Culinary FAIL

I really enjoy cooking. And, if I do say so myself, I am quite good at it. But something happened yesterday that is so funny to me that I just have to share it with you. Scott had bought a whole chicken, planning to do something creative with it. Then a series of football games came on television and he never got around to whatever his masterpiece was going to be. The bird needed to be cooked, and my very favorite thing to do with a whole bird is to make soup. Chicken tortilla soup, specifically. I find it disproportionately thrilling to take a pot of water and a chicken, add some magic and end up with soup.

So Sunday afternoon I did just that. After an hour I had both cooked chicken and a pot of steaming chicken broth that smelled absolutely intoxicating. I carmelized an onion and a couple of jalapenos, then pureed three cans of Rotel and a can of stewed tomatoes. I added all this to the broth and the (now-chopped) chicken meat and let it simmer for an hour. If it hadn't been bedtime at that point, I would have gotten a bowl and had myself a little fiesta. It turned out that good.

Scott had a bowl for dinner last night while the rest of us were at Katie's ballet class. When I got home, he said, "Wow, that was some spicy chicken soup." (To be fair, it did turn out a bit hotter than I expected, so I didn't think it was a particularly strange thing to say.) A few hours later, just before bed, he brought up the soup again, saying, "You know, that soup you made was really good. It almost reminded me of a chicken tortilla soup."

"Honey?" I said, trying to figure out if he was kidding. "It was chicken tortilla soup."

He wasn't kidding. Shocked, he said, "It was? I thought it was just really spicy chicken noodle soup."

Spicy chicken noodle soup?? Really? The complete lack of noodles didn't give you pause? The fact that I have never once, in the entire time you have known me, made chicken noodle soup? We laughed and laughed, but now I'm wondering if he might be harboring questions about other dishes I've been congratulating myself over.