Chomp!

 

 

By Ron Aiken

 

Chomp! Vs. The Children!

It was a classic scenario.

Parent gets home (the parent is Chomp!), surveys available protein around which to build a dinner. It’s chicken.

 

Not very exciting on its own, eh?

 

With such an unflattering image before mine eyes, how does one go about making this into something special? Usually, Chomp! adds olive oil and a combination of seasonings depending on what’s handy or uses honey and seasonings or uses some barbecue sauce or simply grills them. On Monday, however, Chomp! had a new, better idea.

There was pesto. There were peanuts no one was eating because some person for reasons I will never understand bought UNSALTED peanuts, which are the devil.

But paired with the pesto, though, WHOA! This was going to be good. First, I took the peanuts and put them in a Ziploc bag, like so. Ignore the product placement, pls.

 

Putting things in Ziploc bags to crush them (almonds, peanuts, etc.) is a GREAT way to avoid a mess.

 

So I then crushed them to a (mostly) powdery form using a nice stone pestle we have. I then took the pesto and prepared to combine the two when it happened.

Chomp!’s children came in the kitchen to see what was going on.

Let Chomp! say for the record his children are wonderful people who usually have very adventurous tastes. Usually. On Monday, these same children became animals, however, unwilling to even I consider the flavor possibilities of what I had going on. Oh, the faces they made! Oh, how they pleaded that I PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE DON’T DO THIS AND JUST MAKE FRIED CHICKEN OK BECAUSE WHY CAN’T YOU EVER JUST MAKE FRIED CHICKEN LIKE WE LIKE IT INSTEAD OF WHAT YOU NORMALLY MAKE?

Now being an accommodating sort by nature and just pleasant in every which way as a rule, Chomp! conceded to their demands with a caveat – I’d make half the chicken their way (six strips), half mine and we’d see which was better.

The battle was on.

Chomp! at this point realized he did not have flour in the house at the moment – however, undeterred, he grabbed a big box of Ritz crackers. Crumbling them up quite easily (and doing so in their own bag also prevents a mess!), the crackers made for a wonderful crust substitute.

For a batter, Chomp! just used two eggs and a cup of milk. Wasn’t anything else around (like buttermilk), so it had to do.

 

Here are my two chicken stations:

 

Who will win????? Go, Chomp!, go!

 

So, in go the Ritx-cracker-crusted fried chicken strips:

 

And out they come!

 

Pretty dadgum appetizing, right?

 

And then out come MY pieces out of the fryer, in all their sadness.

 

I know what you’re saying … “Chomp!, those look good, too!” But you would be wrong. Oh, how wrong you would be.

 

Let’s just go ahead and say right now that Chomp! was never going to win this. Not now, not tomorrow, not next week, not ever. Kids like what they like and want what they want.

But besides even that insurmountable fact, the truth is I got my butt kicked on flavor. Chomp! lost and the children won because the simple, Ritz-cracker encrusted chicken was in every way superior to my ultimately tasteless and depressing chicken. The pesto was a poor actor as a binding agent for the powdered peanuts, which I didn’t powder enough anyway and left too many big chunks of. And again, I’m going to mention here just how catastrophically bad it is to buy unsalted peanuts.

At meal’s end there were no pieces left of the Ritz chicken and three left of my chicken – and that was ONLY because I choked down a third piece of my own that I did not even want just for show when I really wanted one of theirs.

In the final analysis Chomp! versus the children ended how every ‘Chomp! vs. the children’ battle does (such as Chomp! vs. clean your room, Chomp! vs. please take the trash to the dump and Chomp! vs. why is it so hard to put your dishes in the sink?) – in demoralizing defeat, painful acceptance and a quiet resignation that such is the fate of parents. Til next week!

 

 

 

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