The Day After, and a Very Serious Chicken

November twenty-ninth. The list was my idea.

I wrote it on the back of a receipt, which should have been the first sign, and by the third line it said 'chicken (or something)' and then just stopped. Simone read it over my shoulder at the deli counter and handed it back without comment, which is how I knew she understood the assignment. The assignment being: it is the day after Thanksgiving, the holiday food is gone or someone else's problem, and we have to figure out what to eat for the next four days on what is left in the budget after November happened to both of us.

We stood in front of the rotisserie case for longer than I will admit.

Chicken or chicken: a study in options

There was a brief debate about whether one chicken constitutes a meal plan or just a beginning of one. Simone's position was that it is the foundation. My position was that she was right and I was going to need to buy rice. We bought the chicken, the rice, eggs, a can of crushed tomatoes, and one bunch of kale that felt virtuous enough to make up for the rest of the decisions. Total. It was fine. It was actually fine. The checkout math worked out to something reasonable and I stood there while the cashier read the total and thought: okay. That's it. That's the win.

The list said a lot. The cart said less.

I keep thinking about how the post-holiday grocery run is its own kind of accounting, not dramatic, not a crisis, just: here is what is left, here is what you need, here is what you can do with both of those things. Simone texted me twenty minutes after we split up a picture of the chicken already taken apart on a plate with the caption 'day one.' I have not replied yet because I am still thinking about how that is actually a very good way to think about the day after anything.