Tastes Just Like Chicken (But is it?)

It was going to be a par-tay! A small one, but my first, a dinner party. My boyfriend-at-the-time and I invited two friends to his apartment and I bought the chicken breast. At 19, I didn't yet own a cookbook, but I just knew I had the recipe, right in my little old head. How could I fail?

A-mixin' and a-stirrin' - that was me in the little kitchen, pots and pans clanking, spoons flying. The rectangular baking dish came out and was filled with the main event - fresh frozen chicken breasts (still frozen, tiny ice chips clinging and glimmering under the fluorescent lights), topped with a delightful sauce of Campbell's Cream of Chicken soup (completely undiluted) and very large chunks of fresh garlic, a spice with which I was completely unfamiliar. Garlic press? What's that?

The doorbell rang and there were our guests. Debi and some other guy, spike-haired, black-clothed, pierced here and there. They brought a French Silk pie from Baker's Square, which turned out to be a life-saver.

Ding! Dinner was ready! I took my masterpiece out of the oven, admiring it as it steamed and smelled. The "gravy," aside from the browned skin which had formed on the top, was that glorious shade of Golden Retriever that always looks so desirable on a dinner plate. The garlic pieces that had floated to the top, those that had fought their way through their incredibly viscid slime blanket, had browned at their tips and instantly projected their pleasantly pungent aroma throughout the house.

They sat and I served. As I cut through the meat, anticipating that falling-apart quality (I remember that from my meat-eating days), I noticed that what I had made (and had the nerve to serve to my friends) had the texture of a pre-chewed piece of Bazooka Bubble Gum. Getting a knife to cut through it was one thing, but getting my teeth to chew it was another completely. Suddenly the other guy (what was his name?) realized that he had eaten a very large, late lunch and he was rather full, sorry, don't mean to be wasteful, I should have told you before. The other three of us choked down what we could, then attacked the pie (oh, but the guy had room for dessert now, didn't he?)

Since then, I have become quite a decent cook when I want to be. I have eliminated meat from my diet - I wonder if that chicken fiasco had anything subliminal to do with that decision - and have managed to find quite a few nice vegetarian recipes. At least I think they are nice, because so far no other dinner guest has ever remembered that he just ate a large meal right before coming to my house.