Tonight, while Joey was Christmas shopping for me, I decided to make him Sichuan Orange Chicken.  I’ve been laying around all day, and my fever finally broke!, so I hopped in the shower to freshen up before starting dinner.

Making Joey any kind of Orange Chicken dish is a sacrifice on normal days, because I hate the taste of fruit and meat together.  Joey loves it, though, so about once or twice a year I find a new recipe that I try, thinking maybe THIS time it won’t make me want to upchuck.

Making Sichuan Orange Chicken while hopped up on progesterone and estradiol is much worse than making it under normal circumstances.

Halfway through zesting the oranges, shredding the ginger root and crushing the garlic cloves, I realized I’d only be eating the rice and broccoli part of this dish.  All the smells were working against me and my pharmaceutically faked-out system, which thinks I’m pregnant. (And hopefully will be later this week.)

The oranges, though, were absolutely perfect.  They were the ripest, juiciest oranges I had eaten in the longest time.  They were so juicy, in fact, that I only needed the juice of two of them instead of three, so I peeled the third and munched on it while I tried to make the rest of the meal without running to the bathroom.

I was successful.

When I finally told Joey it was ready, he said, “WOW!  This smells GREAT!”

I grunted.  I thought it smelled anything but great, but I made it for him and so I was glad he thought it smelled good.

I’d put the oranges I hadn’t yet eaten in a bowl on the table along with the rice, broccoli and main dish, and I was pleasantly surprised when Joey took one and ate it.  ”This is a good orange!” he exclaimed, and if Joey says an orange is good, Internet, it is VERY GOOD.

Joey has this thing with oranges, he usually won’t eat them because the white part creeps him out.  But this orange was so good, he was willing to look paste the white part; I saw him eat about 4 slices.

Then he reached for the biggest orange in the bowl and pulled it out.  Once he was the slightly asymmetrical shape of it, his eyes got really large and he dropped it on the table runner.  Then, really quickly, he threw it back in the bowl and not-so-sutbly picked out another orange.

“Uh, what was wrong with the first one you had,” I asked him.

“It was…distorted,” he said very seriously.

I could not stop laughing at him, which is tricksy when you are surrounded by strange-smelling food and your stomach is very empty because you have not yet eaten and it’s 6:00 p.m., but every thing you try to eat makes you feel sick.  So I laughed until I thought I just might make myself sick for sure, and then I told him he was a total orange weenie.

“It was weird looking,” he said, taking a giant bite of Sichuan Orange Chicken (which is spicy enough to knock my Pops out for a full week, so I will never serve it when he’s around.)

“Not that weird,” I said.

“Do you think Henry likes oranges?” Because changing the subject gets you off the hook, every single time.

Sure enough, Henry likes oranges.  He loves them with all his heart.  Joey tore a piece of the distorted orange slice and gave it to Henry, who snarfed it down in about 2 seconds.

I ate the rest of the distorted orange and suffered no adverse affects.