Chicken Pizza

My mother mentioned in her post yesterday that she would not lie to me, except for the veal incident. Many of you (unless you were spying on me in my youth) have no idea what the “Veal Incident” is exactly and missed that reference so now it is my pleasure to bring you the “Veal Incident Story.”

It was probably 1983 or 84 or 82 or sometime before 1985. I know it was before 1985 because that was the year I left Miami to live with my father for two years and my mom had stopped her Gourmet craze by that point and it was right in the middle of her Gourmet craze that the “Veal Incident” took place. This would mean we are talking about 1982 almost for certain.

Regardless of the year, my mother was going through a Gourmet craze where she was taking weekly cooking classes and then subjecting her family to the homework. It was the common craze around that time as microwaves were just starting to take over kitchens and mothers everywhere suddenly worried about the diminishing quality of food. Most days it was quite good actually. It was only on the rare occasion that my mom had to resort to “this is not a restaurant” to get me to eat that night’s creation.

One night I came to the dinner table to see spaghetti with a garlic butter sauce and, next to it, some brown round thing with marinara sauce and melted cheese on top of it. My eyebrow cocked immediately as I looked at this bizarre concoction my mother came up with and, seeing my hesitation, she said “eat it, its chicken pizza. You like pizza.” My mom doesn’t lie, so I began eating my chicken pizza and found myself a really big fan of chicken pizza.

Once I told my mom how much I enjoyed it I discovered my mom lied to me because it was not chicken pizza, it was veal parmesan. She knew I would never taste something called “veal” and therefore tricked me into trying it.

Years came to pass and my mother would tell me many more things, some of which I just could not believe. “Have I ever lied to you,” she would often ask. All I needed were two words “chicken pizza” and she would say, “yes, but I am telling you the truth this time, I promise.”

And now you know the “veal incident.” To her credit, the year is now 2008 and that is still the only instance I can think of where my mother lied to me.

I must admit to eating veal every now and then. I quit it for ten years and, during my time not eating it, I found that the production increased and the price went down. All this meant was that my protesting was keeping me from eating something that I liked and did nothing to slow the slaughter down.