On December 19th, two noteworthy events occurred: 1) My doctoral thesis presentation was a spectacular failure, and 2) I ate chives.
“Tsk, I thought maybe an undergraduate had wandered into the wrong classroom,” my professor remarked. I distinctly remembered her previously mistaking me for a master’s student.
Squeezing onto the peak-hour train, I texted my girlfriend: “On my way back.” “Great! I’m making chicken with ginger and spring onion tonight,” she replied, without asking anything further. My girlfriend was smart, but fate was equally fair – her cooking was a disaster. Her culinary misadventures included boiling an entire orange with the peel (because once a TV ad said you can add orange peel for flavour), baking sausages with their plastic casings (“I didn’t know sausages have casings,” she said), and mistakenly believing that frying a sunny-side-up egg required boiling it first (the rationale remains a mystery).
Yet, her chicken with ginger and spring onion was exceptional. It was just good – worth four stars from Michelin. Hence, she reserved this dish for critical moments, like when someone’s doctoral thesis presentation bombs.
That being said, even the most perfect piece of chicken couldn’t lift my spirits. I appreciated her kindness, but the correlation between “good food” and “good mood” was merely a hypothesis, not a statement. I knew the difference between hypothesis and statement, even a bachelor would know that.
But the chicken still needed to be enjoyed, or she would be upset.
“I’m home,” I announced, only to find her standing at the door, trembling lips.
“What’s wrong?”
“I messed up. I went to buy spring onions, but bought chives. I failed.”
“Oh, the classic rookie housewife mistake.”
She pouted and sighed. “No chicken with ginger and spring onion then, forget the last three words. I’m sorry, I wanted to cheer you up.”
I took her hand and inspected the forlorn chives lying defeated in the kitchen. “How about chicken with ginger and chives?”
“Don’t you hate chives?”
“The professor said she hated me too, but here I am.”
We pretended the chives were spring onions and made the dish. You think I am going to say “Turns out chives are delicious after all”? Too simple, too naive. This isn’t a story of a blessing in disguise; the real world doesn’t work like this. But well, it’s okay.
She sniffed a piece of chicken. “It tastes weird.”
“Don’t buy the wrong thing next time,” I said.