Shift of Tow

If you’re in a relationship where the spark has gone, there’s no physical intimacy and you annoy the heck out of each other most of the time, but neither of you has the desire to go out and find “someone else” and you still care for each other, what else would trigger a break-up? Just “I can’t be truly happy around you” doesn’t seem a strong enough reason to go through the disentangling of two enmeshed lives. Opinion?

Oh, honey. I’m sorry that it’s like that. “I can’t be truly happy around you” is definitely a powerful enough reason to leave someone in the right context, but there are a lot of other factors, too. I’m not going to say whether you should stay or go because 1) you didn’t tell me much about the relationship and 2) it’s something you have to decide for yourself. I went through something similar a while back, though, and here are some useful things to think about while you’re making your decision:

Are you staying because you’re afraid to be alone? Because you’re afraid that your departure will destroy your partner? If those are your best reasons, it might be time to leave. The first is unhealthy for you, and the second shows a huge lack of respect for the person you’re with. It is condescending and cruddy to your partner to think that they won’t be able to live without you; what you really mean is that you can’t imagine their life without you in it.

Are you staying because you love your partner, but it’s not working? Get therapy. Work on it. Set a deadline after which you must either be okay with staying, or you’re going to leave, because you should only invest so much of your life in trying to make a failing relationship work.

Are you staying because you have children together? Young children should be your first concern, because they’re still so malleable. Are they going to benefit if y’all split? I think that sometimes it’s going to be better for the kids if the parents split, but sometimes it won’t.

Are you staying because you made a vow to stay? If you don’t want to break your promise I can get behind that, but you’ve got to find a way to be happy within the relationship. Or you need to leave and not get married again until you’re sure you can keep a vow to stay. Lord, we get married too lightly in this country, and I say that as someone with a divorce in her past.

How long have you been thinking about leaving? Is this something you think about once a year, or once a month? When you think about it, does it cause a big downward spiral, or are you just irritated? How much of your emotional life is spent worrying about this relationship?

What do you want from a relationship, and how does it differ from what you’re getting? Make lists.

In the end, there is rarely a perfect, crystalline emotion that tells you to end or begin or stay in a relationship, though I do think that there are sometimes pivotal moments that clue you in to your right answer.

Also, if you’re not happy, get therapy for yourself along with any couples therapy you do. It’s easy to blame your relationship or your partner when you’re unhappy, and while sometimes you may have it right, that might only be a small part of your story.

Good luck, and may you find a way to joy no matter which choice you make.

I had never made or even tried pot pie before, but Poor Melissa saw this recipe when we were flipping through the Foster’s Market cookbook and said “oooh,” so I thought I’d try to make it. I was more pleased by the squash I fried to go along with it than I was with the pot pie itself, as you can tell from this picture:

It’s not that the pot pie was bad, really. It’s just that, for one thing, I bought the cheapest vegetable broth I could find and didn’t realize until I was in the middle of cooking that the stuff had high fructose corn syrup in it. That pretty thoroughly grossed me out. It’s broth, why are you going to add stuff to it? Doesn’t that make it cost more to make? What in hell are you hiding, adding extra sweetness? Plus, I was ashamed of the fact that I bought pastry to put on top of the pot pie rather than making my own biscuits (like the recipe suggested). Third, I think that it really needed more gravy, in the end. I wonder if the cheap pastry I bought sucked it all up, or if I cooked it too long since I halved it.

In case you want to give it a try, and do it better than I did, here are the ingredients (mostly as written in the book. The Foster’s Market cookbook recipes usually make enough to feed eight to ten people, though):

• One 4 pound chicken (I used fake chicken; we’re vegetarian at home. You could probably just use any kind of chicken pieces without bones.)
• About a dozen biscuits formed but not baked—the recipe the book calls for is herbed biscuits
• 6 tbsp butter
• 4 carrots, peeled and chopped
• 4 ribs celery, chopped
• 8 oz. button mushrooms (I used crimini—I usually do when a recipe calls for button, because crimini has more flavor)
• ¼ c. all purpose flour
• 5 c. broth (I used veggie with HFCS; I recommend you do differently)
• 2 c. green peas, frozen or fresh
• 1 tbsp fresh or 1 tsp dried sage
• Egg wash (1 egg beaten with 2 tbsp milk)

Like I said, I didn’t use the biscuits, I didn’t use chicken, and I didn’t use egg wash. If you top yours with biscuits, just brush them with the egg wash before you bake it.

Here’s how to make it:

Preheat the oven to 375F.

Melt the butter over medium high and add the carrots, celery, and mushrooms. Cook those until they’re light brown.

Add the flour and cook, stirring frequently, 3 or 4 minutes longer. Slowly add the broth and whisk constantly while bringing it to a boil.

My whisk is problematic and kept getting bits of vegetables stuck in it:

Add the peas and sage, and season with salt and pepper. Simmer for 10 to 15 minutes.

Add the chicken, or “chicken,” and stir it in.

Transfer the mess into a baking dish (9×13 if you’re following these directions and don’t halve it), then top it with whatever you’re topping it with—uncooked biscuits, pastry, puff pastry, or even phyllo.

Bake it for 25 to 30 minutes, then take it out and eat it.

It was pretty alright. Poor Melissa liked it more than I did, I think—I’m not willing to eat it as leftovers, and she is. Then again, Poor Melissa will eat just about anything set in front of her and is not picky like I am.

The squash was pretty sexy, in any case, and the meal was a nice variation from our quesadilla-stir fry-beans and rice routine. This was the first time I’d breaded and fried a vegetable in my new cast iron frying pan, and it was so easy to get perfect squash. Soon I am going to make fried green tomatoes, oh yes.