chicken mole

It was anniversary eve so last night I made a yummy dinner that doubled as a running joke. Every time I am about to make nachos for dinner, again, I say, “I’ll give you three guesses what I’m making for dinner.” Usually we are on our daily mailbox date when I say this, and Rich then guesses wrongly on purpose twice, then narrowly wins the guessing game on the final guess. Lately his first guess is almost always “chicken mole,” something I’ve never made, and so I finally decided to see if I could figure out mole sauce. I obtained enough chili peppers in my grocery clicklist to approximate some of the mole recipes I saw online and decided on chicken mole enchiladas. On our mailbox date when I gave him three guesses I was hoping he might get it on the first guess, and that’s exactly what happened. It was ridiculous how much fun I had thinking about it all day, anticipating how much he would laugh at my very involved and deliberately planned home cooked joke.

Still not a food blogger

Traditionally the symbol for a third anniversary is leather… that idea of flexible durability fits us like broken-in work boots or a trusty pair of birkenstocks. However, I think our third anniversary symbol is actually mole sauce. Spicy and deeply flavorful, a labor of love, inspired by humor. A cinnamon stick, some powerful peppers, some fragrant herbs, simmered over high heat for a long time. Contains chocolate. A bay leaf means you have to kiss the cook.

At three years of marriage, there is a nice blend of predictable and unpredictable. The other day I knew he would come home and ask me to go for a drive to pick up some whiskey, and I also knew he would take the bay road home but I had not anticipated his thoughtful purchase of a six-pack of pear cider for me.

Rich made popcorn on Saturday when I was worn out from market and I was lounging in the yard when he emerged with my wonder woman bucket and a shot of rainbow whiskey we sipped together just like we did to toast our wedding… we have been doing lots of reminiscing about the wedding week. Each day we thought about who of our guests would have been arriving and what would have been going on. It would have been the Wednesday my parents arrived. Dad would be playing guitar, the kids would all be buying from Quinn’s store, Lauren would be stirring sauce, and I would be perched on Rich’s lap watching and listening and soaking in all the love. As we munched our popcorn, Rich remarked how fresh and new our yard had looked that season, one year after we started rehabilitating its overgrown neglected tangle. My newly built terrace garden was starting to grow plants and the new wood chip zone accommodated all our straw bales and the whole yard was clean and new… the garden has grown so much in the three years and other areas have been cultivated with flowers and new shrubs, right now it is all looking well-tended as we have kept busy on the yard work. He lets me do the writing, but my husband of three years, comes up with the best metaphors for marriage.

Happy Anniversary my love!

4 comments to chicken mole

Leave a Reply

You can use these HTML tags

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>