As a “real life food blogger”, I spend way too much time every day looking at food on the various social media platforms and at least twice a day, I run across a post or recipe for someone’s “Marry Me Chicken” recipe variant.
Now, for the record, I’ve never tasted or made Marry Me Chicken, and it looks like a solid recipe, except for the use of chicken breasts. I hate chicken breasts. It’s like a meat based tofu substitute.
Anyway, the ubiquity of the dish in the foodosphere was really starting to creep me out. Like how in the silence of your morning coffee you wonder how much meat there is on a guinea pig and suddenly you start seeing guinea pig posts on Facetagram. That bothered me. Then there’s all the people out there claiming they invented it. According to ChatGPT, the dish is a variant on a Tuscan recipe originally popularized in 2016 by Delish.com, a website I never visited until doing the research.
Anyway, the last thing about the dish that creeps me out is purely woo-woo. I have this lingering notion that words spoken repeatedly by many people become a sort of “psychological magick spell”, creating an egregor or thought form that is a kind of truth. And yeah, I know that sounds crazy, but that’s how marketing works, so the science is sound.
If enough people buy into the concept that this dish is so good it inspires a lifelong commitment, then, to some people it will. That’s terrifying. Like a love spell that enslaves and binds one human to the will of another using chicken breasts of all things.
So I’ve developed my own version of the dish and call it Shrimp with Benefits in the hopes that enough people will see it that it too becomes an egregore of its own, encouraging a good time between consenting partners, but allowing them to continue on their own paths.
In my masterplan, both thought forms will eventually do battle in the streets of Tokyo, destroying each other after a grueling slog, freeing mankind from their influence.
My shrimp are served atop a bed of spinach enhanced orzo. I say spinach enhanced because I’m really only doing it for the color and to pretend there are vegetables in this dish. The season shrimp are lightly sauted and served in a red pepper cream sauce.
The recipes are tight and I’m very happy with the video, all of which are available on my Patreon, SkilletandFlask.com. You can buy the video and the recipes as a collection, but I highly encourage you to subscribe. It’s more cost effective in the short and long term. You’re call.
Cheers!
JO
