Thatboy's Wife Gets Married

When Thatboy likes someone he never shuts up about them. It's "Mitch this" and "Eric that" and "Adam says..." I always joke about his never-ending stream of boyfriends. Of course, it doesn't help that for a while he was coming home in the clothes of these men.

Well, this is a ragging that I didn't start. Thatboy has a relationship with one of his coworkers that has caused the whole office to dub them "work spouses." They're always checking in with each other, having the other's back. She's fabulous, and loads of fun and in actuality, her own guy is pretty fun too.

Last year Thatboy would come home with all the stories of Workwife's engagement drama. Her boyfriend was messing with her for weeks. Planning romantic dates every weekend that she thought would lead to an engagement. Trips to wineries, hot air balloon trips, the whole gamut. And every Monday she would come in to work and gripe to Thatboy about this tomfoolery. Finally Thatboy came home with the good news - there was a proposal! Workwife was getting married! (The actually engagement story? They went skydiving - told you, fun people - and he landed first, so that by the time she landed, he was down on a knee and waiting. And of course the whole thing is on video.)

So this year, instead of engagement drama, I got to hear all about Workwife's wedding plans. How her now fiance wanted his fingers in every aspect (which I totally get because that's exactly how Thatboy was.) How the summer wedding of their dreams got turned into a fall bonanza that wouldn't be nearly as uncomfortably hot.

Labor Day weekend was Workwife's wedding, so we headed up to see the happy couple make it official. (Although, in the middle of the ceremony, Thatboy leaned over to tell me that technically they were already married after their Vietnamese ceremony which had taken place 2 weeks earlier)

The wedding had a photo booth, which of course meant dress up, play time, and foolishness.

There was also a candy buffet, and I had to warn Thatboy it wasn't really appropriate to take 3 boxes of candy. Especially since he wanted to fill up an entire box of skittles AND an entire box of gummy bears. (On this note, it has been 2 weeks and the box of skittles remain untouched.)

Dinner at the reception was a duet of steak and chicken. I'm not going to recreate it for you, but have you noticed how chicken is ubiquitous at weddings? I mean, I get it - it has wide appeal, it's not offensive to most, and it's easy to cook in large quantities. But unfortunately, wedding chicken is just never as good as chicken you can make at home. In part, this is definitely due to the large quantity aspect. It's hard to cook large amounts of chicken without them getting dry or cold. So instead of what we had, I'll show you how to create a perfect "wedding style chicken" at home. Dressed in white like a bride, the chicken can't get dry - not with the perfect creamy sauce sitting on top! But just to make sure, the chicken is braised (low and slow), to help it retain as much moisture as possible.

Wedding Chicken
whole chicken cut into 8 pieces
1 stick of butter
2 Tbsp canola oil
1 onion, sliced
2 stalks of celery, chopped
1 carrot, sliced
1 bay leaf
4 Tbsp flour
1 cup heavy cream
juice of half a lemon
salt and pepper

1. Heat half of the butter with the canola oil in a dutch oven. Brown the chicken.
2. Lower the heat and cover the chicken with boiling water. Add the onion, celery, carrot, and bay leaf. Cover and simmer 40 minutes.
3. Remove chicken and strain the broth. Return the strained broth to the dutch oven and reduce to 1.5 cups.
4. While the broth is reducing, melt the remaining butter in saucepan. Stir in the flour and make a paste.
5. Slowly add the cream and broth, simmer, stirring until it is thick and smooth.
6. Add lemon juice, salt and pepper to sauce and spoon over the chicken.