Of Chicken Patties and Bad Cooking

So tonight I'm cooking. Which is a very LOOSE version of the term. Now that Alton Brown is practically my neighbor, you'd think some of his Chi might rub off on me, waft it's way over here and inspire me to cook - actually COOK rather than just heat food for my family.
Yeah......ummmm.
No.
I heat food. I don't cook it.
I suppose that it's a step in the right direction to know the difference.
Tonight I am heating sweet potatoes and tyson chicken patties, and I am NOT heating but am serving COLD as God intended, mixed fruit.
The chicken patties made me think of someone I hadn't really given much more than a passing thought to in a while, Diane Hollinden.
I know some of you out there know where she is or where she went, but in the sea of life she was swept away from me. (Nik and Scott this doesn't mean she is dead despite the CURSE you insist exists). We just both went on with our lives and they went in different ways.

I am reminded of her, because I remembered the first time I ever saw her cook dinner when we were in high school. She pulled out of the freezer a box of tyson chicken patties and from the cabinet a box of au gratin potatoes. I had never had anything like it before, because my mom didn't buy pre-packaged food. She made food. You want a chicken pattie? Here's your floured and fried chicken breast. Have a nice day. Yuppie moms today will tout that "they don't buy pre-packaged food" but at my house it wasn't fashion it was necessity. When your dad is a school teacher there isn't a lot of style that goes into parenting.

I thought Diane's family was so rich, with their prepackaged food. I really did. Her dad worked for Eli Lilly and her mom was a nurse, if I remember correctly. They could afford food I hadn't even ever LOOKED at in the store.

What a difference 20 years makes, when I feel guilty, like I'm the BAD parent for serving food I once coveted as rare and lofty.

The last bastion of the overworked and under culinary educated parent.

And if anyone knows where Diane Hollinden. is or talks to her, tell her I miss drinking RC cola and eating chips and dip with her on our depressed girl days moaning about boys. And tell her, I remember SPIDERS.

She'll get it.