Peanut chicken and honest new year wishes

Here I am,  crushing 100gr of peanuts (actually you need half of that for this recipe but I love peanuts so much that I end up eating half of it as I cook…) and thinking, as I crush away, that, if I receive one more bland and/or generic Hallmark-style-cut-and-pasted New Year greeting, I’m going to lose it! Every year, the same thing. We frantically wish each other the same half-ass, half-thought clichés that no one cares about and that we’ll remember about as much as our New year resolutions on January 4th.

I cut 4 chicken breasts in bite sizes and I generously spread mustard all over (preferably the old fashion style with actual mustard seeds in it). Then I dip them in the crushed peanuts so they’re nicely coated. It’s best to let the chicken marinate in the fridge for a couple of hours and cook them at the last minute. As I pour olive oil into a pan, I am telling myself (I do have a tendency to talk to myself in the kitchen) that just once a year we could be a bit honest. Have you ever wished your noisy neighbour to break both his legs; your mother in law to suddenly turn mute; your boss to fall in a deep coma before your next performance review; your ex to wake up reduced to the size of a playmobile. Come on admit it, you’ve thought about it….

I cook the chicken on all sides on medium heat and then pour 20cl of heavy cream in the pan at which point I let it cook for 5-10 minutes.

Sitting down in front of my plate (I serve it with Thai rice and a fresh cucumber salad to add a little color, a little freshness to the whole shebang) I start thinking about the wishes I could send to you, my fellow readers, something real and honest for once. So there it is:

To all the women out there, I wish you to turn around to watch a cute guy walk down the street, just to see how that feels; to stop thinking that everyone else is slower, less efficient and that you have to do everything by yourself; to take an extra five minutes in the morning to make yourself pretty, just for you; to paint your toenails a bright red and add little pink flowers on it, even in winter; to stop faking it because you don’t have the guts to ask what you want; to say out loud “I don’t know what I want” and sit down in front of the TV with one beer in hand and the other in your bloomers (or somebody else’s for that matter). More importantly, I wish you to stop playing mother, nurse, psychologist, secretary, accountant, and overall personal assistant extraordinaire to people who don’t deserve 5 minutes of your time (and don’t pay you for those services).

To men, I wish you to take an extra five minutes in the morning to make yourself pretty, for others; to buy a cologne that costs more than your car’s annual tune-up and to actually use it; to stop thinking you’re a poor victim of the women’s Lib, just to see how that feels; to be a little sick without the whole world, your 45 Facebook friends, your colleagues and your mother-in-law knowing about it. More importantly, I wish you to figure out what you want, for real, for once and to hold onto it when, and especially when, it’s all going to hell.

To all of you, I wish you to finally accept your flabs, to understand your children, to stop trying to change your spouse, to be truly capable to ignore the dumbasses at the office, and to realize once and for all that you will never win the 649. That’s not all: I wish you to stop expecting from others what you should bring to yourself. To sweat in bed regularly, and not because you have the flu; to sometimes find the right words to talk to the ones you love; to undestand how that damn universal remote works; to find the source of that God-awful smell in the fridge; to stop yelling at other people when you know you’re the one who’s wrong; to stop believing that your computer answers to threats, and to stop thinking that expensive eye-creams will do anything if you sleep 3hrs per night.

All right, Namaste to all of you, bunch of ninis!