By: Samantha Lee

As a first born child I was subjected to the whims of two over enthusiastic parents. This position entailed obsessive amounts of clothing, strictly organic food and a vegetarian diet. At the ripe age of two, I couldn’t care less; I had more important things to worry about, like making sure I got the purple sippy cup at meals. Meanwhile, my parents were packing for their first trip since I was born. They had tickets to Cuba for a seven am flight and a clock that read twelve am, at this point sleep is unlikely. 

Yesterday, my grandparents had flown in from Calgary to look after me. Grandma had brought her stack of flash cards containing recipes for delectable desserts, remarkable roasts and everything in between. Tucked away and biding its time in the casserole section sat an innocent piece of paper. On said paper was a list of ingredients and directions to strip me of my vegetarian status. Soon the forbidden smell of roasted chicken wafted through the halls, and non-organic celery dirtied my plate. Ignorant, I smiled, simply happy to have my trusty purple cup by my side. As my grandpa cut the chicken into microscopic pieces, I like to imagine he felt something nagging at the back of his mind. He would try to pinpoint the elusive source of his unease but ultimately fail. Forty thousand feet above the ground, my parents nibbled on crappy airplane food while I dutifully took bite after bite of my grandma’s sticky baked chicken. It tasted like nothing I’d had before. The unlikely pairing of soya sauce and apricot jam merged together to coat the chicken in an addictive sauce. 

In the following days, I would fall in love with new delicacies such as fish, steak, and pork. My parents, in all their sunburnt glory, were mortified to discover that they were about a week too late. Their daughter had developed a taste for meat, her vegetarian days now a distant memory.

​ Years later, over grandma's sticky baked chicken, I have the pleasure of hearing an all too familiar, if not slightly reworded argument. It goes a little something like this: an accusation that hits like the paw of a well loved stuffed animal, a defensive “you didn’t tell us,” followed by a rebuttal that “it was implied and I shouldn’t have had to.” 

---

​Sticky Baked Chicken Recipe

Ingredients (serves 5)

- 1 chicken
- 1 cup of apricot or peach jam
- ½ a cup of barbecue sauce
- 1 chopped garlic
- ½ a cup of chopped onion
- 2 tbsp of soya sauce
- 1 lime (juiced) 
- 2 chopped stalks of celery 

Directions

Step 1 
Preheat the oven to 325 F

Step 2
​Put the onion and celery in a 9”x13” casserole dish. Make sure the ingredients are evenly spread out

Step 3 
Cut the chicken and place in the casserole dish so that it is overtop of the onions and celery

Step 4
Mix the jam of your choice, barbecue sauce, garlic, soya sauce, and lime into a sauce

Step 5
Pour the sauce over the chicken

Step 6 
Bake for 1 hour or until the chicken is a light golden brown

Step 7 
​Serve! (with purple sippy cup)