T.

This is what I made for dinner: Niv ua Qoc.

As I won't ask you to hold your computer

up to a mirror, I shall translate: (backwards) Coq au Vin.

Backwards because I had no intention to cook up

a classic French dish; in fact, I didn't really even want

any dinner. Thus:

Home late, chicken legs in fridge: saute in olive oil

with a little salt and pepper. Boring! Add chicken stock,

a little of the red wine I'm sipping. Needs something else --

bay leaves, thyme. Wait! Onions! Garlic! Simmer simmer.

WHAT ABOUT BACON? Okay okay.  Added browned  bacon.

Reduced sauce, threw in a dab of butter: Dinner.

Dipped thick bread in the lovely sauce: my own private gravy.

There is something about this dish that demands

it be eaten regularly, or at least something way back

in my cultural genetic memory that tells me

This Is Something Good. It's not a dish from my childhood,

but when I hunkered down at the table tonight

sopping up the bacon/onion/sauce with bread,

the feelings of comfort and completeness

inhabited every cell in my body. In fact,  Coq au Vin

doesn't even date very far back in French cuisine:

Various legends trace coq au vin to ancient Gaul and 

Julius Caesar,  but the food is not documented until the early

20th century, though it no doubt existed as a rustic 

country dish long before that. (Wikipedia.) 

I'm fairly certain that someone, somewhere in the

land of my foremothers, long before the 20th century, 

figured out the sublime pairing of chicken, red wine, bay leaves.....

Maybe this someone even began backwards, as I did, searching

the cupboard for yet something else to add to the sizzling poulet.

I raise my glass (and the little that's left in it!) to her.