Mid-day texts between my wife and me generally include wellness checks and supper inquiries.
On this particular day, Jen had left for work feeling a bit under the weather, thanks to my especially rousing 8-hour snore symphony and the prior day’s cumulonimbus-size pollen cloud that enveloped the neighborhood.
“I want chicken soup,” she texted.
I know from 16 years’ experience that she wasn’t hinting that I make the soup. She’s seen the aftermath of my omelet trials and spaghetti sauce hybrid mixture of Ragu and Daddy’s WTF! marsala.
No, what she meant was: When I get home from work feeling lousy, I will still make my homemade chicken soup since my husband cannot be trusted to introduce food to flame.
Suddenly I was seized by a marvelous idea! What if I created a reasonable facsimile to chicken soup? Something that looked and behaved just like homemade soup … but was fabricated.
Our mission impossible would begin with a blast to the local supermarket. There I deposited the last 32-ounce clear plastic jug of Panera chicken (broad) noodle soup into my red basket. Remember that detail. Once I recovered from the $9.99 sticker price, I realized the quart wasn’t enough. And time was ticking.
I zipped over to the soup aisle where I snatched a pair of Campbell’s 18-ounce Chunky Classic chicken noodle soups. And I made a quick pass through the bakery section before racing home to fraud’s Ground Zero.
I hastily dumped the three complete chicken noodle soups into a stainless-steel pan and fired up the stove. Jen’s ETA was still two hours off, but if I wanted to fill the house with the scent of home-cookin’ I’d need a head start.
The sight of the empty cans was damning. The evidence must be hidden!
I stuffed the cans into their shopping bag and crammed that into a second garbage bag. I stepped into the garage where I dredged up an armful of leaky, stinky trash from the barrel. This created a void just large enough for a bag of dead soup receptacles.
Back at the stove, I felt further steps were needed. Ingredient clues to create additional misdirection.
Carrots … yes, small slices of carrots bobbed listlessly in the pan which I would have to claim as my own handiwork. I located a bag of baby carrots, ran a peeler over one of the junior roots and intentionally left the shards on the cutting board. The actual carrots were returned to their spot in the fridge drawer.
Noodles. There needed to be evidence of the pasta’s inclusion from this very kitchen. In the corner of the cupboard lurked a box of well-aged Walmart Great Value macaroni — or as the Italians say, elbows. I poured a few elbows into the pot, then strategically placed the box and loose elbows inches from the stove. Compliments of Chef Boy-ar-me.
What was missing? It seemed like something signif … the chicken! Turns out we had a package of chicken teats in the garage fridge. Diabolically I removed all the chicken meat, repackaged it into a Ziploc, then restocked the entire contents of the freezer atop the squeezed breasts.
I left the empty Purdue packaging on the counter for anyone to see easily. With the aroma of percolating soup wafting through the kitchen, I headed for the driveway where I’d soon meet my unsuspecting accomplice. This mission was too big for one person. I’m only a man.
One of Emerita’s final days in fifth grade would later feature tales of today’s hijinks. My daughter wasn’t off the bus 30 seconds when I hit her with the news.
“Listen, kid, there’s a prank underway. You’re caught up in it, too. There’s no backing out now, so don’t even try. We have an hour to prank mama and I need your help. Get it?”
“Got it!”
“Good!”
In hindsight, she was almost too eager to prank a parent. That may be a genetic thing. Drafted for Prank Duty created a mischievous grin that remained for days.
I quickly explained her mission: She was to take one handful of corn meal and mix it in a big bowl with a splash of water. Whisk it around till it’s gloppy, and coat the bowl, spatula and whisk.
“I did one better,” Emerita beamed a minute later. “I spilled batter all over the counter to make it look accurate.”
As batter spills go, this was a doozy.
“Wait … and why are we pretending to make cornbread?” she asked.
“Because Daddy would have messed it up. Instead, your dad the genius bought this pre-baked cornbread, which we’ll unwrap and squeeze into our own square baking pan. Turn on the oven to something hot!”
The square of dense cornbread fit into the Whipple pan too easily. A 1-inch gap ran all the way around the perimeter of the pan.
“There’s a lot of extra space in there,” mused my accomplice.
“We’ll tell Mama the cornbread shrank … due … to …. oven humidity.”
Within minutes, the hot oven was re-cooking the cornbread, and you could smell it from the next county. And just in time.
We heard Jen’s car in the driveway. Emerita took her mark, aimlessly shuffling dishes around the sink after her exhausting cornbread construction. I bounded to the stove and began stirring the bubbling brew.
Jen paused in the doorway, surveying this very unfamiliar sight. A curious look spread across her face.
“You made homemade soup?” she asked incredulously. “YOU?! Where are the cans?”
She opened the kitchen trash barrel and rummaged around in search of the evidence I had ingeniously hidden in the garage.
She then contrasted the small elbow macaroni in the box versus the Band-Aid-size noodles twerking in the hot pan. That brought a suspicious frown. As did the particles of already-cooked chicken — significantly different than what she’d expect from me and the pink hue of inadequately cooked poultry. As my wife was trying to make some logic of the scene, the oven timer dinged.
“Oh, look! Emerita’s homemade corn bread is done!”
If Jen was baffled before, she was double-baffled now. I grabbed an oven mitt and snatched the warm bread from the oven.
“That damn oven humidity! Just look how much it made Emerita’s homemade cornbread shrink.”
The shrinkage, chicken and noodle discrepancies and an overall sense of implausible led to our laughter-speckled confessions. For all our planning, buying and faking, the ruse was up minutes after its launch.
My daughter Geni’s boyfriend Shawn oversees three high-end kitchens. He knows his way around food. He heard my story with all its deception and misdirection.
“You did all that? To pretend you made homemade soup? Why didn’t just make the chicken noodle soup? It would have been cheaper and taken less time.”
Hmm. It’s a crazy idea but it just might work.
