Week 197: Tried and True
By: Aaron Charles
Tags: Cooking, Home, Food, Short Story, Marriage

For the most part, we try to make new things here. A big part of this journey for Sarah and I has been the effort to try new things together. There’s a joy in creating and trying novel foods and experiences.

But sometimes, you need to go back to a favorite.

There are times when all of us need to be recharged — comforted, even — by familiar things. We need to give ourselves that opportunity to relish in our favorites so we have renewed ability to go out and create new things.

When it comes to comfort food, Sarah and I have a favorite that we often return to. This Sunday, we decided to return to it as our meal for Cooking With Sarah. You might remember Lemon Poppyseed Chicken.

My sister-in-law Amanda was the one who first introduced us to this recipe, and it has been one of our favorites ever since! We make it often, but we try as much as possible to make new things on Sunday. This week though, we were really feeling the need to return to this favorite of ours.

So what’s all that important about returning to the tried and true?

There’s the comfort aspect, sure. Lemon poppyseed chicken certainly counts as comfort food, but it’s more than that. It’s the comfort of knowing it’s a meal we truly love. When you make something new, there’s always that chance it doesn’t turn out quite right. But I think there’s something else about the tried and true that makes returning to these favorites so special.

It forces you to see the good, and even the new, in the familiar.

I’ve just spent the first part of this story by talking about how this wasn’t a new recipe for us, so what do I mean by finding “even the new” in this one? Well, even when you make a tried and true recipe, it doesn’t always turn out exactly like you’ve made it before. Especially with this recipe, where there are quite a few ingredients, there are opportunities for different tastes to stand out each time.

For instance, this time I noticed the lemon taste more than anything else. That’s interesting for me. I love lemonade, but I don’t really like lemon desserts. Here, the lemon taste pops in just the right way. But other times we’ve made it, I’ve noticed the chicken or the sour cream or the poppyseeds more.

It’s a good reminder that, when things become familiar to us, we often stop engaging with them. We just get used to them and we take them for granted. But there’s a reason these things, foods, and even people are in our lives — we love them! We don’t ever want to take them for granted, and so we need to do the hard work of looking at them with new eyes.

When it comes to making this recipe, we’ve gotten into a groove with it. But I always love that moment when everything is in the slow cooker and the house begins to fill up with aroma and warmth. Finally, it was ready to serve!

We dished up our bowls of piping hot lemon poppyseed chicken, and we went to the living room to eat. As we each took a bite, we were reminded of the many times we’ve shared this meal before. We sat together in our warmth and companionship.

We took comfort in the joy of the familiar.

Keep Your Eyes Open

The featured picture for this post is of a sunrise outside our front door. I snapped a picture of it. I don’t usually take pictures of sunrises or sunsets, because I never think the picture does it justice. I still don’t think this one quite captures it, but it’s still beautiful.

To be completely honest, I used that picture because we forgot to get a picture of the lemon poppyseed chicken. Yes, even amid us relishing this familiar favorite, it was still so familiar to us that we forgot to highlight it. Don’t ever say we aren’t human. The featured picture was taken just a few days after we made lemon poppyseed chicken, and the second picture in this post was taken a few days before. Here’s why I think they still work…

It’s easy to let our home become too familiar. But there’s beauty all around us — we just need to keep our eyes open. Whether it’s when you’re making a familiar recipe or when you’re walking out your front door in the morning, there’s beauty just waiting for you to see it.

I’m not perfect. Sarah’s not perfect. We forget to keep our eyes open sometimes. But when we remember to do it, we’re always blown away by the beauty we find. This week, we found it in lemon poppyseed chicken and in our very home.

Where will you find it?