I decided to put my own spin on Marry Me Chicken over the weekend and call it Marry Me Alana Chicken.
Have you heard of the dish. According to legend it got its name because it’s so delicious that anyone who eats it will immediately want to propose marriage.
The original recipe was developed in 2016 by Delish editor Lindsay Funston. It’s a decadent mix of chicken, garlic, heavy cream, parmesan and sun-dried tomatoes. View it here. I’m supposedly on a diet this week, so I was on a mission to make it a bit healthier.
Marriage talk was also on the table while I was shopping for ingredients. A friend is tying the knot for the second time and I told her I wasn’t interested in walking down the aisle again.
To be honest, the only reason I got married the first time was because I was envious of everyone getting to wear gorgeous dresses and be the centre of attention for a day. Oh, and because my ex proposed … but that was probably because I was so wistful about the princess-for-a-day thing.
My friend seemed a little shocked by my lack of interested in a second marriage. She wondered if DD would ask me one day and whether he knew I wasn’t keen on the idea. She asked: “have you had these discussions?”
Yes, we’ve had these discussions.
DD and I genuinely don’t want to get married. We even struggle with the concept of living together one day. After almost 12 years as a couple, we love having time together then retreating to our own spaces.
Never say never, but we can’t see any major reason to get hitched.
I’m thrilled for anyone who does want to give it a whirl. But DD often quotes Oscar Wilde: “Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.”
Actually, he just quotes the second marriage sentence. I was a bit startled to discover Wilde’s verdict on first marriages. Harsh!
Anyways, back to my Marry Me Alana experiment …
It needs a bit more refining. I added sauteed leek and butter beans to a baking dish with chicken stock, risoni and a few tablespoons of sundried tomato pesto. Then I placed a deboned chicken on top and drizzled it with olive oil. I roasted the lot in the oven, adding a half a cup of low-fat cooking cream and some baby spinach leaves towards the end. Then I sprinkled some parmesan over the top before serving.
Next time I’ll add some additional sundried tomato strips and chilli. But it shows delicious potential!
Unlike my marriage prospects.
On the other hand, I am very excited to be celebrating DD’s birthday today. Happy birthday to youuuuuuuuu, spunky boyf!
I couldn’t find a suitable pic of us celebrating one of his previous birthdays together to use on today’s blog post. So you’ll have to make do with one taken at an ill-fated birthday of mine.
Despite how chirpy I look, I was VERY ill with a perforated ear drum and two ear infections.
I started that birthday in the hospital and received an icy response from my horrible then-boss when I called in sick.
Reading a blog post from back then – while searching for the DD pic – made me feel a little PTSD. I was so frightened of being sacked that I kept going to work each day despite being terribly crook and deaf.
Mind you, I wasn’t frightened enough to stop doing stuff that made my horrible boss hate me even more.
She had regular meltdowns because she didn’t like the perfectly innocuous content I was posting on the publication’s Instagram page … despite the fact that “likes” were going off like frogs in socks.
I get a bit incredulous when I’m told to do stupid things that make no sense, like to stop posting uplifting, relatable content that’s successful.
That was a harrowing six months of my working life. Thank heavens she sacked me, it led to much better things.
Song of the day: Bruno Mars “Marry you”
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