Mom, This Dinner Smells Like Vomit

PHOTO of the DAY: Coke Chicken

I put the crock pot of Coke chicken on the table and spoon out a helping for my son. He looks down at it, squints his eyes, pinches up his nose and says, “Mom, this dinner smells like vomit.” 

I take a whiff and admit, “Yes, it does.” 

He points to the blobs of ketchup with a fork tine: “It has this red stuff on it. And, this thing.” 

He lifts a translucent onion with his fork: “I think I’m gonna throw up, Mom.”

I always ask my friends for crock pot recipes. I love coming home from work with dinner cooked. My friend Julie gave me this recipe and she swears by it. Except, I couldn’t exactly remember the instructions. So, I just poured a bunch of Coke and squirt a bunch of ketchup on top of the chicken breasts. I thought it was going to taste so good.

As I threw out the vomit-smelling dinner I remembered my mother in 1975, so proud of her new Fondue set. I speared a cube of bread with a tiny doll-size fork, stuck it in the cheese and took a bite. It tasted like vomit and I said, “Mom, I think I’m gonna throw up.” 

The writer Willa Cather wrote in her American novel, O Pioneers!, “There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.”