peanut butter chicken

Peanut butter chicken: the period after you have bought the all-natural peanut butter, but before you can actually eat the all-natural peanut butter, because the all-natural peanut butter is sitting in the kitchen waiting to see who is going to give in and stir it.

I feel for you guys who live alone, I surely do. Life must be so empty without this kind of gamesmanship lending it quotidian color and interest.

Actually it occurs to me that this is a pretty good example of the appeal of traditional gender roles. If it were my job to stir the peanut butter, on account of how I am a woman and it is a kitchen thing, well I would be annoyed at always having to be the one to get peanut butter all over myself and everything and clean it up. BUT it would mean that I could eat the peanut butter right away. Plus I would not have to devote any mental cycles to deciding whether I wanted to be the one to give in and stir the peanut butter. It would just be an automatic thing. So there would be something in it for me. And of course it would be great for Mr. E, automatic pre-stirred peanut butter. >XP

And then of course the mindful alternative would be that we sit down and discuss our peanut butter roles, should we take turns, how would we keep track, should it be the person who bought it, would that just encourage us to never buy any peanut butter, who eats more peanut butter, maybe we should trade it off with another chore so that one person would be the peanut butter stirrer and that person would never have to return the deposit bottles, honestly even thinking about this level of negotiation makes me want to eat my own head.

So peanut butter chicken it is. Maybe I should call it satay.