The Mystery of the Secret Ingredient

Grace has been watching a LOT of Scooby Doo lately. In fact, our entire DVR is filled with it and hunting shows right now. Sunday evening we had our own little mystery and thanks to some quick super sleuthing the mystery was solved asap.

I spent WAY too much time struggling over our "local" lasagna to freeze for book club next week and then foolishly decided to make chicken and noodles for us for dinner Sunday night. This was Grace's request. If you ask her what we should fix for dinner it's almost always chicken and noodles.

I put a half chicken into the stew pot with some herbs from our garden and set it to boiling while I was doing six other things. I had a couple of bags of chicken stock saved in the freezer from previous chicken dinners and sat it out on the counter too. I'm notorious for saving little bits of this and that in the freezer in ziplocks of which I hardly EVER label.

The afternoon progressed and the Hugglers were visiting with us while we cooked supper. We tried to get them to stay for dinner but they had other chores at home to tend to.

Bryon pretty much put together all the ingredients I'd pulled from the freezer: carrots from our garden, chicken stock and the diced organic celery I'd just bought. He assembled it all and boiled the noodles up while I did ... well I don't even remember what I did but I'm sure it was vastly important.

As everything came to a climax he asked while looking thoughtfully into the cookpot, "Um, why did you put potato chunks into the chicken noodle soup?"

"I didn't." I answered and came over to investigate. Hmmm, sure LOOKED like potato chunks. "I did NOT put potatoes into the soup," I said again. "Maybe the garden carrots just lost their color in the freezing, thawing, cooking process?" I ventured.

"No, no," he said trying to puzzle it out. And finally he says, "It's pineapples. There are pineapples in the chicken noodle soup." Hmmm, guess that's what happens when you don't label.

Luckily he fished them all out (about a dozen in total) and I was the guinea pig who tasted it first. Tasted delicious. No trace of pineapple at all.

I laughed so hard I almost threw up. Well, I laughed AFTER it turned out okay. I would have just thrown up otherwise after all that hard work!

I told him no one ever had to know about this little fiasco, lest my loyal readers see behind the Wizard's curtain and learn what a screw up I am sometimes.

Of course, I can't keep a secret of any kind so here it is for all to see.

The Mystery of the Secret Ingredient was solved and all was well.

Scooby Dooby Doo.