice here in France, and no high school sports teams. And no school-sponsored community service, either. My brain knows that this perfect France-meets-America smiley teenager doesn’t not exist in real life, at least not without some complexities. But I cannot help wishing that my son was different, right now. And I feel terrible about it, which of course doesn’t help me show up as the sturdy, confident mother I really want to be.
Now back to Tuesday. Let’s just say that following the upsetting news, I didn’t have the strength to get the damned groceries, again. So, I ordered online, thinking I would get them by the end of the day. But this is not NYC and was not going to happen. Meaning I would have to improvise again in the evening when I just wanted to go straight to sleep “sans passer par la case dîner” – without passing the dinner box in mommy-Monopoly speak. You know when sometimes, dinner just feels impossible. Like you are just not physically going to be able to do it. Like you just want to send your teens out on the streets to figure it out for themselves and kill a wild boar or something. And take your little ones directly from bath to story time, with maybe a bowl of cheerios if you even have the strength to pull a bowl and a spoon out.
This was one of those nights. And the temptation was great to pull out the cheerios and send my teens to Mc Donald’s, if not to the wilderness – boar can be hard to come by in the middle of Paris if I’m being perfectly honest. But at the same time, there was a sensation in my body that if I gave up on dinner, my day would just completely unravel, and probably with it the rest of the week. Call me grandiose, but I think you know what I mean. There are times when I will happily scratch all pretense of a civilized dinner and be totally fine with it. In fact, this is what I do most weekend nights. But there are also times that call for a little structure when you least have the energy for it, because you know that without it, you will just feel ten times worse. This was one of those nights, when dinner was the last thing standing between me and my sanity. All I needed now was a plan. Something easy and reliable, with ingredients that could be purchased in five minutes across the street at Franprix.
And in my darkest moment, it came to me. The New York Times Roasted Chicken Provençal, which would have the added advantage of using up the remaining shallots I had from last week. And the leftover coquillettes from last night, because who can survive a family crisis without coquillettes? Not me.
Within twenty minutes, it was done. The chicken thighs were purchased, cut in half (it’s almost impossible to find thighs without drumsticks here in France, a major pet peeve of mine especially when time is tight), doused with olive oil and vermouth. The shallots were peeled and the Herbes de Provence liberally scattered. Dinner was in the oven and just needed to be pulled out an hour later, which gave just enough time to go over homework with the seven-year-old and say no to the new “Tera crystal” scratchy (they HAVE to be scratchy – “grattantes”, mom) Pokemon cards for the fifteenth time. In other words, a perfectly normal night, even when the teenager came home, and a conversation needed to be had. For a good twenty minutes, it was a peaceful Tuesday night. There aren’t many things that will do this for me, but that chicken did, and I’m sure it could do it for you too if you are in need of a grounding, satisfying, routine-resetting dinner with a prep time of under fifteen minutes.
The New York Times Chicken Provençal, aka the Life-Saving Chicken for Exhausted Mothers Whose Mental Health is Hanging by a Thread and it’s Only Tuesday https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1017327-roasted-chicken-provencal
Everything in there is either already in your kitchen cabinets or can be purchased from the local supermarket in a matter of minutes. Otherwise, it would not be life-saving and I would personally not be interested.INGREDIENTS
For 4 servings
4 chicken legs or 8 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
½ to ¾cup all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons herbes de Provence
1 lemon, quartered
8 to 10cloves garlic, peeled
4 to 6medium-size shallots, peeled and halved
⅓ cup dry vermouth
4 sprigs of thyme, for serving
PREPARATION
Step 1
Heat oven to 400 degrees (200° C). Season the chicken with salt and pepper. Put the flour in a shallow pan, and lightly dredge the chicken in it, shaking the pieces to remove excess flour.
Step 2
Swirl the oil in a large roasting pan and place the floured chicken in it. Season the chicken with the herbes de Provence. Arrange the lemon, garlic cloves and shallots around the chicken, then add the vermouth to the pan.
Step 3
Put the pan in the oven, and roast for 25 to 30 minutes, then baste it with the pan juices. Continue roasting for another 25 to 30 minutes, or until the chicken is very crisp and the meat cooked through.
Step 4
Serve in the pan or on a warmed platter, garnished with the thyme.
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