Chicken alla Cacciatora - In the Kitchen With Franny (8)

"Why does everyone think I have an eating disorder?" she said melodramatically. (The adverb may be unnecessary.) I don't, really – though there are some days that I don't see her eat enough to feed an anemic chipmunk, there are times when she really puts it away. It all balances out, I hope, and she certainly looks good. But it's my job as parent to try and tip the scales, so to speak, with regular balanced meals.

So I suggest we cook for some neighbors. My wife was traveling on what was supposed to be a business trip but was starting to seem like Bob Dylan's Never Ending Tour, and we needed some guinea pigs, or guests, for our cooking.

We decided to invite our neighbor Lisa, whose husband was also away on business, and her two kids, Harry and Rose. Lisa and her husband had just adopted baby Rose from Haiti, not long after the earthquake. They had been in the midst of the adoption process, and were expecting another year or so before they really had to worry about buying diapers and things when suddenly they got the call to come get their daughter. A blessing, no doubt, especially given all the uncertainty surrounding international adoptions in Haiti after the quake – though the suddenness of it seemed to have left them slightly stunned. She was grateful for the invitation and offered to bring dessert.

It had been a quiet Sunday so far. Franny was recovering from her school week, which involved paying the sleep debt and watching a bunch of weird science shows she had taped throughout the week, and I had been running errands. I took some papers to be shredded at a Shredfest location, part of a program the city was promoting to fight identity theft. (I spend half the time wondering if the people in the shredder trucks were actually identity thieves.) Then I brought some old clothes to Goodwill before hitting the supermarket.

For our dinner menu we turned to the ever-reliable Mark Bittman and his version of chicken alla cacciatora, with a rice pilaf with currants and pine nuts for a starch. "It's not your mother's chicken alla cacciatora," he wrote, "unless your mother's a traditional Italian cook." I don't remember my mother making chicken alla cacciatora, probably because it didn't come in a can or a plastic pouch you could boil. Yet.

After picking up the ingredients for dinner at the least disgusting local supermarket I spotted Lisa and Rose on the way out to the park. We compared missing spouse notes and she was surprised to hear Peg had been gone nine days already.