By Dick Ellis:
Chicken breast, turkey breast, fish filet: all three of these words are interchangeable when describing dinner at the Ellis house. Five days a week, dear old Mom slaves over a hot oven all day to concoct a repulsive dinner that came to her in a wicked dream the night before. Lately, since beef has been outlawed by the house dietitian, almost every night we some obscure form of poultry or fish. Unfortunately, by only using "choice" chicken, turkey, and fish, difficulty is created when determining what exactly you are eating because when fried, broiled, or baked, the texture of all three proteins are indistinguishable and the chicken smells like fish, the turkey smells like fish, and the fish smells disgusting.
To completely befuddle the eater, no meal is prepared more than once mostly because my mother doesn't follow recipes and forgets how she created dinner. She will improvise, such as using pretzels in lieu of noodles in her chow mein casserole. On special occasions we find fingernails, eyelashes, and hair in our food. My mother's best meal is Tio Sancho's Mexican tacos: chop up lettuce and you literally have a Mexican fiesta! Everyone can't be perfect and even though my mom isn't a good cook she makes my bed.