WEEVIL FOR DINNER

I had boiled a chicken and when it was cool I and cut the meat into chunks. I cooked carrots, celery and maybe peas, I don’t remember for sure. I thickened the broth, tasted it and knew it was just right. I put the chunked chicken back in the broth along with the veggies and added boiled noodles. My chicken noodle soup was as good as that served at Heaps, our favorite restaurant.

Gillmore Girl was at Emily’s and wasn’t home for dinner so we ate without her. After we ate, someone noticed weevil sitting on the top of the leftover chicken noodle soup. There were gagging noises made and then much laughter when we realized we had all eaten weevil—they must have been in the bag of noodles. "More protein," someone said, as if that made it all right. More gagging noises and finger pointing and things said, like, "weevil eater," but everyone had weevil-soup-filled stomachs so we were laughing at ourselves, too.

Gilmore Girl was due home in a few minutes. What was I going to do? We had all eaten the weevil, the soup had been delicious and I had nothing else to feed her for dinner. So I did what any woman who lived through the Great Depression would do—okay, I didn’t actually live through the Great Depression but my mother did and I’m nothing if not my mother’s daughter. I skimmed every weevil off the top of the soup and then stirred it up in case any others surfaced. They didn’t, so I was confident I had found them all. Then I warmed the soup and threatened the kids to say nothing.

Gilmore Girl came home and ate dinner. After she was finished I threw the rest of the soup out. It wasn’t until later—much later that I confessed to my daughter. There were more gagging noises and even a little anger, I think, but you know what? She is the daughter of the mother who is the daughter of the mother who lived through the Great Depression and Gilmore Girl is as thrifty as I am—maybe more so—and I think she may have forgiven me by now. We’ll see what she has to say in the comments section.

PS This is not actually a photo of my chicken noodle soup. I pulled this off the Internet. You can tell it's not mine because there aren't any interesting protein bits floating on top.